Haha! Great references. Mangar and Tyranthraxus really give me the warm fuzzies when I think about the great games of the past. The dog you reference, if I've got the right dog, is the best friendly NPC ever.
Let's see... They got a few right, they had some good games that were fun, but not very "influential", and they got some dead wrong.
A few right:Civilization, Doom, Alone in the Dark, Ultima (though not necessarily III, but OK), SimCity, Tomb Raider (though more for consoles than PC's).
Fun, but not influential: Myst comes to mind. How many games are there like Myst, other than its sequel, Riven? None that I can think of... How influential is that??? Falcon 3.0 was also fun, but there were tons of flight sims before it. This game added some features, but didn't influence present flight sims as much as some of its predecessors did.
Dead wrong:Quake and Half-Life. Sorry, folks, they're fun, they're fast-paced, and they're just like Doom in almost every way except graphics and better network support. What was Gamespot thinking? Ultima Online influenced nothing! Both EverQuest and Asheron's Call were well into development before UO was ever released. They had their own worlds, interfaces, and character systems that had nothing to do with Ultima Online. Dune II was barely a blip on the radar, too. Someone at their office must have enjoyed the hell out of it, but it wasn't very influential, to be gentle about it.
The glaring omissions:Adventure/Zork was one of the first problem-solving adventure type games. Rogue/Nethack/Moria/Angband introduced the concept of "graphics" to gaming, as well as gave the first 3rd person adventure game life. The MUD's were massively multiplayer before whole Ultima series became popular. The Bard's Tale was the first party-based RPG, and was also the first to have 3D scrolling graphics, Warcraft (or another of it's genre) has become vastly popular, influencing many present games, Donkey Kong inspired Mario Bros, and, in turn, it's sequels and copycats... Making it the granddaddy of platform games. Finally, most definitely something from the sports and wargame/strategy genres, which I'm not a big fan of, but I know there are a whole lot of folks that are.
They also included a few games that I did not mention. This is because I have either not experienced these titles, or have mixed feelings about their choices, and my discussion of them would be unfair or overcomplicated.
It is inane that we switch over to 10 digit numbers if we are going to move to 11 or 12 at some point in the foreseeable future. Heloooo! Humans resist change. Therefore, make changes that will work for long periods of time, not temporary fixes.
Let's see... Other similar instances where a lack of foresight caused huge hassles for us humans: The 640k barrier, y2k, potentially IPv4, and SUV gas mileage (well, the hassles will come later on that one, trust me).
Wouldn't it be simpler just to go with 12 digits in the long run.
Um, they're not "stupid and pointless steps.." In fact, you just proved that. Someone who "knows their stuff" would have already checked cabling, connections, and power.
I think that we are forgetting the 3rd group of people (which actually are only a subset of the first group): The ones that think they know something, but really have no clue. They are tech-support's worst nightmare.
Sorry, Mr. Ska, but there are very few newspapers that are even close to unbiased. Almost all of them have editorial preferences and philosophies...many times politically based.
Even television is getting to be this way, depending on the station you watch.
CmdrTaco has the right to an opinion, as do you, and if he wants to post some editorial commentary, as long as it's not disguised as fact, he's welcome to do so.
I can see it now. "UI specially dumbed down (er, designed) for thumb-buster joypad users."
Take a game like Asheron's Call, made by Turbine, the company mentioned in the article. Their interface is big, and admittedly clunky, out of necessity. Without the keyboard and mouse combination it would be impossible to have the full and detailed control of the game that there is now. I know that they're already making keyboards for these machines, but let's face it, if you're going to start getting into expensive external peripherals and more UI than a joypad can handle, why not get a PC?
Someone in a previous post stated that Consoles make for a larger market for games because they're cheaper. What they didn't take into account is that Asheron's Call will run on a regular old 586/Pentium machine without a 3D card (though a cheap 3d upgrade greatly enhances the experience, but I got one of those from CompUSA for less than $40 U.S. a week or so ago). A machine like that runs less than $150, with 15 inch monitor. Try getting a PS2 or X-Box for that price!
Sorry, tie_guy_matt... If you look at the numbers, dreamcast just isn't performing as well as it might. Maybe it's the lack of imagination in every game I've seen for it. Maybe it's the crappy plastic that it's made out of. Maybe it's the fact that the graphics could be great, but they don't have enough programmers to make use of them.
Take your pick, but the "army of loyal fans" is probably more like a squadron (in the national market scheme of things).
I don't mean to slam on your system of choice, but even if the technology is better, the numbers say that Sega's still barely a blip on the radar of game systems. If anyone will overtake the Nintendo/Sony domination of the market, it will be Microsoft. I doubt it, but hey, people are dumb enough to wait in lines after midnight to get Windows, they might just be dumb enough to open their wallets for X-Box, too.
Hey, if they were smart they would have taped two endings originally, just in case...
It's happened before... J.K. Rowling says that Harry Potter IV *was* originally called...and the Doomspell Tournament, and not...Goblet of Fire. She just switched them right before printing, because of the leak.
Amiga's biggest hardware advantage was that it had separate "copper" and "blitter" chips for graphics coprocessing. Guess what: Look at any modern 3d card and you'll see the same stuff only pumped up for today's technology and speed. With AGP bus to plug it into the motherboard, and 32MB fast becoming a standard for just video processing memory, the old amiga style of hardware has no advantages.
Sure, that would explain why US CD sales totaled more than 5% higher last year than in 1998.
The sample was not completely random in the survey, as is made apparent by the article. This is bad. However, the biggest transgression is the attribution of causality through the results of a survey! Any student that's been through a first level research methods class can tell you that causality can only be attributed through scientific experimentation, with both a control and an experimental group of subject.
I can do nothing but agree with you. TPM was the biggest letdown in movie history, and most people that defend it do so only on the basis of their (quite warranted) love for the earlier Star Wars films. Lucas was in it for the money this time.
I saw Matrix in the theatres 3 times, on the other hand (a record for me!). Simply the best movie of 1999 (hand in hand with American Beauty, of course.)
Too much criticism here, slashdot readers! Nobody knows for sure what SlackInc will become, but if the past is any indication, it won't be another redhat.
Best wishes in new endeavors, Slack team. Keep those uncluttered, beautifully stable releases coming!
You're right, for the most part. The majority of the old games will be forgotten, and PSX2 games will prevail. I can definitely acknowledge that. But, who says you won't want to play the original Tekken 2 in a few years? How about Final Fantasy 7 or 8, once 9, 10, and 11 come out?
I still play my original Nintendo, if only for shits and giggles.
The point is that Sony's initial market share for PSX2 will partially hinge on backward compatibility. If that helps them to sell more systems, then they're that better off for the future. If that makes gamers worldwide happy, if only for a few months, they'll take it, trust me.
Dreamcast, though it's not my favorite system, is not a bad platform. There are some definite innovations held within that cheap plastic chassis. However, Sony's heritage, backward compatibility, and superior overall architecture (not to mention previous contracts and sheer market power) will crush Dreamcast, leaving Sega to rest in ashes for another 500 (internet) years before it rises again.
"I have no particular problem with a new system keeping backwards compatibility, but I don't think it's a powerful feature that'll attract new users."
I think you might want to look at this from a different perspective. You see, most people that are in the market for a new game console already own another gaming system. Since PSX is the most common console already, the odds are that this customer has old PSX games, too. I would bet that the vast majority of the public that would buy a console that doesn't have one already would be parents with children that want a system, and that isn't a large demographic, relatively speaking.
Therefore, there are many advantages to getting a system compatible with old PSX games... Use the new PSX2 as the main machine. Then hook the old console up to the little TV in the basement, or keep it for the kids, or save it for a backup when somebody else is watching a DVD on the new one... There are tons of good reasons for com
Sony has little to worry about when it comes to Dreamcast. The biggest reason for this is that the PlayStation 2 will play all of the old PlayStation CD's. Another good reason is that Sony's graphics system has proven to kick Dreamcast's not-all-that-impressive ass.
Though purely MHO, other benefits to PSX2 are that Dreamcast's game selection is largely pathetic, and the Sega hardware is made from such cheap plastic that it feels like a kiddie toy.
It is a shame that Sony would do such a second rate job. This is not typically like them. I assume that many top execs are considering seppuku at this point. (The "Sony" culture in Japan is incredible. Almost any university-bound youngster has his/her sights set on working for Sony, it's like an icon!)
I wonder what their rationale is for this seeming rush job. Dreamcast has been on the market long enough in Japan to get its piece of the pie, and it's not likely that Sony would have lost much market share by waiting a few more months for better debugging. Nintendo, their real competitor, doesn't have anything on the horizon, either, deepening my puzzlement at the move.
Fortunately, the bugs will probably be worked out by the time the PSII crosses the Pacific.
Does anyone have ideas/links for possible reasons why Sony would commit such a blooper?
Final Fantasy games are about as low on the "interactivity" scale as one can get. The games are completely linear in plot, and really are just "movies" that the "player" adds to with a few choices of which weapon to use, or which chocobo to breed.
I don't see why it wouldn't translate into a great movie. It would save me all that wasted time trying to kill the giant spider, or march perfectly in the parade.
Don't get me wrong, it's a superbly designed game, but it's really not any sort of mental challenge, and there's no "role playing" involved (despite what it says on the packaging).
You know, quite frankly, I doubt if I'll be buying an Intel chip for quite some time. AMD seems to be taking the better, faster, cheaper road, and I'm happy to support their business. Besides, Intel's fingers are beginning to get as dirty as M$'s, if you consider recent events.
No thanks, I'll take the Athlon. (Until Transmeta comes up with some comparable (read: really fast) Crusoes for the desktop market.)
You might be interested in knowing that CA openly passes out source code for many (if not most) of their products. It's not GNU, and you can't modify it and pass it off as your own, but you can always make your own improvements.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha! Great references. Mangar and Tyranthraxus really give me the warm fuzzies when I think about the great games of the past. The dog you reference, if I've got the right dog, is the best friendly NPC ever.
Apparently they kept the name in Canada. My apologies.
In general, anything that was "Computer City" is now either closed down or relabeled CompUSA.
ZDNet Article
The "last time (you) checked" was quite a long time ago, then, indeed...
You see, Computer City went out of business about 2 years ago.
Someone apparently got lost on their way to junior high this morning.
Let's see... They got a few right, they had some good games that were fun, but not very "influential", and they got some dead wrong.
A few right: Civilization, Doom, Alone in the Dark, Ultima (though not necessarily III, but OK), SimCity, Tomb Raider (though more for consoles than PC's).
Fun, but not influential: Myst comes to mind. How many games are there like Myst, other than its sequel, Riven? None that I can think of... How influential is that??? Falcon 3.0 was also fun, but there were tons of flight sims before it. This game added some features, but didn't influence present flight sims as much as some of its predecessors did.
Dead wrong: Quake and Half-Life. Sorry, folks, they're fun, they're fast-paced, and they're just like Doom in almost every way except graphics and better network support. What was Gamespot thinking? Ultima Online influenced nothing! Both EverQuest and Asheron's Call were well into development before UO was ever released. They had their own worlds, interfaces, and character systems that had nothing to do with Ultima Online. Dune II was barely a blip on the radar, too. Someone at their office must have enjoyed the hell out of it, but it wasn't very influential, to be gentle about it.
The glaring omissions: Adventure/Zork was one of the first problem-solving adventure type games. Rogue/Nethack/Moria/Angband introduced the concept of "graphics" to gaming, as well as gave the first 3rd person adventure game life. The MUD's were massively multiplayer before whole Ultima series became popular. The Bard's Tale was the first party-based RPG, and was also the first to have 3D scrolling graphics, Warcraft (or another of it's genre) has become vastly popular, influencing many present games, Donkey Kong inspired Mario Bros, and, in turn, it's sequels and copycats... Making it the granddaddy of platform games. Finally, most definitely something from the sports and wargame/strategy genres, which I'm not a big fan of, but I know there are a whole lot of folks that are.
They also included a few games that I did not mention. This is because I have either not experienced these titles, or have mixed feelings about their choices, and my discussion of them would be unfair or overcomplicated.
It is inane that we switch over to 10 digit numbers if we are going to move to 11 or 12 at some point in the foreseeable future. Heloooo! Humans resist change. Therefore, make changes that will work for long periods of time, not temporary fixes.
Let's see... Other similar instances where a lack of foresight caused huge hassles for us humans: The 640k barrier, y2k, potentially IPv4, and SUV gas mileage (well, the hassles will come later on that one, trust me).
Wouldn't it be simpler just to go with 12 digits in the long run.
Um, they're not "stupid and pointless steps.." In fact, you just proved that. Someone who "knows their stuff" would have already checked cabling, connections, and power.
I think that we are forgetting the 3rd group of people (which actually are only a subset of the first group): The ones that think they know something, but really have no clue. They are tech-support's worst nightmare.
AMEN to that! The Aeron is simply the best desk chair I have ever sat in. Amazing.
I'll trade the "chair of the future" any day for an Aeron.
Sorry, Mr. Ska, but there are very few newspapers that are even close to unbiased. Almost all of them have editorial preferences and philosophies...many times politically based.
Even television is getting to be this way, depending on the station you watch.
CmdrTaco has the right to an opinion, as do you, and if he wants to post some editorial commentary, as long as it's not disguised as fact, he's welcome to do so.
It'll cost $200 after about a year and a half, I'd bet. No way they can afford to give them away for that price.
I can see it now. "UI specially dumbed down (er, designed) for thumb-buster joypad users."
Take a game like Asheron's Call, made by Turbine, the company mentioned in the article. Their interface is big, and admittedly clunky, out of necessity. Without the keyboard and mouse combination it would be impossible to have the full and detailed control of the game that there is now. I know that they're already making keyboards for these machines, but let's face it, if you're going to start getting into expensive external peripherals and more UI than a joypad can handle, why not get a PC?
Someone in a previous post stated that Consoles make for a larger market for games because they're cheaper. What they didn't take into account is that Asheron's Call will run on a regular old 586/Pentium machine without a 3D card (though a cheap 3d upgrade greatly enhances the experience, but I got one of those from CompUSA for less than $40 U.S. a week or so ago). A machine like that runs less than $150, with 15 inch monitor. Try getting a PS2 or X-Box for that price!
Sorry, tie_guy_matt... If you look at the numbers, dreamcast just isn't performing as well as it might. Maybe it's the lack of imagination in every game I've seen for it. Maybe it's the crappy plastic that it's made out of. Maybe it's the fact that the graphics could be great, but they don't have enough programmers to make use of them.
Take your pick, but the "army of loyal fans" is probably more like a squadron (in the national market scheme of things).
I don't mean to slam on your system of choice, but even if the technology is better, the numbers say that Sega's still barely a blip on the radar of game systems. If anyone will overtake the Nintendo/Sony domination of the market, it will be Microsoft. I doubt it, but hey, people are dumb enough to wait in lines after midnight to get Windows, they might just be dumb enough to open their wallets for X-Box, too.
Very correct. I was going to point that out until I noticed that you did...
King's quest was *not* an rpg, unless you only like to play one role: The inept child of a king.
Hey, if they were smart they would have taped two endings originally, just in case... It's happened before... J.K. Rowling says that Harry Potter IV *was* originally called ...and the Doomspell Tournament, and not ...Goblet of Fire. She just switched them right before printing, because of the leak.
Amiga's biggest hardware advantage was that it had separate "copper" and "blitter" chips for graphics coprocessing. Guess what: Look at any modern 3d card and you'll see the same stuff only pumped up for today's technology and speed. With AGP bus to plug it into the motherboard, and 32MB fast becoming a standard for just video processing memory, the old amiga style of hardware has no advantages.
We're using the same techniques today.
Sure, that would explain why US CD sales totaled more than 5% higher last year than in 1998.
The sample was not completely random in the survey, as is made apparent by the article. This is bad. However, the biggest transgression is the attribution of causality through the results of a survey! Any student that's been through a first level research methods class can tell you that causality can only be attributed through scientific experimentation, with both a control and an experimental group of subject.
I can do nothing but agree with you. TPM was the biggest letdown in movie history, and most people that defend it do so only on the basis of their (quite warranted) love for the earlier Star Wars films. Lucas was in it for the money this time.
I saw Matrix in the theatres 3 times, on the other hand (a record for me!). Simply the best movie of 1999 (hand in hand with American Beauty, of course.)
Too much criticism here, slashdot readers! Nobody knows for sure what SlackInc will become, but if the past is any indication, it won't be another redhat.
Best wishes in new endeavors, Slack team. Keep those uncluttered, beautifully stable releases coming!
You're right, for the most part. The majority of the old games will be forgotten, and PSX2 games will prevail. I can definitely acknowledge that. But, who says you won't want to play the original Tekken 2 in a few years? How about Final Fantasy 7 or 8, once 9, 10, and 11 come out?
I still play my original Nintendo, if only for shits and giggles.
The point is that Sony's initial market share for PSX2 will partially hinge on backward compatibility. If that helps them to sell more systems, then they're that better off for the future. If that makes gamers worldwide happy, if only for a few months, they'll take it, trust me.
Dreamcast, though it's not my favorite system, is not a bad platform. There are some definite innovations held within that cheap plastic chassis. However, Sony's heritage, backward compatibility, and superior overall architecture (not to mention previous contracts and sheer market power) will crush Dreamcast, leaving Sega to rest in ashes for another 500 (internet) years before it rises again.
I think you might want to look at this from a different perspective. You see, most people that are in the market for a new game console already own another gaming system. Since PSX is the most common console already, the odds are that this customer has old PSX games, too. I would bet that the vast majority of the public that would buy a console that doesn't have one already would be parents with children that want a system, and that isn't a large demographic, relatively speaking.
Therefore, there are many advantages to getting a system compatible with old PSX games... Use the new PSX2 as the main machine. Then hook the old console up to the little TV in the basement, or keep it for the kids, or save it for a backup when somebody else is watching a DVD on the new one... There are tons of good reasons for com
Sony has little to worry about when it comes to Dreamcast. The biggest reason for this is that the PlayStation 2 will play all of the old PlayStation CD's. Another good reason is that Sony's graphics system has proven to kick Dreamcast's not-all-that-impressive ass.
Though purely MHO, other benefits to PSX2 are that Dreamcast's game selection is largely pathetic, and the Sega hardware is made from such cheap plastic that it feels like a kiddie toy.
It is a shame that Sony would do such a second rate job. This is not typically like them. I assume that many top execs are considering seppuku at this point. (The "Sony" culture in Japan is incredible. Almost any university-bound youngster has his/her sights set on working for Sony, it's like an icon!)
I wonder what their rationale is for this seeming rush job. Dreamcast has been on the market long enough in Japan to get its piece of the pie, and it's not likely that Sony would have lost much market share by waiting a few more months for better debugging. Nintendo, their real competitor, doesn't have anything on the horizon, either, deepening my puzzlement at the move.
Fortunately, the bugs will probably be worked out by the time the PSII crosses the Pacific.
Does anyone have ideas/links for possible reasons why Sony would commit such a blooper?
Final Fantasy games are about as low on the "interactivity" scale as one can get. The games are completely linear in plot, and really are just "movies" that the "player" adds to with a few choices of which weapon to use, or which chocobo to breed.
I don't see why it wouldn't translate into a great movie. It would save me all that wasted time trying to kill the giant spider, or march perfectly in the parade.
Don't get me wrong, it's a superbly designed game, but it's really not any sort of mental challenge, and there's no "role playing" involved (despite what it says on the packaging).
You know, quite frankly, I doubt if I'll be buying an Intel chip for quite some time. AMD seems to be taking the better, faster, cheaper road, and I'm happy to support their business. Besides, Intel's fingers are beginning to get as dirty as M$'s, if you consider recent events.
No thanks, I'll take the Athlon. (Until Transmeta comes up with some comparable (read: really fast) Crusoes for the desktop market.)
You might be interested in knowing that CA openly passes out source code for many (if not most) of their products. It's not GNU, and you can't modify it and pass it off as your own, but you can always make your own improvements.