The article says "Excitingly, the game is supposed to have deep rules. That's certainly believable as Keith Johnson is responsible for them. He created the wonderfully complex rules for The Simpsons Pinball Party - widely praised amongst pinball aficionados."
But then says: "But perhaps most interesting of all is the one detail missing. Who's the designer? It's been generally believed that George Gomez would be in charge on this one, but there's no mention of the designer in the press release at all. Hmmm."
So I guess the guy who created the rules of the game isn't it's designer. I'm not sure how you can create the rules for a pin and not have designed it, but whatever... I stand corrected.
I, for one, actually consider this news. The creation of a brand new pinball machine when most arcades subsist on "sit down driving games" and "light gun games" is a fortunate thing indeed. Now if I could only find a place that has them. Oh wait.
On the other hand, Stern is no Midway. A lot of their games have fairly uninspiring themes/designs IMHO (Roller Coaster Tycoon). And while they've finally gotten better parts for their recent machines, they do have pretty shoddy quality control. My Simpsons Pinball Party (TSPP) had such "powerful" flippers (Stern's older machine's were notorious for weak flippers) that they would shake when you held the flipper button down. This was due to a misalignment in the flipper coil. It came from the factory this way! Stern "tech support" gave the following suggestion to fix it: hit it (the flipper coil) with a hammer. Uh, yeah... I'm sure there won't be any more problems with the machine after I whack it with a blunt object a few times.
"What are you going to do with that hammer?"
"Mongo fixing pinball!"
Speaking of TSPP, they say in the article that the same designer is doing the Lord of the Rings pin. I hope they do a better job making it clear what the player has to do to score points then they did with TSPP. There's a fine line between a deep ruleset, and simply confusing the player. TSPP is a fine game for home use, because you get to take the time to learn its rules and idiosyncrasies. If I was playing it in an arcade, I doubt I would have taken the time to figure it all out.
That said, Stern is getting better and better with every new machine. It takes guts to stick in a market that everyone else has abandoned. I wish them the best of luck and hope they keep making new pins.
When Nintendo uses the phrase "family friendly", why does it seem to mean uber cute (pikmin, animal crossing, any mario game, pokemon, etc)?
A game like Mario Golf was a decent game, but I developed cavities from all the bouncy/cute/happy characters.
I don't think Nintendo has to start making "adult" games, but there has to be a middle ground between "It'sa me!" and "Die you bitch!" I think Viewtiful Joe is a good example of a game that looks good, is pretty cool, is fun to play, and doesn't have anything particularly offensive in it.
10-20 hours is just about right in my opinion. I have about 40 hrs playtime on Disgaea right now, and I'm completely burnt out on the game.
I'm also most of the way through Max Payne 2, and I'm loving every minute. Sure it's short(er). Maybe it should have been $35 or $40 instead of $50. But I'd rather have a 10 hr game that's packed to the gills with quality, rather than have a game artificially lengthened to make people think they got their monies worth.
Anyway, it costs $10 bucks to go to a 2 hr movie. If I get 10 hours of playtime out of a game, I'd say it evened out.
Okay guys! I concede that they may not affect performance as much as they did on previous versions. Unfortunately, I'm gonna' be stuck with version 10.1 for a while.
However, I still believe that all the pretty bells and whistles are bloat, and add about as much to the user's OS experience as a leopard skin cell phone cover helps them dial their phone.
I never said it was confusing, I said it was inconsistent. I'll stick by that. And while we're at it, let's add gaudy to the list too.
And I never compared it to Windows, you did. Which just proves that you're either biased toward OS X, or against Windows.
Personally, I think XP's new interface is an ugly piece of shit as well. I want my operating system to fade into the background so I can focus program I'm using, not be so tacky that it detracts. I don't need drop shadows, menus fading in and out, jumping icons, etc. That's just for people who are dazzled by shiny objects.
"The biggest new feature on Mac OS X, according to Apple, is the new Metal-looking, multi-threaded Finder"
"Additionally, when double-clicking apps to load, a nice effect will zoom in and fade the icon's application, giving the user a smooth launch feedback feeling."
"The effect is like a big bang, with each window shrinking in size and moving outward until they're all on one plane."
"Fast User Switching' is here too and it allows you to change users without logging out of your applications (by using another cool looking QuartzExtreme-powered special effect). "
"If you are using a metal application and you invoke an alert or an "attached" child window on the master window, the effect of the way the child window pops up out is impressive"
Bet they could increase performance significantly if they got rid of all this "gee-whiz" garbage.
And what is with these brushed metal applications? I thought the whole point of an OS was to have a consistent GUI.
I guess the difference between me and you is I have my NES set up, and I can play the game anytime I want. Plus, I don't care about the game being portable. Every time I take my gameboy with me, I never seem to play it.
I agree with you on the price. If they want to do re-releases, fine, but they should be budget titles. When all you do is take the SNES version and port it over (with minor tweaks to the aspect ratio, etc), I don't think you need to recoup quite as much as an "original" game.
I'm just tired of Nintendo getting away with re-releasing old games in lieu of putting out original games (not counting the original Advance Wars).
Who the hell cares? I played this game 10 years ago... and *again* (with new graphics and sound) on the Super Nintendo. Did Nintendo just release the GBA as a dumping ground for all their old games? Lazy bastards. I want something original damn it!
A free copy of Half Life 2 sounds good to me, however I doubt they will be shipping out them out in a timely manner. I don't want to be waiting 6-8 weeks for ATI to get me my free copy of HL2....yah know, 6-8 weeks from, uh, whenever it's done.
I'm not saying they shouldn't try to create something new and innovative. However, it's one thing to design something wacky and impractical in the concept stages, but someone high up in Nokia should have nixed the phone well before it got to the manufacturing stage.
What the hell is wrong with Nokia's designs lately? I know they are trying to innovate, but jesus christ, reign those designers in. Just cause someone can create a Winamp skin, doesn't mean they can design a phone.
This new quality control system of yours is working great! Now if you could just alienate a few more companies, like THQ and TDK, I think you'd have a strongest library out there.
I was thinking of the same thing... every time I hear them yell "DOOOOOOOOD!" a smile comes to my face. Damn Prinnys!
Also the Prinny guys in Disgaea constantly say "Dood" ('cool' wayof saying dude, just in case you don't know;p) in various ways when they attack, which gets pretty odd when you have 3-4 of them attacking in the same round (and characters next to each other can team attack which adds more doodage). Sample:
Prinny1: Take this dood! *boom*
Prinny2: Dood! *slashslashslash*
Prinny1 (team attacking with 2): Dood!
Prinny3: Dooooooooood! *thwak*
Me (commenting on the experience): Doood!
My brother (replying to my comment): Dood.
I overheard a clerk at GameStop explaining to a customer why their return policy is so great: you can return new games (with-in 7 days I believe he said) and they will give you your money back. Sounds great right? The problem is, they repackage the returned games at the store and re-sell them as new (after all, they are basically new, he said).
Some people might not have a problem with this, but I sure do. If I'm paying for a brand new item, I want it to be BRAND NEW. If I didn't care, I would have picked up a used copy for less.
Keep this in mind the next time you pick up your "brand new" copy of the latest release.
Perhaps you are making assumptions on the kind of study he's doing. Maybe he's comparing subject lines or designs of SPAM messages, and it doesn't matter if he get's an accurate sampling of "average user" data.
I think some of you are missing the point of the article. They aren't saying that the games on the list are necessarily bad... they are saying they were over-blown and over-hyped when they were released.
They're looking back (with the benefit of some hindsight) and saying: "wait, some of those games didn't change the gaming world as much as we thought at the time." Games like DK Country were fun, but it was pretty much a standard platformer, not the "Second Coming of 16-bit" Nintendo wanted us to believe.
When you come down to it, it's all relative anyway. If you liked the game, what do you care? Stop reading articles about games, and go play the damn things!
The naming jokes are getting old? How about the games themselves? The preposterous names are simply an example of the lack of innovation the series has had over the years.
Sure, there were a couple decent SF games over the years, but nothing amazing or genre defining (like Soul Caliber for the DC). I hope when a title comes out with a name I can remember (SF4?!), it'll be a sign that Capcom has spent some time innovating, rather then simply cranking out the next sequel & watering down a already bland franchise.
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Self correction:
The article says "Excitingly, the game is supposed to have deep rules. That's certainly believable as Keith Johnson is responsible for them. He created the wonderfully complex rules for The Simpsons Pinball Party - widely praised amongst pinball aficionados."
But then says: "But perhaps most interesting of all is the one detail missing. Who's the designer? It's been generally believed that George Gomez would be in charge on this one, but there's no mention of the designer in the press release at all. Hmmm."
So I guess the guy who created the rules of the game isn't it's designer. I'm not sure how you can create the rules for a pin and not have designed it, but whatever... I stand corrected.
I, for one, actually consider this news. The creation of a brand new pinball machine when most arcades subsist on "sit down driving games" and "light gun games" is a fortunate thing indeed. Now if I could only find a place that has them. Oh wait.
On the other hand, Stern is no Midway. A lot of their games have fairly uninspiring themes/designs IMHO (Roller Coaster Tycoon). And while they've finally gotten better parts for their recent machines, they do have pretty shoddy quality control. My Simpsons Pinball Party (TSPP) had such "powerful" flippers (Stern's older machine's were notorious for weak flippers) that they would shake when you held the flipper button down. This was due to a misalignment in the flipper coil. It came from the factory this way! Stern "tech support" gave the following suggestion to fix it: hit it (the flipper coil) with a hammer. Uh, yeah... I'm sure there won't be any more problems with the machine after I whack it with a blunt object a few times.
"What are you going to do with that hammer?"
"Mongo fixing pinball!"
Speaking of TSPP, they say in the article that the same designer is doing the Lord of the Rings pin. I hope they do a better job making it clear what the player has to do to score points then they did with TSPP. There's a fine line between a deep ruleset, and simply confusing the player. TSPP is a fine game for home use, because you get to take the time to learn its rules and idiosyncrasies. If I was playing it in an arcade, I doubt I would have taken the time to figure it all out.
That said, Stern is getting better and better with every new machine. It takes guts to stick in a market that everyone else has abandoned. I wish them the best of luck and hope they keep making new pins.
When Nintendo uses the phrase "family friendly", why does it seem to mean uber cute (pikmin, animal crossing, any mario game, pokemon, etc)?
A game like Mario Golf was a decent game, but I developed cavities from all the bouncy/cute/happy characters.
I don't think Nintendo has to start making "adult" games, but there has to be a middle ground between "It'sa me!" and "Die you bitch!" I think Viewtiful Joe is a good example of a game that looks good, is pretty cool, is fun to play, and doesn't have anything particularly offensive in it.
I couldn't agree more.
10-20 hours is just about right in my opinion. I have about 40 hrs playtime on Disgaea right now, and I'm completely burnt out on the game.
I'm also most of the way through Max Payne 2, and I'm loving every minute. Sure it's short(er). Maybe it should have been $35 or $40 instead of $50. But I'd rather have a 10 hr game that's packed to the gills with quality, rather than have a game artificially lengthened to make people think they got their monies worth.
Anyway, it costs $10 bucks to go to a 2 hr movie. If I get 10 hours of playtime out of a game, I'd say it evened out.
...that this would be the 7th larry game. They skipped 4.
Okay guys! I concede that they may not affect performance as much as they did on previous versions. Unfortunately, I'm gonna' be stuck with version 10.1 for a while.
However, I still believe that all the pretty bells and whistles are bloat, and add about as much to the user's OS experience as a leopard skin cell phone cover helps them dial their phone.
It's soooooooo shiny...
I never said it was confusing, I said it was inconsistent. I'll stick by that. And while we're at it, let's add gaudy to the list too.
And I never compared it to Windows, you did. Which just proves that you're either biased toward OS X, or against Windows.
Personally, I think XP's new interface is an ugly piece of shit as well. I want my operating system to fade into the background so I can focus program I'm using, not be so tacky that it detracts. I don't need drop shadows, menus fading in and out, jumping icons, etc. That's just for people who are dazzled by shiny objects.
"The biggest new feature on Mac OS X, according to Apple, is the new Metal-looking, multi-threaded Finder"
"Additionally, when double-clicking apps to load, a nice effect will zoom in and fade the icon's application, giving the user a smooth launch feedback feeling."
"The effect is like a big bang, with each window shrinking in size and moving outward until they're all on one plane."
"Fast User Switching' is here too and it allows you to change users without logging out of your applications (by using another cool looking QuartzExtreme-powered special effect). "
"If you are using a metal application and you invoke an alert or an "attached" child window on the master window, the effect of the way the child window pops up out is impressive"
Bet they could increase performance significantly if they got rid of all this "gee-whiz" garbage.
And what is with these brushed metal applications? I thought the whole point of an OS was to have a consistent GUI.
I guess the difference between me and you is I have my NES set up, and I can play the game anytime I want. Plus, I don't care about the game being portable. Every time I take my gameboy with me, I never seem to play it. I agree with you on the price. If they want to do re-releases, fine, but they should be budget titles. When all you do is take the SNES version and port it over (with minor tweaks to the aspect ratio, etc), I don't think you need to recoup quite as much as an "original" game. I'm just tired of Nintendo getting away with re-releasing old games in lieu of putting out original games (not counting the original Advance Wars).
Who the hell cares? I played this game 10 years ago... and *again* (with new graphics and sound) on the Super Nintendo. Did Nintendo just release the GBA as a dumping ground for all their old games? Lazy bastards. I want something original damn it!
My mistake. Guess I'm going to hell.
It made the Reader Top 10
My vote goes to Rez. I gave the game a chance, but it sure didn't do anything for me. Maybe if I self-medicated, that would help me *get* it.
A free copy of Half Life 2 sounds good to me, however I doubt they will be shipping out them out in a timely manner. I don't want to be waiting 6-8 weeks for ATI to get me my free copy of HL2. ...yah know, 6-8 weeks from, uh, whenever it's done.
I'm not saying they shouldn't try to create something new and innovative. However, it's one thing to design something wacky and impractical in the concept stages, but someone high up in Nokia should have nixed the phone well before it got to the manufacturing stage.
What the hell is wrong with Nokia's designs lately? I know they are trying to innovate, but jesus christ, reign those designers in. Just cause someone can create a Winamp skin, doesn't mean they can design a phone.
This new quality control system of yours is working great! Now if you could just alienate a few more companies, like THQ and TDK, I think you'd have a strongest library out there.
Why is this news? It doesn't seem like this game deserves any more special attention then any other game release.
Also the Prinny guys in Disgaea constantly say "Dood" ('cool' wayof saying dude, just in case you don't know ;p) in various ways when they attack, which gets pretty odd when you have 3-4 of them attacking in the same round (and characters next to each other can team attack which adds more doodage). Sample:
Prinny1: Take this dood! *boom*
Prinny2: Dood! *slashslashslash*
Prinny1 (team attacking with 2): Dood!
Prinny3: Dooooooooood! *thwak*
Me (commenting on the experience): Doood!
My brother (replying to my comment): Dood.
I overheard a clerk at GameStop explaining to a customer why their return policy is so great: you can return new games (with-in 7 days I believe he said) and they will give you your money back. Sounds great right? The problem is, they repackage the returned games at the store and re-sell them as new (after all, they are basically new, he said). Some people might not have a problem with this, but I sure do. If I'm paying for a brand new item, I want it to be BRAND NEW. If I didn't care, I would have picked up a used copy for less. Keep this in mind the next time you pick up your "brand new" copy of the latest release.
Perhaps you are making assumptions on the kind of study he's doing. Maybe he's comparing subject lines or designs of SPAM messages, and it doesn't matter if he get's an accurate sampling of "average user" data.
They're looking back (with the benefit of some hindsight) and saying: "wait, some of those games didn't change the gaming world as much as we thought at the time." Games like DK Country were fun, but it was pretty much a standard platformer, not the "Second Coming of 16-bit" Nintendo wanted us to believe.
When you come down to it, it's all relative anyway. If you liked the game, what do you care? Stop reading articles about games, and go play the damn things!
The naming jokes are getting old? How about the games themselves? The preposterous names are simply an example of the lack of innovation the series has had over the years.
Sure, there were a couple decent SF games over the years, but nothing amazing or genre defining (like Soul Caliber for the DC). I hope when a title comes out with a name I can remember (SF4?!), it'll be a sign that Capcom has spent some time innovating, rather then simply cranking out the next sequel & watering down a already bland franchise.
...I'm still waiting for Super Hyper Street Fighter Alpha Beta Zero Turbo X III.