Also Defender 2000 for the Jaguar and remakes of Gridrunner, Hover Bovver and Deflex for PocketPCs (and Windows). I admit he hasn't done anything terribly original since, well, ever, but then a) shooting games haven't been original since 1985 or so and b) Unity seems to be shaping up to be something pretty special.
Is anybody actually shocked that it sucks? Naming your company after an Ayn Rand book is like stamping a big fat "AVOID" sign on everything you produce.
Most older Neo-Geo games have been going down in price for a while (not surprising). Newer ones, on the other hand, are not particularly likely to drop below current levels, since only an extremely small amount of the home cartridge versions were produced. Games that came out just 2-3 years ago already sell for between $500-$1,000. So if you ever hope to get your hands on an SvC Chaos or Metal Slug 5 cart you may as well do it now.
We watched as Garrett carefully avoided the gate guards and downed one of them with an arrow to the head; then he finished off the others.
What the hell? Does Garrett have super-powers now? Finishing off one guard out of a group was hard enough in parts 1 and 2, never mind taking out the whole bunch at once.
Honestly the only reason people were into it was because it was the first multiplayer fps on a console
Except, oops, it wasn't. Faceball 2000 is the first that comes immediately to mind; I'm sure there were earlier ones. Doom for the Jaguar and PSX had multiplayer as well and I believe they came out before Goldeneye. The main reason Goldeneye is remembered is because it objectively and indisputably made them all look like soft flabby things.
And the new one looked terrible. Seriously, the screenshots they released were sub-Grim Fandango in terms of graphics quality and they were describing it as an "action-adventure" instead of pure adventure, complete with lots of fistfights (in fact, most of the released screenshots were of action scenes). Can't say I'm terribly crushed they canned it.
Thing is, an awful lot is known about this unreleased game for it to be completely unavailable to the public somehow.
Not really. I have an old back issue of Sega Visions (the crappy free magazine Sega sent you if you bothered registering one of their products) with a two-page spread that goes into pretty good detail on every single mini-game. I haven't found anyone who actually claims to have played it.
The point of an emulator is that it duplicates the original hardware to the greatest possible extent. If you're programming a game for an emulator you face the same restrictions as you would if programming for the actual hardware; otherwise you're defeating the purpose of emulating the older hardware in the first place. My PC may be able to run Doom III and it may be able to run a Super Nintendo emulator, but that doesn't mean I could make a faithful conversion of Doom III that would run with the SNES emulator. The "new" 2600 Pac-Man is nothing more than a hack of the 2600 Ms. Pac-Man, so I see no reason why it couldn't be played on an actual 2600 system. It wouldn't surprise me if people already have done just that.
The third-person mode, by itself, is no big deal. The game already renders the player's entire body in first-person mode (meaning you can look down and see your own feet), so it was probably ridiculously simple to implement.
The problem is the levels: DX2 had horribly tiny levels to accomodate the Xbox's limited RAM, and apparently Thief 3 is going to be the same way -- apparently levels in T3 are divided into areas roughly 1/4 the size of the average level in part 2, and to access the different areas you walk into a sort of misty thing and confirm whether or not you want to leave the current area. Again this is a complete compromise to deal with the Xbox's comparatively pitiful RAM but it's almost certainly going to be carried over to the PC version -- just as it was in the PC version of DX2 -- even though my PC has eight times the RAM of the Xbox and a lot of folks have far more. In short, screw Eidos, screw Ion Storm and screw Warren Spector for his "this is how we'd be doing it even if it was PC-only" bullshit.
According to GameScience (quoting Nintendo of Japan's press release), the two processors will be one ARM7 and one ARM9. Which from what I've heard is rougly equivalent to a GBA and a Tapwave.
One of the programmers for that game wrote to some magazine (I think it was PC Gamer) and confirmed that not only was the AI terrible, they didn't bother implementing it in the first place. In other words, there was no AI. I'm not entirely sure how it's possible to have a game with no AI at all (any programmers out there care to give it a shot?) but that's what he claimed.
PacMan for the 2600 was out-sourced by Atari (just like Truckers) to a single developer who got royalties on *EVERY CARTRIDGE MANUFACTURED*, not sold.
The guy who did Pac-Man (Tod Frye) worked in-house for Atari. I don't know how much money he made off of it but since programmers at Atari weren't paid any royalties at that time I would be very surprised indeed if he became a millionaire off of it. In any event it wasn't outsourced to anyone.
It's Team Ninja's baby, and with such great gameplay achievements such as 'Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball' to emphasise the point, it's easy to see why the DoA series gets criticised.
The funny thing about DOAXBV is that the creator actually admitted the gameplay was so simplistic you could play it with one hand. His explanation was that he wanted it to be easy enough for his 5-year-old daughter. Uh huh.
I think the sequel you refer to was Ballblazer Champions. Which sucked. BattleSport was a sort of spiritual sequel to Ballblazer and was a MUCH better game, but I'm not sure it ever came out on any system besides the 3DO.
Slashdot Mirror
Lucasarts hasn't made a decent in-house game in years. I didn't shed any tears for Full Throttle 2 and I'm not going to for this one either.
BRING BACK AMIPRO DAMMIT!
Also Defender 2000 for the Jaguar and remakes of Gridrunner, Hover Bovver and Deflex for PocketPCs (and Windows). I admit he hasn't done anything terribly original since, well, ever, but then a) shooting games haven't been original since 1985 or so and b) Unity seems to be shaping up to be something pretty special.
Is anybody actually shocked that it sucks? Naming your company after an Ayn Rand book is like stamping a big fat "AVOID" sign on everything you produce.
Most older Neo-Geo games have been going down in price for a while (not surprising). Newer ones, on the other hand, are not particularly likely to drop below current levels, since only an extremely small amount of the home cartridge versions were produced. Games that came out just 2-3 years ago already sell for between $500-$1,000. So if you ever hope to get your hands on an SvC Chaos or Metal Slug 5 cart you may as well do it now.
The largest Genesis/MD cart (that I know of) was 5 MB, not 4. (I'm referring to Super Street Fighter II.)
C'mon, people. Let's show Kenta Cho some well-deserved love.
The point of an emulator is that it duplicates the original hardware to the greatest possible extent. If you're programming a game for an emulator you face the same restrictions as you would if programming for the actual hardware; otherwise you're defeating the purpose of emulating the older hardware in the first place. My PC may be able to run Doom III and it may be able to run a Super Nintendo emulator, but that doesn't mean I could make a faithful conversion of Doom III that would run with the SNES emulator. The "new" 2600 Pac-Man is nothing more than a hack of the 2600 Ms. Pac-Man, so I see no reason why it couldn't be played on an actual 2600 system. It wouldn't surprise me if people already have done just that.
The third-person mode, by itself, is no big deal. The game already renders the player's entire body in first-person mode (meaning you can look down and see your own feet), so it was probably ridiculously simple to implement.
The problem is the levels: DX2 had horribly tiny levels to accomodate the Xbox's limited RAM, and apparently Thief 3 is going to be the same way -- apparently levels in T3 are divided into areas roughly 1/4 the size of the average level in part 2, and to access the different areas you walk into a sort of misty thing and confirm whether or not you want to leave the current area. Again this is a complete compromise to deal with the Xbox's comparatively pitiful RAM but it's almost certainly going to be carried over to the PC version -- just as it was in the PC version of DX2 -- even though my PC has eight times the RAM of the Xbox and a lot of folks have far more. In short, screw Eidos, screw Ion Storm and screw Warren Spector for his "this is how we'd be doing it even if it was PC-only" bullshit.
According to GameScience (quoting Nintendo of Japan's press release), the two processors will be one ARM7 and one ARM9. Which from what I've heard is rougly equivalent to a GBA and a Tapwave.
Can you say Game and Watch? Hopefully the graphics will be a little better.
Here's a better Seanbaby list.
"Interesting"? The man doesn't make an actual point at all. HEY EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHAT SUCKS?? LINUX!!!!!! +1,000,000 INSIGHTFUL!!!!!!!
I seem to remember Missile Command having three buttons.....
I think the sequel you refer to was Ballblazer Champions. Which sucked. BattleSport was a sort of spiritual sequel to Ballblazer and was a MUCH better game, but I'm not sure it ever came out on any system besides the 3DO.