> Manhunt is the most obvious example - were it not for the controversy [...] that piece of crap would have sold all of 3 copies.
Manhunt received generally good reviews (75% on Metacritic, 77% on GameRankings) and was widely considered to be a solid, well-executed stealth-action game. If anything, the over-the-top gore worked against it terms of reviews and sales, though it boosted its rental performance.
> So Toshiba's HD-DVD player will not display HD video on the millions of Toshiba HDTVs that were produced before DVI and HDMI were common?
Yeah, no kidding. I bought a Toshiba HDTV in late 2001, and it only has component video inputs for HD content. Instead of rewarding me for paying a premium to be an early adopter, I'm being punished because of the assumption that I'm going to pirate movies. Very classy.
Domain names are typically short and rarely have any separation between the words in compound names. There's no capitalization, no font, no logo -- nothing to distinguish them from each other except a handful of lower case letters. In that kind of limited naming space, I think it's dangerous to start giving companies the right to claim any names that are merely close to their own.
Was this Russian guy intentionally using typos of Google's address to generate hits? Yes. But was he infringing on their trademarks, mimicing their logos, or diluting their brand identity in the process? Not from what I can see. He may be an annoying bottom-feeder who exploits people's typing mistakes, but if he's not trying to present his sites as if they were part of Google, then I don't see why anyone has the right to yank those domain names from him.
Does Google have the right to shut down legitimate names like googol.com or goggle.com? Or if someone whose last name is Igle creates goigle.com, could that be construed as "typosquatting" too? And what about companies with less unique names who are more likely to have "typo collisions" with other legitimate names? Is this going to be reduced to the same bullshit subjective standard as pornography, where some judge "knows it when he sees it"?
If someone suggested applying this same sort of typo ownership standard to telephone numbers, people would think they were insane.
> At the time, it was the only game in the FPS category that you could complete without killing anyone. Even now, I haven't seen a game where you could do that.
Not that it's much of a game, but in order to get the "Jesus" ranking you have to complete Postal 2 without killing anyone.
That would be simplifying it down too much. Look at it this way: [...]
GTAIII: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race.
GTAVC: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a story.
GTASA: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a richer story with a few added elements that break up some of the monotony.
* * *
And how is that not a gross oversimplification? Gimme a break. If GTA is just "taking cars and shooting people", then SMB is just "jumping on stuff and picking up things". You can't have it both ways.
Well, from that perspective, the core of the Super Mario games has always been "jump on the heads of the bad guys and pick up coins". That didn't change in 2 or 3 -- they just made it so you could pull turnips out of the ground or put on raccoon ears in addition to the core game mechanic. The point is, the so-called "nice features" added in both game series did fundamentally change the overall experience.
You'd have a better case if you were comparing GTA:VC to GTA3 -- but GTA:SA is so far down the road from GTA3 that your comparison doesn't really hold up at all, IMO.
> San Andreas, for example, is really only better than Vice City because of the big long story.
Right, because having 4+ times the real estate, controllable planes, casino games, gang control, fence hopping, movement while crouching, stealth kills, train hijacking, parachuting, alpine bike racing, rural areas, vehicle hitching (tractor train, anyone?), body and car modification, bicycles, etc. has absolutely zero impact on gameplay...
Nintendo fanboy: "This is just more proof that Nintendo understands gamers better than anyone else. I mean, who would have ever thought that you could play older games on a current console? Nintendo doesn't need cutting-edge technology when they have cutting-edge ideas like these! Let all those other posers have their Grand Theft Halo 7 or whatever -- I'm perfectly content playing only Mario, Metroid, and Zelda games!"
XBox fanboy: "Nintendo R teh sUxX0rZ, d00d. XBox graphics R sick, w/ redder blood + tight controls + Live just r00lz. DOA Volleyball
+ Blood Wake R sw33t. I saw teh 360 on MTV and it pwns!"
Playstation fanboy: "I'm glad that you enjoy your cutesy games about fat, mushroom-eating plumbers. In the meantime I'll be enjoying the largest game library of any console, and the vast majority of those new games will finally make full use of my obscenely expensive HDTV. $400-$500 for the console? Hell, I wipe my ass with that kind of money. I really couldn't care less about the Revolution."
Casual gamer: "Is this one of those stupid blogs? I just wanted to check my email..."
But take a look at the history of console launch prices with inflation taken into account...
Ugh, why did it have to be the XBox360?
on
Xbox 360 Lightsynth
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· Score: 0, Troll
I bought a Jaguar for Minter's Tempest 2000. I bought a Jaguar CD unit for his VLM. I even bought a Nuon DVD player for Tempest 3000 and VLM-2. I might've considered a Gamecube if his Unity project had come to fruition. But throwing in with Microsoft for VLM-3?
I'm happy that Jeff's going to get his work in front of more people, but there's no way in hell I'm going to help Microsoft try to take over yet another market. Sorry, Jeff.
Star Control 2 was just a very well-done ripoff of Binary Systems' Starflight with the Star Control combat engine slapped into it. It was a fun game, and much better than its predecessor, but it wasn't the least bit innovative.
I believe that all you have to do to circumvent the license is avoid the use of team names, team logos, player names, and player likenesses. That means that you can still refer to the teams by their city or state, still use their team colors, and still use the players' numbers without getting sued. IIRC, the original John Madden Football did this very thing because it didn't have an NFL license.
Sure, this would be less appealing than the real deal -- but many people would find it to be a reasonable substitute for a lower price, especially if they could input player names and edit team rosters themselves.
First of all, GTA:VC takes place in the mid-80s, about 15 years before GTA3. Since Tommy Vercetti in GTA:VC is at least in his late 20s, that would put him in his mid 40s during the GTA3 time period, and the mute guy clearly isn't that old.
On top of that, GTA:SA takes place in the early 90s, and in that game you actually meet the mute GTA3 guy from that time period, who looks much younger than he did in GTA3, and obviously much younger than Tommy Vercetti in GTA:VC, which took place years earlier.
The author thinks that the "mute mothafucka" (thanks, C.J.) from GTA3 and Tommy Vercetti from GTA:VC are the same guy. That should give you some idea of the overall worth of the piece.
I've had a 50" rear-projection Toshiba CRT HDTV since late 2001, and I have yet to see any kind of burn-in. I've easily logged 100+ hours on both GTA3 and GTA:VC, which have fixed overlays, not to mention myriad other games with static display components, and I can't say that there's any evidence of this on-screen.
I suspect that burn-in is only a problem if you leave the TV at the showroom settings, with the contrast maxed out. If you follow the advice of most RP CRT web sites and bring the contrast down to ~30 and crank up the brightness to compensate, I don't think this will ever be an issue.
PS2 software sales in 2003 amounted to a little under $3 billion [...] with almost 80 million software units sold
That means that the PS2 library alone pulled in more than double the gross monetary sales of all computer games (PC & Mac) combined. And the console games offered a higher profit margin, too.
Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales.
Guardian Heroes, Virtua Fighter 2 (hi-res and 60fps!), The House Of The Dead, Virtual On, Marvel Super Heroes, and Capcom Generations #2 (Ghosts 'n Goblins, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts) were all great titles on the Sega Saturn.
Tempest 2000, Alien Vs. Predator, and Battlemorph were great on the Atari Jaguar.
In fact, Tempest 2000 and Guardian Heroes are my second and third favorite games of all time (Grand Theft Auto III claims the top spot).
Guardian Heroes was easily the greatest beat-em-up of all time. The game deftly merged elements from beat-em-ups, fighting games, and RPGs. The story mode branched furiously, and ultimately let you ally yourself with any faction in the game as you careened toward one of five different endings. You also got to issue orders to an NPC helper through most of the game.
The arena mode was unparalleled, letting up to 6 players duke it out using any character in the game (good or bad, grunts or bosses -- over 40 in all, complete with special moves). You could set up any combination of teams, tweak the attributes of each character, have some characters be CPU-controlled -- whatever you wanted.
Even though the graphics were a bit chunky, the game was an amazing thing to watch in action. The view would zoom in and out based on what was going on, and the magic and tech effects were larger than life. Huge beams would scorch across the field, and explosions would fill the entire screen and hurl people hundreds of feet in the air. The combat was absolutely insane.
It's great to see a sequel coming. Too bad they're doing it on a system I don't own instead of bringing the game to next-gen hardware that could really do it justice...
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"We don't make the crappy music genre -- we make it crappier..."
Manhunt received generally good reviews (75% on Metacritic, 77% on GameRankings) and was widely considered to be a solid, well-executed stealth-action game. If anything, the over-the-top gore worked against it terms of reviews and sales, though it boosted its rental performance.
Personally, I enjoyed Manhunt quite a bit.
Yeah, no kidding. I bought a Toshiba HDTV in late 2001, and it only has component video inputs for HD content. Instead of rewarding me for paying a premium to be an early adopter, I'm being punished because of the assumption that I'm going to pirate movies. Very classy.
Believe it or not, Battlemorph was a great game. Even the critics agreed on that one...
Was this Russian guy intentionally using typos of Google's address to generate hits? Yes. But was he infringing on their trademarks, mimicing their logos, or diluting their brand identity in the process? Not from what I can see. He may be an annoying bottom-feeder who exploits people's typing mistakes, but if he's not trying to present his sites as if they were part of Google, then I don't see why anyone has the right to yank those domain names from him.
Does Google have the right to shut down legitimate names like googol.com or goggle.com? Or if someone whose last name is Igle creates goigle.com, could that be construed as "typosquatting" too? And what about companies with less unique names who are more likely to have "typo collisions" with other legitimate names? Is this going to be reduced to the same bullshit subjective standard as pornography, where some judge "knows it when he sees it"?
If someone suggested applying this same sort of typo ownership standard to telephone numbers, people would think they were insane.
The best review aggregator that I've run across (for video games, at least): www.metacritic.com
Not that it's much of a game, but in order to get the "Jesus" ranking you have to complete Postal 2 without killing anyone.
GTAIII: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race.
GTAVC: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a story.
GTASA: Take cars. Drive cars. Shoot/blow up people. Race. Unfold a richer story with a few added elements that break up some of the monotony.
* * *
And how is that not a gross oversimplification? Gimme a break. If GTA is just "taking cars and shooting people", then SMB is just "jumping on stuff and picking up things". You can't have it both ways.
You'd have a better case if you were comparing GTA:VC to GTA3 -- but GTA:SA is so far down the road from GTA3 that your comparison doesn't really hold up at all, IMO.
Right, because having 4+ times the real estate, controllable planes, casino games, gang control, fence hopping, movement while crouching, stealth kills, train hijacking, parachuting, alpine bike racing, rural areas, vehicle hitching (tractor train, anyone?), body and car modification, bicycles, etc. has absolutely zero impact on gameplay...
XBox fanboy: "Nintendo R teh sUxX0rZ, d00d. XBox graphics R sick, w/ redder blood + tight controls + Live just r00lz. DOA Volleyball + Blood Wake R sw33t. I saw teh 360 on MTV and it pwns!"
Playstation fanboy: "I'm glad that you enjoy your cutesy games about fat, mushroom-eating plumbers. In the meantime I'll be enjoying the largest game library of any console, and the vast majority of those new games will finally make full use of my obscenely expensive HDTV. $400-$500 for the console? Hell, I wipe my ass with that kind of money. I really couldn't care less about the Revolution."
Casual gamer: "Is this one of those stupid blogs? I just wanted to check my email..."
"I am not the droid you're looking for..."?
But take a look at the history of console launch prices with inflation taken into account...
I'm happy that Jeff's going to get his work in front of more people, but there's no way in hell I'm going to help Microsoft try to take over yet another market. Sorry, Jeff.
Star Control 2 was just a very well-done ripoff of Binary Systems' Starflight with the Star Control combat engine slapped into it. It was a fun game, and much better than its predecessor, but it wasn't the least bit innovative.
Sure, this would be less appealing than the real deal -- but many people would find it to be a reasonable substitute for a lower price, especially if they could input player names and edit team rosters themselves.
On top of that, GTA:SA takes place in the early 90s, and in that game you actually meet the mute GTA3 guy from that time period, who looks much younger than he did in GTA3, and obviously much younger than Tommy Vercetti in GTA:VC, which took place years earlier.
So, your "well known fact" is dead wrong.
The author thinks that the "mute mothafucka" (thanks, C.J.) from GTA3 and Tommy Vercetti from GTA:VC are the same guy. That should give you some idea of the overall worth of the piece.
...they actually show that in the TV ad. Guess it's a more common fantasy than I'd realized.
I suspect that burn-in is only a problem if you leave the TV at the showroom settings, with the contrast maxed out. If you follow the advice of most RP CRT web sites and bring the contrast down to ~30 and crank up the brightness to compensate, I don't think this will ever be an issue.
PS2 software sales in 2003 amounted to a little under $3 billion [...] with almost 80 million software units sold
That means that the PS2 library alone pulled in more than double the gross monetary sales of all computer games (PC & Mac) combined. And the console games offered a higher profit margin, too.
Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales.
Shouldn't that be "867-5309"...?
Tempest 2000, Alien Vs. Predator, and Battlemorph were great on the Atari Jaguar.
In fact, Tempest 2000 and Guardian Heroes are my second and third favorite games of all time (Grand Theft Auto III claims the top spot).
The arena mode was unparalleled, letting up to 6 players duke it out using any character in the game (good or bad, grunts or bosses -- over 40 in all, complete with special moves). You could set up any combination of teams, tweak the attributes of each character, have some characters be CPU-controlled -- whatever you wanted.
Even though the graphics were a bit chunky, the game was an amazing thing to watch in action. The view would zoom in and out based on what was going on, and the magic and tech effects were larger than life. Huge beams would scorch across the field, and explosions would fill the entire screen and hurl people hundreds of feet in the air. The combat was absolutely insane.
It's great to see a sequel coming. Too bad they're doing it on a system I don't own instead of bringing the game to next-gen hardware that could really do it justice...