They're not perfect by far, but they're small, I know some of the guys there, and they're actually profitable. I know there are fewer and fewer regional providers these days, which is all the more reason for me to keep using one.
I pay a little bit more for my DSL than I was paying for DirectTV DSL but I get very similar service and terms.
I have few complaints but even if there were major issues I would likely still use a small regional for no other reason than I refuse to support any of the evil three (AOL, MSN, Earthlink).
Also, the local cable provider (http://www.charter.net) really blows in my area. I hear about horrible lag, serious downtime, and other problems from everyone I know who uses them.
My choice to use a regional may seem silly, but I feel like my money is being well spent supporting a dying breed. There should be more companies like them.
NiGHTS was easily one of the best games on the Saturn
Absolutely! Any self respecting video game fan MUST find a Saturn and a copy of NiGHTS. It was the single best reason to own the system. To this day I consider it a greater work than any of the Sonic games or the Panzer Dragoon games (with the exception of Panzer Dragoon Saga which I have not been lucky enough to aquire.)
You're talking about replacing crap sound-tracks in mediocre games, while I'm talking about wanting to retain excellent, mood enhancing, genre defining music in games that outclass the latest installment in a lame churned-out-thumb-numbing series.
In the instances your are talking about, I'd just as soon turn the in-game volume down and play WinAMP off of my computer. Having the ability to play it from the game-system itself is neat, but hardly required.
Those kinds of shallow and pointless games are seldom the sorts of things that keep me involved for very long anyway.
(BTW, everybody talks about how great Halo and Metroid Prime are as games, but often people overlook that both of these games had OUTSTANDING sound tracks. At least GTA:3/VC got the attention it deserved.)
Nobody would deny that the XBox is a "good" purchase overall, if you did not have a game system and if you wanted a DVD player.
But look at those 8-10 games you have. How many of them also exist for either the GC or the PS2? Some of them, at least. Several of the best games on the system are cross-platform. Which one is the best varies from title to title, so I'll leave that bit out.
Anyway, I agree you could end up with about 20 okay games for the XBox, about 5-8 of them exclusive, but only half of those are truly MUST HAVE titles.
This doesn't mean the XBox wasn't a good system to have, but using the same criteria, I would say either of the other two systems would have been a better purchase. (Unless you just HAD to have a DVD player, in which case the GC is straight out).
All in all I am highly disappointed in the XBox. I look over the titles everytime I make my weekly video game purchases and I sigh that my XBox collection is so much smaller than any of my others, including the Dreamcast.
The PS2 is a remarkably inferior platform, but it does have a very large number of very high quality games. I will immediately be one of the first to point out that the PS2 lacks a great RATIO of good games vs. bad games, but that's a universal complaint anymore.
I have several pretty good games for the PS2, and several really good PS1 games. I havea lot of crap for the system, too... but at least I can say I have that many great games for the PS2.
For the XBox, I only have a few that I can honestly say I like. I've rented several, and the better ones weren't exclusives. I've even given away XBox games that I thought were total trash.
Halo is fab, and Buffy is neat. DOAX is neat. But overall the system IS lacking in great games. I mean to pick up Panzer Dragoon sOrta, since it'll be worth it. But c'mon, the systme has been out this long and the good games are only now starting to really trickle in, and the best ones are cross-platform.
That hardly says good things about the XBox.
The Gamecube is doing marginally better, since I can honestly say I only have one Gamecube game that I would honestly say I think sucks. Not that there aren't shitty games for the Gamecube, too, but most of those are obvious trash. The Nintnedo first party titles have all been top notch, and even ANIMAL CROSSING (as strange and childish as it is) has been a greater source of amusement to me than anything on the XBox.
That's always amused me. Yes, it's nice to have custom sound-tracks. BUT if a game has such a shitty soundtrack that I have to replace it with my own music, I'm probably not playing that game very much.
GTA:3/VC both have outstanding sound-tracks.
I'd rather see this any day than have to resort to using my own music. Still, having custom sound-tracks IS a cool feature of the Xbox.
On the other hand, there aren't a whole lot of really great games for the XBox, and Project Gotham Racing isn't really that great of a racer. It amused me for maybe two days at most.
Will Microsoft publish Rare games on Game Boy platforms
Supposedly Rare is still a liscensed GBA developer and still has titles in the works for the GBA. I wish I had links to my sources, but they are out there.
What Sega is doing is more like aiming their titles at the core audience of the respective consoles.
Sonic, Monkeyball, and the like make sense on the Gamecube.
Panzer Dragoon sOrta on the XBox makes sense.
Shinobi on the PS2 makes a whole lot of sense, though I wish they had made that one cross-platform in the same way they did some of their other titles.
From the site, the focus seems to be on 4.0, not 2K/XP. While this will be great for those who have a huge amount of time and effort invested in implimenting an NT4.0 environment, it doesn't make much sense for someone who has migrated to 2K/XP to move back to ReactOS.
I do think this is really cool though, and I plan to keep my eye on this. With any luck it'll come far enough to start implimenting 2k/Xp compatibility.
I can relate to the Lindsey chick the article mentions. I sleep 3-5 hours max per day. Sometimes I'm doing good to get 3. Either 3 before work, or three after work, or 3 sometime in the middle of my off-time. It just always depends on how I feel. I have no regular sleep schedule because I rarely get "sleepy" unless I've been drinking alcohol.
When I force myself to lay down and sleep knowing it's for the better, I toss and turn for a good portion of the time, thinking. I can't say with any certainty how long it takes me to fall asleep. It's a very gradual process by which I go from being fully awake and aware to being in a surreal life. Sometimes life resumes as normal. The pizza I put in the fridge is still there and I go grab a piece because I thought I couldn't sleep, only when I put it in the microwave the microwave flashes bright blue (like a burnted lightbulb) and the pizza explodes. I realize it's a dream, and surreality insues.
Sometimes the dreams are very mild and uneventful. My house is filled with flowers and exotic insects or I live underwater. Sometimes there is alot of bizarre action, and Escher like architechture isn't so uncommon.
The article mentions attending one's own funderal? Done it. Killed myself. Killed people I know. Witnessed murdered. Witnessed my own, even. Plane crashes. Car wrecks. Natural disasters. But sometimes I have great dreams too. Sex dreams with famous beautiful women, or women I know in real life. Dreams about eating good food, or going on cool trips. Just about anything you could think if, I often experience in my dreams.
It is a mix of both good and bad. Whichever it is it is very lifelike, and while I often know I'm dreaming and sometimes can control it, even that too varies from time to time. It has bled over into my view of the real world so that I remain calm in the most bizarre of situations, or the most tragic crisis. Sometimes I do this the whole forced "wake up" thing. Waking myself from inside the dream. I once thought just anybody could do it at least some of the time. I can do it a good portion of the time. I try and do it sometimes while awake, which leads to some very akward situations when I find that what I thought was naturally a dream was in fact real. (This works against me in dreams where I think I'm dreaming in the dream but try to wake up and can't, proving that I'm awake while still in the dream.)
I've had long discussions about my lucid dreams with people, but it wasn't until my late teens that I realized how uncommon the whole thing is. Both of my parents and one of my brothers dream lucidly. I thought it was normal.
The dreams have only become more intense as I get closer to my 30's. I sleep much less now and dream much more vividly for what seems like longer periods of time but is actually in shorter time spans. I have considered seeing a doctor, but I feared they would give me a medication that would "take this away". The article clearly gives the caption "is it a gift?" and I ask myself all the time.
The dreams force me to "wake myself" so essentially my dreams are keeping me from getting good sleep. This is true. But it's not like I really feel like I'm doing so bad. I'm certainly not walking around in a total daze from sleep deprivation, at least not often anyway. As I said earlier on I don't "get sleepy" really.
The only other "negative" thing mentioned that I think really applies to me is sleep talking. I have occassional bouts of two sided conversations with myself. I often wake up in hysterical laughter from very amusing dreams. I answer the phone (in my dream but also while doing so in reality) and have conversations with people that I only vaguely remember later on (more on this in a bit) and am later reminded of. I'm told I say some very bizarre, off subject things, make no sense (duh!) and often believe the other person is someone they are not.
As for what I remember, I remember almost all of my dreams at least partially. Exact details aren't always retained beyond the first few hours after waking. If I don't dwell on a dream, I lose it within a few days and it becomes a fuzzy mess. Normally I remember most of the dream though, and if asked what I dreamt immediately after waking I can recall very sharp and precise details. As if whatever I dreamt of actually did just happen.
I dream in color. I dream in stereo. I taste. I feel. And to top it all off I remember events of the real world, events that often happened in toher dreams, and (not so suprisingly) have sometimes had dreams that I know what's going to happen later on in the dream (think about that, and it's really not that strange).
All in all I'm bothered by my dreams but I don't want to lose them. If I were to see a doctor, they would almost certainly make some attempt to make me "normal", and I'm not sure I'm willing to trade this "condition" with one where I simply don't remember anything for a good chunk of my life.
Having said all this, gift or course, I wish I better understood what's going on. And I would gladly give myself to dream research if I felt I myself as a specimin could be useful to researchers. I just wish everybody could have a good "lucid dream" a few times they they would understand why I don't want to give up the great ones dispite all the bad ones.
Flying over your home town with a sickening sense of realism is indescribable, even if it often ends in a dream about falling.
CAPCOM has made this point about Sony a few times. Seems it's actually a known habit at Sony, but their official take on it is "Game Systems only live a few years anyway."
So, if your PS1 broke, buy a PS2. If you are unlucky and your PS2 breaks before the PS3 is out, you'll just have to buy a new one or wait till you can upgrade.
I know someone who has owned 6 Playstations, 4 original, and 2 PS2s. My PS2 is now making funny noises.:(
Does anybody remember when DivX was the "alternative format" for DVDs? The players were supposed to only allow people to play the movies if they paid to have the keys?
That form of DivX was, I think, the first real attempt the industry made towards DRM, though it's horrible failure caused it to die a welcomed death. If this current day DivX is based on the same format, I find it a sweet irony that it's now the format of choice for those who trade video (notice I didn't say people who pirate, even though they love this format, too).
Isn't this the same thing as them selling those CDs that don't play on some players because of the copy protection that contains noise and shit?
If you buy a regular CD that contains hisses and pops if your cd player doesn't like that Data Cactus crap or whatever it is, then you're getting the same thing.
On the other hand, some would say most pop-music already sounds likes erroneous garbage to begin with. Destiny's Child, anyone?
This is so true. I still think of EA as the sports game company, I don't know when they got into computer games.
See, that's the problem. I don't consider Sports games real games. Most of them "Game-wise" aren't very good, and if you don't like sports there is literally NOTHING in them for you. Some really good sports games are fun even if you don't like the sport they represent. That's almost never the case though, since most sports games fail to be good games, and become nothing but drab rehashes of the game from the year before.
As for EA, you don't know when they got into computer games? What are you kidding? Try 1981 or 1982, somewhere around there. Electronic Arts used to be THE SHIT. They kicked ass for the first ten years they were around. Now days they completely fucking suck. EA become a 15 ton Godzilla of video games that can buy whole countries because of their roots, games like Archon, Mail Order Monsters, Racing Destruction Set, Realm of Impossibilities, The Bard's Tale, Starflight... the list goes on and on and on.
Now days they're just a big, worthless media company that appeals to the casual gamer and doesn't give a shit where they came from.
Your complaints about Sim City 4 are a good example of the sort of things Electronic Arts does to developers. EA is milking MAXIS till they are a stone from which no more can be squeezed. At that time EA will bury them just like they have every other great developer that has come under them.
"Consumers today apparently don't want to sit in front of the television to play games for hours and hours."
Actually, the article says that this quote from Nintendo isn't accurate because there are so many people with PS2's, when the article I believe is misunderstanding Nitnendo.
See, most PS2 gamers are very casual gamers. The majority of the PS2 titles really suck. Casual gamers don't hold a game up to as high a standard as hardcore gamers. They WILL buy the latest movie liscense, or that Britney Spears Dance Beat shitheap of a game. While there are many very excelleng games for the PS2, oddly enough they aren't the games casual gamers play, except maybe Grant Theft Auto 3/VC which is selling to both the casual and hardcore.
A hardcore gamer will most likely have both a Gamecube and a PS2. In some cases a Gamecube and an XBox, and no PS2. The real fanatics have all three.:D
Still, what I've noticed about hardcore gamers, is that they WANT complexity and difficulty. They want depth, and freedom. There are games on every platform for the hardcore gamer, but when it comes to games that the unskilled, unwashed, untalented casual gamer wants, the largest number appear on the Playstation. The Playstation IS the video game equivilant of "pop-culture". The video game industry, because of the Playstation, is starting to mimick the music and movie industry.
The point Nintendo was making that the article seemed to miss was that gamers now days DON'T want the complexity, difficulty, and depth that Nitnendo's first part games tend to have.
I just hope this doesn't mean Nintendo is going to give up their "Quality vs. Quantity" policy, and start releasing huge piles of crap.
If you love good games but have refrained from getting a Gamecube beause you already have a PS2, you are denying yourself some really wonderful gems. I can honestly say I've enjoyed almost all of the Nintendo first party titles. Yet, with few exceptions, nearly every game I have on the PS2 or XBox goes unplayed after the first few times. They're just so "blah". (Like I said, there are exceptions...)
I have all three systems. I have the most fun with the Gamecube. A lot of people I know agree once they've played a few of the Gamecube games. Esspecially Metroid.
Nintendo is doing quite well. The Gamecube is profitable, albeit not as much as they would like. Their playign card business is pure profit. The Gameboy is pure profit. They generate revenue from franchise related merchandise they do not directly sell. The Pokemon franchise alone (love it or hate it) is worth more than the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and that's saying some amazing things.
Nintendo is big. Nintendo is HUGE. Nintendo doesn't file "Bad Years". They don't file "losses". They file years where "we didn't make as much as we hoped."
Anybody who thinks Nintendo is going somewhere apparently has no idea what is going on in the gaming industry.
Oh, and the Gamecube is ahead of the XBox in sales worldwide, even if it is only closely "tied" or a bit behind in the US. Globally, Nintendo is kicking Microsoft square in the jimmy.
I'm not knocking the XBox, because I like the platform just fine. But Microsoft fanboys that think the XBox is going to dominate need to give up waiting for the exodus to happen. It isn't going to.
As for Microsoft buying companies, I don't care as long as they make good games. There certain is a lack of innovation in the game market lately, and Microsoft's subsidaries have a better track record of releasing non-shitty-shit than, say, either Electronic Arts or Acclaim.
If Microsoft turns into another Shit-Game-Spewing company like Electronic Arts, then I just won't buy their shit. (And for the purpose of Shit-Games, Windows-Pack-Ins hardly count).
The question isn't if nuture has some role, because it obviously does. The question is, does nature ALSO have some role, as well. How much does each have? Does genetics effect one's behavior at all. Can you inherit violent or criminal tendacies? (i.e. if your father was a violent man, will you be a violent man even if you've never met him?)
As far as I know there is no clear cut answer. I've literally watched two "experts" go back and forth on the topic for very long periods of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I use a regional provider for my DSL.
They're not perfect by far, but they're small, I know some of the guys there, and they're actually profitable. I know there are fewer and fewer regional providers these days, which is all the more reason for me to keep using one.
I pay a little bit more for my DSL than I was paying for DirectTV DSL but I get very similar service and terms.
I have few complaints but even if there were major issues I would likely still use a small regional for no other reason than I refuse to support any of the evil three (AOL, MSN, Earthlink).
Also, the local cable provider (http://www.charter.net) really blows in my area. I hear about horrible lag, serious downtime, and other problems from everyone I know who uses them.
My choice to use a regional may seem silly, but I feel like my money is being well spent supporting a dying breed. There should be more companies like them.
What exactly are you disagreeing with? :)
I wasn't exacty, just drawing attention to the difference in the types of games.
Most of those types of games have the option to mute the music but leave the sound FX intact.
That's what I do when I want to play my own music, but not listen to whatever rubbish is in the game.
On the other hand, some games have sound-tracks I wish I could listen to outside of the game.
NiGHTS was easily one of the best games on the Saturn
Absolutely! Any self respecting video game fan MUST find a Saturn and a copy of NiGHTS. It was the single best reason to own the system. To this day I consider it a greater work than any of the Sonic games or the Panzer Dragoon games (with the exception of Panzer Dragoon Saga which I have not been lucky enough to aquire.)
You're talking about replacing crap sound-tracks in mediocre games, while I'm talking about wanting to retain excellent, mood enhancing, genre defining music in games that outclass the latest installment in a lame churned-out-thumb-numbing series.
In the instances your are talking about, I'd just as soon turn the in-game volume down and play WinAMP off of my computer. Having the ability to play it from the game-system itself is neat, but hardly required.
Those kinds of shallow and pointless games are seldom the sorts of things that keep me involved for very long anyway.
(BTW, everybody talks about how great Halo and Metroid Prime are as games, but often people overlook that both of these games had OUTSTANDING sound tracks. At least GTA:3/VC got the attention it deserved.)
Nobody would deny that the XBox is a "good" purchase overall, if you did not have a game system and if you wanted a DVD player.
But look at those 8-10 games you have. How many of them also exist for either the GC or the PS2? Some of them, at least. Several of the best games on the system are cross-platform. Which one is the best varies from title to title, so I'll leave that bit out.
Anyway, I agree you could end up with about 20 okay games for the XBox, about 5-8 of them exclusive, but only half of those are truly MUST HAVE titles.
This doesn't mean the XBox wasn't a good system to have, but using the same criteria, I would say either of the other two systems would have been a better purchase. (Unless you just HAD to have a DVD player, in which case the GC is straight out).
All in all I am highly disappointed in the XBox. I look over the titles everytime I make my weekly video game purchases and I sigh that my XBox collection is so much smaller than any of my others, including the Dreamcast.
At least DOAX and PDS are out now, anyway.
The PS2 is a remarkably inferior platform, but it does have a very large number of very high quality games. I will immediately be one of the first to point out that the PS2 lacks a great RATIO of good games vs. bad games, but that's a universal complaint anymore.
I have several pretty good games for the PS2, and several really good PS1 games. I havea lot of crap for the system, too... but at least I can say I have that many great games for the PS2.
For the XBox, I only have a few that I can honestly say I like. I've rented several, and the better ones weren't exclusives. I've even given away XBox games that I thought were total trash.
Halo is fab, and Buffy is neat. DOAX is neat. But overall the system IS lacking in great games. I mean to pick up Panzer Dragoon sOrta, since it'll be worth it. But c'mon, the systme has been out this long and the good games are only now starting to really trickle in, and the best ones are cross-platform.
That hardly says good things about the XBox.
The Gamecube is doing marginally better, since I can honestly say I only have one Gamecube game that I would honestly say I think sucks. Not that there aren't shitty games for the Gamecube, too, but most of those are obvious trash. The Nintnedo first party titles have all been top notch, and even ANIMAL CROSSING (as strange and childish as it is) has been a greater source of amusement to me than anything on the XBox.
Oh, and yes, I do have all three systems.
That's always amused me. Yes, it's nice to have custom sound-tracks. BUT if a game has such a shitty soundtrack that I have to replace it with my own music, I'm probably not playing that game very much.
GTA:3/VC both have outstanding sound-tracks.
I'd rather see this any day than have to resort to using my own music. Still, having custom sound-tracks IS a cool feature of the Xbox.
On the other hand, there aren't a whole lot of really great games for the XBox, and Project Gotham Racing isn't really that great of a racer. It amused me for maybe two days at most.
Oh -- and yes, I do have all three systems.
Will Microsoft publish Rare games on Game Boy platforms
Supposedly Rare is still a liscensed GBA developer and still has titles in the works for the GBA. I wish I had links to my sources, but they are out there.
What Sega is doing is more like aiming their titles at the core audience of the respective consoles.
Sonic, Monkeyball, and the like make sense on the Gamecube.
Panzer Dragoon sOrta on the XBox makes sense.
Shinobi on the PS2 makes a whole lot of sense, though I wish they had made that one cross-platform in the same way they did some of their other titles.
I want NiGHTS on the Cube. That's all I can say.
What utter crock.
Do a web search for UMAMI at Google. You'll find more results than you know what to do with.
From the site, the focus seems to be on 4.0, not 2K/XP. While this will be great for those who have a huge amount of time and effort invested in implimenting an NT4.0 environment, it doesn't make much sense for someone who has migrated to 2K/XP to move back to ReactOS.
I do think this is really cool though, and I plan to keep my eye on this. With any luck it'll come far enough to start implimenting 2k/Xp compatibility.
Nothing says "Security" better to me than "Former Microsoft Security Chief".
What about "blinde, cripple, deaf, dumb, and stupid rent-a-cop"?
The Amiga One is actually being produced, 4.0 is looking pretty cool and there is a new Commodore 64.
What's the temperature in hell again?
I can relate to the Lindsey chick the article mentions. I sleep 3-5 hours max per day. Sometimes I'm doing good to get 3. Either 3 before work, or three after work, or 3 sometime in the middle of my off-time. It just always depends on how I feel. I have no regular sleep schedule because I rarely get "sleepy" unless I've been drinking alcohol.
When I force myself to lay down and sleep knowing it's for the better, I toss and turn for a good portion of the time, thinking. I can't say with any certainty how long it takes me to fall asleep. It's a very gradual process by which I go from being fully awake and aware to being in a surreal life. Sometimes life resumes as normal. The pizza I put in the fridge is still there and I go grab a piece because I thought I couldn't sleep, only when I put it in the microwave the microwave flashes bright blue (like a burnted lightbulb) and the pizza explodes. I realize it's a dream, and surreality insues.
Sometimes the dreams are very mild and uneventful. My house is filled with flowers and exotic insects or I live underwater. Sometimes there is alot of bizarre action, and Escher like architechture isn't so uncommon.
The article mentions attending one's own funderal? Done it. Killed myself. Killed people I know. Witnessed murdered. Witnessed my own, even. Plane crashes. Car wrecks. Natural disasters. But sometimes I have great dreams too. Sex dreams with famous beautiful women, or women I know in real life. Dreams about eating good food, or going on cool trips. Just about anything you could think if, I often experience in my dreams.
It is a mix of both good and bad. Whichever it is it is very lifelike, and while I often know I'm dreaming and sometimes can control it, even that too varies from time to time. It has bled over into my view of the real world so that I remain calm in the most bizarre of situations, or the most tragic crisis. Sometimes I do this the whole forced "wake up" thing. Waking myself from inside the dream. I once thought just anybody could do it at least some of the time. I can do it a good portion of the time. I try and do it sometimes while awake, which leads to some very akward situations when I find that what I thought was naturally a dream was in fact real. (This works against me in dreams where I think I'm dreaming in the dream but try to wake up and can't, proving that I'm awake while still in the dream.)
I've had long discussions about my lucid dreams with people, but it wasn't until my late teens that I realized how uncommon the whole thing is. Both of my parents and one of my brothers dream lucidly. I thought it was normal.
The dreams have only become more intense as I get closer to my 30's. I sleep much less now and dream much more vividly for what seems like longer periods of time but is actually in shorter time spans. I have considered seeing a doctor, but I feared they would give me a medication that would "take this away". The article clearly gives the caption "is it a gift?" and I ask myself all the time.
The dreams force me to "wake myself" so essentially my dreams are keeping me from getting good sleep. This is true. But it's not like I really feel like I'm doing so bad. I'm certainly not walking around in a total daze from sleep deprivation, at least not often anyway. As I said earlier on I don't "get sleepy" really.
The only other "negative" thing mentioned that I think really applies to me is sleep talking. I have occassional bouts of two sided conversations with myself. I often wake up in hysterical laughter from very amusing dreams. I answer the phone (in my dream but also while doing so in reality) and have conversations with people that I only vaguely remember later on (more on this in a bit) and am later reminded of. I'm told I say some very bizarre, off subject things, make no sense (duh!) and often believe the other person is someone they are not.
As for what I remember, I remember almost all of my dreams at least partially. Exact details aren't always retained beyond the first few hours after waking. If I don't dwell on a dream, I lose it within a few days and it becomes a fuzzy mess. Normally I remember most of the dream though, and if asked what I dreamt immediately after waking I can recall very sharp and precise details. As if whatever I dreamt of actually did just happen.
I dream in color. I dream in stereo. I taste. I feel. And to top it all off I remember events of the real world, events that often happened in toher dreams, and (not so suprisingly) have sometimes had dreams that I know what's going to happen later on in the dream (think about that, and it's really not that strange).
All in all I'm bothered by my dreams but I don't want to lose them. If I were to see a doctor, they would almost certainly make some attempt to make me "normal", and I'm not sure I'm willing to trade this "condition" with one where I simply don't remember anything for a good chunk of my life.
Having said all this, gift or course, I wish I better understood what's going on. And I would gladly give myself to dream research if I felt I myself as a specimin could be useful to researchers. I just wish everybody could have a good "lucid dream" a few times they they would understand why I don't want to give up the great ones dispite all the bad ones.
Flying over your home town with a sickening sense of realism is indescribable, even if it often ends in a dream about falling.
CAPCOM has made this point about Sony a few times. Seems it's actually a known habit at Sony, but their official take on it is "Game Systems only live a few years anyway."
:(
So, if your PS1 broke, buy a PS2. If you are unlucky and your PS2 breaks before the PS3 is out, you'll just have to buy a new one or wait till you can upgrade.
I know someone who has owned 6 Playstations, 4 original, and 2 PS2s. My PS2 is now making funny noises.
I'm sure I would make tons of mistakes if someone asked me to transcribe some spoken Chinese in a movie to make subtitles.
It's for that reason you probably would never be given that job.
I'd be interested in knowing if the entire movie is done as bad as those snaps, or if those are just a few precious examples.
So you go around playing game engines that have no game content?
I admit, Quake 3 was pretty good. It's a modern classic, even. But gaming moves on. Well, it does for the rest of the world anyway.
Rumor.Mil
I always date my artwork, no matter how trivial.
Part of the reason is so that years later when looking through old artwork I can look back and say "Wow, I've come very far in 5 years."
In reality, it's been more like "Wow, 5 years ago I kicked ass. Now I really suck!"
Does anybody remember when DivX was the "alternative format" for DVDs? The players were supposed to only allow people to play the movies if they paid to have the keys?
That form of DivX was, I think, the first real attempt the industry made towards DRM, though it's horrible failure caused it to die a welcomed death. If this current day DivX is based on the same format, I find it a sweet irony that it's now the format of choice for those who trade video (notice I didn't say people who pirate, even though they love this format, too).
Isn't this the same thing as them selling those CDs that don't play on some players because of the copy protection that contains noise and shit?
If you buy a regular CD that contains hisses and pops if your cd player doesn't like that Data Cactus crap or whatever it is, then you're getting the same thing.
On the other hand, some would say most pop-music already sounds likes erroneous garbage to begin with. Destiny's Child, anyone?
This is so true. I still think of EA as the sports game company, I don't know when they got into computer games.
See, that's the problem. I don't consider Sports games real games. Most of them "Game-wise" aren't very good, and if you don't like sports there is literally NOTHING in them for you. Some really good sports games are fun even if you don't like the sport they represent. That's almost never the case though, since most sports games fail to be good games, and become nothing but drab rehashes of the game from the year before.
As for EA, you don't know when they got into computer games? What are you kidding? Try 1981 or 1982, somewhere around there. Electronic Arts used to be THE SHIT. They kicked ass for the first ten years they were around. Now days they completely fucking suck. EA become a 15 ton Godzilla of video games that can buy whole countries because of their roots, games like Archon, Mail Order Monsters, Racing Destruction Set, Realm of Impossibilities, The Bard's Tale, Starflight... the list goes on and on and on.
Now days they're just a big, worthless media company that appeals to the casual gamer and doesn't give a shit where they came from.
Your complaints about Sim City 4 are a good example of the sort of things Electronic Arts does to developers. EA is milking MAXIS till they are a stone from which no more can be squeezed. At that time EA will bury them just like they have every other great developer that has come under them.
"Consumers today apparently don't want to sit in front of the television to play games for hours and hours."
:D
Actually, the article says that this quote from Nintendo isn't accurate because there are so many people with PS2's, when the article I believe is misunderstanding Nitnendo.
See, most PS2 gamers are very casual gamers. The majority of the PS2 titles really suck. Casual gamers don't hold a game up to as high a standard as hardcore gamers. They WILL buy the latest movie liscense, or that Britney Spears Dance Beat shitheap of a game. While there are many very excelleng games for the PS2, oddly enough they aren't the games casual gamers play, except maybe Grant Theft Auto 3/VC which is selling to both the casual and hardcore.
A hardcore gamer will most likely have both a Gamecube and a PS2. In some cases a Gamecube and an XBox, and no PS2. The real fanatics have all three.
Still, what I've noticed about hardcore gamers, is that they WANT complexity and difficulty. They want depth, and freedom. There are games on every platform for the hardcore gamer, but when it comes to games that the unskilled, unwashed, untalented casual gamer wants, the largest number appear on the Playstation. The Playstation IS the video game equivilant of "pop-culture". The video game industry, because of the Playstation, is starting to mimick the music and movie industry.
The point Nintendo was making that the article seemed to miss was that gamers now days DON'T want the complexity, difficulty, and depth that Nitnendo's first part games tend to have.
I just hope this doesn't mean Nintendo is going to give up their "Quality vs. Quantity" policy, and start releasing huge piles of crap.
If you love good games but have refrained from getting a Gamecube beause you already have a PS2, you are denying yourself some really wonderful gems. I can honestly say I've enjoyed almost all of the Nintendo first party titles. Yet, with few exceptions, nearly every game I have on the PS2 or XBox goes unplayed after the first few times. They're just so "blah". (Like I said, there are exceptions...)
I have all three systems. I have the most fun with the Gamecube. A lot of people I know agree once they've played a few of the Gamecube games. Esspecially Metroid.
Sega is gone and nintendo might be next.
How do you figure?
Nintendo is doing quite well. The Gamecube is profitable, albeit not as much as they would like. Their playign card business is pure profit. The Gameboy is pure profit. They generate revenue from franchise related merchandise they do not directly sell. The Pokemon franchise alone (love it or hate it) is worth more than the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and that's saying some amazing things.
Nintendo is big. Nintendo is HUGE. Nintendo doesn't file "Bad Years". They don't file "losses". They file years where "we didn't make as much as we hoped."
Anybody who thinks Nintendo is going somewhere apparently has no idea what is going on in the gaming industry.
Oh, and the Gamecube is ahead of the XBox in sales worldwide, even if it is only closely "tied" or a bit behind in the US. Globally, Nintendo is kicking Microsoft square in the jimmy.
I'm not knocking the XBox, because I like the platform just fine. But Microsoft fanboys that think the XBox is going to dominate need to give up waiting for the exodus to happen. It isn't going to.
As for Microsoft buying companies, I don't care as long as they make good games. There certain is a lack of innovation in the game market lately, and Microsoft's subsidaries have a better track record of releasing non-shitty-shit than, say, either Electronic Arts or Acclaim.
If Microsoft turns into another Shit-Game-Spewing company like Electronic Arts, then I just won't buy their shit. (And for the purpose of Shit-Games, Windows-Pack-Ins hardly count).
The question isn't if nuture has some role, because it obviously does. The question is, does nature ALSO have some role, as well. How much does each have? Does genetics effect one's behavior at all. Can you inherit violent or criminal tendacies? (i.e. if your father was a violent man, will you be a violent man even if you've never met him?)
As far as I know there is no clear cut answer. I've literally watched two "experts" go back and forth on the topic for very long periods of time.