Re:Sega their own worst enemy and Sony's bullshit.
on
The Rise and Fall of Sega
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"The upgrade path should have been Genesis -> Dreamcast"
I don't think it's wise to wait ten years between console roll outs. They messed up with the CD/32x/Satrun but something should've come between the two.
So if your mom gets bitten by a radioactive spider, does that make you Spider-Man? I think you're reading too much into this. Plenty of sibling react very differently to allergens and irritants like Poison Ivy despite their mom's exposure to such things.
I don't really care about the DRM angle. I'm ok with that to an extent. What I have a problem with is that I run my current videos off a PIII 450 with 256 MB RAM and a Radeon video card with TV Out. Now I can comfortably run your average quality Divx encoded movie and play a DVD just fine without dropping frames and without the sound skipping on me. Running a worse quality Quicktime file from iTunes will completely bog the system and make playback unwatchable. If they're not going to offer an alternative format, can we at least get a Quicktime that only consumes as much processing power as its peers?
"VHS tapes are still on the shelves at most, if not all, video rental stores."
Maybe it's because every time they're out of VHS and I have to rent a DVD, my disc is scratched up my whatever moron had the disc before me. I absolutely hate renting DVDs. On a rental, I'll take the loss in quality and get a format that has played 99% of the time I've rented a movie on it.
I've never been a big soda drinker (my favorites are RC and Tab and NOBODY has those around anymore) but caffeine withdrawl is indeed a real thing. I was down to tea at restaurants before my 2nd kid was born a couple of months ago. He was in ICU for two weeks because he was born a month early and I was living off of 4 to 5 hours of sleep per night as a result. Now things have stabilized but I'm still consuming all the caffeine I was consuming as the result of the lack of sleep. I'm not looking forward to cutting back but I've already managed to skip caffeine for a day here and there. Next week I'll go 3 days and as you've pointed out, it probably won't be pretty.
The hardest part to me is not accidentally slipping up. It's not like smoking where you have to go out of your way to do it. That was hard to quit but at least there was ample societal pressure to discourage it. Caffeine is everywhere and it's hard sometimes to remember not to get that Coke or tea with your fast food meal.
My experience with capacitors is limited but I do know that they are extremely dangerous. I do distinctly remember having to discharge the capacitors in my arcade monitor in order to replace some circuitry. This involved a screwdriver with a grounded chain soldered onto it, some rudder gloves, and some flinching like a little school girl when you hear that loud pop from the discharge. I'm not entirely certain I'd want this sort of thing powering my laptops and cell phones.
Stupid Fox! I had a show set to air later this fall on ABC called "Unbearable" about a low-grade celebrity rooming with a rabid bear. Can't they stop stealing show ideas?
"Microsoft plans a new release this year and is trying to get Office into more consumers' hands at a cheaper price while persuading businesses to buy higher-priced versions."
Granted it's a complete and total POS, but isn't that what MS Works is supposed to be doing already?
If you were comparing the Genesis version to the non-Championship Edition SFII on the SNES, I'd agree with you. The regular SFII on the SNES always seemed sluggish and poorly controlled IMHO. However, comapring SFII:Turbo to SFII:SCE, I've never noticed a difference in actual gameplay and the only place smoother is noticeable is when you jack up the speed all the way to crazy psycho speed (which after its initial novelty wasn't done all that often by most players). I too had both consoles and I'm supremely glad I bought SFII:Turbo and only rented SFII:SCE. I don't exactly pray to the graphics gods or anything but the jump in graphics and sound capabilites found on the SNES version far outweighs the slight bump in framerate on a setting I never use anyways.
Do you expect them to tell you that they're having financial difficulty and that they might not exist in a few months? Even if they are in a bad way finanically, they still need to sell as many issues as possible. Making customers think they are financially sound is a good way to keep circulation up as high as possible.
"There was an era when GamePro was the perennial second-runner behind Nintendo Power in circulation. There was a time when other mags couldn't even touch it." (FTFA)
I remember being a huge fan of GamePro. I had a subscription and everything. Then one day they did the review that made me stop reading them forever. They reviewed "Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition" for the Sega Genesis. Every other mag on earth claimed that it fell flat on its face when compared to the SNES version (Street Fighter II: Turbo). GamePro on the other hand goes on and on about how it's better than the SNES version. Even though I owned the SNES version, I bought a six button Genesis pad and rented SFII:SCE. What a waste of $15 ($10 for the controller and $5 for the game). The game wasn't exactly terrible but the graphics and sound were seriously subpar. That isn't too big a deal for me but GamePro specifically claimed the graphics and sound were better. They also touted how much better the control was but it really wasn't very different from the SNES control. And they also claimed the Genesis version had a better framerate but apparently I never noticed this.
I just felt that GamePro knowingly lied to us and I still to this day believe that they had some sort of underhanded deal with Capcom and/or Sega to get this game reviewed so highly. I just haven't had the desire to ever read that magazine again.
I think you're onto something here. The controller of Holy Damnation had more to do with the failure of the 5200 than any backwards compatibility ever could have. Likewise, backwards compatibility couldn't save a console that launched with 4 year old hardware even if it did include the most excellent ProLine joysticks.
Then I guess they made one vacuum cleaner back in 1991 and called it MS-DOS 5.0. In an impressive feat for Microsoft, they managed to get it right the first time around. It did what it was supposed to do and did it well.
Considering the framerates I get at 1280x1024 on my far from epic gaming rig, I imagine getting a paltry 30fps (highest uncompressed bandwidth offered at 1080p) out of a 1920x1080 rig would be very doable.
True the games are compressed many times. I'll conceed that it may not be possible to shoehorn a current uncompressed game onto a single DVD but is a technology that hasn't even been released yet the answer here? And why isn't the 360 particularly concerned about this right now? They have some notion that down the road maybe they'll add an HD-DVD drive but there's no concrete indication that they'll ever support anything but DVD as a game media.
You can have my geek badge. If my hours spent building a super gun (JAMMA to TV converter), stuffing MAME in an arcade cabinet, or taking apart those crappy straight to TV games and adding REAL arcade controls to them aren't as important as silly nonsense like HDTV, then being a geek just isn't what it used to be and I want no part of it.
It was far from obvious that you meant games should only be on DVD. You did mention that games don't currently need any higher capacity but neglected to mention that you thought games would never need that sort of capacity. Point taken. However, I am now confused on exactly why you would want the ability to swap a Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) drive into your PS3. Why not just have a Blu-Ray player and a PS3? Is your PS3 really going to be a better Blu-Ray player than a Blu-Ray player?
"I would have preferred if the drive bay was swappable so I could eventually buy a BluRay (or even HD-DVD assuming they win the format war) drive and stick it in there."
That's just not going to work. Having two similar-looking but significantly different types of media for a single game console is a nightmare waiting to happen. When you have people in stores trying to buy games labelled as PS3 games that do not play on their PS3, there will be heck to pay. This isn't the PC world where people check requirements before-hand and it shouldn't be. These are console games. Any user should be able to buy any game for their console and have it at least be playable on that console.
"It was my understanding that having games that play in insane resolution (1080p) requires not only high processing but also high storage."
Insane? I've been playing similar resolution games on my PC for quite some time now and we've managed to get by on DVD-ROM and CD-ROM discs. Only recently am I starting to see titles that span more than one DVD. Sure, having a lot of potential room for the games to grow is a good idea but this resolution argument is hogwash.
It's all a matter of perspective. I used to work construction and I can tell you that I'd much rather spend my day in a cubicle than framing houses or pouring concrete. Fortunately, I have an office now but there are far worse fates than getting a cubicle for a workspace.
Egads, how much driving do you do? At $3 per gallon, assuming you are driving the average number of miles per day (30) at a meager 20 miles per gallon will run you $135 per month. Compare that to the $90 per month you'd spend in the same conditions if gas were $2 per gallon. $45 won't even buy a used Gamecube and certainly wouldn't buy a new game.
"Finally a threat that will make the average joe start to take computer security seriously!"
Until a computer virus or trojan can come into your house, shave your eyebrows off while you're asleep, drink all your beer, and leave you with no toilet paper, the average joe will never take computer security seriously.
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Relax, the Chinese have nothing on Emmit Fitzhume and Austin Millbarge.
"The upgrade path should have been Genesis -> Dreamcast"
I don't think it's wise to wait ten years between console roll outs. They messed up with the CD/32x/Satrun but something should've come between the two.
So if your mom gets bitten by a radioactive spider, does that make you Spider-Man? I think you're reading too much into this. Plenty of sibling react very differently to allergens and irritants like Poison Ivy despite their mom's exposure to such things.
I don't really care about the DRM angle. I'm ok with that to an extent. What I have a problem with is that I run my current videos off a PIII 450 with 256 MB RAM and a Radeon video card with TV Out. Now I can comfortably run your average quality Divx encoded movie and play a DVD just fine without dropping frames and without the sound skipping on me. Running a worse quality Quicktime file from iTunes will completely bog the system and make playback unwatchable. If they're not going to offer an alternative format, can we at least get a Quicktime that only consumes as much processing power as its peers?
You missed CD and 8mm, but who ever used those obscure formats?
"VHS tapes are still on the shelves at most, if not all, video rental stores."
Maybe it's because every time they're out of VHS and I have to rent a DVD, my disc is scratched up my whatever moron had the disc before me. I absolutely hate renting DVDs. On a rental, I'll take the loss in quality and get a format that has played 99% of the time I've rented a movie on it.
"a Sega game amongst the "classics" list"
Uh, I would consider Frogger a classic. It's at least as old as Donkey Kong.
I've never been a big soda drinker (my favorites are RC and Tab and NOBODY has those around anymore) but caffeine withdrawl is indeed a real thing. I was down to tea at restaurants before my 2nd kid was born a couple of months ago. He was in ICU for two weeks because he was born a month early and I was living off of 4 to 5 hours of sleep per night as a result. Now things have stabilized but I'm still consuming all the caffeine I was consuming as the result of the lack of sleep. I'm not looking forward to cutting back but I've already managed to skip caffeine for a day here and there. Next week I'll go 3 days and as you've pointed out, it probably won't be pretty.
The hardest part to me is not accidentally slipping up. It's not like smoking where you have to go out of your way to do it. That was hard to quit but at least there was ample societal pressure to discourage it. Caffeine is everywhere and it's hard sometimes to remember not to get that Coke or tea with your fast food meal.
My experience with capacitors is limited but I do know that they are extremely dangerous. I do distinctly remember having to discharge the capacitors in my arcade monitor in order to replace some circuitry. This involved a screwdriver with a grounded chain soldered onto it, some rudder gloves, and some flinching like a little school girl when you hear that loud pop from the discharge. I'm not entirely certain I'd want this sort of thing powering my laptops and cell phones.
Stupid Fox! I had a show set to air later this fall on ABC called "Unbearable" about a low-grade celebrity rooming with a rabid bear. Can't they stop stealing show ideas?
"Microsoft plans a new release this year and is trying to get Office into more consumers' hands at a cheaper price while persuading businesses to buy higher-priced versions."
Granted it's a complete and total POS, but isn't that what MS Works is supposed to be doing already?
If you were comparing the Genesis version to the non-Championship Edition SFII on the SNES, I'd agree with you. The regular SFII on the SNES always seemed sluggish and poorly controlled IMHO. However, comapring SFII:Turbo to SFII:SCE, I've never noticed a difference in actual gameplay and the only place smoother is noticeable is when you jack up the speed all the way to crazy psycho speed (which after its initial novelty wasn't done all that often by most players). I too had both consoles and I'm supremely glad I bought SFII:Turbo and only rented SFII:SCE. I don't exactly pray to the graphics gods or anything but the jump in graphics and sound capabilites found on the SNES version far outweighs the slight bump in framerate on a setting I never use anyways.
Do you expect them to tell you that they're having financial difficulty and that they might not exist in a few months? Even if they are in a bad way finanically, they still need to sell as many issues as possible. Making customers think they are financially sound is a good way to keep circulation up as high as possible.
"There was an era when GamePro was the perennial second-runner behind Nintendo Power in circulation. There was a time when other mags couldn't even touch it." (FTFA)
I remember being a huge fan of GamePro. I had a subscription and everything. Then one day they did the review that made me stop reading them forever. They reviewed "Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition" for the Sega Genesis. Every other mag on earth claimed that it fell flat on its face when compared to the SNES version (Street Fighter II: Turbo). GamePro on the other hand goes on and on about how it's better than the SNES version. Even though I owned the SNES version, I bought a six button Genesis pad and rented SFII:SCE. What a waste of $15 ($10 for the controller and $5 for the game). The game wasn't exactly terrible but the graphics and sound were seriously subpar. That isn't too big a deal for me but GamePro specifically claimed the graphics and sound were better. They also touted how much better the control was but it really wasn't very different from the SNES control. And they also claimed the Genesis version had a better framerate but apparently I never noticed this.
I just felt that GamePro knowingly lied to us and I still to this day believe that they had some sort of underhanded deal with Capcom and/or Sega to get this game reviewed so highly. I just haven't had the desire to ever read that magazine again.
I think you're onto something here. The controller of Holy Damnation had more to do with the failure of the 5200 than any backwards compatibility ever could have. Likewise, backwards compatibility couldn't save a console that launched with 4 year old hardware even if it did include the most excellent ProLine joysticks.
Then I guess they made one vacuum cleaner back in 1991 and called it MS-DOS 5.0. In an impressive feat for Microsoft, they managed to get it right the first time around. It did what it was supposed to do and did it well.
Considering the framerates I get at 1280x1024 on my far from epic gaming rig, I imagine getting a paltry 30fps (highest uncompressed bandwidth offered at 1080p) out of a 1920x1080 rig would be very doable.
True the games are compressed many times. I'll conceed that it may not be possible to shoehorn a current uncompressed game onto a single DVD but is a technology that hasn't even been released yet the answer here? And why isn't the 360 particularly concerned about this right now? They have some notion that down the road maybe they'll add an HD-DVD drive but there's no concrete indication that they'll ever support anything but DVD as a game media.
You can have my geek badge. If my hours spent building a super gun (JAMMA to TV converter), stuffing MAME in an arcade cabinet, or taking apart those crappy straight to TV games and adding REAL arcade controls to them aren't as important as silly nonsense like HDTV, then being a geek just isn't what it used to be and I want no part of it.
It was far from obvious that you meant games should only be on DVD. You did mention that games don't currently need any higher capacity but neglected to mention that you thought games would never need that sort of capacity. Point taken. However, I am now confused on exactly why you would want the ability to swap a Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) drive into your PS3. Why not just have a Blu-Ray player and a PS3? Is your PS3 really going to be a better Blu-Ray player than a Blu-Ray player?
"I would have preferred if the drive bay was swappable so I could eventually buy a BluRay (or even HD-DVD assuming they win the format war) drive and stick it in there."
That's just not going to work. Having two similar-looking but significantly different types of media for a single game console is a nightmare waiting to happen. When you have people in stores trying to buy games labelled as PS3 games that do not play on their PS3, there will be heck to pay. This isn't the PC world where people check requirements before-hand and it shouldn't be. These are console games. Any user should be able to buy any game for their console and have it at least be playable on that console.
"It was my understanding that having games that play in insane resolution (1080p) requires not only high processing but also high storage."
Insane? I've been playing similar resolution games on my PC for quite some time now and we've managed to get by on DVD-ROM and CD-ROM discs. Only recently am I starting to see titles that span more than one DVD. Sure, having a lot of potential room for the games to grow is a good idea but this resolution argument is hogwash.
Eunuchs can't give birth. They don't have any... oh, you said "Unix," not "Eunuchs" Nevermind.
It's all a matter of perspective. I used to work construction and I can tell you that I'd much rather spend my day in a cubicle than framing houses or pouring concrete. Fortunately, I have an office now but there are far worse fates than getting a cubicle for a workspace.
Egads, how much driving do you do? At $3 per gallon, assuming you are driving the average number of miles per day (30) at a meager 20 miles per gallon will run you $135 per month. Compare that to the $90 per month you'd spend in the same conditions if gas were $2 per gallon. $45 won't even buy a used Gamecube and certainly wouldn't buy a new game.
"What we want to do is to make a great movie that happens to be set in a video game universe."
I think Tron already has this covered.
"Finally a threat that will make the average joe start to take computer security seriously!" Until a computer virus or trojan can come into your house, shave your eyebrows off while you're asleep, drink all your beer, and leave you with no toilet paper, the average joe will never take computer security seriously.