I live in the SW Chicago suburbs, and I can't find a Wii anywhere I go. Granted, I'm not trying too hard to find one, but whenever I go to the local Gamestops, Targets, Best Buys and Wal-marts (about once a week apiece), they never have one in stock. I just checked again last night.
A shortage is not over until a consumer can go into three major retail shops that would normally have the item and be relatively certain to find that item in one of them, IMO.
Of the exclusives, I found four worth the purchase:
Super Mario Sunshine Zelda: Four Swords Super Smash Brothers Mario Party 4
Then there were four others that were multi that i just happened to get for the GC:
Sonic Mega Collection Viewtiful Joe Alien Hominid Super Monkey Ball 2
If I had paid more than $100 for the system I probably would have been really disappointed with my purchase. But I played these enough that I got my moneys worth, and some of the multi-platform titles were exclusives when I picked them up, and had influenced the purchase of the console. That said, that's still pretty bad considering I bought about three or four times more XBox games and even though I never owned a PS2 I purchased 4 games for that as well to play on friends' systems. Out of all the consoles I've owned, the Gamecube is the one I've purchased the least number of games for, and that's including the NES, which I had when I was 8-11 years old and only making about $5-$10 a week in allowance.
Part of the problem is that there's not much to the game to begin with. You place blocks down to make squares and try to sneak more in before the line moves across and clears everything. It's similar to Bejeweled or Zuma as far as complexity is concerned, and those games are fully featured and only cost $10 on XBLA, wheras Lumines STARTS at $15, without all the content.
They've got a bit more of an argument with the 50 MB limit, but really, we're seeing some amazing games being made chock full of content that are sneaking in at under that limit (Roboblitz made with the Unreal 3 engine with hi-res textures, the upcoming sprite-animation-heavy Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers)... I doubt that's as big of an issue as they claim it is (although, to be fair, music tends to be the big size hog for casual games, and Lumines is big on the music).
Basically my list's criteria are games that were previously never even considered by game designers (and might never have been considered by other developers, or conceived in that way), that really changed how people thought about designing games and made everyone want to make their own versions of them:P.
1. Civilization 2. Super Mario Brothers 3. Tetris 4. Doom 5. Street Fighter II
5 is really too small, but I think that pretty well covers it. For me, at least. I really don't play much outside those types of games (and racing).
I usually do some quick general design and planning beforehand, then go in and write the software one element at a time, testing to make certain it works properly before moving on to the next. The benefits seem to far outweight doing it the other way, for me, as it reveals problems I wouldn't have noticed in the planning stages in the design or implementation early, and it also helps isolate where any bugs would be located at, so I'm not checking all over the place.
I'm not sure if it really saves me any time in the long run, but I'm much more comfortable coding this way, which is probably more important.
Also, so far, I've been the only coder for my projects at work and my games at home, so it *might* not be quite as effective for large teams, although what I've read on XP seems to suggest that it can still be very effective.
...since with just pen and paper there is not a lot you can do to amuse yourself unless you have a really active imagination or like doing the box game or playing Tic-Tac-Toe for hours on end.
You'd be surprised. During my college years I drew several full page ink drawings and wrote about 20 poems and a novel's worth of odd portions of stories written while killing time during boring lectures. I also remember setting up the basics for a synthetic language, designing an artificial intelligence system, drawing storyboards for a couple Flash animations, and designing database structures/layouts for a few website ideas I had.
Agreed. You want to know how I get around that myself? I select and copy about a half a sentence or so from the last comment on the page I'm on, click the next page, and do a search for that text. I really shouldn't have to do that, but it gets the job done without too much hassle.
Damancy is also like the web game 'Fishy' with a twist also. (Fishy is also a clone of an old... I want to say Commodore 64 game, also, but I can't remember the name of it. I want to say Fishin' Frenzy, but I can't find it on a google search).
Yeah, when I saw that it claimed it took 3 days total to make in the headline, I choked and said "There's no possible way a game like that can be completed by 3 people in 3 days. Hell, Proximity took me a full week, and it's one of the simplest, ugliest web games I've ever made!"
But prototype. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. He should have been able to prototype it even without an artist in that time. In fact, for my game Proximity, only 6 hours after I came up with the idea I had the prototype up and was playing my brother 2 player, tweaking the ruleset.
But coming up with a solid, fun, well polished game to sell at retail in just 3 days? That's just not going to happen.
Since you seem to know what the hell he's talking about, care to explain what "mash-up" crap means? I want to know if I should be offended and burn his house down to the ground and kill his first-born son or not.
I wouldn't say the block launching in Meteos is gimmicky. It's interesting, and changes how you play. But the game still doesn't quite recreate the intensity of Tetris Attack.
I'm aware of the other releases. I'm still mad Nintendo Puzzle Collection is not going to be released in the US. But none of those are portable.
I can play the SNES version on an emulator for my NGage, but it's kinda slow, doesn't have the music, and it doesn't support a 2nd controller so I can't set up a 2P VS against the CPU at its highest AI setting, so it's not the same:(. I NEED A DS RELEASE! Or GBA would work too, but using the stylus to switch seems like it might be faster than moving that cursor around, thanks to the example Meteos gave.
We were discussing 10% of going market value of the items, in their current condition.
I brought a lot of my games in to EBgames recently after checking the price they go for used on ebay/amazon (before shipping, even), and they offered less than 20% of that amount (and the price they go for in their stores) on all but 4 of the games I brought in. 5 of the games they offered 10% of what they sell them for in the store. Needless to say, I only said yes to the 4 they offered about 35% for, but only because I really wanted to knock the price down on the DS and wanted to walk out with one.
But my roommate did the same recently without even bothering to check their market value and traded in most of his collection (I can always buy them back later, he said). And I'm sure he's not the only one who does this, or else I have a feeling the prices they offer would be better.
And EBgames is a large, corporate company. So are they honest businessmen? (I'd argue not, but I'm actually willing to sell these things online, the only alternative in the games world anymore since Gamespot and EBGames --soon to merge into one company, by the way-- are the only brick and mortar places to find used games nowadays in most places in the US).
Forget the stop counter. Tetris Attack isn't good because of its single player mode. It's ALL about the multiplayer (human or CPU opponent). This game puts so much more stress on you to find your way out of a rock and a hard place pretty much constantly after 3 mins it becomes a very intense experience. It's still the most excited I get while playing a game competitively.
Meteos does a pretty decent job of recreating that feeling, but not quite. There's no real point to making combos in Meteos (combos equals hurting your opponent much more in TA), and you don't have a screen and a half of solid rock slammed on your tiles at the end game that you're constantly trying to combo (cuz that's the only way you'll beat the opponent) into smaller and smaller blocks while quickly running out of blocks to use, and eventually your brain just stops working and you can't find a match anymore and BOOM! All over, relief! Take a few breaths, let's do it again!
Meteos is good, but I'd much rather have my Tetris Attack on the DS. They've still only made a gameboy version of that, right? Yeah, that one kinda sucked.
Heheh, my roommate gets pissy at me if I forget to wrap the controllers up the right way because it "hurts" them also. I have to put my finger on the top of the controller as I wrap or it's too tight and he complains the next time he opens up the controller drawer.
Nevermind that I've had controllers since the NES and haven't ever had one short on me, ever. Even during the Playstation days when people had an ugly habit of walking in front of the console, tagging the cord, and knocking the damn console on the ground (went through 3 Playstations because of that, thank God for XBox's breakaway cords!), it still never shorted the controller cords. Only the Playstation.
Don't forget, the NES was released after everything else too (Sega Master System, and... a coupla others, I think). They beat everyone with their strong 1st Party and their monopolist "if you want to make games for us, you can ONLY make games for us" policies, even though they had inferior hardware.
If you had links to actual articles to help support your claim, I might believe you, but otherwise, unless you pressed pause in each of those games at their most intense moments and physically counted their millions of polygons, I don't see how this is any more empirical than the talking points of most media outlets.
Hear hear! So the PSP gets one full speed emulator and a few others in early stages, and now it's the "ultimate in handheld emulation"? Right. I'm sure it WILL be in a year or two, but I've got lots more on my N-Gage and I've had the sucker for a year and a half now (not to mention GP32 and Zodiac). I can play just about any game I played from the ages of 6-17 whenever I want, and that's just awesome. As well as not having to carry a PDA, cellphone, and/or MP3 player with me at the same time.
The emulator I'm playing the most at the moment is the Master System. Once I finally realized I could play my old love, Shining Force 2 for Game Gear, on it, I've gotten addicted again. And my N-Gage doesn't devour batteries like my Game Gear used does:).
Re:Gamers never know what's good for them
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 1
Actually, after having to deal with Nintendo not allowing people to skip cutscenes in ANY of their games this generation, I'd be happy if they just put the skip option back in:).
But pausing would be useful too, I guess, if I ever wanted to watch any game's crappy cutscenes.
I guess you're right. I mean, the first thing I thought of when I saw it was "George Foremen Grill!" so since it looks like a kitchen appliance, and all women spend all their time in the kitchen, then OF COURSE they're going to love the kitchen appliance design of the PS3.
I barely paid attention to the movie (absolutely hated it, knew I would beforehand, half slept through it even) and now, years later, I still remember the 50 billion Fed Ex packages/delivery drivers everywhere, but I don't remember this "blatant" American Express placement.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, I agree. Although I may be a bit biased, as two of my own games are on that list: Proximity and Formation.
I live in the SW Chicago suburbs, and I can't find a Wii anywhere I go. Granted, I'm not trying too hard to find one, but whenever I go to the local Gamestops, Targets, Best Buys and Wal-marts (about once a week apiece), they never have one in stock. I just checked again last night.
A shortage is not over until a consumer can go into three major retail shops that would normally have the item and be relatively certain to find that item in one of them, IMO.
Of the exclusives, I found four worth the purchase:
Super Mario Sunshine
Zelda: Four Swords
Super Smash Brothers
Mario Party 4
Then there were four others that were multi that i just happened to get for the GC:
Sonic Mega Collection
Viewtiful Joe
Alien Hominid
Super Monkey Ball 2
If I had paid more than $100 for the system I probably would have been really disappointed with my purchase. But I played these enough that I got my moneys worth, and some of the multi-platform titles were exclusives when I picked them up, and had influenced the purchase of the console. That said, that's still pretty bad considering I bought about three or four times more XBox games and even though I never owned a PS2 I purchased 4 games for that as well to play on friends' systems. Out of all the consoles I've owned, the Gamecube is the one I've purchased the least number of games for, and that's including the NES, which I had when I was 8-11 years old and only making about $5-$10 a week in allowance.
Part of the problem is that there's not much to the game to begin with. You place blocks down to make squares and try to sneak more in before the line moves across and clears everything. It's similar to Bejeweled or Zuma as far as complexity is concerned, and those games are fully featured and only cost $10 on XBLA, wheras Lumines STARTS at $15, without all the content.
They've got a bit more of an argument with the 50 MB limit, but really, we're seeing some amazing games being made chock full of content that are sneaking in at under that limit (Roboblitz made with the Unreal 3 engine with hi-res textures, the upcoming sprite-animation-heavy Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers)... I doubt that's as big of an issue as they claim it is (although, to be fair, music tends to be the big size hog for casual games, and Lumines is big on the music).
Basically my list's criteria are games that were previously never even considered by game designers (and might never have been considered by other developers, or conceived in that way), that really changed how people thought about designing games and made everyone want to make their own versions of them :P.
1. Civilization
2. Super Mario Brothers
3. Tetris
4. Doom
5. Street Fighter II
5 is really too small, but I think that pretty well covers it. For me, at least. I really don't play much outside those types of games (and racing).
According to Wikipedia, there were 150 games released for Neo-Geo.
Also, Wikipedia also claims that rare carts can (currently) go for over $1000 on eBay, so that might be what the GP was thinking of.
It's possible his week starts on Sunday. On most calendars it does.
I usually do some quick general design and planning beforehand, then go in and write the software one element at a time, testing to make certain it works properly before moving on to the next. The benefits seem to far outweight doing it the other way, for me, as it reveals problems I wouldn't have noticed in the planning stages in the design or implementation early, and it also helps isolate where any bugs would be located at, so I'm not checking all over the place.
I'm not sure if it really saves me any time in the long run, but I'm much more comfortable coding this way, which is probably more important.
Also, so far, I've been the only coder for my projects at work and my games at home, so it *might* not be quite as effective for large teams, although what I've read on XP seems to suggest that it can still be very effective.
...since with just pen and paper there is not a lot you can do to amuse yourself unless you have a really active imagination or like doing the box game or playing Tic-Tac-Toe for hours on end.
You'd be surprised. During my college years I drew several full page ink drawings and wrote about 20 poems and a novel's worth of odd portions of stories written while killing time during boring lectures. I also remember setting up the basics for a synthetic language, designing an artificial intelligence system, drawing storyboards for a couple Flash animations, and designing database structures/layouts for a few website ideas I had.
Agreed. You want to know how I get around that myself? I select and copy about a half a sentence or so from the last comment on the page I'm on, click the next page, and do a search for that text. I really shouldn't have to do that, but it gets the job done without too much hassle.
Damancy is also like the web game 'Fishy' with a twist also. (Fishy is also a clone of an old... I want to say Commodore 64 game, also, but I can't remember the name of it. I want to say Fishin' Frenzy, but I can't find it on a google search).
Yeah, when I saw that it claimed it took 3 days total to make in the headline, I choked and said "There's no possible way a game like that can be completed by 3 people in 3 days. Hell, Proximity took me a full week, and it's one of the simplest, ugliest web games I've ever made!"
But prototype. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. He should have been able to prototype it even without an artist in that time. In fact, for my game Proximity, only 6 hours after I came up with the idea I had the prototype up and was playing my brother 2 player, tweaking the ruleset.
But coming up with a solid, fun, well polished game to sell at retail in just 3 days? That's just not going to happen.
Since you seem to know what the hell he's talking about, care to explain what "mash-up" crap means? I want to know if I should be offended and burn his house down to the ground and kill his first-born son or not.
I wouldn't say the block launching in Meteos is gimmicky. It's interesting, and changes how you play. But the game still doesn't quite recreate the intensity of Tetris Attack.
:(. I NEED A DS RELEASE! Or GBA would work too, but using the stylus to switch seems like it might be faster than moving that cursor around, thanks to the example Meteos gave.
I'm aware of the other releases. I'm still mad Nintendo Puzzle Collection is not going to be released in the US. But none of those are portable.
I can play the SNES version on an emulator for my NGage, but it's kinda slow, doesn't have the music, and it doesn't support a 2nd controller so I can't set up a 2P VS against the CPU at its highest AI setting, so it's not the same
We were discussing 10% of going market value of the items, in their current condition.
I brought a lot of my games in to EBgames recently after checking the price they go for used on ebay/amazon (before shipping, even), and they offered less than 20% of that amount (and the price they go for in their stores) on all but 4 of the games I brought in. 5 of the games they offered 10% of what they sell them for in the store. Needless to say, I only said yes to the 4 they offered about 35% for, but only because I really wanted to knock the price down on the DS and wanted to walk out with one.
But my roommate did the same recently without even bothering to check their market value and traded in most of his collection (I can always buy them back later, he said). And I'm sure he's not the only one who does this, or else I have a feeling the prices they offer would be better.
And EBgames is a large, corporate company. So are they honest businessmen? (I'd argue not, but I'm actually willing to sell these things online, the only alternative in the games world anymore since Gamespot and EBGames --soon to merge into one company, by the way-- are the only brick and mortar places to find used games nowadays in most places in the US).
Forget the stop counter. Tetris Attack isn't good because of its single player mode. It's ALL about the multiplayer (human or CPU opponent). This game puts so much more stress on you to find your way out of a rock and a hard place pretty much constantly after 3 mins it becomes a very intense experience. It's still the most excited I get while playing a game competitively.
Meteos does a pretty decent job of recreating that feeling, but not quite. There's no real point to making combos in Meteos (combos equals hurting your opponent much more in TA), and you don't have a screen and a half of solid rock slammed on your tiles at the end game that you're constantly trying to combo (cuz that's the only way you'll beat the opponent) into smaller and smaller blocks while quickly running out of blocks to use, and eventually your brain just stops working and you can't find a match anymore and BOOM! All over, relief! Take a few breaths, let's do it again!
Meteos is good, but I'd much rather have my Tetris Attack on the DS. They've still only made a gameboy version of that, right? Yeah, that one kinda sucked.
And he only designed the characters for Starfox. The game was almost all Argonaut. Well, the first one, at least.
Heheh, my roommate gets pissy at me if I forget to wrap the controllers up the right way because it "hurts" them also. I have to put my finger on the top of the controller as I wrap or it's too tight and he complains the next time he opens up the controller drawer.
Nevermind that I've had controllers since the NES and haven't ever had one short on me, ever. Even during the Playstation days when people had an ugly habit of walking in front of the console, tagging the cord, and knocking the damn console on the ground (went through 3 Playstations because of that, thank God for XBox's breakaway cords!), it still never shorted the controller cords. Only the Playstation.
Don't forget, the NES was released after everything else too (Sega Master System, and... a coupla others, I think). They beat everyone with their strong 1st Party and their monopolist "if you want to make games for us, you can ONLY make games for us" policies, even though they had inferior hardware.
If you had links to actual articles to help support your claim, I might believe you, but otherwise, unless you pressed pause in each of those games at their most intense moments and physically counted their millions of polygons, I don't see how this is any more empirical than the talking points of most media outlets.
Euchre is a common game in Illinois also. It's really not as screwed up as you think, and plays a lot faster than its sister trump-based games.
Hear hear! So the PSP gets one full speed emulator and a few others in early stages, and now it's the "ultimate in handheld emulation"? Right. I'm sure it WILL be in a year or two, but I've got lots more on my N-Gage and I've had the sucker for a year and a half now (not to mention GP32 and Zodiac). I can play just about any game I played from the ages of 6-17 whenever I want, and that's just awesome. As well as not having to carry a PDA, cellphone, and/or MP3 player with me at the same time.
:).
The emulator I'm playing the most at the moment is the Master System. Once I finally realized I could play my old love, Shining Force 2 for Game Gear, on it, I've gotten addicted again. And my N-Gage doesn't devour batteries like my Game Gear used does
Actually, after having to deal with Nintendo not allowing people to skip cutscenes in ANY of their games this generation, I'd be happy if they just put the skip option back in :).
But pausing would be useful too, I guess, if I ever wanted to watch any game's crappy cutscenes.
I guess you're right. I mean, the first thing I thought of when I saw it was "George Foremen Grill!" so since it looks like a kitchen appliance, and all women spend all their time in the kitchen, then OF COURSE they're going to love the kitchen appliance design of the PS3.
Huh? American Express?
I barely paid attention to the movie (absolutely hated it, knew I would beforehand, half slept through it even) and now, years later, I still remember the 50 billion Fed Ex packages/delivery drivers everywhere, but I don't remember this "blatant" American Express placement.