I dunno, minigames aren't a problem for me but too many are never good. The problem is that by adding more gameplay styles you need a player who enjoys all of them to enjoy the entire game. That's what I dislike especially about Treasure, they tend to throw in so many gameplay styles that maybe three people in the world will appreciate them all. Or take Battletoads for another example.
I still prefer levelling all characters. Sure, they have to be balanced but if there are one or two characters that I want to keep in the party all the time (usually the medic and the main damage dealer (who happens to be the plot's lead character often enough)) those tend to become way too powerful. Even worse if only those characters are strong enough to deal with all the enemies you encounter if you don't spend time levelgrinding.
If you wrote a letter that if traced could land you in jail or even on the death row, would you use your own handwriting or would you make sure the writing looks nothing like your own?
Artists also recognize that by making money from their art they can both dedicate more time to it and keep their family fed or have some cash to get drunk or what they choose to do today.
And an artist does consider making art "work" because it's hard. That doesn't mean it's not fun, work can be quite fun but you work on art.
Of course, if you consider only art that was done for art's sake as real art then the output falls but is there really a difference between an artwork that was made for money and one that was done for love, provided the artist put the same amount of effort into it?
They did copy parts of the LAME code for that detection, though. They'd have to claim "Fair Use" for that. Is "using parts to impair the functionality of a competing product" fair use?
Most distros allow you to install all but the most obscure programs with their built-in package downloader or if that fails, accept those autoinstalling packages (like deb). The problem is to figure out what the program is called. I've never downloaded a soucecode only version of a program.
Exact same feeling here. If they want to make stealth games they shouldn't make them levels in popular non-stealth games. Same problem with Wind Waker's Forsaken Fortress (first pass).
I don't think I encountered the spiderball boss but that's because the boost ball boss annoyed me so much I stopped playing.
Your mom must be tech savvier than mine because mine can't even figure out how to move a file with drag and drop, she wouldn't be able to edit a DVD without assistance no matter what OS you put in front of her. I could probably put any OS in front of her, as long as it has a GUI with buttons labelled after the things she wants to do (email, writing, browsing) it'd be all the same to her.
Back when Ford introduced the Model T there was no such thing as ABS or an automatic gearshift and the T lacked many basic features like seatbelts but if you built a car like that today noone sane would buy it.It may not have been standard that long ago but now it has become standard.
Now that all new consoles are offering backwards compatibility that can and probably will indeed be a deciding factor for potential early adopters. Sure, few use that feature but that doesn't mean people won't change their buying decisions because of it. It sounds better on paper and Joe Sixpack who's buying the system for EA Sports games anyway will prefer the system that sounds the best to him in the store, not what countless reviews say on the matter.
Or you can install another OS (Linux, BSD, BeOS, OS/2, whatever you fancy) to dualboot on your PC so you don't have to pay 500$ for 200$ worth of computer.
But the computation costs (at least those that are influenced by the resolution, transformation and lighting doesn't get more demanding in HiDef) aren't per scanline but per pixel so talking only about scanlines is ignoring a part of the problem.
Bomberman and Smash Bros are hardly current but if you're willing to go back a bit, sure, there's 10 player Bomberman supporting both local and networked players, Serious Sam with splitscreen + network, games like Worms that don't need more than one controller and tons of fighting games (if you google for the manufacturer names you'll find downloadable demo versions for most, Melty Blood and Eternal Fighter Zero are the highest profile ones). Plus all those freeware versions of pretty simple games like Tetris, Bust-a-Move, etc that are probably even included in your Linux distro.
Of course there aren't as many of them as there are for the consoles but there aren't as many PC games (if we ignore cheap moneygrab junk that apparently doesn't even get sold in stores in the US) as there are console games anyway.
And hell, it's not like there's a major investment required to make a simple PC game for youself and your buddies.
Excuse me? Nintendo isn't making money from NES games? Have you looked into the gameboy section of a game store lately? Those "NES Classics" cartridges? And what about their plan to offer a for-pay ROM download service for the Revolution?
I don't play RPGs for the gameplay, but rather the story. I don't care about the gameplay as long as it doesn't get in the way.
In the case of Final Fantasy it got in the way quite often.
Regarding minigames, I onsider that one of the parts where Final Fantasy could learn from Anachronox: "Oh dear, looks like you failed that minigame! Want to try again?" [Yes] [No] [Can't we pretend I made it?]
Another part is handling the levelling of party members that aren't in the active party (I'd prefer if you could have all characters in play all the time), in Final Fantasy useless characters tend to be ignored and become more and more useless with each battle.
I welcome the change. I have played only three FF games and I'm already tired of the repetitive formula. These days the bar for what qualifies as good combat is miles higher than it was back when FF first appeared. They've been changing the levelling system like mad to prevent the formula from becoming even more stale but at some point (eleven main games into the franchise sounds like a good point, even Capcom changed the Megaman formula quicker than that) the basic gameplay concepts need to see some changes. Since the story on japanese RPGs tends to be pretty samey overall and the number of worthwile variations on the same old "guy meets shy girl, fights villain, world gets destroyed, hero defeats villain and all is good" story that aren't done is rapidly shrinking there needs to be some focus on the other parts of the game.
Chrono Trigger wasn't exactly a NES game. After the NES there was no technical reason to keep the transitions but they did because it was part of what defined the gameplay.
I take issue with your terminology, traditional RPGs are either pen & paper or the early computer RPGs, all of which are much more freeform than the average japanese RPG. There's nothing traditional about single-pathed movie-driven RPGs.
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I dunno, minigames aren't a problem for me but too many are never good. The problem is that by adding more gameplay styles you need a player who enjoys all of them to enjoy the entire game. That's what I dislike especially about Treasure, they tend to throw in so many gameplay styles that maybe three people in the world will appreciate them all. Or take Battletoads for another example.
I still prefer levelling all characters. Sure, they have to be balanced but if there are one or two characters that I want to keep in the party all the time (usually the medic and the main damage dealer (who happens to be the plot's lead character often enough)) those tend to become way too powerful. Even worse if only those characters are strong enough to deal with all the enemies you encounter if you don't spend time levelgrinding.
If you wrote a letter that if traced could land you in jail or even on the death row, would you use your own handwriting or would you make sure the writing looks nothing like your own?
Noone knows but the GBA series were that expensive at least in part because GBA carts are expensive to make (more than ten bucks a piece, I think).
Artists also recognize that by making money from their art they can both dedicate more time to it and keep their family fed or have some cash to get drunk or what they choose to do today.
And an artist does consider making art "work" because it's hard. That doesn't mean it's not fun, work can be quite fun but you work on art.
Of course, if you consider only art that was done for art's sake as real art then the output falls but is there really a difference between an artwork that was made for money and one that was done for love, provided the artist put the same amount of effort into it?
They did copy parts of the LAME code for that detection, though. They'd have to claim "Fair Use" for that. Is "using parts to impair the functionality of a competing product" fair use?
You make that sound like there's an actual choice available.
Most distros allow you to install all but the most obscure programs with their built-in package downloader or if that fails, accept those autoinstalling packages (like deb). The problem is to figure out what the program is called. I've never downloaded a soucecode only version of a program.
Exact same feeling here. If they want to make stealth games they shouldn't make them levels in popular non-stealth games. Same problem with Wind Waker's Forsaken Fortress (first pass).
I don't think I encountered the spiderball boss but that's because the boost ball boss annoyed me so much I stopped playing.
Plus it's now in the manual.
And Zero Mission had a section where she ran around without her suit.
Your mom must be tech savvier than mine because mine can't even figure out how to move a file with drag and drop, she wouldn't be able to edit a DVD without assistance no matter what OS you put in front of her. I could probably put any OS in front of her, as long as it has a GUI with buttons labelled after the things she wants to do (email, writing, browsing) it'd be all the same to her.
[car analogy warning]
Back when Ford introduced the Model T there was no such thing as ABS or an automatic gearshift and the T lacked many basic features like seatbelts but if you built a car like that today noone sane would buy it.It may not have been standard that long ago but now it has become standard.
Now that all new consoles are offering backwards compatibility that can and probably will indeed be a deciding factor for potential early adopters. Sure, few use that feature but that doesn't mean people won't change their buying decisions because of it. It sounds better on paper and Joe Sixpack who's buying the system for EA Sports games anyway will prefer the system that sounds the best to him in the store, not what countless reviews say on the matter.
Or you can install another OS (Linux, BSD, BeOS, OS/2, whatever you fancy) to dualboot on your PC so you don't have to pay 500$ for 200$ worth of computer.
I thought he meant hard-to-counterfeit paper like the stuff that's used for banknotes?
Anyone care to diff that to the list of all XBox games to see which ones are missing?
But the computation costs (at least those that are influenced by the resolution, transformation and lighting doesn't get more demanding in HiDef) aren't per scanline but per pixel so talking only about scanlines is ignoring a part of the problem.
Bomberman and Smash Bros are hardly current but if you're willing to go back a bit, sure, there's 10 player Bomberman supporting both local and networked players, Serious Sam with splitscreen + network, games like Worms that don't need more than one controller and tons of fighting games (if you google for the manufacturer names you'll find downloadable demo versions for most, Melty Blood and Eternal Fighter Zero are the highest profile ones). Plus all those freeware versions of pretty simple games like Tetris, Bust-a-Move, etc that are probably even included in your Linux distro.
Of course there aren't as many of them as there are for the consoles but there aren't as many PC games (if we ignore cheap moneygrab junk that apparently doesn't even get sold in stores in the US) as there are console games anyway.
And hell, it's not like there's a major investment required to make a simple PC game for youself and your buddies.
All of those are or were platform "neutral". Doesn't mean they won't favour one platform or that their best games won't end up on one specific system.
Sure there is a PSN.
Excuse me? Nintendo isn't making money from NES games? Have you looked into the gameboy section of a game store lately? Those "NES Classics" cartridges? And what about their plan to offer a for-pay ROM download service for the Revolution?
Copyright assigned to corporations is treated differently since corporations don't tend to die of age.
I don't play RPGs for the gameplay, but rather the story. I don't care about the gameplay as long as it doesn't get in the way.
In the case of Final Fantasy it got in the way quite often.
Regarding minigames, I onsider that one of the parts where Final Fantasy could learn from Anachronox:
"Oh dear, looks like you failed that minigame! Want to try again?"
[Yes]
[No]
[Can't we pretend I made it?]
Another part is handling the levelling of party members that aren't in the active party (I'd prefer if you could have all characters in play all the time), in Final Fantasy useless characters tend to be ignored and become more and more useless with each battle.
I welcome the change. I have played only three FF games and I'm already tired of the repetitive formula. These days the bar for what qualifies as good combat is miles higher than it was back when FF first appeared. They've been changing the levelling system like mad to prevent the formula from becoming even more stale but at some point (eleven main games into the franchise sounds like a good point, even Capcom changed the Megaman formula quicker than that) the basic gameplay concepts need to see some changes. Since the story on japanese RPGs tends to be pretty samey overall and the number of worthwile variations on the same old "guy meets shy girl, fights villain, world gets destroyed, hero defeats villain and all is good" story that aren't done is rapidly shrinking there needs to be some focus on the other parts of the game.
Chrono Trigger wasn't exactly a NES game. After the NES there was no technical reason to keep the transitions but they did because it was part of what defined the gameplay.
Sad but true: I had a classmate who looks like Tidus. And another one with an uncanny resemblance to the Toxic Avenger...
I take issue with your terminology, traditional RPGs are either pen & paper or the early computer RPGs, all of which are much more freeform than the average japanese RPG. There's nothing traditional about single-pathed movie-driven RPGs.