"Sometimes a game comes along that can surprise everybody, but not that often."
But now nobody will know, since the game that just might have been the one to come along and surprise them was cancelled.:/
"Product Name SCPH-4000
"PocketStation(TM)"
Release Date December 23, 1998
The Dreamcast was released in 1999."
You are quite correct in saying that the Dreamcast was released in 1999 - but this was only in the United States and Europe. The Dreamcast was released in 1998 in Japan, on November 27th. As is customary in the games industry, all the hardware (including the VMU's) had been announced and shown some time before that.
Furthermore, the VMU's were available to purchase some three or four months prior to the console. This was done in order to promote one of the Japanese launch games - a Godzilla title - and to build hype for the Dreamcast itself. Green-coloured Godzilla-branded VMU's (which came with a Godzilla virtual pet pre-installed) were sold in Japanese cinemas, during the run of a Godzilla movie that was out at the time.
It's actually very well-known that Sony based the PocketStation on Sega's Visual Memory Units (or Visual Memory System, as they were known in Japan).
"Sony had a hand-held that connected to the PSX back in the 90's. It was pretty much the same thing as the Dreamcast VMU, except it came out before and had a lil' screen protector."
I know, though I would class the PocketStation more as a memory-card-with-a-display than a real handheld, hence why I didn't mention it initially. But even back then, people gave Sony undue credit for the idea, which was nothing more than a ripoff of the Dreamcast VMU's which had been around for some time beforehand.
Incidentally, Nintendo did do a link-up between a home-console and a 'proper' handheld (with the GC and GBA) before Sony ever did. That said, the concept was first done by the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Sega Dreamcast, although due to how the NGPC vanished and Sega dropped out of the hardware business, nobody ever really got to see it put to use.
I wonder how many of the people who said Nintendo's handheld to home-console connectivity ideas were bad and would never work will now be saying stuff along the lines of "That's a good idea.", and giving all the (undeserved) credit to Sony?
"It will probably fail because I don't see how they will keep the cost down enough to justify it."
Well, going by what Japanese retailers have said recently, the DS will cost around $150 to $180. That's a pretty good price compared to what will be it's closest 'rival', the Sony PSP (despite the DS not being put out to compete with it), which has been confirmed (by Japanese retailer speculations, but more importantly, by Sony Europe) to cost between $350 to $450.
"I realize I'm just reiterating everything that was said the last time this came up, but I think we're now starting to see how feature-packed this may become."
Indeed. The touch-screen also sounds interesting - I'd like to see what developers can pull off with that.
"So the question is, will it be bloated?"
The question is, has there ever been a bloated Nintendo handheld? They've all been good at what they do, and as small as comfortably possible given the technology of the times (although, in retrospect, the original Game Boy looks large, it will still fit in a pocket).
The iPaq's with ARM chips are basically a Newton with a color screen and more memory. Then we really wouldn't need a GBA."
Well, you wouldn't need a GBA or anything related to it in this instance anyway - the article is about a NES emulator.;)
"I agree with the the overall sentiment described in the summary, but I didn't bother reading past the headline. "Quoting" the people you're arguing against using l33tspeak is an extremely weak-minded way of making them look dumb."
That's a pity - you missed out on an extremely interesting and informative piece.
The l33tsp34k headlines in the article are little more than a joke. If you look around, there genuinely are people out there saying "N1NtEdN0 R tEh DUM3D LOL" just like that and expecting to be (and somehow actually being) taken seriously, so it's not like the jokey headlines are far from the truth. The article itself contains nothing but genuine facts and figures to debunk the "Nintendo is doomed" myth (currently) often perpetuated by the media and others who are in denial about Nintendo's true situation, and is actually a far better read than the summary here indicates.;)
It's also the first in a series of editorials, so there will be more worthwhile reading to follow.
I get this feeling that Sony will have these exclusive franchises run into the ground before too long, just like they did with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon in years gone by, when those franchises were exclusive to Sony's consoles.
On the topic of Jak & Daxter 3, I lost a degree of respect for the series' developer when they were interviewed prior to the release of the first Jak & Daxter, and not-too-subtly hinted that there were going to be more installments in the series (it gave the impression that they knew from the outset that it would be [over]sequelized).
" Huh? You might ask. But it's something I've noticed about the OS X version of Halo:
Where's the fucking demo? I mean, I've heard "Halo runs great on my Powerbook" to "Halo runs like a turd on my G5 with a 3 Gigabyte memory card"."
Apparently, the Mac Halo demo is in the works at the moment. It's a pity it wasn't released nearer to the game's launch date, though.
"Sony and those gamers out there (not necessarily Sony fanboys) who believe graphics make a game what it is are destroying MY hobby and I'm pissed. I hope you non-fanboy, videogame enthusiasts are just as pissed as I am."
It's a very refreshing change to see that someone else sees things this way. I'd have to say that I feel gaming has detiorated quite badly since certain non-game companies started selling their attempts at consoles/pretty-picture-displaying-machines.
On the subject of the 'graphics-whoring' that some folks flocked to Sony because of, I also recall that Sony managed to halt (or severely delay, in some cases) the release of some third-party titles (I remember this happening specifically with some of Capcom's stuff), just because they were 2D, and thus not 'good' enough for their console (despite the fact that they looked and played a thousand times better than the made-out-of-cereal-boxes looking 3D of the day). Similarly, there were some cases where they obtained the rights to publish certain third-party titles, but delayed them until they looked extremely dated, in order to push other similar games that they held exclusivity rights to (which the third-party titles were 'rivals' to). If memory serves, this happened with a platform game called Jersey Devil - Sony bought up the rights to publish it in North America, but then the game appeared to have been delayed so that Crash Bandicoot 2 (the overly-hyped sequel, starring the character then regarded as Sony's unofficial "mascot") could hog the limelight (as it stands, North America got Jersey Devil some 6 to 8 months after the rest of the world, by which time it looked very old and out-of-touch with the current trends indeed).
As for the exclusivity thing, in some cases, exclusivity is normal practice. For example: Nintendo's first-party games only appear on Nintendo's consoles, and that's perfectly acceptable - Nintendo don't make their games for anybody else. However, in the case of i-Ninja in Europe, I strongly disagree with what Sony have done - it's a third-party game, and was a multiplatform title, but now the GameCube and XBox versions will never see the light of day there. That is just plain wrong. I can understand Sony keeping their EyeToy, and other first/second-party stuff exclusive to their console (as with Nintendo's first-party games, that's perfectly fine), but when it moves into preventing a multiplatform title from getting released on all platforms, it crosses into the realm of restricting customer choice. Sony is one of the only console makers I'm aware of who have ever done this - back in the old days, if a game was multi-console, it would see release on all the major formats with no trouble (I'm talking, say, when the NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, and Game Boy were all still on the market - those consoles' makers never prevented any 3rd-party games from being released on their rivals' machines, as far as I'm aware). This practice of permanently locking-in third-party titles needs to be nipped in the bud before it happens again.
"What's your view of the success of the GameCube and its software titles in the current console generation?"
There are other consoles worth playing this generation? O_o;;
"So, it is alright for a company to abandon their users and sell out to MS.
It is alright for their premiere platform to be the last one they port it to, years later.
It is alright for them to make the buyers unable to play with their PC friends who got the game years earlier.
It is alright for the game to run like complete ass showing it was quick port."
If I'm not mistaken, though, Bungie themselves weren't responsible for the Mac port - MacSoft were.
I've read the article, and I think it just goes to show how biased the media are that this got reported with the headline " Computer game teenager gets DVT ", rather than something like " Teenager gets DVT from sitting awkwardly for too long ", which is what really happened.
Surely the kid felt his legs going numb? I know that when I was a kid, I would have tended to move or something if I noticed that my leg was falling asleep. I bet some loony pro-health group somewhere will get all over gaming's case 'cos of this, now. Well done, BBC. At the very least, it was good to see that the doctor who commented showed some common sense, even if he did fall prone to the annoying habit of using "Playstations" as a synonym for "games consoles".;P
" If I'm not mistaken(which I could very well be... oh the hell with it) wasn't pokemon a toon before it became a game?"
Nope, it was a game first - the original title (which was Pocket Monsters - Green Version) was released in Japan in late 1995/early 1996, and went on to become an animated series in Japan in 1997. However, the TV show hit the West before the games (Pokemon - Red Version and Pokemon - Blue Version) were released outside of Japan, which was likely for marketing purposes.
"Further than that, even. Simba was originally white"
I'm reminded of a quote reportedly from a Disney employee who saw some early material related to The Lion King, featuring the original white-furred Simba, which went something along the lines of; "Even our lawyers aren't THAT good.".
"There are few things disney puts out that are *worse* than watching another episode of pokemon."
Except for a lot of truly awful TV serial spin-offs - the Lilo & Stitch TV show springs to mind, as well as the lousy Timon & Pumbaa (Lion King spin-off) series, and the Tarzan show, too. Though, that said, Jungle Cubs (show starring younger versions of The Jungle Book cast) and the Aladdin TV series were fairly entertaining at times, though.
As well as the bad cartoon-series spin-offs, there's the straight-to-video sequels to movies which had been successful. Stitch the Movie, the sequel to Lilo & Stitch, for example, is one overly-long, painful-to-watch, insipid, insulting-to-the-intelligence ad for the awful Lilo & Stitch TV series, which was so awful, it's not even possible to make fun of it in MST3K style! The two Aladdin sequels weren't that good, either, and nor can I say much for the sequels to Peter Pan, Cinderella, or The Lion King. Admittedly, The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride did have a couple of nice songs in it, however, but it was a pretty terrible movie - like many of Disney's other sequels to revered classics, it's painful to sit through. I can't believe they're making 'The Lion King 1.5: Hakuna Matata', either - they really shouldn't, IMO.
"I think Sony will have a viable chance with the PSP and for the first time in a long time I have been excited about owning a handheld again, let's just hope the price is decent:)"
Myself, I don't think Sony will have a very big chance, considering the PSP is going to cost between $350 to $450, as opposed to the GBA at about $70, and the Nintendo DS at $150 or thereabouts.
"The original Metroid, on the other hand, is already getting a remake for the GBA called Metroid: Zero Mission."
If memory serves, Zero Mission actually picks up right after the end of the original, so it's not exactly a remake...
I wonder how many people who'd said Nintendo and Namco's Donkey Konga was a "cash-in", or "retarded", and suchlike will now be changing their views purely because this will be appearing on Sony's console?
It's amusing that "www.hotmale.com" really is owned by - of all people - a company who offers (offered? I don't know if they're still around) a subscription webmail service.;)
All of the titles in the list seem to be old DOS and Win95/98 titles.
It makes me suspicious that they got some of the game-names wrong (for example, they attribute Capcom with a "Mega Man X Legends", which does not even exist, although it's quite possibly a typo of 'Mega Man Legends', which was ported to PC around 1998), and even credited the wrong companies with games (an outfit called 'Div Games Studios' is listed as supplying Mega Man X, but that game is a part of Capcom's flagship Mega Man property). Oh yeah, and some of the companies that were listed no longer exist (some haven't for years, some went bankrupt not-so-long-ago), and others are listed several times - note that many of Take Two's various names are in that list, and Disney is listed as both 'Disney' and 'Disney Interactive'. The presence of editions of some software dated as far back as 2000 is also quite bizarre.
The whole list reads like they skimmed through a few lists of games-by-{whoever} on GameFAQs or someplace similar, and shoved it all into one document (and forgot to name it - it was called Untitled Document when it was first up).
(And isn't it odd that nobody has said they have dev-kits for the Phantom, considering when dev-kits arrive for existent new consoles, you tend to hear about it on gaming news sites?)
Incidentally, I've seen quite a few of the listed titles available for purchase on TryGames.com - isn't it curious that TryGames.com's try-and-buy-online service for PCs is so similar to the much-touted broadband-content-delivery-system that the modified-Win-XP (IIRC) based Phantom will supposedly have?
In closing, it just seems to me like it's more a case of "these big-name-big-developer games will run on our modified PC-like box", as opposed to "these developers are making games on our machine"...
Having seen all these comments where/.'ers were punished for messing with school computers, I figure I'll post my experiences of utilising school computer gear (this is going back quite some time, I was around the age of the kid in the article, the machines in my little tale here were running various revisions of Windows 95).
Way back when I was in school, my teachers didn't even know HOW to use the computers. In fact, I ended up being the one who taught them how to use their equipment correctly - two of them actually firmly believed that shutting down Win95 was done by clicking 'Shut Down', then yanking the power cable out of the wall as fast as they possibly could before the machine displayed the "It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer" (or whatever it was) message or powered off on it's own!
So, being the curious and helpful sort that I was, I decided that helping them out would be a good idea, and I was never stopped or told that I was wrong (although I do recall that if I was told something I'd said was wrong, I'd provide a detailed explanation as to why it wasn't, as well as translating it into non-techie speak on-the-fly, and then all was well). As well as helping to fix the machines when there were problems (I sometimes helped out with other equipment too - they most-kindly let me play with all the tech-related stuff they had/got, including helping to set up and learn brand-new just-out-of-the-box gear:D), and assisting if they had trouble teaching the other kids how to do things with the computers. This was all of my own volition, and I felt (and was) encouraged to do stuff, partly because I did know more than my teachers.
I was also allowed to set up my own laptop and play games/create artwork/write fiction/work on other assignments in class because I finished my own work way ahead of everyone else.
The teachers didn't even mind when I changed desktop artwork, various settings, and the placing of taskbars and such on the school machines, because they knew that not only did I help to maintain the things, but also that I had no ill intent in playing around with even the most advanced stuff I could find on them (I'd also taught them quite early on that there were innocuous things that were absolutely nothing to freak out over, and what those were).
In short: Experimenting and playing around with the school computers helped my education a great deal, not only computing-wise, but because I was allowed to use free time doing stuff on my own machine to learn even more whilst everyone else continued with their standard given tasks. Not just that, but I also picked up valuable skills about good ways of imparting one's knowledge to others, and was able to refine how patient I was with such things, too. For the first time, I hadn't been shunned for being a geek, too.;)
Having read other comments here, though, I guess I was VERY lucky to be encouraged as I was. Unfortunately, I doubt the teachers I had will ever see me say this, but major kudos to them, they made a positive impact on what (and how) I learned in their classes, and I can only hope that others are lucky enough to be encouraged in similar ways during the course of their education.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sometimes a game comes along that can surprise everybody, but not that often." :/
But now nobody will know, since the game that just might have been the one to come along and surprise them was cancelled.
"Back that up."
Ok. Take a look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And for more plenty more links to back it up, Google has you covered. Hope that helps.
"Product Name SCPH-4000
"PocketStation(TM)"
Release Date December 23, 1998
The Dreamcast was released in 1999."
You are quite correct in saying that the Dreamcast was released in 1999 - but this was only in the United States and Europe. The Dreamcast was released in 1998 in Japan, on November 27th. As is customary in the games industry, all the hardware (including the VMU's) had been announced and shown some time before that.
Furthermore, the VMU's were available to purchase some three or four months prior to the console. This was done in order to promote one of the Japanese launch games - a Godzilla title - and to build hype for the Dreamcast itself. Green-coloured Godzilla-branded VMU's (which came with a Godzilla virtual pet pre-installed) were sold in Japanese cinemas, during the run of a Godzilla movie that was out at the time.
It's actually very well-known that Sony based the PocketStation on Sega's Visual Memory Units (or Visual Memory System, as they were known in Japan).
"Sony had a hand-held that connected to the PSX back in the 90's. It was pretty much the same thing as the Dreamcast VMU, except it came out before and had a lil' screen protector."
I know, though I would class the PocketStation more as a memory-card-with-a-display than a real handheld, hence why I didn't mention it initially. But even back then, people gave Sony undue credit for the idea, which was nothing more than a ripoff of the Dreamcast VMU's which had been around for some time beforehand.
Incidentally, Nintendo did do a link-up between a home-console and a 'proper' handheld (with the GC and GBA) before Sony ever did. That said, the concept was first done by the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Sega Dreamcast, although due to how the NGPC vanished and Sega dropped out of the hardware business, nobody ever really got to see it put to use.
I wonder how many of the people who said Nintendo's handheld to home-console connectivity ideas were bad and would never work will now be saying stuff along the lines of "That's a good idea.", and giving all the (undeserved) credit to Sony?
"It will probably fail because I don't see how they will keep the cost down enough to justify it."
Well, going by what Japanese retailers have said recently, the DS will cost around $150 to $180. That's a pretty good price compared to what will be it's closest 'rival', the Sony PSP (despite the DS not being put out to compete with it), which has been confirmed (by Japanese retailer speculations, but more importantly, by Sony Europe) to cost between $350 to $450.
"I realize I'm just reiterating everything that was said the last time this came up, but I think we're now starting to see how feature-packed this may become."
Indeed. The touch-screen also sounds interesting - I'd like to see what developers can pull off with that.
"So the question is, will it be bloated?"
The question is, has there ever been a bloated Nintendo handheld? They've all been good at what they do, and as small as comfortably possible given the technology of the times (although, in retrospect, the original Game Boy looks large, it will still fit in a pocket).
" ...install Newton OS on an iPaq?
;)
The iPaq's with ARM chips are basically a Newton with a color screen and more memory. Then we really wouldn't need a GBA."
Well, you wouldn't need a GBA or anything related to it in this instance anyway - the article is about a NES emulator.
"I agree with the the overall sentiment described in the summary, but I didn't bother reading past the headline. "Quoting" the people you're arguing against using l33tspeak is an extremely weak-minded way of making them look dumb." ;)
That's a pity - you missed out on an extremely interesting and informative piece.
The l33tsp34k headlines in the article are little more than a joke. If you look around, there genuinely are people out there saying "N1NtEdN0 R tEh DUM3D LOL" just like that and expecting to be (and somehow actually being) taken seriously, so it's not like the jokey headlines are far from the truth. The article itself contains nothing but genuine facts and figures to debunk the "Nintendo is doomed" myth (currently) often perpetuated by the media and others who are in denial about Nintendo's true situation, and is actually a far better read than the summary here indicates.
It's also the first in a series of editorials, so there will be more worthwhile reading to follow.
I get this feeling that Sony will have these exclusive franchises run into the ground before too long, just like they did with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon in years gone by, when those franchises were exclusive to Sony's consoles.
On the topic of Jak & Daxter 3, I lost a degree of respect for the series' developer when they were interviewed prior to the release of the first Jak & Daxter, and not-too-subtly hinted that there were going to be more installments in the series (it gave the impression that they knew from the outset that it would be [over]sequelized).
" Huh? You might ask. But it's something I've noticed about the OS X version of Halo:
Where's the fucking demo? I mean, I've heard "Halo runs great on my Powerbook" to "Halo runs like a turd on my G5 with a 3 Gigabyte memory card"."
Apparently, the Mac Halo demo is in the works at the moment. It's a pity it wasn't released nearer to the game's launch date, though.
"Sony and those gamers out there (not necessarily Sony fanboys) who believe graphics make a game what it is are destroying MY hobby and I'm pissed. I hope you non-fanboy, videogame enthusiasts are just as pissed as I am."
It's a very refreshing change to see that someone else sees things this way. I'd have to say that I feel gaming has detiorated quite badly since certain non-game companies started selling their attempts at consoles/pretty-picture-displaying-machines.
On the subject of the 'graphics-whoring' that some folks flocked to Sony because of, I also recall that Sony managed to halt (or severely delay, in some cases) the release of some third-party titles (I remember this happening specifically with some of Capcom's stuff), just because they were 2D, and thus not 'good' enough for their console (despite the fact that they looked and played a thousand times better than the made-out-of-cereal-boxes looking 3D of the day). Similarly, there were some cases where they obtained the rights to publish certain third-party titles, but delayed them until they looked extremely dated, in order to push other similar games that they held exclusivity rights to (which the third-party titles were 'rivals' to). If memory serves, this happened with a platform game called Jersey Devil - Sony bought up the rights to publish it in North America, but then the game appeared to have been delayed so that Crash Bandicoot 2 (the overly-hyped sequel, starring the character then regarded as Sony's unofficial "mascot") could hog the limelight (as it stands, North America got Jersey Devil some 6 to 8 months after the rest of the world, by which time it looked very old and out-of-touch with the current trends indeed).
As for the exclusivity thing, in some cases, exclusivity is normal practice. For example: Nintendo's first-party games only appear on Nintendo's consoles, and that's perfectly acceptable - Nintendo don't make their games for anybody else. However, in the case of i-Ninja in Europe, I strongly disagree with what Sony have done - it's a third-party game, and was a multiplatform title, but now the GameCube and XBox versions will never see the light of day there. That is just plain wrong. I can understand Sony keeping their EyeToy, and other first/second-party stuff exclusive to their console (as with Nintendo's first-party games, that's perfectly fine), but when it moves into preventing a multiplatform title from getting released on all platforms, it crosses into the realm of restricting customer choice. Sony is one of the only console makers I'm aware of who have ever done this - back in the old days, if a game was multi-console, it would see release on all the major formats with no trouble (I'm talking, say, when the NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, and Game Boy were all still on the market - those consoles' makers never prevented any 3rd-party games from being released on their rivals' machines, as far as I'm aware). This practice of permanently locking-in third-party titles needs to be nipped in the bud before it happens again.
"What's your view of the success of the GameCube and its software titles in the current console generation?"
There are other consoles worth playing this generation? O_o;;
"So, it is alright for a company to abandon their users and sell out to MS.
It is alright for their premiere platform to be the last one they port it to, years later.
It is alright for them to make the buyers unable to play with their PC friends who got the game years earlier.
It is alright for the game to run like complete ass showing it was quick port."
If I'm not mistaken, though, Bungie themselves weren't responsible for the Mac port - MacSoft were.
I've read the article, and I think it just goes to show how biased the media are that this got reported with the headline " Computer game teenager gets DVT ", rather than something like " Teenager gets DVT from sitting awkwardly for too long ", which is what really happened. ;P
Surely the kid felt his legs going numb? I know that when I was a kid, I would have tended to move or something if I noticed that my leg was falling asleep. I bet some loony pro-health group somewhere will get all over gaming's case 'cos of this, now. Well done, BBC. At the very least, it was good to see that the doctor who commented showed some common sense, even if he did fall prone to the annoying habit of using "Playstations" as a synonym for "games consoles".
" If I'm not mistaken(which I could very well be... oh the hell with it) wasn't pokemon a toon before it became a game?"
Nope, it was a game first - the original title (which was Pocket Monsters - Green Version) was released in Japan in late 1995/early 1996, and went on to become an animated series in Japan in 1997. However, the TV show hit the West before the games (Pokemon - Red Version and Pokemon - Blue Version) were released outside of Japan, which was likely for marketing purposes.
"Further than that, even. Simba was originally white"
I'm reminded of a quote reportedly from a Disney employee who saw some early material related to The Lion King, featuring the original white-furred Simba, which went something along the lines of; "Even our lawyers aren't THAT good.".
"There are few things disney puts out that are *worse* than watching another episode of pokemon."
Except for a lot of truly awful TV serial spin-offs - the Lilo & Stitch TV show springs to mind, as well as the lousy Timon & Pumbaa (Lion King spin-off) series, and the Tarzan show, too. Though, that said, Jungle Cubs (show starring younger versions of The Jungle Book cast) and the Aladdin TV series were fairly entertaining at times, though.
As well as the bad cartoon-series spin-offs, there's the straight-to-video sequels to movies which had been successful. Stitch the Movie, the sequel to Lilo & Stitch, for example, is one overly-long, painful-to-watch, insipid, insulting-to-the-intelligence ad for the awful Lilo & Stitch TV series, which was so awful, it's not even possible to make fun of it in MST3K style! The two Aladdin sequels weren't that good, either, and nor can I say much for the sequels to Peter Pan, Cinderella, or The Lion King. Admittedly, The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride did have a couple of nice songs in it, however, but it was a pretty terrible movie - like many of Disney's other sequels to revered classics, it's painful to sit through. I can't believe they're making 'The Lion King 1.5: Hakuna Matata', either - they really shouldn't, IMO.
"I think Sony will have a viable chance with the PSP and for the first time in a long time I have been excited about owning a handheld again, let's just hope the price is decent :)"
Myself, I don't think Sony will have a very big chance, considering the PSP is going to cost between $350 to $450, as opposed to the GBA at about $70, and the Nintendo DS at $150 or thereabouts.
"The original Metroid, on the other hand, is already getting a remake for the GBA called Metroid: Zero Mission."
If memory serves, Zero Mission actually picks up right after the end of the original, so it's not exactly a remake...
I wonder how many people who'd said Nintendo and Namco's Donkey Konga was a "cash-in", or "retarded", and suchlike will now be changing their views purely because this will be appearing on Sony's console?
Oops... Small mistake in my last post. I think it was 'hotmale.co.uk' or something - it used to be owned by Funmail/Another.com.
It's amusing that "www.hotmale.com" really is owned by - of all people - a company who offers (offered? I don't know if they're still around) a subscription webmail service. ;)
All of the titles in the list seem to be old DOS and Win95/98 titles.
It makes me suspicious that they got some of the game-names wrong (for example, they attribute Capcom with a "Mega Man X Legends", which does not even exist, although it's quite possibly a typo of 'Mega Man Legends', which was ported to PC around 1998), and even credited the wrong companies with games (an outfit called 'Div Games Studios' is listed as supplying Mega Man X, but that game is a part of Capcom's flagship Mega Man property). Oh yeah, and some of the companies that were listed no longer exist (some haven't for years, some went bankrupt not-so-long-ago), and others are listed several times - note that many of Take Two's various names are in that list, and Disney is listed as both 'Disney' and 'Disney Interactive'. The presence of editions of some software dated as far back as 2000 is also quite bizarre.
The whole list reads like they skimmed through a few lists of games-by-{whoever} on GameFAQs or someplace similar, and shoved it all into one document (and forgot to name it - it was called Untitled Document when it was first up).
(And isn't it odd that nobody has said they have dev-kits for the Phantom, considering when dev-kits arrive for existent new consoles, you tend to hear about it on gaming news sites?)
Incidentally, I've seen quite a few of the listed titles available for purchase on TryGames.com - isn't it curious that TryGames.com's try-and-buy-online service for PCs is so similar to the much-touted broadband-content-delivery-system that the modified-Win-XP (IIRC) based Phantom will supposedly have?
In closing, it just seems to me like it's more a case of "these big-name-big-developer games will run on our modified PC-like box", as opposed to "these developers are making games on our machine"...
Didn't those guys publish an article insulting people that play older, simpler games a little while back? ;P
Having seen all these comments where /.'ers were punished for messing with school computers, I figure I'll post my experiences of utilising school computer gear (this is going back quite some time, I was around the age of the kid in the article, the machines in my little tale here were running various revisions of Windows 95).
:D), and assisting if they had trouble teaching the other kids how to do things with the computers. This was all of my own volition, and I felt (and was) encouraged to do stuff, partly because I did know more than my teachers.
;)
Way back when I was in school, my teachers didn't even know HOW to use the computers. In fact, I ended up being the one who taught them how to use their equipment correctly - two of them actually firmly believed that shutting down Win95 was done by clicking 'Shut Down', then yanking the power cable out of the wall as fast as they possibly could before the machine displayed the "It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer" (or whatever it was) message or powered off on it's own!
So, being the curious and helpful sort that I was, I decided that helping them out would be a good idea, and I was never stopped or told that I was wrong (although I do recall that if I was told something I'd said was wrong, I'd provide a detailed explanation as to why it wasn't, as well as translating it into non-techie speak on-the-fly, and then all was well). As well as helping to fix the machines when there were problems (I sometimes helped out with other equipment too - they most-kindly let me play with all the tech-related stuff they had/got, including helping to set up and learn brand-new just-out-of-the-box gear
I was also allowed to set up my own laptop and play games/create artwork/write fiction/work on other assignments in class because I finished my own work way ahead of everyone else.
The teachers didn't even mind when I changed desktop artwork, various settings, and the placing of taskbars and such on the school machines, because they knew that not only did I help to maintain the things, but also that I had no ill intent in playing around with even the most advanced stuff I could find on them (I'd also taught them quite early on that there were innocuous things that were absolutely nothing to freak out over, and what those were).
In short: Experimenting and playing around with the school computers helped my education a great deal, not only computing-wise, but because I was allowed to use free time doing stuff on my own machine to learn even more whilst everyone else continued with their standard given tasks. Not just that, but I also picked up valuable skills about good ways of imparting one's knowledge to others, and was able to refine how patient I was with such things, too. For the first time, I hadn't been shunned for being a geek, too.
Having read other comments here, though, I guess I was VERY lucky to be encouraged as I was. Unfortunately, I doubt the teachers I had will ever see me say this, but major kudos to them, they made a positive impact on what (and how) I learned in their classes, and I can only hope that others are lucky enough to be encouraged in similar ways during the course of their education.