This is easily solved with a decent audio/video amplifier ($200 for a good one, you can get better of course but $200 these days will get you something that can do Dolby Digital EX and Pro Logic II). These cost a fraction of the cost of a good TV, and less than any game console. In my case, even that's not enough...I have to have 2 switch boxes too (1 for video/s-video, one for component). If you want to forego the amp, you can get decent video/S-video switch boxes for around $30 and decent component ones for around $60-$70. Although, if you want to have something better for sound than the speakers on your TV, you'll need the amp anyway. Being able to hook lots of devices up to it is just a bonus.
Mine went through two update cycles once I got it hooked up...both seemed to go through okay. However, I did notice a couple weird things...if I go into the wireless config and use "test connection" from there, it tells me that it was successful, then asks if I want to do a firmware update, with code 62112. If I say ok, it doesn't even try and immediately fails. However, if I go to the main firmware update option, it works fine, it tells me no update is necessary as I have the latest version. I cannot access the online store though...if I try it connects to the first part, then takes a LOOOONG time and eventually gives me a 209600 error. Nintendo's search page for errors doesn't work (go button does nothing, Firefox on 3 different computers), so I can't search for it. The wireless router is on channel 11 already (we set it to that when we set up the wireless network because it was one of the few channels that wasn't heavily used). Everything seems to work connection-wise, I just can't get into the online store.
Heavy water by itself would be totally useless for any type of bomb. It'd be about as useful as ordinary water. A fusion bomb requires a rather large fission bomb as the trigger, as there is no way to create a fusion chain reaction without a great deal of energy input.
Because your cells regulate the amount of water and salt in them via osmosis. If there's too much salt, draw water in...if there's too little, push water out. The barrier is very sensitive to the weight of the water. Heavy water weighs more than regular water because of the extra neutron in the hydrogen atom. This messes with the cell's water regulation mechanism. However, the good news is, the water in your system has to have a significant percentage of heavy water (something like 50%) to really have much effect. You'd basically have to drink nothing but heavy water for a week to really get any effect. It's not radioactive, and it's chemically the same as water (though heavier isotopes always react/move more slowly due to their additional weight). It's the osmosis mechanism that gets thrown off, our cells are adapted to use regular water for osmosis.
They called it a DVD drive because it is a DVD drive. It's pretty much the same thing as the DVD-ROM in your computer. Just putting a DVD drive in your computer isn't going to give you the ability to play DVD movies, you'd have to have some sort of DVD player software. You can read the files off of the disk, but if you don't have an MPEG2 decoder, they're just going to be files. I personally don't see the need to have the Wii be able to play DVD movies. It's a game console...if I really want to play DVD movies, the local grocery store has progressive scan DVD players for $28, and these will be better for movies than any game console. It's not like it is when the PS2 first came out, when DVD players were still relatively expensive (and thus having DVD playback on the PS2 was helpful).
I got mine through the two necessary updates successfully. The internet connection seems to be working fine, but I do get a timeout error when I try to access the VC shop. However, I think this is due to a problem at the server end, because I was able to get both firmware updates successfully. The internet connection itself tested fine once I got the WEP key put in, and I can get to anything but the VC shop.
I normally read Slashdot a couple times a day, but I spent the entire day yesterday playing Twilight Princess, until it was time for bed, without even turning on my computer. Maybe everyone that would either write or read such an article was too busy actually playing with the system.;) I only had to "camp" for an hour and a half at Toys 'R Us yesterday morning to get one (though I almost didn't, I got the next to the last one). Amusingly enough, the other campers didn't look anything like the typical (PS3) camping crowd...there were moms with kids. The guy in front of me was an older white-haired guy with his grandson.
No kidding! I went into Best Buy last night to see if they'd have the Wii component cable on Sunday (they will), while I was waiting for my wife to get off of work at the Waffle House next door...they had a PS3 demo set up. I had heard about how flimsy the controller feels, so I picked it up. They had a magnet and a cord attached to it (probably so noone would try to walk off with it), and it was STILL too light. Actually, that's not the right word, light just implies lack of weight. It felt cheap and flimsy. It seems like the type of thing that will fall apart in 5 minutes. I can't possibly see how the "motion sensors" in this thing could possibly be of any use whatsoever. The Dual Shock was just not meant to be played while tilted, so using the tilt sensors would make pretty much everything else on the controller useless while you were tilting it. They would've been better off just making it use the standard Dual Shock 2 (even if they wanted it to be wireless)...but they just HAD to go and try to copy Nintendo.
Composite and S-video can only do 480i. The only way to do 480p (or better) is with component, DVI, or HDMI (which is DVI + audio + crap DRM + new connector)
Actually, I remember the early PS2 "online" reports from Sony (before it was launched). They claimed that they were going to a ethernet/broadband only online service (not even offering a modem), because their PS2 online service would be so awesome that a modem couldn't possibly handle it. Obviously, Sony never even *made* any type of online service themselves...and only a few games ever used the ethernet adapter (which was not even built in until the new slimline PS2 game out). It was really just a lame marketing attempt to defame the Dreamcast, which was "inferior" because it had a modem.
For some reason that makes me think of the beginning of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where Jim Carrey was masquerading as a UPS delivery guy and abusing the hell out of that package "accidentally". I bet UPS loved that scene.
That's a thought! I had completely forgotten about K-mart. There's a K-mart and a Micro Center right next to each other about 5 miles from my apartment. Target is also an idea. I'm sure I'll be able to pick up a Wii on launch day if I go to one of those places.
All the Wal-marts around here are 24-hour. I'm off the 18th and the 19th, so I can just head up there around 8-10pm or so and wait by the games. There's a Wal-mart very close to where I live, and 3 others (all 24 hours) within 15 miles.
True...backward compatibility is never perfect. But I'm sure it'll be better than PS2/PS1 backward compatibility...and even that wasn't that bad. I never had a problem getting any of my PS1 games to run, and except for a slight sound glitch in Xenogears and a slight graphic glitch in another of my PS1 games (don't even remember which), I didn't have any problems. I'm sure the Wii will fare better in that regard...as it's much more architecturally similar to the GC than the PS2 was to the PS1.
Yeah, I wish people would quit saying the Wii is just an overclocked Gamecube, as it is very far from that. All you have to do is look to the main CPU to know...the GC uses a PPC4xx variant, while the Wii uses a PPC750 variant. There's a huge difference here, the PPC4xx was more of an embedded processor...the 750 is a full blown desktop processor. It can handle (I believe) 2 more integer operations per clock than the 4xx, it has an Altivec unit (which Gekko did not), and it's around 20-30% more efficient per clock than the Gekko (from Nintendo's own estimate). On top of that, it's clocked at somewhere between 800 MHz and 1 Ghz...so saying it's 3-4x more powerful than Gekko is about right, and probably conservative. I'm sure the GPU is better than the GC's by about that amount. Is it as big of a jump in processor power as PS2-PS3 or Xbox-360? No...but it's a definite improvement on the Gamecube in every way. Plus it has lots more RAM and lots more disk space due to DVD9.
Yes, and it's rumored that he was made that way because Miyamoto himself is left handed, and he made the character. Apparently there has been a bit of an uproar about Link being right handed in this game, but since most people (even me, left handed myself) will hold the Wii-mote in their right hand, it was a lot less awkward for Link's sword hand to match. I read an interview, Miyamoto himself also holds the Wii-mote in his right hand, and he was the one who suggested this change. I'm left handed and holding the Wii-mote with my left hand and using the nunchuck with my right would be awkward as hell, I've always used my left hand for the joystick/whatever moves the character around. I play Hunters in right hand stylus mode for this reason.
I dunno about that...I'm left handed, and it's much more natural for me to hold the nunchuck in my left hand. I'm terrible at manipulating thumbsticks and moving a character around with my right hand. However, hitting buttons and pointing isn't nearly as hard, so the Wiimote can be used in my right hand without much difficulty. Oddly enough, it's easier for me to play Hunters using right hand stylus mode, even though I'm left handed, because even though holding the stylus with my right hand is a bit awkward, it's a lot more awkward to try to use my right thumb to move the Samus around.
That reminds me of the stress testing I've seen done on both the Gamecube and the GBA. The Gamecube stress test I remember they dropped it a few times and really banged it up and it still worked. The GBA they did all kinds of things to...dropping it onto a hard surface repeatedly, extinguishing cigarettes on it, and even throwing it in the toilet and flushing it. After all of that, the GBA still worked...the only problems were some scratches on the screen. I've had my Gamecube since launch and it still works perfectly. I will be giving it away once the Wii comes out though...no point in keeping the GC since the Wii is backward compatible.
This is why the only consoles I'll buy at launch any more are Nintendo. I've never had any problems with any Nintendo systems. I didn't get a PS2 until the 50000 series came out (this is when they dropped the price to $179, the 50000 is the one with the quieter fan, built in IR receiver, and progressive scan DVD support)...and I didn't get an Xbox until they stopped making them (I got one just before they became impossible to find used). I'll probably do the same with the PS3. I don't think I'll ever get a 360 because thus far it has nothing that interests me.
Finally! Someone else who notices that just because the GC and Wii both use IBM-developed PPC chips doesn't mean that they're the same thing. My older computer and my newer gaming computer both use AMD-developed x86 chips (K6-3 on one, Athlon XP on the other). While I don't expect the jump from GC to Wii will be as drastic as 450 MHz K6-3 to 2.2 GHz Athlon XP, it is rather significantly improved. As it was, the GC's 480 MHz PPC was able to routinely beat the Intel 733 that the Xbox had in most things. The only real limits the GC had were memory and disk space. It only had 40MB of RAM (and only 24 of that was high speed) compared to 64 for the Xbox, and yet it was still able to keep up with the Xbox and even beat it in some things. The GC's real limiter was the disk space, you can only stuff so much onto a mini-DVD. The Wii fixes both problems...lots more RAM than the GC, much more disk space due to using DVD9, and plus it has a significantly more powerful main CPU. They haven't stated details on the GPU yet, but since the GC used something on par with the Radeon 7500 I have in my old computer...I'm expecting "Hollywood" to be at least on par with a Radeon 9700.
I'm not really interested in the sports game to be honest...I don't need another controller (or at least I won't for quite awhile) as I'm more into games like Metroid and Zelda and much less into games like Smash Bros. And actually, I neglected to mention one other thing I'll need with the system: either a component or DVI cable.
MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html) will play both Quicktime and WMV files. It also has a Mozilla plugin that works very well. I haven't yet found any video on a website I haven't been able to play with it.
Yeah...basically my Athlon XP 3200+ is just a smaller, faster version of the original Athlon (which was in the 600 MHz range iirc)...oh noes! That means my processor isn't any better than the 600 MHz one that was released in 2000! Also keep in mind that Nintendo is realistic with their performance numbers. When they released the number of polygons/sec that the GC was capable of, that was in a *real game*, with full hardware lights and 8 texture layers (basically what the hardware is capable of in one clock cycle). I think it was somewhere in the 12 million/sec range. When Sony said the PS2 could do 75 million/sec, that was wire frame (no textures or shading), all polygons the same shape and size. In real game performance, the PS2 fell significantly behind the GC for this reason. The PS2 video chip is not a GPU (doesn't do hardware transform or lighting, has to be handled by the main CPU), and it does not handle multitexturing at all. It has to do a separate rendering pass for every texture layer, while the GC could do 8 in one clock cycle (with S3TC to reduce memory bandwidth requirements)...the Xbox could do 4 in one clock cycle. Both the GC and Xbox have full GPU's (hardware transform/lighting). Anyway, the point of all this is Nintendo is saying (using their conservative estimates of what can be done in a real game) the Wii will be about 3x more powerful than the Gamecube. They're not talking about what's possible in a tech demo. Sure, it won't be as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, but it also doesn't have to do HD resolutions. The games will look every bit as good as the other two systems on a non-HDTV...and even so, 480p does not look bad at all, and with a little antialiasing to smooth things out HD at this time does not justify the additional expense for the hardware capable of rendering it. I somehow doubt that Twilight Princess or Metroid Prime 3 will be any worse considering they don't run in HD.
Hopefully not. I'm not going for that bundle nonsense...usually that's just Gamestop anyway. I want 2 things: the system, and Twilight Princess. If someone tries to make me buy something else, I'll just take my business elsewhere. I think my best chance for getting one will be Target.
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This is easily solved with a decent audio/video amplifier ($200 for a good one, you can get better of course but $200 these days will get you something that can do Dolby Digital EX and Pro Logic II). These cost a fraction of the cost of a good TV, and less than any game console. In my case, even that's not enough...I have to have 2 switch boxes too (1 for video/s-video, one for component). If you want to forego the amp, you can get decent video/S-video switch boxes for around $30 and decent component ones for around $60-$70. Although, if you want to have something better for sound than the speakers on your TV, you'll need the amp anyway. Being able to hook lots of devices up to it is just a bonus.
Mine went through two update cycles once I got it hooked up...both seemed to go through okay. However, I did notice a couple weird things...if I go into the wireless config and use "test connection" from there, it tells me that it was successful, then asks if I want to do a firmware update, with code 62112. If I say ok, it doesn't even try and immediately fails. However, if I go to the main firmware update option, it works fine, it tells me no update is necessary as I have the latest version. I cannot access the online store though...if I try it connects to the first part, then takes a LOOOONG time and eventually gives me a 209600 error. Nintendo's search page for errors doesn't work (go button does nothing, Firefox on 3 different computers), so I can't search for it. The wireless router is on channel 11 already (we set it to that when we set up the wireless network because it was one of the few channels that wasn't heavily used). Everything seems to work connection-wise, I just can't get into the online store.
IIRC, the Wii only supports 802.11b. This would explain why G-only doesn't work.
Heavy water by itself would be totally useless for any type of bomb. It'd be about as useful as ordinary water. A fusion bomb requires a rather large fission bomb as the trigger, as there is no way to create a fusion chain reaction without a great deal of energy input.
Because your cells regulate the amount of water and salt in them via osmosis. If there's too much salt, draw water in...if there's too little, push water out. The barrier is very sensitive to the weight of the water. Heavy water weighs more than regular water because of the extra neutron in the hydrogen atom. This messes with the cell's water regulation mechanism. However, the good news is, the water in your system has to have a significant percentage of heavy water (something like 50%) to really have much effect. You'd basically have to drink nothing but heavy water for a week to really get any effect. It's not radioactive, and it's chemically the same as water (though heavier isotopes always react/move more slowly due to their additional weight). It's the osmosis mechanism that gets thrown off, our cells are adapted to use regular water for osmosis.
They called it a DVD drive because it is a DVD drive. It's pretty much the same thing as the DVD-ROM in your computer. Just putting a DVD drive in your computer isn't going to give you the ability to play DVD movies, you'd have to have some sort of DVD player software. You can read the files off of the disk, but if you don't have an MPEG2 decoder, they're just going to be files. I personally don't see the need to have the Wii be able to play DVD movies. It's a game console...if I really want to play DVD movies, the local grocery store has progressive scan DVD players for $28, and these will be better for movies than any game console. It's not like it is when the PS2 first came out, when DVD players were still relatively expensive (and thus having DVD playback on the PS2 was helpful).
I got mine through the two necessary updates successfully. The internet connection seems to be working fine, but I do get a timeout error when I try to access the VC shop. However, I think this is due to a problem at the server end, because I was able to get both firmware updates successfully. The internet connection itself tested fine once I got the WEP key put in, and I can get to anything but the VC shop.
I normally read Slashdot a couple times a day, but I spent the entire day yesterday playing Twilight Princess, until it was time for bed, without even turning on my computer. Maybe everyone that would either write or read such an article was too busy actually playing with the system. ;) I only had to "camp" for an hour and a half at Toys 'R Us yesterday morning to get one (though I almost didn't, I got the next to the last one). Amusingly enough, the other campers didn't look anything like the typical (PS3) camping crowd...there were moms with kids. The guy in front of me was an older white-haired guy with his grandson.
No kidding! I went into Best Buy last night to see if they'd have the Wii component cable on Sunday (they will), while I was waiting for my wife to get off of work at the Waffle House next door...they had a PS3 demo set up. I had heard about how flimsy the controller feels, so I picked it up. They had a magnet and a cord attached to it (probably so noone would try to walk off with it), and it was STILL too light. Actually, that's not the right word, light just implies lack of weight. It felt cheap and flimsy. It seems like the type of thing that will fall apart in 5 minutes. I can't possibly see how the "motion sensors" in this thing could possibly be of any use whatsoever. The Dual Shock was just not meant to be played while tilted, so using the tilt sensors would make pretty much everything else on the controller useless while you were tilting it. They would've been better off just making it use the standard Dual Shock 2 (even if they wanted it to be wireless)...but they just HAD to go and try to copy Nintendo.
Composite and S-video can only do 480i. The only way to do 480p (or better) is with component, DVI, or HDMI (which is DVI + audio + crap DRM + new connector)
Actually, I remember the early PS2 "online" reports from Sony (before it was launched). They claimed that they were going to a ethernet/broadband only online service (not even offering a modem), because their PS2 online service would be so awesome that a modem couldn't possibly handle it. Obviously, Sony never even *made* any type of online service themselves...and only a few games ever used the ethernet adapter (which was not even built in until the new slimline PS2 game out). It was really just a lame marketing attempt to defame the Dreamcast, which was "inferior" because it had a modem.
For some reason that makes me think of the beginning of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where Jim Carrey was masquerading as a UPS delivery guy and abusing the hell out of that package "accidentally". I bet UPS loved that scene.
That's a thought! I had completely forgotten about K-mart. There's a K-mart and a Micro Center right next to each other about 5 miles from my apartment. Target is also an idea. I'm sure I'll be able to pick up a Wii on launch day if I go to one of those places.
All the Wal-marts around here are 24-hour. I'm off the 18th and the 19th, so I can just head up there around 8-10pm or so and wait by the games. There's a Wal-mart very close to where I live, and 3 others (all 24 hours) within 15 miles.
True...backward compatibility is never perfect. But I'm sure it'll be better than PS2/PS1 backward compatibility...and even that wasn't that bad. I never had a problem getting any of my PS1 games to run, and except for a slight sound glitch in Xenogears and a slight graphic glitch in another of my PS1 games (don't even remember which), I didn't have any problems. I'm sure the Wii will fare better in that regard...as it's much more architecturally similar to the GC than the PS2 was to the PS1.
Yeah, I wish people would quit saying the Wii is just an overclocked Gamecube, as it is very far from that. All you have to do is look to the main CPU to know...the GC uses a PPC4xx variant, while the Wii uses a PPC750 variant. There's a huge difference here, the PPC4xx was more of an embedded processor...the 750 is a full blown desktop processor. It can handle (I believe) 2 more integer operations per clock than the 4xx, it has an Altivec unit (which Gekko did not), and it's around 20-30% more efficient per clock than the Gekko (from Nintendo's own estimate). On top of that, it's clocked at somewhere between 800 MHz and 1 Ghz...so saying it's 3-4x more powerful than Gekko is about right, and probably conservative. I'm sure the GPU is better than the GC's by about that amount. Is it as big of a jump in processor power as PS2-PS3 or Xbox-360? No...but it's a definite improvement on the Gamecube in every way. Plus it has lots more RAM and lots more disk space due to DVD9.
Yes, and it's rumored that he was made that way because Miyamoto himself is left handed, and he made the character. Apparently there has been a bit of an uproar about Link being right handed in this game, but since most people (even me, left handed myself) will hold the Wii-mote in their right hand, it was a lot less awkward for Link's sword hand to match. I read an interview, Miyamoto himself also holds the Wii-mote in his right hand, and he was the one who suggested this change. I'm left handed and holding the Wii-mote with my left hand and using the nunchuck with my right would be awkward as hell, I've always used my left hand for the joystick/whatever moves the character around. I play Hunters in right hand stylus mode for this reason.
I dunno about that...I'm left handed, and it's much more natural for me to hold the nunchuck in my left hand. I'm terrible at manipulating thumbsticks and moving a character around with my right hand. However, hitting buttons and pointing isn't nearly as hard, so the Wiimote can be used in my right hand without much difficulty. Oddly enough, it's easier for me to play Hunters using right hand stylus mode, even though I'm left handed, because even though holding the stylus with my right hand is a bit awkward, it's a lot more awkward to try to use my right thumb to move the Samus around.
That reminds me of the stress testing I've seen done on both the Gamecube and the GBA. The Gamecube stress test I remember they dropped it a few times and really banged it up and it still worked. The GBA they did all kinds of things to...dropping it onto a hard surface repeatedly, extinguishing cigarettes on it, and even throwing it in the toilet and flushing it. After all of that, the GBA still worked...the only problems were some scratches on the screen. I've had my Gamecube since launch and it still works perfectly. I will be giving it away once the Wii comes out though...no point in keeping the GC since the Wii is backward compatible.
This is why the only consoles I'll buy at launch any more are Nintendo. I've never had any problems with any Nintendo systems. I didn't get a PS2 until the 50000 series came out (this is when they dropped the price to $179, the 50000 is the one with the quieter fan, built in IR receiver, and progressive scan DVD support)...and I didn't get an Xbox until they stopped making them (I got one just before they became impossible to find used). I'll probably do the same with the PS3. I don't think I'll ever get a 360 because thus far it has nothing that interests me.
Finally! Someone else who notices that just because the GC and Wii both use IBM-developed PPC chips doesn't mean that they're the same thing. My older computer and my newer gaming computer both use AMD-developed x86 chips (K6-3 on one, Athlon XP on the other). While I don't expect the jump from GC to Wii will be as drastic as 450 MHz K6-3 to 2.2 GHz Athlon XP, it is rather significantly improved. As it was, the GC's 480 MHz PPC was able to routinely beat the Intel 733 that the Xbox had in most things. The only real limits the GC had were memory and disk space. It only had 40MB of RAM (and only 24 of that was high speed) compared to 64 for the Xbox, and yet it was still able to keep up with the Xbox and even beat it in some things. The GC's real limiter was the disk space, you can only stuff so much onto a mini-DVD. The Wii fixes both problems...lots more RAM than the GC, much more disk space due to using DVD9, and plus it has a significantly more powerful main CPU. They haven't stated details on the GPU yet, but since the GC used something on par with the Radeon 7500 I have in my old computer...I'm expecting "Hollywood" to be at least on par with a Radeon 9700.
I'm not really interested in the sports game to be honest...I don't need another controller (or at least I won't for quite awhile) as I'm more into games like Metroid and Zelda and much less into games like Smash Bros. And actually, I neglected to mention one other thing I'll need with the system: either a component or DVI cable.
MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html) will play both Quicktime and WMV files. It also has a Mozilla plugin that works very well. I haven't yet found any video on a website I haven't been able to play with it.
Yeah...basically my Athlon XP 3200+ is just a smaller, faster version of the original Athlon (which was in the 600 MHz range iirc)...oh noes! That means my processor isn't any better than the 600 MHz one that was released in 2000! Also keep in mind that Nintendo is realistic with their performance numbers. When they released the number of polygons/sec that the GC was capable of, that was in a *real game*, with full hardware lights and 8 texture layers (basically what the hardware is capable of in one clock cycle). I think it was somewhere in the 12 million/sec range. When Sony said the PS2 could do 75 million/sec, that was wire frame (no textures or shading), all polygons the same shape and size. In real game performance, the PS2 fell significantly behind the GC for this reason. The PS2 video chip is not a GPU (doesn't do hardware transform or lighting, has to be handled by the main CPU), and it does not handle multitexturing at all. It has to do a separate rendering pass for every texture layer, while the GC could do 8 in one clock cycle (with S3TC to reduce memory bandwidth requirements)...the Xbox could do 4 in one clock cycle. Both the GC and Xbox have full GPU's (hardware transform/lighting). Anyway, the point of all this is Nintendo is saying (using their conservative estimates of what can be done in a real game) the Wii will be about 3x more powerful than the Gamecube. They're not talking about what's possible in a tech demo. Sure, it won't be as powerful as the 360 or the PS3, but it also doesn't have to do HD resolutions. The games will look every bit as good as the other two systems on a non-HDTV...and even so, 480p does not look bad at all, and with a little antialiasing to smooth things out HD at this time does not justify the additional expense for the hardware capable of rendering it. I somehow doubt that Twilight Princess or Metroid Prime 3 will be any worse considering they don't run in HD.
Hopefully not. I'm not going for that bundle nonsense...usually that's just Gamestop anyway. I want 2 things: the system, and Twilight Princess. If someone tries to make me buy something else, I'll just take my business elsewhere. I think my best chance for getting one will be Target.