Probably the fact that the PSP has been imported from Japan, and the DS is out in Europe officially. Imported stuff can cost you a lot of money (they know a certain group of people will [ay stupid money to get a system first), although I think you can get PSPs cheaper if you shop around.
It's pedantic, but in Ocarina Of Time Link can also wear fetching Red and Blue costumes in his adult form, as well as the Wind Waker example someone else mentioned...
But I do think this games designers have taken a quite bit of inspiration from Wind Waker, at least in the graphical style. Having a vaguely Linkish character in your promo shots isn't likely to dissuade people from that notion. They could've tried to be a bit more original and disguise some of the Wind Wakerness
This page has data on various vinyl records with computer data stored on them. Most of which are about 20 years old. So they're not the first to distribute computer data on vinyl.
It's unlikely the Xbox you get from this [scam / pyramid scheme] will be over a year old. I don't think the "Free X" things have been going on that long, so they probably bought the stock recently. If you RTFA the Xboxes in question are basically any since launch to early last year, I doubt you'll find many new Xboxes made that long ago.
I've had to look and the manufacturing date on my Xbox, and it was only a couple of months before I bough it at most. I've got a nice new power cable winging its way to me...
As for the scam, if you can afford to pay the people we you get referred $10, why can't you afford to just go into a shop and buy one? Or are you just tight, and want the illusion of a free lunch?
I take it you've never really listened to radio drama then (try The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy in it's original and best form). They're far better than the stupid codec conversations.
(Begin anti-MGS2 rant)
MGS2 put me off even wanting to play a MGS game ever again, the badly structured rather ludicrous plot just killed any will I had to get around the rather bad aiming system (worst actual gameplay bit) and kill the vampire person (I'd already seen the ending anyway). I mean, the cutscenes are very cinematic, but the endless codec converstaions. And no film would ever have the stupid 45 minute cutscene[1] between the last two bosses. It completly breaks any kind of flow or structure. In a James Bond film, they don't stop for ten minutes in the middle of the ending whilst the villain explains the entire plot, then turns it on it's head. A proper action film would be throwing everything at the hero now, without much time to explain anything...
I wonder if MGS3 is better. But frankly, I don't care.
[1] OK, about 10 minutes in you have to hit a button radidly to stop someone killing you.
Wasn't it released in 2004 in the US? That's the only thing that matters to Americans.;-)
Hopefully it'll quailitfy for 2005 as well, I think if it's released in Europe I might just invest in a PS2. Living in Europe sucks sometimes. Actually, when it involves videogames, most of the time.;-)
Apart from Safari, do any other browsers actually have a built in spell checker anyway? It's such a useful thing to have, especially with my (lack of) command of English.
But I think the spelling, grammer and factual errors are all part of the Slashdot experience. I mean, it's not like it's a real news site anyway.;-)
(I'm using Firefox on my PC ATM, so ingoer ayn speklinf mostajes.)
I suppose they could try and set up some sort of agreement to produce some more Trek, say sell shares in a company to produce the series to fans (New Trek Project, Inc. say). Although they'd probably have to start with something like a small series, say six episodes, and see how it did. Perhaps direct to video? Although I have no idea how well that would work in the US.
Presumably if the series makes a profit, the company would be dissolved, and you get money back (but perhaps not the original investment). Of course if it makes a loss you wouldn't get any money back. You'd presumably get a compilmentary DVD and a certificate or something either way.
Presumably they could thenk set up New Trek Project II, Inc. to produce another series if sucessful. Or Trek could stay dead for a few years before getting resurrected again, a rest might be the best thing.
It's all very risky, and frankly I wouldn't do it for Trek unless they could either get the DS9 people back, or perhaps the Babylon 5 person / someone else well regarded. I wouldn't through money at the current production team. Although I don't have any money to throw at anything anyway, so it's a moot point. Plus I don't think it would fly anyway.
Note: I haven't seen more than about three / four episodes of Enterprise, Voyager killed Trek for me. I am also neither a businessman, nor a lawyer, and I am pulling this idea from my Advanced Realistic Solution Engine, just like the original forum poster probably did.
I'd presume the map data is vector based at some point, or else they're really good with smoke and mirrors. (I suppose it's either live rendered vectors, or huge prerendered bitmaps at oodles of scales).
I think some of the local knowledge stuff would be hard to get anyway, unless you went over the entire map system adding hand tuned bits (anyone going to Springfield goes through this exit, unless they're going to Bob's Pizza...), most of it's going to be run through an automated process, which is dumb, and will go for what it thinks is the obvious route.
Although I suppose formulas and data might improve a bit, it would probably be impossible to completley eliminate the stupid routefinders. Although they hopefully won't send you through eleven countries anymore.
I don't think there's much problem with censorship anymore. I can't think of any massivley changed games apart from Contra (although Ninja Gaiden had some bits removed apparently[1], but not in a major makeover way). Apart from Germany, they're still a bit weird. A couple of years ago the ratings systems were mostly combined (apart from Germanies, and I think a few countries have 'local variations').
Hell, Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt are both European games (Scottish, to be precise).
The localisation thing is even worse in the UK (we speak English anyway, and it's not like they usually correct the spellings for British English anyway), but surely they could work out a system to do all the translations together. Some companies do. Halo 2 came out in Europe a few days after the US for instance, with localisation. Companies are beginning to try, at least with big titles. Or small titles in the case of GBA Shining Force, which came out earlier in Europe with ENG/FRE/ESP/DEU/ITA localisation than in the US with English only. But that's Sega, they like Europe...
(We also got a fully multilingual version of Zelda: Minish Cap a couple of months before the US release, but IMO that's becuase Nintendo is desperate for Euro sales.)
I just wish companies would stop screwing Europe. Although I can kinda understand stepped launches for hardware, it's still anoying, especially as Sony seemed to be saying it would be out in Europe at the same time as the US.
PAL optimisation is a whole other issue, if companies actually bother that much about it anyway (not time to type it all ATM anyway).
[1] It was still rated 16+ by PEGI anyway, although they might've wanted to avoid a BBFC certificate in the UK.
I don't really follow how Enterprise's production is going, but I wonder if it's possible for them to do something special for the end? Although I think it's too late for a Grand Finale. I'd have to hope they're not going to end on a cliffhanger. But sod's law say it probably will...
Perhaps they could tack on a voiceover like Doctor Who ended (until this March).;-)
---
Anyway, I doubt this'll kill Trek completley, there'll still be repeats, and I'd imagine they'll keep on printing the books as long as people buy them. Doctor Who's original novels only started a couple of years after the series ended, and they managed to carry on going. But I think the series could do with a rest for a while, it might be for the best, even if the series is apparently getting better near the end...
25 million is about 1/3 of the UK population, you're out about x10. Although 2.5 million would be fairly good ratings for Channel 4 or BBC TWO primetime AFAIK, or amazing ratings for a digital channel.
Or course the final-for-quite-a-while series of Doctor Who got about 3.5-4 million IIRC, which wasn't bad at all considering it was against Coranation Street at the time. But that was before Sky really came in etc.
Or do they simply show them over the course of a couple months, and then show other stuff (or reruns) the other 10 months of the year?
That's pretty much it, programmes are generally run weekly, and once one programme has finished it's run another will fill it's slot. I think the UK may have more cheap filler and repeats in the schedules as well, but I haven't looked at US TV schedules in depth. It's mostly economics I think...
The main exception are soap operas of course, which run in fixed slots (barring live football etc.) all year round. The big soaps are now on four days a week, UK TV seems to be getting awful for people who don't like soaps, or cheap fillers about people buying houses, or selling stuff at auction (etc.). (Then again a while ago all the fillers were about home improvement and stuff...)
You'd probably get the same issues taking the source to a program for the last release of OPENSTEP, and trying to run it on the first release of NeXTSTEP. Things like libraries change over time, and trying to move a program backwards though versions is probably going to be rather hard, most developers assume you're only going to be migrating your code to newer versions. Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP (in part) but the libraries and stuff didn't stop dead when Apple bough NeXT.
I'd imagine bits of Mac OS X code would still work though, but you would probably have to do some major hacking to reverse and changed from OpenStep to Mac OS X.
Well, I like analouge triggers which the N64 pad didn't had (they're good for racing games), although they're contampary to the N64 pad and not a later creation (the Sega Saturn 'NiGHTS' Pad had them).
But I'm not quite sure of the point of analouge (face) buttons either, but I haven't really used a game that uses them, so I don't know how good they are.
I personally don't mind the game ending on a cliffhanger, as long as it's resolved at some point. The story did seem to be going quite well, just you know, left me wanting to play Halo 3. Which is probably the plan.
I'm sure it was out before Christmas in the UK , Nintendo have suddenly gained this strange interest in the European market. We've started getting some games early, or at least at the same time as the US, not the three month waits we used to have. There's also a neat gold Triforce embalzoned GameBoy Advance to go with it, not sure if the US has that.
For GBA it's probably to combat importers (no region locks to stop use importng cheaper US GBA games), for GameCube it's probably also to try and combat the Xbox, which it's really stuggling against. I'm not sure about outside the UK, but in the UK the GameCube is tanking. Non-games shops are starting to take it off the shelves, at least in smaller branches, it usually have a far smaller presence compared to Xbox if it is availible. (PS2 is bigger than both, of course).
I just hope the GameCube doesn't die completly in the UK before the new Zelda is out. I hope it's better than Wind Waker as well, Ocarina was far better.
...and Football Manager 2005. The latter was somewhat of a surprise, as it was an independent release by the maker of the Championship Manager series, sparking rumors that its relationship with Eidos may have come to an end.
I somehow don't think this guy has been following (association) football management games, seeing as he kinda missed the bit where Sports Interactive (makers of Champ. 1-4) split with Eidos. No rumours, just facts. Championship Manager 5 is made by a different company, as Eidos own the rights to the name, whilst Sega[1] published SI's football management game. I think SI kept the rights to the game engine as well. It was kinda known about for months before either game came out IIRC.
[1]Or at least Sega Europe, I have no idea about America, if they even like Football management.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably the fact that the PSP has been imported from Japan, and the DS is out in Europe officially. Imported stuff can cost you a lot of money (they know a certain group of people will [ay stupid money to get a system first), although I think you can get PSPs cheaper if you shop around.
Have you ever seen Link in anything but green?
It's pedantic, but in Ocarina Of Time Link can also wear fetching Red and Blue costumes in his adult form, as well as the Wind Waker example someone else mentioned...
But I do think this games designers have taken a quite bit of inspiration from Wind Waker, at least in the graphical style. Having a vaguely Linkish character in your promo shots isn't likely to dissuade people from that notion. They could've tried to be a bit more original and disguise some of the Wind Wakerness
Personally I want a Jet Set Radio style MMO. ;-)
If you want weird software distribution, the BBC (and Channel 4) broadcast software through teletext services at one point as well.
Although that wasn't data as sound, teletext uses unused parts of the picture.
This page has data on various vinyl records with computer data stored on them. Most of which are about 20 years old. So they're not the first to distribute computer data on vinyl.
It's unlikely the Xbox you get from this [scam / pyramid scheme] will be over a year old. I don't think the "Free X" things have been going on that long, so they probably bought the stock recently. If you RTFA the Xboxes in question are basically any since launch to early last year, I doubt you'll find many new Xboxes made that long ago.
I've had to look and the manufacturing date on my Xbox, and it was only a couple of months before I bough it at most. I've got a nice new power cable winging its way to me...
As for the scam, if you can afford to pay the people we you get referred $10, why can't you afford to just go into a shop and buy one? Or are you just tight, and want the illusion of a free lunch?
The vital question is, did they film in the same quarry as the BBC TV series?
I take it you've never really listened to radio drama then (try The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy in it's original and best form). They're far better than the stupid codec conversations.
(Begin anti-MGS2 rant)
MGS2 put me off even wanting to play a MGS game ever again, the badly structured rather ludicrous plot just killed any will I had to get around the rather bad aiming system (worst actual gameplay bit) and kill the vampire person (I'd already seen the ending anyway). I mean, the cutscenes are very cinematic, but the endless codec converstaions. And no film would ever have the stupid 45 minute cutscene[1] between the last two bosses. It completly breaks any kind of flow or structure. In a James Bond film, they don't stop for ten minutes in the middle of the ending whilst the villain explains the entire plot, then turns it on it's head. A proper action film would be throwing everything at the hero now, without much time to explain anything...
I wonder if MGS3 is better. But frankly, I don't care.
[1] OK, about 10 minutes in you have to hit a button radidly to stop someone killing you.
Wasn't it released in 2004 in the US? That's the only thing that matters to Americans. ;-)
;-)
Hopefully it'll quailitfy for 2005 as well, I think if it's released in Europe I might just invest in a PS2. Living in Europe sucks sometimes. Actually, when it involves videogames, most of the time.
Apart from Safari, do any other browsers actually have a built in spell checker anyway? It's such a useful thing to have, especially with my (lack of) command of English.
;-)
But I think the spelling, grammer and factual errors are all part of the Slashdot experience. I mean, it's not like it's a real news site anyway.
(I'm using Firefox on my PC ATM, so ingoer ayn speklinf mostajes.)
I suppose they could try and set up some sort of agreement to produce some more Trek, say sell shares in a company to produce the series to fans (New Trek Project, Inc. say). Although they'd probably have to start with something like a small series, say six episodes, and see how it did. Perhaps direct to video? Although I have no idea how well that would work in the US.
Presumably if the series makes a profit, the company would be dissolved, and you get money back (but perhaps not the original investment). Of course if it makes a loss you wouldn't get any money back. You'd presumably get a compilmentary DVD and a certificate or something either way.
Presumably they could thenk set up New Trek Project II, Inc. to produce another series if sucessful. Or Trek could stay dead for a few years before getting resurrected again, a rest might be the best thing.
It's all very risky, and frankly I wouldn't do it for Trek unless they could either get the DS9 people back, or perhaps the Babylon 5 person / someone else well regarded. I wouldn't through money at the current production team. Although I don't have any money to throw at anything anyway, so it's a moot point. Plus I don't think it would fly anyway.
Note: I haven't seen more than about three / four episodes of Enterprise, Voyager killed Trek for me. I am also neither a businessman, nor a lawyer, and I am pulling this idea from my Advanced Realistic Solution Engine, just like the original forum poster probably did.
I wish I didn't take ten minute to make forum posts, somebody always gets there before me. And I make a fool of myself anyway.
I'd presume the map data is vector based at some point, or else they're really good with smoke and mirrors. (I suppose it's either live rendered vectors, or huge prerendered bitmaps at oodles of scales).
I think some of the local knowledge stuff would be hard to get anyway, unless you went over the entire map system adding hand tuned bits (anyone going to Springfield goes through this exit, unless they're going to Bob's Pizza...), most of it's going to be run through an automated process, which is dumb, and will go for what it thinks is the obvious route.
Although I suppose formulas and data might improve a bit, it would probably be impossible to completley eliminate the stupid routefinders. Although they hopefully won't send you through eleven countries anymore.
<pedant>
Endland != United Kingdom
England [SUBSET] United Kingdom
</pedant>
Even if Greater London on it's own has a greater population than Scotland, Wales and Nortern Ireland put together, IIRC.
/English, but gets pissed off when people use England for the entire UK anyway. (Or using the Union Jack for "England")
Yes, and everyone views the source of every page they look at.
I don't think there's much problem with censorship anymore. I can't think of any massivley changed games apart from Contra (although Ninja Gaiden had some bits removed apparently[1], but not in a major makeover way). Apart from Germany, they're still a bit weird. A couple of years ago the ratings systems were mostly combined (apart from Germanies, and I think a few countries have 'local variations').
Hell, Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt are both European games (Scottish, to be precise).
The localisation thing is even worse in the UK (we speak English anyway, and it's not like they usually correct the spellings for British English anyway), but surely they could work out a system to do all the translations together. Some companies do. Halo 2 came out in Europe a few days after the US for instance, with localisation. Companies are beginning to try, at least with big titles. Or small titles in the case of GBA Shining Force, which came out earlier in Europe with ENG/FRE/ESP/DEU/ITA localisation than in the US with English only. But that's Sega, they like Europe...
(We also got a fully multilingual version of Zelda: Minish Cap a couple of months before the US release, but IMO that's becuase Nintendo is desperate for Euro sales.)
I just wish companies would stop screwing Europe. Although I can kinda understand stepped launches for hardware, it's still anoying, especially as Sony seemed to be saying it would be out in Europe at the same time as the US.
PAL optimisation is a whole other issue, if companies actually bother that much about it anyway (not time to type it all ATM anyway).
[1] It was still rated 16+ by PEGI anyway, although they might've wanted to avoid a BBFC certificate in the UK.
I don't really follow how Enterprise's production is going, but I wonder if it's possible for them to do something special for the end? Although I think it's too late for a Grand Finale. I'd have to hope they're not going to end on a cliffhanger. But sod's law say it probably will...
;-)
Perhaps they could tack on a voiceover like Doctor Who ended (until this March).
---
Anyway, I doubt this'll kill Trek completley, there'll still be repeats, and I'd imagine they'll keep on printing the books as long as people buy them. Doctor Who's original novels only started a couple of years after the series ended, and they managed to carry on going. But I think the series could do with a rest for a while, it might be for the best, even if the series is apparently getting better near the end...
25 million is about 1/3 of the UK population, you're out about x10. Although 2.5 million would be fairly good ratings for Channel 4 or BBC TWO primetime AFAIK, or amazing ratings for a digital channel.
Or course the final-for-quite-a-while series of Doctor Who got about 3.5-4 million IIRC, which wasn't bad at all considering it was against Coranation Street at the time. But that was before Sky really came in etc.
Or do they simply show them over the course of a couple months, and then show other stuff (or reruns) the other 10 months of the year?
That's pretty much it, programmes are generally run weekly, and once one programme has finished it's run another will fill it's slot. I think the UK may have more cheap filler and repeats in the schedules as well, but I haven't looked at US TV schedules in depth. It's mostly economics I think...
The main exception are soap operas of course, which run in fixed slots (barring live football etc.) all year round. The big soaps are now on four days a week, UK TV seems to be getting awful for people who don't like soaps, or cheap fillers about people buying houses, or selling stuff at auction (etc.). (Then again a while ago all the fillers were about home improvement and stuff...)
You'd probably get the same issues taking the source to a program for the last release of OPENSTEP, and trying to run it on the first release of NeXTSTEP. Things like libraries change over time, and trying to move a program backwards though versions is probably going to be rather hard, most developers assume you're only going to be migrating your code to newer versions. Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP (in part) but the libraries and stuff didn't stop dead when Apple bough NeXT.
I'd imagine bits of Mac OS X code would still work though, but you would probably have to do some major hacking to reverse and changed from OpenStep to Mac OS X.
Can get a UK DS now, with Mario64, WarioWare and Metroid Demos and a T-shirt, for 1000 stars and £129.99.
I knew there was a reason for signing up for this VIP thing, I'm gonna try and flog a DS on eBay. L@@K RARE IN HAND!
Well, I like analouge triggers which the N64 pad didn't had (they're good for racing games), although they're contampary to the N64 pad and not a later creation (the Sega Saturn 'NiGHTS' Pad had them).
But I'm not quite sure of the point of analouge (face) buttons either, but I haven't really used a game that uses them, so I don't know how good they are.
I personally don't mind the game ending on a cliffhanger, as long as it's resolved at some point. The story did seem to be going quite well, just you know, left me wanting to play Halo 3. Which is probably the plan.
The multiplayer is great of course.
I'm sure it was out before Christmas in the UK , Nintendo have suddenly gained this strange interest in the European market. We've started getting some games early, or at least at the same time as the US, not the three month waits we used to have. There's also a neat gold Triforce embalzoned GameBoy Advance to go with it, not sure if the US has that.
For GBA it's probably to combat importers (no region locks to stop use importng cheaper US GBA games), for GameCube it's probably also to try and combat the Xbox, which it's really stuggling against. I'm not sure about outside the UK, but in the UK the GameCube is tanking. Non-games shops are starting to take it off the shelves, at least in smaller branches, it usually have a far smaller presence compared to Xbox if it is availible. (PS2 is bigger than both, of course).
I just hope the GameCube doesn't die completly in the UK before the new Zelda is out. I hope it's better than Wind Waker as well, Ocarina was far better.
I somehow don't think this guy has been following (association) football management games, seeing as he kinda missed the bit where Sports Interactive (makers of Champ. 1-4) split with Eidos. No rumours, just facts. Championship Manager 5 is made by a different company, as Eidos own the rights to the name, whilst Sega[1] published SI's football management game. I think SI kept the rights to the game engine as well. It was kinda known about for months before either game came out IIRC.
[1]Or at least Sega Europe, I have no idea about America, if they even like Football management.