The English version of Shenmue and Shenmue II. Lukcily I live in the UK so I've been able to pick up the PAL Dreamcast version of 2, which has Japanese voice acting instead. It's probably just as bad, but it's in Japanese so it's less noticable.;-)
Puyo Pop Fever is even worse. Lukcily if you set the Xbox to Japanese the game switched to Japanese as well, which makes it better, it's not like you actually need to follow the story. I just wish there was a Off option though...
Let's not get started on Sonic Adventure...
Y'know, I think it's mostly Sega. They just have the special ability to pick the worst voice actors in any games they put out. Although Otogi seems alright...
Well, it did have about 64MB (I think it was up to 96MB when it was dumped) of memory by that time, rather than the original 8MB. Plus a nice big 3.5GB hard disk. But it was still a Pentium 75, and it was fine for word processing (Word 6, then 95), email (Outlook Express) and web browsing (Opera), although cicuit design autoroutes were overnight jobs...
I'm no expert either, but the main difference between Celeron and Pentiums is that Celerons have less cache. In some cases this makes no difference, but usually it means Celerons run slower for the clock speed. They're probably fine for just surfing etc., but for gaming and media work you need a proper CPU. The first run of Celerys didn't have any cache at all, and ran like an absolute dog, but newer ones are alright, but you can get faster AMD iron for the same price range AFAIK.
With AMD the Celeron line is the Duron, and the Pentium line is the Athlon. AMD is generally cheaper. AMD also offera 64bit consumer CPU, the Althon 64.
There are more powerful chips, the Xeons (Intel) and Opertons (AMD), but they're aimed at servers and workstations.
My early model Megadrive[1] seems to get quite warm after a bit of running. Rather suprising for something you start thinking of as primative. But I don't think it got to Mk. 1 Pentium levels.:-)
I once opened a Megadrive up, the 68k is possibly the biggest DIL type chip I've ever seen though.
[1] It was a very early one, with the text on the circle bit (High resolution grapics!) and an expansion connector on the back. It's also a French RGB one, rather than a PAL one.
My Dad's PC is probably running the most confused version of Windows ever, seing as it's been upgraded from DOS 6.22 / WfW 3.11, through Windows 95, and then onto Windows 98 (apparently he thought it would crash less[1]). Apart from Internet Explorer not working (as a web browser) anymore (he bought Opera instead, it was faster anyway), it's fine, even after shock treatment of taking the hard drive and putting it a completely different PC. Still going strong after about nine years.
Then again, I've had WIndows go crazy and need reinstalling on my own PCs. I've seen plenty of BSODs on my own hardware.
My Dad got his Pentium 75 in March 1995, so he had the wonderfulness of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. 8 whole MB of RAM (it eventually went to 90MB) and a 700MB hard drive (replaced with a 3.5GB), it was still used until last month running Windows 98 (thank god for Opera, and Office 95, probably the last non-bloated[1] MS Office!).
I remember playing SimCity 2000, Terminal Velocity, Doom and Quake on it. And all those Lucasarts games like Day Of The Tentacle and Sam and Max. It was a powerhouse! Compuserve Mosiac on the internet using a 14,400kb modem as well.
[1] By modern standards. I know back in 1995 Office 4 / 95 were considered bloated, but they aren't as bad as newer ones.
The collections credits definitely mention emulator programmers, so some of it is emulated. Some of it might've been tweaked though (the graphics etc. have been changed so they fit on the GBA's lower res screen). The sound's lousy though.
The Dreamcast should be able to emulate a Megadrive pretty well (the Saturn does pretty well with Sonic Jam, apart from odd sound sometimes), although I guess it depends on the coders.
I doubt it, that was only ever on models without built in games, and I don't think any without built in games were made after the Master System 1. Even then, all the Master System 1's I've seen in the UK[1] have had built in games (Safari Hunt and Hang On IIRC), although SMS1's still have the nice startup animation, not the crappy still Sega logo on SMS2's.
[1] One thing I love is the way Sonic Jam's museum lists all the Master System versions as Latin America only, which is strange as those games were all released in the UK too (SMS was dropped around 1994 in the UK IIRC, Brazil does have a few exclusives after that).
I doubt it will have Phantasy Star, as I don't think they'll be putting battery backup in it. But a Portuguese version of Phantasy Star was made for the Brazilian market.
I think he actually recorded complete readings of all the book versions of H2G2 (available from BBC Cover To Cover audio-books in the UK IIRC), which AFAIK is the source of his posthumous appearance in the new radio series.
He might partly be stuck in the role. He was apparently the real show runner from the start of the Next Generation (barring DS9, he was mostly hands off aparently, focusing on Voyager instead), and he might be stuck as Executive Producer, typecast if you will (I don't know what the term is for a producer).
I think most of the rights to Star Trek are held by Paramount, although Majel Baret might have some minor share of the rights, I'm not sure.
But Branon Braga didn't have anything to do with Deep Space Nine, by some accounts Rick Berman didn't have much to do with it either after the first couple of seasons. Which is why it was the best modern Star Trek series (IMO), lesbian kisses and all.
Voyager isn't a story ark really. It had an overall story that set the scene, but apart from the pre / post 7 of 9 split, none of the stories[1] have to be in any particular order apart from the first couple and the last two. Nothing ever really changes, it's reset button city. There's precious little story progression, and really only the first and last episodes, and the Kes / 7of9 change, change the story really, and that's mostly introducing and writing out characters.
DS9 is the only Star Trek (I haven't seen Enterprise however) with any real story arc, albeit in a schizophrenic mix with old style episodic episodes ignoring the ongoing story (reportadley becuase Paramount execs didn't really want one, it screws up syndication). But it's still got an arc, you couldn't put a series 3 episode in series 6, whereas with Voyager you could, assuming the cast is the same.
[1] Story in the Doctor Who sense, ie: Year Of Hell 1 and 2 count as one story, even if they're two episodes / parts.
I've had to do that, and build the system back up again (600Mhz with ATI Rage graphics). Luckily I found a website saying how to do it. The end of a headphone connector broke off inside the port, which naturally wasn't a good thing. Disassemblarity ensued, almost to the hard drive level, and I've still got an odd screw somewhere.
Probably screwed up other things as well, the backlight has recently started going out permanently if I move the screen towards the keyboard, although that might be related to the couple of times I kinda dropped it as well (so might the fact the casing is coming apart by the screen hinge, although the screen has been off-kilter ever since it got disassembled). Somehow I don't think I qualify for the repairs, at least they don't seem to be the same problems as described in the site, external video is fine and it's not scrambled / intermittent etc.. But when the screen does die I'll still have a neat compact Amiga 600 style computer.;-)
I wonder if it's possible to remove the screen safely?;-)
Well, they were sending it by Special Delivery, which is a bit different to just sticking something in the post, but I think it's mostly just a priority service, still delivered by the postman. They probably didn't expect the postman to be mugged though (it doesn't sound to me like a specific attack to get the source code).
Special Delivery is insure, I think all Royal Mail has some level of insurance on it, with Special Delivery being higher than normal post, but not by much.
FedEx isn't particularly big in the UK AFAIK, it's mostly used for sending international packages, but other delivery companies do exist. But surely if it's a real life-or-death matter for delivery of this master, they should hire a courier to take the package directly.
I think this is obviously PR, a company developing yet another stupid generic cookie-cutter PC Strategy Game[1] getting a copy of the code stolen, and trying to get some publicity. They've probably already got another copy to the duplicators by now...
[1] I've never heard of, let alone player, these games. This is more of a comment on the PC games market in general, which seems to consist of dozens of identikit strategy and first person shooter games.
Well, they still had a boot ROM, just it was tied specifically to Mac OS (even AUX (Apple's UNIX variant) had to boot into Mac OS before AUX itself could be loaded AFAIK). The rest of the ROM contained the toolbox, which was still around in OpenFirmware Macs until the iMac (where it moved to the Mac OS ROM file in the System Folder), although I guess some of the toolbox might still be in the ROM if OpenFirmware can bring up a window with it. (I am not an expert)
The article doesn't actually mention Athlon 64's at all. Although AFAIK they're designed so they can use the old PC BIOS system (and everything else x86) rather than needing a new BIOS (etc.). Perhaps a sentence on how AMD took an x86 compatible approach to designing a 64 bit system meant that they (can and do) use the old BIOS system instead of something new would've been a useful addition.
The same goes for Acorn[1]'s RISC OS on the Archimedes series, at least early version, I'm not really sure about 3.5 and 4, they might be reliant on stuff on a hard disk. You could also count most 8 bit micros of course, like BBC BASIC and the DFS (a DOS) on the BBC Micro were in ROM, although they weren't GUI OSes.
You forgot PS2 Memory cards, which are 8MB as well. That's two whole WWF Smackdown saves. (I think that's the game that had 4MByte saves, it was definitely a WWF game).
Whatever the Gamecube ones are (I worked it out one time...) they're better than Dreamcast, which had 128KByte as it's only card size. (Apparently the US and Japan got some bank switching 4x one as well, but not in Europe). Completely stupid, especially for an online console. The Sega Saturn had 512kb (AFAIK) in it's memory cartrige (although the internal memory might've been smaller).
In the UK you can borrow music CDs from public libraries (at least in Worcestershire), although Blockbuster doesn't do them. I guess most people like to buy music CDs though, and there isn't a market, or they just can't get the rights.
As for computer games, computer games are a far smaller market (AFAIK), in my town the Blockbusters (a smallish 'Express' one) doesn't even have Gamecube games, becuase not enough people borrow them.
The other reason is the fact that console games run on a fixed platform. If it didn't work, it's either the disc, or the console. With PCs, what would you do if the renter said the game hadn't worked on their system? It could be that the persons PC doesn't have the specs, has incompatible drives etc. Or they could be saying that, to try and get there money back. And people would probably be far more likely to copy (or try to) a PC game rather than a DVD or console game, IMO.
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I'm not getting the hell freezing over people either, it's not like it's Duke Nukem Forever or something (or Half-Life 2, coming out ten months ago!)
I guess your referring to the Japanese soundtrack, the English version of Shenmue sucks, it's awful voice acting.
The English version of Shenmue and Shenmue II. Lukcily I live in the UK so I've been able to pick up the PAL Dreamcast version of 2, which has Japanese voice acting instead. It's probably just as bad, but it's in Japanese so it's less noticable. ;-)
Puyo Pop Fever is even worse. Lukcily if you set the Xbox to Japanese the game switched to Japanese as well, which makes it better, it's not like you actually need to follow the story. I just wish there was a Off option though...
Let's not get started on Sonic Adventure...
Y'know, I think it's mostly Sega. They just have the special ability to pick the worst voice actors in any games they put out. Although Otogi seems alright...
Well, it did have about 64MB (I think it was up to 96MB when it was dumped) of memory by that time, rather than the original 8MB. Plus a nice big 3.5GB hard disk. But it was still a Pentium 75, and it was fine for word processing (Word 6, then 95), email (Outlook Express) and web browsing (Opera), although cicuit design autoroutes were overnight jobs...
I'm no expert either, but the main difference between Celeron and Pentiums is that Celerons have less cache. In some cases this makes no difference, but usually it means Celerons run slower for the clock speed. They're probably fine for just surfing etc., but for gaming and media work you need a proper CPU. The first run of Celerys didn't have any cache at all, and ran like an absolute dog, but newer ones are alright, but you can get faster AMD iron for the same price range AFAIK.
With AMD the Celeron line is the Duron, and the Pentium line is the Athlon. AMD is generally cheaper. AMD also offera 64bit consumer CPU, the Althon 64.
There are more powerful chips, the Xeons (Intel) and Opertons (AMD), but they're aimed at servers and workstations.
My early model Megadrive[1] seems to get quite warm after a bit of running. Rather suprising for something you start thinking of as primative. But I don't think it got to Mk. 1 Pentium levels. :-)
I once opened a Megadrive up, the 68k is possibly the biggest DIL type chip I've ever seen though.
[1] It was a very early one, with the text on the circle bit (High resolution grapics!) and an expansion connector on the back. It's also a French RGB one, rather than a PAL one.
My Dad's PC is probably running the most confused version of Windows ever, seing as it's been upgraded from DOS 6.22 / WfW 3.11, through Windows 95, and then onto Windows 98 (apparently he thought it would crash less[1]). Apart from Internet Explorer not working (as a web browser) anymore (he bought Opera instead, it was faster anyway), it's fine, even after shock treatment of taking the hard drive and putting it a completely different PC. Still going strong after about nine years.
Then again, I've had WIndows go crazy and need reinstalling on my own PCs. I've seen plenty of BSODs on my own hardware.
[1] I'm not entirely sure of his logic myself.
My Dad got his Pentium 75 in March 1995, so he had the wonderfulness of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. 8 whole MB of RAM (it eventually went to 90MB) and a 700MB hard drive (replaced with a 3.5GB), it was still used until last month running Windows 98 (thank god for Opera, and Office 95, probably the last non-bloated[1] MS Office!).
I remember playing SimCity 2000, Terminal Velocity, Doom and Quake on it. And all those Lucasarts games like Day Of The Tentacle and Sam and Max. It was a powerhouse! Compuserve Mosiac on the internet using a 14,400kb modem as well.
[1] By modern standards. I know back in 1995 Office 4 / 95 were considered bloated, but they aren't as bad as newer ones.
The collections credits definitely mention emulator programmers, so some of it is emulated. Some of it might've been tweaked though (the graphics etc. have been changed so they fit on the GBA's lower res screen). The sound's lousy though.
The Dreamcast should be able to emulate a Megadrive pretty well (the Saturn does pretty well with Sonic Jam, apart from odd sound sometimes), although I guess it depends on the coders.
They did BMX: XXX. :-)
I doubt it, that was only ever on models without built in games, and I don't think any without built in games were made after the Master System 1. Even then, all the Master System 1's I've seen in the UK[1] have had built in games (Safari Hunt and Hang On IIRC), although SMS1's still have the nice startup animation, not the crappy still Sega logo on SMS2's.
[1] One thing I love is the way Sonic Jam's museum lists all the Master System versions as Latin America only, which is strange as those games were all released in the UK too (SMS was dropped around 1994 in the UK IIRC, Brazil does have a few exclusives after that).
I doubt it will have Phantasy Star, as I don't think they'll be putting battery backup in it. But a Portuguese version of Phantasy Star was made for the Brazilian market.
Well, don't worry, the new radio series is keeping up tradition and contradicting the old radio series.
I think he actually recorded complete readings of all the book versions of H2G2 (available from BBC Cover To Cover audio-books in the UK IIRC), which AFAIK is the source of his posthumous appearance in the new radio series.
He might partly be stuck in the role. He was apparently the real show runner from the start of the Next Generation (barring DS9, he was mostly hands off aparently, focusing on Voyager instead), and he might be stuck as Executive Producer, typecast if you will (I don't know what the term is for a producer).
I think most of the rights to Star Trek are held by Paramount, although Majel Baret might have some minor share of the rights, I'm not sure.
But Branon Braga didn't have anything to do with Deep Space Nine, by some accounts Rick Berman didn't have much to do with it either after the first couple of seasons. Which is why it was the best modern Star Trek series (IMO), lesbian kisses and all.
Ahh, the Doctor Who approach. ;-)
Well, technically Star Trek pioneered it in the first place.
Voyager isn't a story ark really. It had an overall story that set the scene, but apart from the pre / post 7 of 9 split, none of the stories[1] have to be in any particular order apart from the first couple and the last two. Nothing ever really changes, it's reset button city. There's precious little story progression, and really only the first and last episodes, and the Kes / 7of9 change, change the story really, and that's mostly introducing and writing out characters.
DS9 is the only Star Trek (I haven't seen Enterprise however) with any real story arc, albeit in a schizophrenic mix with old style episodic episodes ignoring the ongoing story (reportadley becuase Paramount execs didn't really want one, it screws up syndication). But it's still got an arc, you couldn't put a series 3 episode in series 6, whereas with Voyager you could, assuming the cast is the same.
[1] Story in the Doctor Who sense, ie: Year Of Hell 1 and 2 count as one story, even if they're two episodes / parts.
I've had to do that, and build the system back up again (600Mhz with ATI Rage graphics). Luckily I found a website saying how to do it. The end of a headphone connector broke off inside the port, which naturally wasn't a good thing. Disassemblarity ensued, almost to the hard drive level, and I've still got an odd screw somewhere.
;-)
;-)
Probably screwed up other things as well, the backlight has recently started going out permanently if I move the screen towards the keyboard, although that might be related to the couple of times I kinda dropped it as well (so might the fact the casing is coming apart by the screen hinge, although the screen has been off-kilter ever since it got disassembled). Somehow I don't think I qualify for the repairs, at least they don't seem to be the same problems as described in the site, external video is fine and it's not scrambled / intermittent etc.. But when the screen does die I'll still have a neat compact Amiga 600 style computer.
I wonder if it's possible to remove the screen safely?
Well, they were sending it by Special Delivery, which is a bit different to just sticking something in the post, but I think it's mostly just a priority service, still delivered by the postman. They probably didn't expect the postman to be mugged though (it doesn't sound to me like a specific attack to get the source code).
Special Delivery is insure, I think all Royal Mail has some level of insurance on it, with Special Delivery being higher than normal post, but not by much.
FedEx isn't particularly big in the UK AFAIK, it's mostly used for sending international packages, but other delivery companies do exist. But surely if it's a real life-or-death matter for delivery of this master, they should hire a courier to take the package directly.
I think this is obviously PR, a company developing yet another stupid generic cookie-cutter PC Strategy Game[1] getting a copy of the code stolen, and trying to get some publicity. They've probably already got another copy to the duplicators by now...
[1] I've never heard of, let alone player, these games. This is more of a comment on the PC games market in general, which seems to consist of dozens of identikit strategy and first person shooter games.
Well, they still had a boot ROM, just it was tied specifically to Mac OS (even AUX (Apple's UNIX variant) had to boot into Mac OS before AUX itself could be loaded AFAIK). The rest of the ROM contained the toolbox, which was still around in OpenFirmware Macs until the iMac (where it moved to the Mac OS ROM file in the System Folder), although I guess some of the toolbox might still be in the ROM if OpenFirmware can bring up a window with it. (I am not an expert)
The article doesn't actually mention Athlon 64's at all. Although AFAIK they're designed so they can use the old PC BIOS system (and everything else x86) rather than needing a new BIOS (etc.). Perhaps a sentence on how AMD took an x86 compatible approach to designing a 64 bit system meant that they (can and do) use the old BIOS system instead of something new would've been a useful addition.
The same goes for Acorn[1]'s RISC OS on the Archimedes series, at least early version, I'm not really sure about 3.5 and 4, they might be reliant on stuff on a hard disk. You could also count most 8 bit micros of course, like BBC BASIC and the DFS (a DOS) on the BBC Micro were in ROM, although they weren't GUI OSes.
[1] The A in ARM, the Acorn RISC Machine.
You forgot PS2 Memory cards, which are 8MB as well. That's two whole WWF Smackdown saves. (I think that's the game that had 4MByte saves, it was definitely a WWF game).
Whatever the Gamecube ones are (I worked it out one time...) they're better than Dreamcast, which had 128KByte as it's only card size. (Apparently the US and Japan got some bank switching 4x one as well, but not in Europe). Completely stupid, especially for an online console. The Sega Saturn had 512kb (AFAIK) in it's memory cartrige (although the internal memory might've been smaller).
In the UK you can borrow music CDs from public libraries (at least in Worcestershire), although Blockbuster doesn't do them. I guess most people like to buy music CDs though, and there isn't a market, or they just can't get the rights.
As for computer games, computer games are a far smaller market (AFAIK), in my town the Blockbusters (a smallish 'Express' one) doesn't even have Gamecube games, becuase not enough people borrow them.
The other reason is the fact that console games run on a fixed platform. If it didn't work, it's either the disc, or the console. With PCs, what would you do if the renter said the game hadn't worked on their system? It could be that the persons PC doesn't have the specs, has incompatible drives etc. Or they could be saying that, to try and get there money back. And people would probably be far more likely to copy (or try to) a PC game rather than a DVD or console game, IMO.