Even if you think that games make you fat (and it can't possibly be worse than Television can it?) There's obviously games that do not, like Dance Dancd Revolution.
And violence makes you mean? Final Fantasy Tactics is a game about a civil war which consists primarily of battling with swords, guns, knives, spears, axes, magic, and mathematics. That's obviously a game centered around violence (especially math; that stuff HURTS). However, the good guys strive for peace; mediating between the two forces and looking out for the little guy. If FFT really makes kids mean then you can colour me confused.
Do I think GTA make people more violent/evil? No. Do I want to play the game so that I can beat up hookers myself? No, and I don't understand the people that do, but to each his own.
HOWEVER, what bothers me about GTA games is that the media points to it, and says "see? Video games are twisted and have you commit theft and murder." That's not (usually) true! Certainly not the games that I've been playing recently. GTA existing doesn't really bother me, except when people associate all videogames with GTA, or talk of it as if it's the center of the gaming universe. Didn't FFX sell better anyway?
Actually the Canadian dollar has been up recently; maybe the problem is us canucks buying GameCubes down south because it's cheaper......eh?
Though, point taken: I had forgotten that Nintendo finally set up a Canadian shipping company a few years back, so it's not the same warehouses anymore.
I wouldn't call Vice City an RPG either, but it does have some RPG elements in that you do build up your character. When you complete all the firetruck missions he becomes fireproof, when you complete the ambulance missions, he can run without getting tired, etc.
That's nothing special. A similar thing hapens in the Megaman series and the Metroid series. I personally dislike the association of "levelling up" = "RPG-like". You can make games that play nothing like RPGs where you level up. You could in-theory make a very traditional RPG where you don't level up, but plays in all other ways like any RPG. (Though, the advantage to levelling is that you introduce abilities a bit at a time and it's a built-in difficulty adjuster).
My friend got a GameCube for Christmas, and my resistance to buying new consoles broke down a couple months after that since I couldn't get that SSB:M music out of my head.... Also, a few somewhat anti-Nintendo friends I have on the internet broke down over MK:DD around December-January, which caught me by surprise.
Well, that and I was trying to complete most of the old PSX RPGs at the same time so I was just on genre overload, and GameCube seemed to have the freshest action titles.
Either way, I'm greatly enjoying Metroid Prime (oh, and unlike most here, I didn't have trouble finding a system in Montreal).
That's like saying the Genesis couldn't compete with the NES.
And it couldn't. Honestly, I didn't even hear about the Genesis existing until after Nintendo abandoned the NES pissing off a lot of its fans (1992? 1993? Something like that; I know I heard about the SNES first). At this point, the Genesis was cheaper than the SNES, and took a decent market hold.
What would have happened if Nintendo held on to the NES? A good example of where this was actually tried was with the original Gameboy, and it beat the Gamegear quite handlily in the end.
While there are great games, they constitute a relatively small percentage of the total.
Much like the PSX (which also had a lot of SNES ports, especially early on). And to be perfectly honest, Wario Ware and Mario & Luigi are some of the best games I've played in a long time, so the GBA is not lacking for AAA titles.
And I've lost the original post, but there's theories that this is an attempt to bully the PSP out of the market. Suppose Nintendo releases nothing and it looks something like this
GBA: 80%
PSP: 18%
other: 2%
Looks like Sony's eating into the market share. However, if they release the DS at the same time as the PSP taking the wind out of their launch sails it might come out more like:
GBA: 80%
PSP: 11%
DS: 7%
other: 2%
Now things look a lot more shaky for the PSP, and Nintendo has said themselves that the GBA will not be replaced so PSP and DS both fail and GBA continues its dominance.
It's a kamakazie system that tries a lot new ideas, and if those ideas take off then great, and if they don't...well it still served its purpose.
Nintendo Power Arena anyone? Much better known than this site, though granted you only have a month to do the challenge at best, which is certainly less time than I spent doing my serious SM speed run, and I spent a long time getting a feel for the game first.
Though, speed runs didn't used to be as popular. I know I didn't get interested in them at all until (believe it or not) 1998 and Warioland 2. Can anybody beat 2:45? Does anybody have a clue what I'm talking about? *sigh*
Hmm, yeah that checks out. If you use collision detection to get past the zetebite columns then you could get away with one less set. The reason is that the columns take 11 missiles, so with 10 Missiles you lose a Super Missile for each column (you reload Missiles between each one, of course).
Personally, I found 100% runs to be kind of pointless, especially on Metroid 2 where they don't even tell you the percentage, and glitches allow you to get more items that theoretically weren't supposed to be in the game. Even in Super Metroid, though, you basically avoid getting items for most of the game, then sweep back through at the very end when you can reach all the spots and subsequently crush the Mother Brain like a bug. Why do the final sweep at the end? It just serves to make the last few bosses pathetic and thus boring, and merely reduces your choices of route (since you have to go this direction anyway to get the missile, the other shortcut is useless).
So...I'm wondering what the non-100% run for Metroid 2 is. Have they gotten it below an hour yet? I don't remember hearing about it, but I wouldn't be surprised....
Board: Super Metroid Topic: Sortest time ever for a 15% game? From: smokeYxMCpot Posted: 2/20/2004 8:42:36 PM the best is 1:36 set by me, AFAIK. I really don't think 14/15% runs are done for speed anyways.
Personally I did 1:45 IIRC (though it may have been 1:56; I should look that up in my log book). However, I double bomb jumped into Lower Norfair as this was before the Gravity Suit trick, and that took me a couple months so I would just try it repeatedly. So given how much time I wasted, 1:36 sounds very reasonable indeed.
I know that either 3Missiles/2Supers or 2Missiles/3Supers are needed to beat the Mother Brain and the zebetites, then let's look at the rest:
6% -- Morph Ball (can't get out of the area without it)
7% -- Bombs (needed to leave Crateria)
that area of Brinstar)
8% -- Power Bombs (needed to enter the Wrecked Ship, and to beat Metroids without the Ice Beam)
9% -- Gravity Suit (needed to activate the Speed Booster underwater)
10% -- Speed Booster (needed to access Draygon)
11% -- Charge Beam (needed to kill Ridley/Mother Brain unless you stock up on more missiles/Supers)
14% -- Three Energy Tanks (needed to survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack)
15% -- Varia Suit (cuts Mother Brain's ultimate attack in half while Gravity does nothing, unlike all other damage in the game. This is easy to fake in a video mind you, since Gravity and Varia/Gravity look identical)
This is the knowledge of 2001. Has anything changed? If there was a way to bypass the zebetite columns presumably this would cut down the percentage by more than 1%. If you could survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack by crystal flashing maybe...? That'd take out the Varia and three energy tanks, but add in two Power Bombs and at least two Super Missiles. I can't honestly see leaving out the Charge Beam, and all other items lock you completely out of an area before you can progress.
So...spill the beans. What new crack in the game has been found and exploited?
Repeat each segment of course. This is how it works in-game too. There's a constant raging debate over which save points to visit, and which to skip. The more you visit the more you break up the run into more perfectable pieces. However visiting a save point takes time as well, so you really shouldn't do it too often.
100% with 1:30 is a bit of a joke I seem to remember. I may be wrong, but I believe getting below an hour with any percentage is more difficult (and I got 0:43 a couple years ago before newer tricks were found; though yes, getting below 1:00 seems impossible for a while).
And Metroid Fusion 1% run is doable and really not that bad compared to Super Metroid 15%. The reason: all the normal upgrades (Varia, Gravity, etc) do NOT count towards your percentage. You'd be able to do 0% except one missile pod is sitting in your way and you have to roll through it.
By converse, Metroid Prime low percentage runs realistically get padded by 12 items or so (because you have to collect the Chozo Artifacts which really shouldn't add to your percentage).
Oh, and just for the fun of it, you can get to the very last save in Metroid II picking up only the bombs (so 1%...well you start with 30 missiles and the morph ball, thus 5 might be a more accurate description). I haven't managed to bomb jump up through the goo into the next room yet, but in theory I think it can be done. You'll need the Ice Beam to kill the metroids in the next section, of course (2%). Now, for the Queen, the trick is to bomb her stomach, but you lose energy when you do that, and you only have the 30 starting missiles. It's possible that you literally don't have the resources to kill her; I don't know her HP I'm afraid.
Hmm, interesting. I don't actually know much about this game. Hmm, from GameSpot...
It's easy to criticize the core mechanics of Panzer Dragoon Orta, as the game is essentially a rail shooter, a dated action subgenre that forces you onto a set track, like on a roller coaster, and expects you to merely point and shoot at everything that gets in your way.
But further in the article...
The homing lasers are generally much stronger than the gun attack, but you'll learn to use both in conjunction, because only Orta's pistol can shoot down the numerous enemy projectiles you'll constantly be trying to avoid. It may not sound like a big deal, but the fact that Panzer Dragoon Orta alternately requires you to tap the fire button and hold it down during nonstop action sequences lends the gameplay a completely different feel from that of any shooter other than its predecessors.
And it goes on to talk about switching between dragon forms, special attacks, boosting, slowing down, DNA upgrades and other such stuff.
Well it's...not particularly innovative (switching between tapping the button and holding it down? See: Charge Beam (from Super Metroid. Come to think of it, IIRC most of the other above stuff can be found in Pokemon Snap. And...didn't Star Fox 64 have charging? Never played it, but I'm guessing it has boosting and slowing down since the SNES one did). On the other hand, while the "innovations" may not be anything new, I think they're new to the rail-shooter (like charging) so it might have a really fresh feel.
In short, well this is possibly a good answer, but colour me skeptical. If I'm going to get interested in a rail-shooter type game (which hasn't really happened on previous attempts) is PDO really the best starting point? Glancing around I find a few people who liked PD1 or PD2 better, and Panzer Dragoon isn't the only rail-shooter series. And...when it comes down to it, I need to try more Sega games in general; so...why not try Super Monkey Ball 2 first? That's a genre which I've never tried, and a game with similar reviews. Still, you've gotten me interested, so *hands AC a cookie*
without AAA fps' I just don't see how gamecube can appeal to gamers over 10.
Actually, I'd say it's the lack of RPGs more than the lack of FPSs which hurts the older market. As an older gamer myself, I can say that after playing games for 17 years I get bored of the same old repackaged stuff over and over again, and thus I had more or less lost interest in Halo before it came out. Regardless, GameCube does have the multiplatform FPSs (I know people who own Time Spitters 2) so it's just lacking in unique FPSs...as much as any FPS these days is "unique"....
Xbox has several system killers, KOTOR, NHL:2k4,HALO.
KotOR: I already mentioned how from my understanding the PC version is just plain better. Why bother with the XBox version?
NHL:2k4: Multiplatform. Yet another sports game. Umm...how does this make the XBox stand out? I mean there's a reason I didn't include PoP:SoT or BG&E for any of the lists I made.
Halo: my distain for the lack of innovation asside, I'd certainly want to catch up with Half-Life first since that's supposed to be a considerably better FPS.
Despite this the other systems have clung to life
If by "clung to life" you mean "consistently outsell the XBox worldwide" then yes.
And the Dreamcast is a good system, yes, though most of these games aren't DC ports actually. On the GameCube list I made there's...Skies of Arcadia: Legends, though from what I hear the remake is done considerably better than the original. You can count Soul Calibur 2 as well I guess (just because SC1 is supposed to be rather similar). However, a good half of the games I listed are Nintendo-made and thus could never appear on the Dreamcast. From the PS2 list I posted there's...Grandia 2. Again, about four titles I listed for the PS2 are SquarEnix or Sony-made titles, and most of the others are niche RPGs which will likely never be remade for another system.
If you're looking for a system that's nothing but ports/games that were subsequently ported elsewhere it's the XBox. If you have a good PC you can already buy most noteworthy XBox games (Halo, KotOR, Morrowind, PoP:SoT...) well barring the console ports which come from the PS2 mostly (like GTA, and various sports games).
Most of what interests me on the PS2 is RPGs. Most of what interests me on the GameCube is the games with innovative or polished gameplay. Most of what interests me on the XBox is...well to be perfectly honest X-Box Linux and/or the XBox Live headphones.
Now, I'm the kind of person who still plays NES games from time to time, and can replay some games nearly endlessly, so I don't lack for games to play so much as lack for variety of gameplay (like being in the middle of five RPGs at once...). It makes sense to go for whatever genre I'm craving more of at the moment (and purchases of other consoles can come at a later date).
10 games? Well, here's the lists I made a couple weeks ago when deciding which system to get first. As back story I have about 5 PSX RPGs I'm in the middle of at the moment, and more which I intend to buy once finishing those, so I was looking for non-RPG games. Also, no I did not forget Halo; I played Goldeneye back in 1997, thank you. I have no real interest in paying for it again when my N64 still works just fine. As for Soul Calibur 2, well I'm likely to get two or three consoles...eventually, so might as well get the GC version of the game since I don't care much for Spawn. And for some reason I just can't get myself excited about Dark Cloud 2 or Kingdom Hearts, though if I were more logical I suppose they would be on there.
And I'm sure my list has massive gaps; these are mostly games that I somehow noticed and then didn't proceed to brand with "meh".
X-Box
Interested in: KotOR
0% non-RPG interesting games. Failed.
GameCube Interested in: SSB:M SC2 Metroid Prime SMS ToS WW Pikmin Animal Crossing SoA FF:CC Eternal Darkness MK:DD Viewtiful Joe
That's...over 10 already, and I'm one of those freaks who has no real interest in Resident Evil.
What I don't get is people saying "X-Box has bazillions of good unique games!!! So much more than the GameCube!!" Umm...what? KotOR and Morrowind are better on the PC from all I've heard; Halo I dismissed above under the "most console shooters are Goldeneye clones" clause. I'm looking at the GameFAQs top 10 of the XBox and seeing nothing but ports/rehashes, actually.
I've said it before, and nobody responded (outside of the predictable "Halo/KotOR r0x0rz" babble) so for my own education and for the general comedic value I'll say it again: Screw ten! Name ONE good XBox game. (I should be careful; if I keep asking this Ninja Gaiden will finally come out...). To be fair I'm not exactly the target audience of the XBox (since first person shooters, sports, and racing aren't my favourite genres these days) but...there must be some game out there...right?
Actually, from my understanding the hit PC games simply don't sell as well as the hit console games. Off the top of my head, I seem to rememer Myst was about 6 million, and Super Mario Bros was about 40 million...and PC games drop off a fair bit after Myst and the Sims IIRC. I couldn't find any lists to see if this is true or not (anybody know one of those list sites?) though I did find this for 2001 PC sales:
1 / The Sims / Electronic Arts / 11-1999 / $41
2 / RollerCoaster Tycoon / Infogrames / 02-1999 / $23 3 / Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone / Electronic Arts / 11-2001 / $28 4 / Diablo II: Lord of Destruction / Vivendi Universal / 06-2001 / $34 5 / The Sims: House Party / Electronic Arts / 02-2001 / $28 6 / The Sims: Livin' Large / Electronic Arts / 12-1999 / $28 7 / The Sims: Hot Date / Electronic Arts / 11-2001 / $27 8 / Diablo II / Vivendi Universal / 03-1999 / $38 9 / SimTheme Park / Electronic Arts / 11-1999 / $19 10 / Age of Empires II: Age of Kings / Microsoft / 08-1999 / $41
I mean yes, Myst and the Sims break the trend, but...well for example I had heard the name Age of Empires vaguely, but didn't realize it was made by Microsoft; it doesn't strike me as a well-known game; heck anything that gets outsold by three different $30 expansion packs just isn't that impressive for recognition.
To be utterly blunt, I'm not convinced it's GameFAQs that's biased against PC games (though it might be). I think it's more that Slashdot which is baised for PC games. This is a crowd which just likes modding/upgrading their PCs, so using them for gaming is a logical extension.
Yes this is false...or at least there are plenty of exceptions (seeing as 10% of all GameFAQs readers owned all three by 11/10/2002, let alone today which I'd ballpark as closer to 20%) and the XBox has improved a fair bit since Maddox wrote that in 2002. Still, the stereotype that XBox has a weak game lineup frankly does hold some water. Despite all this, there's certainly numerous people who like the XBox on GameFAQs. I wouldn't worry about its games being underrepresented.
If there's any system I'd be worried about getting underrepresented here it's the Dreamcast. Never owned one actually, though I keep looking at the title lineup and old reviews and thinking "dude, I missed a fair bit".
I don't have ZSNES, but are these using the Spazer/Plasma combination beam? That's the one glitch I refuse to use personally (Mach-Ball to skip Spore Spawn doesn't bother me, and that's about as cheap with glitches as I got. 0:43 is my best time incidentally). The problem I have with the Murder-Beam or Spacetime beam or whatever people are calling it these days is that from all I've heard it does different things on the ROM and on the cart, and...isn't there a trick where you bypass the Mother Brain entirely with that thing (as well as Ridley if you're speed running) and trick the game into thinking that it's "escape from Zebes" time? The Spazer/Plasma beam stuff just doesn't sit well with me.
Oh, and I'm not sure if they fixed it, but I know that a few years ago the clock on the actual cart and the clock on ZSNES ran at slightly different speeds.
One interesting way I've heard postmodernism described is through Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. For those that don't know, any system of theories cannot be complete (have a true/false for any statement) or if it is then it will be inconsistent (have statements that are both true and false). Math (and science by extension) strives for consistency, and will add axioms whenever they find a hole in completeness.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, tosses consistency out the window in an attempt to be complete.
Well...it's as good a definition of postmodernism as any I guess. Certainly more tangible to me than "the curvy buildings in architecture from the 60s"; I mean how am I supposed to apply -that- to literature?
Yeah, lets see you get all 150/250/whatever they're up to now Pokemon without cheating while maintaining your job as a professor. I spent over 50 hours in the original Pokemon and didn't even get 100 of them. Good luck trying to get double that number while writing an analyze of it up.
I got as many as possible without trading (129? Something like that). I also recorded about 20 sheets of data trying to reverse engingeer the level up process (only to find that it had been done on the net a year or so earlier). And...I did write a 10 page paper or so (on various topics of the cultural phenomenon that was Pokemon; it got quite a good mark too). Though, granted, that was third year, so the quality of the paper was considerably lower than academic, and I only had 6 Honours courses to keep up with (admitably lower than the load of a professor). On the flip side, this was all done in a much shorter timeframe than your average academic paper.
In short, easily doable, and that's if you even think catching 150 yourself is somehow required to write a paper on Pokemon (*coughAzureHeightscough*).
And, believe me, we're well aware of subjectivism - it's there for most things.
In fact, my understanding is that subjectivity is rather central to postmodernism. As far as I'm concerned the idea in social sciences is to be subjective, just to be subjective from as many angles of subjectivity as possible (thus completeness increases over multiple academics).
As someone who has worked briefly with an academic studying Video Games I thought his choice of games didn't allow for much interpretation of art (DOOM was one game he looked at, for instance, analyzing the main character) and it doesn't look like these scholars are doing much better. On the other hand, you will have a tough time convincing me that, oh, say Tony Hawk 4 or Bond Shooting game 17 is artistic either. Developers are focused more on what sells, or at least that's the impression I get from the internet (having developed an edutainment game, but never been to a conference).
Wouldn't it make more sense for the Academics to grab a more plot-intensive game? (I'm thinking RPGs in particular; Xenogears, Koudelka, et. al.) After all, character and plot are something that we (academics) certainly know how to analyze academically, while gameplay is something new (and likely more interdiciplinary requiring knowledge from CPSC, Physics, Math, as well as social sciences so that you can actually analyze it using postmodernist theories after you understand it).
Slashdot Mirror
And violence makes you mean? Final Fantasy Tactics is a game about a civil war which consists primarily of battling with swords, guns, knives, spears, axes, magic, and mathematics. That's obviously a game centered around violence (especially math; that stuff HURTS). However, the good guys strive for peace; mediating between the two forces and looking out for the little guy. If FFT really makes kids mean then you can colour me confused.
HOWEVER, what bothers me about GTA games is that the media points to it, and says "see? Video games are twisted and have you commit theft and murder." That's not (usually) true! Certainly not the games that I've been playing recently. GTA existing doesn't really bother me, except when people associate all videogames with GTA, or talk of it as if it's the center of the gaming universe. Didn't FFX sell better anyway?
Though, point taken: I had forgotten that Nintendo finally set up a Canadian shipping company a few years back, so it's not the same warehouses anymore.
That's nothing special. A similar thing hapens in the Megaman series and the Metroid series. I personally dislike the association of "levelling up" = "RPG-like". You can make games that play nothing like RPGs where you level up. You could in-theory make a very traditional RPG where you don't level up, but plays in all other ways like any RPG. (Though, the advantage to levelling is that you introduce abilities a bit at a time and it's a built-in difficulty adjuster).
Well, that and I was trying to complete most of the old PSX RPGs at the same time so I was just on genre overload, and GameCube seemed to have the freshest action titles.
Either way, I'm greatly enjoying Metroid Prime (oh, and unlike most here, I didn't have trouble finding a system in Montreal).
And it couldn't. Honestly, I didn't even hear about the Genesis existing until after Nintendo abandoned the NES pissing off a lot of its fans (1992? 1993? Something like that; I know I heard about the SNES first). At this point, the Genesis was cheaper than the SNES, and took a decent market hold.
What would have happened if Nintendo held on to the NES? A good example of where this was actually tried was with the original Gameboy, and it beat the Gamegear quite handlily in the end.
While there are great games, they constitute a relatively small percentage of the total.
Much like the PSX (which also had a lot of SNES ports, especially early on). And to be perfectly honest, Wario Ware and Mario & Luigi are some of the best games I've played in a long time, so the GBA is not lacking for AAA titles.
GBA: 80%
PSP: 18%
other: 2%
Looks like Sony's eating into the market share. However, if they release the DS at the same time as the PSP taking the wind out of their launch sails it might come out more like:
GBA: 80%
PSP: 11%
DS: 7%
other: 2%
Now things look a lot more shaky for the PSP, and Nintendo has said themselves that the GBA will not be replaced so PSP and DS both fail and GBA continues its dominance.
It's a kamakazie system that tries a lot new ideas, and if those ideas take off then great, and if they don't...well it still served its purpose.
Though, speed runs didn't used to be as popular. I know I didn't get interested in them at all until (believe it or not) 1998 and Warioland 2. Can anybody beat 2:45? Does anybody have a clue what I'm talking about? *sigh*
Hmm, yeah that checks out. If you use collision detection to get past the zetebite columns then you could get away with one less set. The reason is that the columns take 11 missiles, so with 10 Missiles you lose a Super Missile for each column (you reload Missiles between each one, of course).
So...I'm wondering what the non-100% run for Metroid 2 is. Have they gotten it below an hour yet? I don't remember hearing about it, but I wouldn't be surprised....
6% -- Morph Ball (can't get out of the area without it)
7% -- Bombs (needed to leave Crateria) that area of Brinstar)
8% -- Power Bombs (needed to enter the Wrecked Ship, and to beat Metroids without the Ice Beam)
9% -- Gravity Suit (needed to activate the Speed Booster underwater)
10% -- Speed Booster (needed to access Draygon)
11% -- Charge Beam (needed to kill Ridley/Mother Brain unless you stock up on more missiles/Supers)
14% -- Three Energy Tanks (needed to survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack)
15% -- Varia Suit (cuts Mother Brain's ultimate attack in half while Gravity does nothing, unlike all other damage in the game. This is easy to fake in a video mind you, since Gravity and Varia/Gravity look identical)
This is the knowledge of 2001. Has anything changed? If there was a way to bypass the zebetite columns presumably this would cut down the percentage by more than 1%. If you could survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack by crystal flashing maybe...? That'd take out the Varia and three energy tanks, but add in two Power Bombs and at least two Super Missiles. I can't honestly see leaving out the Charge Beam, and all other items lock you completely out of an area before you can progress.
So...spill the beans. What new crack in the game has been found and exploited?
Repeat each segment of course. This is how it works in-game too. There's a constant raging debate over which save points to visit, and which to skip. The more you visit the more you break up the run into more perfectable pieces. However visiting a save point takes time as well, so you really shouldn't do it too often.
And Metroid Fusion 1% run is doable and really not that bad compared to Super Metroid 15%. The reason: all the normal upgrades (Varia, Gravity, etc) do NOT count towards your percentage. You'd be able to do 0% except one missile pod is sitting in your way and you have to roll through it.
By converse, Metroid Prime low percentage runs realistically get padded by 12 items or so (because you have to collect the Chozo Artifacts which really shouldn't add to your percentage).
Oh, and just for the fun of it, you can get to the very last save in Metroid II picking up only the bombs (so 1%...well you start with 30 missiles and the morph ball, thus 5 might be a more accurate description). I haven't managed to bomb jump up through the goo into the next room yet, but in theory I think it can be done. You'll need the Ice Beam to kill the metroids in the next section, of course (2%). Now, for the Queen, the trick is to bomb her stomach, but you lose energy when you do that, and you only have the 30 starting missiles. It's possible that you literally don't have the resources to kill her; I don't know her HP I'm afraid.
Well it's...not particularly innovative (switching between tapping the button and holding it down? See: Charge Beam (from Super Metroid. Come to think of it, IIRC most of the other above stuff can be found in Pokemon Snap. And...didn't Star Fox 64 have charging? Never played it, but I'm guessing it has boosting and slowing down since the SNES one did). On the other hand, while the "innovations" may not be anything new, I think they're new to the rail-shooter (like charging) so it might have a really fresh feel.
In short, well this is possibly a good answer, but colour me skeptical. If I'm going to get interested in a rail-shooter type game (which hasn't really happened on previous attempts) is PDO really the best starting point? Glancing around I find a few people who liked PD1 or PD2 better, and Panzer Dragoon isn't the only rail-shooter series. And...when it comes down to it, I need to try more Sega games in general; so...why not try Super Monkey Ball 2 first? That's a genre which I've never tried, and a game with similar reviews. Still, you've gotten me interested, so *hands AC a cookie*
Actually, I'd say it's the lack of RPGs more than the lack of FPSs which hurts the older market. As an older gamer myself, I can say that after playing games for 17 years I get bored of the same old repackaged stuff over and over again, and thus I had more or less lost interest in Halo before it came out. Regardless, GameCube does have the multiplatform FPSs (I know people who own Time Spitters 2) so it's just lacking in unique FPSs...as much as any FPS these days is "unique"....
Xbox has several system killers, KOTOR, NHL:2k4,HALO.
KotOR: I already mentioned how from my understanding the PC version is just plain better. Why bother with the XBox version?
NHL:2k4: Multiplatform. Yet another sports game. Umm...how does this make the XBox stand out? I mean there's a reason I didn't include PoP:SoT or BG&E for any of the lists I made.
Halo: my distain for the lack of innovation asside, I'd certainly want to catch up with Half-Life first since that's supposed to be a considerably better FPS.
Despite this the other systems have clung to life
If by "clung to life" you mean "consistently outsell the XBox worldwide" then yes.
And the Dreamcast is a good system, yes, though most of these games aren't DC ports actually. On the GameCube list I made there's...Skies of Arcadia: Legends, though from what I hear the remake is done considerably better than the original. You can count Soul Calibur 2 as well I guess (just because SC1 is supposed to be rather similar). However, a good half of the games I listed are Nintendo-made and thus could never appear on the Dreamcast. From the PS2 list I posted there's...Grandia 2. Again, about four titles I listed for the PS2 are SquarEnix or Sony-made titles, and most of the others are niche RPGs which will likely never be remade for another system.
If you're looking for a system that's nothing but ports/games that were subsequently ported elsewhere it's the XBox. If you have a good PC you can already buy most noteworthy XBox games (Halo, KotOR, Morrowind, PoP:SoT...) well barring the console ports which come from the PS2 mostly (like GTA, and various sports games).
Now, I'm the kind of person who still plays NES games from time to time, and can replay some games nearly endlessly, so I don't lack for games to play so much as lack for variety of gameplay (like being in the middle of five RPGs at once...). It makes sense to go for whatever genre I'm craving more of at the moment (and purchases of other consoles can come at a later date).
And I'm sure my list has massive gaps; these are mostly games that I somehow noticed and then didn't proceed to brand with "meh".
That's...over 10 already, and I'm one of those freaks who has no real interest in Resident Evil.
What I don't get is people saying "X-Box has bazillions of good unique games!!! So much more than the GameCube!!" Umm...what? KotOR and Morrowind are better on the PC from all I've heard; Halo I dismissed above under the "most console shooters are Goldeneye clones" clause. I'm looking at the GameFAQs top 10 of the XBox and seeing nothing but ports/rehashes, actually.
I've said it before, and nobody responded (outside of the predictable "Halo/KotOR r0x0rz" babble) so for my own education and for the general comedic value I'll say it again: Screw ten! Name ONE good XBox game. (I should be careful; if I keep asking this Ninja Gaiden will finally come out...). To be fair I'm not exactly the target audience of the XBox (since first person shooters, sports, and racing aren't my favourite genres these days) but...there must be some game out there...right?
I mean yes, Myst and the Sims break the trend, but...well for example I had heard the name Age of Empires vaguely, but didn't realize it was made by Microsoft; it doesn't strike me as a well-known game; heck anything that gets outsold by three different $30 expansion packs just isn't that impressive for recognition.
To be utterly blunt, I'm not convinced it's GameFAQs that's biased against PC games (though it might be). I think it's more that Slashdot which is baised for PC games. This is a crowd which just likes modding/upgrading their PCs, so using them for gaming is a logical extension.
As for the XBox..........
Well to quote Maddox
Yes this is false...or at least there are plenty of exceptions (seeing as 10% of all GameFAQs readers owned all three by 11/10/2002, let alone today which I'd ballpark as closer to 20%) and the XBox has improved a fair bit since Maddox wrote that in 2002. Still, the stereotype that XBox has a weak game lineup frankly does hold some water. Despite all this, there's certainly numerous people who like the XBox on GameFAQs. I wouldn't worry about its games being underrepresented.
If there's any system I'd be worried about getting underrepresented here it's the Dreamcast. Never owned one actually, though I keep looking at the title lineup and old reviews and thinking "dude, I missed a fair bit".
Oh, and I'm not sure if they fixed it, but I know that a few years ago the clock on the actual cart and the clock on ZSNES ran at slightly different speeds.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, tosses consistency out the window in an attempt to be complete.
Well...it's as good a definition of postmodernism as any I guess. Certainly more tangible to me than "the curvy buildings in architecture from the 60s"; I mean how am I supposed to apply -that- to literature?
I got as many as possible without trading (129? Something like that). I also recorded about 20 sheets of data trying to reverse engingeer the level up process (only to find that it had been done on the net a year or so earlier). And...I did write a 10 page paper or so (on various topics of the cultural phenomenon that was Pokemon; it got quite a good mark too). Though, granted, that was third year, so the quality of the paper was considerably lower than academic, and I only had 6 Honours courses to keep up with (admitably lower than the load of a professor). On the flip side, this was all done in a much shorter timeframe than your average academic paper.
In short, easily doable, and that's if you even think catching 150 yourself is somehow required to write a paper on Pokemon (*coughAzureHeightscough*).
In fact, my understanding is that subjectivity is rather central to postmodernism. As far as I'm concerned the idea in social sciences is to be subjective, just to be subjective from as many angles of subjectivity as possible (thus completeness increases over multiple academics).
Wouldn't it make more sense for the Academics to grab a more plot-intensive game? (I'm thinking RPGs in particular; Xenogears, Koudelka, et. al.) After all, character and plot are something that we (academics) certainly know how to analyze academically, while gameplay is something new (and likely more interdiciplinary requiring knowledge from CPSC, Physics, Math, as well as social sciences so that you can actually analyze it using postmodernist theories after you understand it).