That would be true if using the Wiimote required anything like swinging your arms in circles... or even if REAL swordplay is anything like swinging your arms in circles. I've taken some fencing, and I can tell you, there's no swinging involved. The only swordplay that ever required any swinging at all were two-handed broadswords, and even then the slashing wasn't as obtuse as flailing. Look at Link, he's got a one-handed sword. Even the master sword, which is somewhat fashioned to look like a broadsword, is weilded as a light, one-handed sword.
A small little flick of the rist translates into a huge motion at the tip of the sword. There will be NO whole arm swinging (unless you're compelled to... which I could see once in a while being a bit fun).
Also, ever played Tennis? Now there's arm swinging, and the average match is at least a good 45 minutes... some have gone as long as 6 hours (Jimmy Conars' vs. Jim Courier, for instance). This is ping-pong, in comparison... a sport played by college students in lounges for hours on end. I don't think fatigue is going to be a problem.
Very lightweight... at least good ones anyway. Modern courtswords are extremely light and have proven to be the more effective, historically, than broadswords and other two-handed blades. It's a myth that broadswords were extremely heavy... sure, they're heavier than rapiers, but even a Scottish Claymoor isn't really all that hard to handle. You always see Hollywood making it look like they were hard to even lift... that's a total myth, they were not very heavy. People use to battle with them for hours on end...
Now we're talking about a 6", hollow piece of plastic... really really light.
I dunno, man, I just started a brand new game of WW last night, and went through the whole sword-fighting tutorial. I'm starting to see why Nintendo would want to move away from that, the whole button combos thing is starting to feel almost as confusing as a Metal Gear Solid control setup. Now thankfully WW is a fairly easy game, at least on the action end of things, so you're really not required to memorize all the different sword slashes, but if you really wanted to play with them while fighting enemies, it's a real pain in the ass. I mean, even simple things like whether to do a simple sword slash, a jab, an overhead slash, or a jumping slash gets hard to remember, and usually the button scheme has little to do with the actual movement, so you pretty much have to memorize it, which means it'll take a half a second or so to recall how to do it, and in the middle of a nice sword battle, you don't have time for that. I think swordplay with the Wiimote should be much more tactile, the gestures will be much more representative of the actual sword motions than simply hitting a combination of buttons, so sword dueling should be much more fun and involved this time around.
Fatigue shouldn't be a problem. Zelda games tend to only have intense sword battles in short spurts, most of the series is about problem solving, anyway. I could imagine fatigue being an issue in, say, a Wii-based Ninja Giaden, but even then, the controller is very lightweight, and as other people have pointed out, even real-life sword technique requires very little wrist motion. A few degrees of wrist motion translates to a few feet at the other end of the sword. I did about a semester of fencing... I was pretty bad at it, but it's really not a very tiring sport, in the least. The most tiring thing about it is probably the weight of the protective gear.
To be honest, addiction doesn't require a physical dependence. One can be addicted to computers, games, or internet without having a real physical dependance on it. The article states that It's not well understood what structural features are responsible for the addictive properties of morphine, but I would assume it's something chemical related. They're trying to reduce the addictive quality of strong pain killers, not remove it, as they said: But it is possible they have found a key to a kinder morphinelike drug that would have potential medicinal applications.
What you described isn't an addiction, what you described is defenitely a dependancy, or habit-forming activity, which may or may not be just as harmful in the long-run as an addiction. But the actual definition of an addiction is a physical/chemical dependancy. Computer Games, Marijuana, even some every-day things like playing music, can become habit-forming, psychological dependancies, but none are addictions. Addictions include withdrawl symptoms, which psychological dependancies do not. If I stop playing video games for a few weeks, it might feel a little strange, I might miss it for a while, but I'm not going to start vomitting, getting massive headaches, and feeling physically ill.
The additional problem is that chemical addictions usually also form psychological dependancies, because of their regularity and supposed "neccessity" in a person's life. For this reason, addictions are usually doubly as potent a problem as plain-old psychological dependancies.
Well, a cure is only temporary if everyone is required to, and able to take the vaccination. The way it's looking now, AIDS suppressing drugs are getting good enough that in a few decades, it will be able to keep people alive and moderately healthy until they die of old age anyway. And by that time, if this vaccine works out and is properly administered, there will be no new cases to "cure". Many times, funding for cures dies when a prevention is found... I was hoping we would find a cure FIRST, because usually preventative menthods are cheeper, and will still be researched well after a cure is found... but how it's looking right now, if the vaccine works out, and you currently have HIV, you're pretty much fucked... except that, again, AIDS supressing drugs are getting better and better each year. People are starting to live decades with HIV without getting AIDS, now. Unfortunately, this success is only seen in developed nations, and mostly within people who can afford state-of-the-art medication. I can't begin to imagine the difficulty in maintaining health insurance if you have HIV.
Not if they have a 50% chance of dieing anyway. And I wasn't talking about a "study", I was talking about it actually being put to use. If this vaccine is thrown out or put on hold because it kills 10% of patience, this will be a real shame (not to mention, unethical), because it means a 90% chance of people living in some regions where only 50% of them have a chance. Sometimes I feel the only reason trial phases go on is because researchers are covering their own arses. We could be out there saving people right now, and then perfecting the vaccine as we go. Right now... PEOPLE ARE DIEING. They're going to die anyway. At least give them a chance!
BTW: Does this work on people who have contracted HIV, but where it hasn't turned into AIDS yet?
C'mon. This was taken from an interview that came out about a week after Brawl's big (and only) announcement. And with the original announcement was the idea that there would be a poll to see what everyone (in Japan)'s favorite characters were to be put in Brawl. If I remember, Sonic had over 50% of the vote, followed by Megaman and Ridley (along with a few others).
Basically, Sonic's inclusion is totally insured. Nintendo pretty much HAS to do it now, or risk looking like the poll was a total scam. At this point, Sonic probably has a better chance of making it in then, say, Zelda (who I really hope stays, as well). So I wish we would drop it already. He's going to be in, period, whether you like him or not (I'm kinda indifferent, though I think he does fit in wonderfully with the franchise).
They're not going to announce his inclusion until just before the game is released, you can count on that... because it's quite possibly the hottest debate out of ANY regarding the makeup of Nintendos soon to be released games, and announcing him will kill the suspense for Brawl.
I just hope they don't include TOO many new characters, and aren't afraid of getting rid of some old ones (trading out characters like Pichu, Mewtwo, Marth, Roy, and Falco and giving other characters in their respective series a chance), or the game will likely become unbalanced.
But seriously, as a huge RPG fan, I'm all for putting a lid on RPG characters in the Smash Bros series. I'd hate to see it turn into "Final Fantasy Bros", as Nintendo is forced by fans to throw in every FF series character known to man. Not that I have any problem with the FF series, but there's so much bad blood between fans of the various games and eras, you're just bound to piss off a lot of people. I'd say just totally stay away from the slippery slope of non-Nintendo RPG characters (Nes, you're cool, you can stay).
Also, unfortunately, Skies is such a cult game, it wouldn't really be much of a boon for Nintendo to include anyone from the game. Which makes me sad, because I wanted to see a sequal:(
I love ChronoTrigger, but this is just a BAD IDEA! If you introduce one Square RPG character, a good 90% of Square RPG fans are going to be yelling, "why not Terra from FF6, why not Cecil from FF4... (gulp) why not Cloud from FF7?!!!", and thus begins WWIII. Suddenly you open up the series to becoming "Final Fantasy Bros", and as much as I like the FF series, and Square's other RPGs, there are WAY too many characters, there's way too many hot-issues, including a lot of bad blood between fans of games like FF7 and FF8... And you're headed down a slippery slope. I love Final Fantasy, I love ChronoTrigger... but keep it out of Smash Bros! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
BetaMAX, dude, not BetaCAM. BetaMAX is a composite, based, system, just like VHS, it just tended to produced cleaner video results and better audio. BetaCAM is what you're thinking of, which is a professional grade (I still use it at the TV station where I work), componant (RGB) based video system.
You can be SURE that this had been done previously. This is just phase 1 of the HUMAN trial. There were probably hundreds of smaller tests done previously, on various lab animals, human blood samples, etc. They only start human trials when they know, to a certain extent, that there is a very low risk of infection or death due to the vaccine.
This is VERY promising. Just think about it... HIV is an INCURABLE disease, which kills %100 of it's victims. As of now, 49 people out of 49, were infected with HIV and didn't catch it. It may just be preliminary results, but this is very very good. There are millions dieing on a contant south-east of ours, of whome this vaccine will save. I'm suprised that it's taken a year and a half for the reports of phase 1 to move along. I hope that Phases 2 and 3 are MUCH MUCH shorter. I would expect them to have a moral obligation to get this thing through the system as quickly as possible. Hell, even if it outright KILLED 10% of patients, remember that about 50% of people in Africa have AIDS and are going to die... those are MUCH better odds.
But it still seems a little bare-bones to me. There doesn't seem to be many formatting options... not even a ruler. I'm a little miffed that there's no customization what-so-ever.
Oh well, I'm the guy that thinks that everyone should write their documents in a propper page-layout program, like InDesign, or use a simple RTF edittor for the rest. I really hate DOC, ODF, and all these bastardized rtf/page-layout hybrids, anyway... so I'll probably just stick to using TextEdit and InDesign, like I always have. Unfortunately, work is exclusively Microsoft based (and I refuse to use Publisher), so I'm forced to use Word... so maybe once Writely matures a little, I'll switch to it.
I think you've got it a little wrong. Apple isn't benefitting from U2 because people particularly like their music (I do), or because people are buying the U2 iPod, but because people respect them, and they see in them a vitality that they'd like to be associated with. Apple, in extension, is then viewed as having some of that vitality, too. One of Apple's largest demographics is the artistic/creative types, which include a lot of activists. Getting U2 on their side is a big way of appealing to them, without having to get political, and pissing off other demographics. The U2 iPod is ugly, yes... and I don't think many people bought it, but that really wasn't the point, was it? It was just a symbol of the supposed "connection" between Apple and U2.
You have unique friends. The reason it works so well is because of it's built-in accelaration detection. It isn't just "once around means 10 lines", the faster you turn it, the faster still it scrolls. In it's ability to pick one song, accurately, out of a list of 500, no other interface comes close to the speed the scroll wheel can handle, period.
Actually, they're even better... they're nostolgic, which is probably a much stronger image to have, to be a spokesman. When you're new, cool, and hip, the kiddies want to listen to your music, but they don't neccessarily trust you so well as a person. Once you "last" for a while, you gain their trust as someone will talent and class.
It also doesn't hurt to be named Time's "Man of the Year" shortly after being used as the spokesman, either.
Sure, but before Sony came out with the Walkman, they had positioned themselves as a hip, agile, youthful company. Their name was only starting to be common-place in the US, and everyone was willing to give them a shot. When they presented themselves in this light, noone had any reason not to believe them to be just that. By the time the discman came out, and the facade had fallen off to reveal a large corporation, their brand recognition was so huge that it propelled them forward.
This is VERY different. Microsoft's image is inexcapable. They've pulled a good race out of the console wars because: A) they signed good game contracts, B) the video game demographic is much closer to the computer elite demographic, where Microsoft already has substantial force. This is a totally new area, a completely different demographic, you're main target is going to be the centralized "in" crowd of teens, who even the "coolest" video games are lost to. A quick advertising campaign isn't going to turn this around, this kind of image takes years to build... and they haven't even started building it.
I have a hunch that this thing will not even make a very big dent in the non-iPod market. The non-iPod market owes much of it's success to possitioning itself as "underdog to the iPod"... that these are the ELITE gadgets that Apple doesn't want you to know about. Microsoft can't begin to claim that.
Interesting thing is that Sony's killer app, for America, around the release time of the PS3, isn't even a PS3 game, it's Final Fantasy XII for the PS2. The PS3 has no large release titles, to my knowledge. So a huge percentage of Sony's customers are going to be rushing out to play a PS2 game, when Sony would like for them to be buying PS3s. Square's also banking on the PS3s success, probably almost as much as Sony. I wonder if there will be attempts to keep the advertising for FFXII down so as not to partially eclipse the PS3s release.
Nintendo has Zelda and Metroid, which are approximately around the same sized franchise, but they're being released on their new system, so that just draws more people into buying the Wii.
If I had been Sony, a year ago, I would have pumped money at Square to fucking finish FFXIIs localization, and get it out well in advance of the PS3s release. I mean, come on, what the hell are they thinking?
BTW: I had no idea about the GameCube and XBox release being within 3 days of eachother. Still, both consoles had minimal launch lineups (although Smash Bros became a runaway hit later in the 'cube's lifecycle), so early adoption wasn't really as much of a huge issue.
Marketting survey's are so irrelivant right now. The Wii is just such a huge wildcard, it's virtually impossible to predict what's going to transpire in the first 3 months after console release, and even harder to predict what the market will be like after the first year. No other generation launch can top this one for pure strangeness and unexpected variables. Two consoles are slated to be launched within the same month, as well as a metric ton of best selling game series (Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy XII, among others)... this alone has never happened before. Probably the closest console launch I've seen to date was between the GameCube and the XBox which were, what, 6 months apart? The turbulance that will insue from such drastically apposing marketting models during that month will be the most interesting to watch since the dawn of the mass market video game, itself. Any number of unexpected situations may arise:
Wii launch is a success, and then everyone takes the system home to find that the Wiimote is glitchy and uncomfortable for long-term use, sales plummit as launch purchasers warn their friends. The system is religated to using the GCN controller, and fizzles.
Wii launch is a huge success, the Wiimote turns out to be even more fun then expected, and titles like Red Steal and Madden2007 begin to capture the attention of the "hardcore" and sports crowds, which flock away from the 360 and PS3, assuring the Wii's dominance in the next generation.
Wii launch is average to low, but becomes an overnight hit with its audience, spurring a national movement along the lines of the iPod, virtually overnight, over the next 3 months, sales gradually increase to market dominance levels.
The PS3 launches surprisingly strongly, although its innitial sales are only moderately successfull. After the first price drop, however, all the "price drop watchers" come running, and sales soar, putting Sony back on top of the console market.
The launch of the PS3 and Wii marks the end of the last gen. People, unwilling to spend $600 on a console, and uneasy about the Wii's new control setup, finally put down their money on the 360, which saurs to the top of the charts.
PS3 launches very well, and continues to do very well.
Now, I think it's unlikely that the PS3 is going to see groundbreaking success (which is really what it needs to combat a fully functioning Microsoft and a groundbreaking Nintendo), I do think that Sony's chances of doing well in this generation are pretty slim, but you never know. And as I said, the turmoil caused by the first few months of two consoles being released virtually similtaniously is going to be hard to predict.
Nope, sorry, Apple has the rights to the word "Sosumi", as it is the name of one of their signature OS sounds. Using it would be playing off the "look & feel" of the Mac OS.
What!!! That artical is totally worthless. The first half of it contains data from a "Nokia-comissioned study" suggesting that outside the US, more people want combined cellphones and music players. Okay, a little lesson in marketting tactics.
Comission a study, centered around your product market.
Twist wording specifically to elicit a desired response. Even something as trivial as, "Would you like your cellphone to also play music?" would elicit a "yes" from most people, even if, when faced with all the real implications of having a combined cellphone/music player, would answer "no".
Release information of said "study", touting that "everyone wants what we've got", an extension of the "everybody's doing it" marketting tactic.
PROFIT!!!
The second half of the artical reads like a Zune commercial, suggesting that Microsoft's cooperation with musicians (read: "music industry moguls") will insure the product doesn't fail like the other iPod competitors have. Wait a minute... didn't you just cite a study just seconds ago that suggested that non-cellphone based music players were unpopular among most of the world?
The artical also fails to mention that the iPod sells even better in Japan than in the US. It also fails to quote any sales figures from late 2005 to the present, which have seen the biggest sales in the iPod's life so far.
Bottom line, the artical reads like a biased, anti-iPod editorial, drudging up obscure information in attempts to sully the iPod's name. The fact that they saught a Nokia-commissioned study says it all. Nothing to see here, move on.
I've heard that Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario Bros, once praised Naoto Ohshima and the Sonic Team for being able to do what he never could: produce a successful platformer that used only one button. It is, litterally, the Apple of the videogame world. It cuts the platformer genre down to its simplest form: run, and jump. It does away with the traditional "run" button of Mario, and instead uses an exponential accelleration system to compansate, so when walking short distances (like jumping from platform to platform), you're moving slowly, but hold the controlpad over, and you will run faster and faster. If you think about it, during normal play, Sonic isn't really any faster than Mario... it's the exponential accelleration that gives Sonic the kick that made it famous.
This is the main reason why I think the first Sonic game is the strongest in the series (as well as Sonic CD and the original GameGear Sonic). Sonic 2 had great level design, but the addition of the spin dash completely destroyed the purity of the original Sonic's control setup. If you got going really fast in the original, it was a rush, because you had to get to that speed by your own doing... with Sonic 2 and on, going from zero to fast was just too easy to make it that thrilling anymore.
I'm a television producer, mostly of commercial spots, but I've always been a very strong advocate of keeping news and advertising away from eachother. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't tend to agree. Promotions and other advertising schemes have been spilling into news in greater and greater quantities. This is especially true for soft news, or morning news, which is virtually a marketting team's playground. The Today Show did this whole "Wedding Giveaway" promotion, where they chose a couple to help fund their wedding, in exchange for them using certain advertisers, and following them through their wedding preparations. So my local station decides to do the same thing, on a local level. I must say, as a whole, it turned out quite well, but it made me feel icky having to make news packages that had contracts sitting behind them. I raised a lot of complaints to the general manager, the sales manager, and the news director about this, and none of them actually wanted to do it, but had basically convinced themselves that they had to do it for the company to stay alive.
In another incident, one of our clients weasled her way into using some of our news footage for her commercial, and she pushed the general manager (who does some production) more and more, until he actually ended up using video of one of our anchors doing a tag, which goes against some of our basic principals. When the anchor found out about this, she was furious, and forced them to retract the ad. I went down to my boss and basically asked him, "What the hell were you thinking?" And the response was basically that he knew it was wrong at the time, but he couldn't figure out what to do, and added that the station was going to be pushing the envilope more and more just to keep afloat. I don't buy it for a second. I don't know what the hawks up at ClearChannel corporate have been feeding everyone, but there are other methods of advertising that work just as well. To appease the client (and at the same time, give her a big, "fuck you"), I setup one of our side rooms as a news studio, with a totally different backdrop, and one of our sales team as an anchor... and made it OBVIOUSLY fake. I did everything possible to keep it from looking anything like our news: I went as far as coming up with my own news color scheme, with lower thirds and over-the-shoulders to match... anything to keep this fucking ad away from looking like our news. Since this is a small town, and everyone knows the anchors, it would be immediately obvious that this was fake. Our client was furious. "What happened to the lower thirds? Why isn't it in the newsroom? What happened to the over-the-shoulders?". She didn't want to come out and say it, but she was wanting our news image to help sell her service.
I'm not as concerned with actors posing as reporters, what I'm more concerned with, at this point, are reporters that are forced into the position of advertising as part of their news.
Give "Kirby's Canvas Curse" a look. Quite possibly the most revolutionary platformers since the genre went 3D. the entire game uses nothing but the stylus, and in its most basic and truest form. Absolute blast of a game. It's a tough call between New Super Mario Bros. and Kirby's Canvas Curse, though, both games are excellent, in fact, Kirby might have an edge, just because it's so unique and fun.
Similarly, the actual gameplay of Metroid Prime Hunters wasn't bad at all... it's just that the level design, and the decission to make it more of an FPS than an adventure game ruined it for me. I'm kinda hoping that they someday port Metroid Prime 1 to the DS though, because it might be really cool with the stylus. Also, Animal Crossing is pretty nice with it's use of the stylus.
Oh, and Mario64, I've finally come around to greatly preffering the thumb stick method... sure it's not quite as solid as the A-Pad, but once you get used to it, it's a fine alternative.
There will always be games that are better suited to different control setups, which is why the Wii is including GCN controller support. The bottom line is, though, we don't even know what's out there yet that can be done with this thing. The mastery of the controller is probably not going to be evident in this first batch of games, but I expect solid results as well.
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That would be true if using the Wiimote required anything like swinging your arms in circles... or even if REAL swordplay is anything like swinging your arms in circles. I've taken some fencing, and I can tell you, there's no swinging involved. The only swordplay that ever required any swinging at all were two-handed broadswords, and even then the slashing wasn't as obtuse as flailing. Look at Link, he's got a one-handed sword. Even the master sword, which is somewhat fashioned to look like a broadsword, is weilded as a light, one-handed sword.
A small little flick of the rist translates into a huge motion at the tip of the sword. There will be NO whole arm swinging (unless you're compelled to... which I could see once in a while being a bit fun).
Also, ever played Tennis? Now there's arm swinging, and the average match is at least a good 45 minutes... some have gone as long as 6 hours (Jimmy Conars' vs. Jim Courier, for instance). This is ping-pong, in comparison... a sport played by college students in lounges for hours on end. I don't think fatigue is going to be a problem.
Very lightweight... at least good ones anyway. Modern courtswords are extremely light and have proven to be the more effective, historically, than broadswords and other two-handed blades. It's a myth that broadswords were extremely heavy... sure, they're heavier than rapiers, but even a Scottish Claymoor isn't really all that hard to handle. You always see Hollywood making it look like they were hard to even lift... that's a total myth, they were not very heavy. People use to battle with them for hours on end...
Now we're talking about a 6", hollow piece of plastic... really really light.
I dunno, man, I just started a brand new game of WW last night, and went through the whole sword-fighting tutorial. I'm starting to see why Nintendo would want to move away from that, the whole button combos thing is starting to feel almost as confusing as a Metal Gear Solid control setup. Now thankfully WW is a fairly easy game, at least on the action end of things, so you're really not required to memorize all the different sword slashes, but if you really wanted to play with them while fighting enemies, it's a real pain in the ass. I mean, even simple things like whether to do a simple sword slash, a jab, an overhead slash, or a jumping slash gets hard to remember, and usually the button scheme has little to do with the actual movement, so you pretty much have to memorize it, which means it'll take a half a second or so to recall how to do it, and in the middle of a nice sword battle, you don't have time for that. I think swordplay with the Wiimote should be much more tactile, the gestures will be much more representative of the actual sword motions than simply hitting a combination of buttons, so sword dueling should be much more fun and involved this time around.
Fatigue shouldn't be a problem. Zelda games tend to only have intense sword battles in short spurts, most of the series is about problem solving, anyway. I could imagine fatigue being an issue in, say, a Wii-based Ninja Giaden, but even then, the controller is very lightweight, and as other people have pointed out, even real-life sword technique requires very little wrist motion. A few degrees of wrist motion translates to a few feet at the other end of the sword. I did about a semester of fencing... I was pretty bad at it, but it's really not a very tiring sport, in the least. The most tiring thing about it is probably the weight of the protective gear.
What you described isn't an addiction, what you described is defenitely a dependancy, or habit-forming activity, which may or may not be just as harmful in the long-run as an addiction. But the actual definition of an addiction is a physical/chemical dependancy. Computer Games, Marijuana, even some every-day things like playing music, can become habit-forming, psychological dependancies, but none are addictions. Addictions include withdrawl symptoms, which psychological dependancies do not. If I stop playing video games for a few weeks, it might feel a little strange, I might miss it for a while, but I'm not going to start vomitting, getting massive headaches, and feeling physically ill.
The additional problem is that chemical addictions usually also form psychological dependancies, because of their regularity and supposed "neccessity" in a person's life. For this reason, addictions are usually doubly as potent a problem as plain-old psychological dependancies.
Well, a cure is only temporary if everyone is required to, and able to take the vaccination. The way it's looking now, AIDS suppressing drugs are getting good enough that in a few decades, it will be able to keep people alive and moderately healthy until they die of old age anyway. And by that time, if this vaccine works out and is properly administered, there will be no new cases to "cure". Many times, funding for cures dies when a prevention is found... I was hoping we would find a cure FIRST, because usually preventative menthods are cheeper, and will still be researched well after a cure is found... but how it's looking right now, if the vaccine works out, and you currently have HIV, you're pretty much fucked... except that, again, AIDS supressing drugs are getting better and better each year. People are starting to live decades with HIV without getting AIDS, now. Unfortunately, this success is only seen in developed nations, and mostly within people who can afford state-of-the-art medication. I can't begin to imagine the difficulty in maintaining health insurance if you have HIV.
Not if they have a 50% chance of dieing anyway. And I wasn't talking about a "study", I was talking about it actually being put to use. If this vaccine is thrown out or put on hold because it kills 10% of patience, this will be a real shame (not to mention, unethical), because it means a 90% chance of people living in some regions where only 50% of them have a chance. Sometimes I feel the only reason trial phases go on is because researchers are covering their own arses. We could be out there saving people right now, and then perfecting the vaccine as we go. Right now... PEOPLE ARE DIEING. They're going to die anyway. At least give them a chance!
BTW: Does this work on people who have contracted HIV, but where it hasn't turned into AIDS yet?
C'mon. This was taken from an interview that came out about a week after Brawl's big (and only) announcement. And with the original announcement was the idea that there would be a poll to see what everyone (in Japan)'s favorite characters were to be put in Brawl. If I remember, Sonic had over 50% of the vote, followed by Megaman and Ridley (along with a few others).
Basically, Sonic's inclusion is totally insured. Nintendo pretty much HAS to do it now, or risk looking like the poll was a total scam. At this point, Sonic probably has a better chance of making it in then, say, Zelda (who I really hope stays, as well). So I wish we would drop it already. He's going to be in, period, whether you like him or not (I'm kinda indifferent, though I think he does fit in wonderfully with the franchise).
They're not going to announce his inclusion until just before the game is released, you can count on that... because it's quite possibly the hottest debate out of ANY regarding the makeup of Nintendos soon to be released games, and announcing him will kill the suspense for Brawl.
I just hope they don't include TOO many new characters, and aren't afraid of getting rid of some old ones (trading out characters like Pichu, Mewtwo, Marth, Roy, and Falco and giving other characters in their respective series a chance), or the game will likely become unbalanced.
Lol, that just begs an event mode match! You vs. 3 Solid Snakes ontop of an arwing! - "Snakes on a Plane"
Great character... one of my favorite games...
But seriously, as a huge RPG fan, I'm all for putting a lid on RPG characters in the Smash Bros series. I'd hate to see it turn into "Final Fantasy Bros", as Nintendo is forced by fans to throw in every FF series character known to man. Not that I have any problem with the FF series, but there's so much bad blood between fans of the various games and eras, you're just bound to piss off a lot of people. I'd say just totally stay away from the slippery slope of non-Nintendo RPG characters (Nes, you're cool, you can stay).
Also, unfortunately, Skies is such a cult game, it wouldn't really be much of a boon for Nintendo to include anyone from the game. Which makes me sad, because I wanted to see a sequal :(
Oh god NO!
I love ChronoTrigger, but this is just a BAD IDEA! If you introduce one Square RPG character, a good 90% of Square RPG fans are going to be yelling, "why not Terra from FF6, why not Cecil from FF4... (gulp) why not Cloud from FF7?!!!", and thus begins WWIII. Suddenly you open up the series to becoming "Final Fantasy Bros", and as much as I like the FF series, and Square's other RPGs, there are WAY too many characters, there's way too many hot-issues, including a lot of bad blood between fans of games like FF7 and FF8... And you're headed down a slippery slope. I love Final Fantasy, I love ChronoTrigger... but keep it out of Smash Bros! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
BetaMAX, dude, not BetaCAM. BetaMAX is a composite, based, system, just like VHS, it just tended to produced cleaner video results and better audio. BetaCAM is what you're thinking of, which is a professional grade (I still use it at the TV station where I work), componant (RGB) based video system.
You can be SURE that this had been done previously. This is just phase 1 of the HUMAN trial. There were probably hundreds of smaller tests done previously, on various lab animals, human blood samples, etc. They only start human trials when they know, to a certain extent, that there is a very low risk of infection or death due to the vaccine.
This is VERY promising. Just think about it... HIV is an INCURABLE disease, which kills %100 of it's victims. As of now, 49 people out of 49, were infected with HIV and didn't catch it. It may just be preliminary results, but this is very very good. There are millions dieing on a contant south-east of ours, of whome this vaccine will save. I'm suprised that it's taken a year and a half for the reports of phase 1 to move along. I hope that Phases 2 and 3 are MUCH MUCH shorter. I would expect them to have a moral obligation to get this thing through the system as quickly as possible. Hell, even if it outright KILLED 10% of patients, remember that about 50% of people in Africa have AIDS and are going to die... those are MUCH better odds.
But it still seems a little bare-bones to me. There doesn't seem to be many formatting options... not even a ruler. I'm a little miffed that there's no customization what-so-ever.
Oh well, I'm the guy that thinks that everyone should write their documents in a propper page-layout program, like InDesign, or use a simple RTF edittor for the rest. I really hate DOC, ODF, and all these bastardized rtf/page-layout hybrids, anyway... so I'll probably just stick to using TextEdit and InDesign, like I always have. Unfortunately, work is exclusively Microsoft based (and I refuse to use Publisher), so I'm forced to use Word... so maybe once Writely matures a little, I'll switch to it.
I think you've got it a little wrong. Apple isn't benefitting from U2 because people particularly like their music (I do), or because people are buying the U2 iPod, but because people respect them, and they see in them a vitality that they'd like to be associated with. Apple, in extension, is then viewed as having some of that vitality, too. One of Apple's largest demographics is the artistic/creative types, which include a lot of activists. Getting U2 on their side is a big way of appealing to them, without having to get political, and pissing off other demographics. The U2 iPod is ugly, yes... and I don't think many people bought it, but that really wasn't the point, was it? It was just a symbol of the supposed "connection" between Apple and U2.
You have unique friends. The reason it works so well is because of it's built-in accelaration detection. It isn't just "once around means 10 lines", the faster you turn it, the faster still it scrolls. In it's ability to pick one song, accurately, out of a list of 500, no other interface comes close to the speed the scroll wheel can handle, period.
Actually, they're even better... they're nostolgic, which is probably a much stronger image to have, to be a spokesman. When you're new, cool, and hip, the kiddies want to listen to your music, but they don't neccessarily trust you so well as a person. Once you "last" for a while, you gain their trust as someone will talent and class.
It also doesn't hurt to be named Time's "Man of the Year" shortly after being used as the spokesman, either.
Sure, but before Sony came out with the Walkman, they had positioned themselves as a hip, agile, youthful company. Their name was only starting to be common-place in the US, and everyone was willing to give them a shot. When they presented themselves in this light, noone had any reason not to believe them to be just that. By the time the discman came out, and the facade had fallen off to reveal a large corporation, their brand recognition was so huge that it propelled them forward.
This is VERY different. Microsoft's image is inexcapable. They've pulled a good race out of the console wars because: A) they signed good game contracts, B) the video game demographic is much closer to the computer elite demographic, where Microsoft already has substantial force. This is a totally new area, a completely different demographic, you're main target is going to be the centralized "in" crowd of teens, who even the "coolest" video games are lost to. A quick advertising campaign isn't going to turn this around, this kind of image takes years to build... and they haven't even started building it.
I have a hunch that this thing will not even make a very big dent in the non-iPod market. The non-iPod market owes much of it's success to possitioning itself as "underdog to the iPod"... that these are the ELITE gadgets that Apple doesn't want you to know about. Microsoft can't begin to claim that.
Interesting thing is that Sony's killer app, for America, around the release time of the PS3, isn't even a PS3 game, it's Final Fantasy XII for the PS2. The PS3 has no large release titles, to my knowledge. So a huge percentage of Sony's customers are going to be rushing out to play a PS2 game, when Sony would like for them to be buying PS3s. Square's also banking on the PS3s success, probably almost as much as Sony. I wonder if there will be attempts to keep the advertising for FFXII down so as not to partially eclipse the PS3s release.
Nintendo has Zelda and Metroid, which are approximately around the same sized franchise, but they're being released on their new system, so that just draws more people into buying the Wii.
If I had been Sony, a year ago, I would have pumped money at Square to fucking finish FFXIIs localization, and get it out well in advance of the PS3s release. I mean, come on, what the hell are they thinking?
BTW: I had no idea about the GameCube and XBox release being within 3 days of eachother. Still, both consoles had minimal launch lineups (although Smash Bros became a runaway hit later in the 'cube's lifecycle), so early adoption wasn't really as much of a huge issue.
I have a hernia!
Marketting survey's are so irrelivant right now. The Wii is just such a huge wildcard, it's virtually impossible to predict what's going to transpire in the first 3 months after console release, and even harder to predict what the market will be like after the first year. No other generation launch can top this one for pure strangeness and unexpected variables. Two consoles are slated to be launched within the same month, as well as a metric ton of best selling game series (Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy XII, among others)... this alone has never happened before. Probably the closest console launch I've seen to date was between the GameCube and the XBox which were, what, 6 months apart? The turbulance that will insue from such drastically apposing marketting models during that month will be the most interesting to watch since the dawn of the mass market video game, itself. Any number of unexpected situations may arise:
Now, I think it's unlikely that the PS3 is going to see groundbreaking success (which is really what it needs to combat a fully functioning Microsoft and a groundbreaking Nintendo), I do think that Sony's chances of doing well in this generation are pretty slim, but you never know. And as I said, the turmoil caused by the first few months of two consoles being released virtually similtaniously is going to be hard to predict.
Nope, sorry, Apple has the rights to the word "Sosumi", as it is the name of one of their signature OS sounds. Using it would be playing off the "look & feel" of the Mac OS.
The second half of the artical reads like a Zune commercial, suggesting that Microsoft's cooperation with musicians (read: "music industry moguls") will insure the product doesn't fail like the other iPod competitors have. Wait a minute... didn't you just cite a study just seconds ago that suggested that non-cellphone based music players were unpopular among most of the world?
The artical also fails to mention that the iPod sells even better in Japan than in the US. It also fails to quote any sales figures from late 2005 to the present, which have seen the biggest sales in the iPod's life so far.
Bottom line, the artical reads like a biased, anti-iPod editorial, drudging up obscure information in attempts to sully the iPod's name. The fact that they saught a Nokia-commissioned study says it all. Nothing to see here, move on.
I've heard that Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario Bros, once praised Naoto Ohshima and the Sonic Team for being able to do what he never could: produce a successful platformer that used only one button. It is, litterally, the Apple of the videogame world. It cuts the platformer genre down to its simplest form: run, and jump. It does away with the traditional "run" button of Mario, and instead uses an exponential accelleration system to compansate, so when walking short distances (like jumping from platform to platform), you're moving slowly, but hold the controlpad over, and you will run faster and faster. If you think about it, during normal play, Sonic isn't really any faster than Mario... it's the exponential accelleration that gives Sonic the kick that made it famous.
This is the main reason why I think the first Sonic game is the strongest in the series (as well as Sonic CD and the original GameGear Sonic). Sonic 2 had great level design, but the addition of the spin dash completely destroyed the purity of the original Sonic's control setup. If you got going really fast in the original, it was a rush, because you had to get to that speed by your own doing... with Sonic 2 and on, going from zero to fast was just too easy to make it that thrilling anymore.
I'm a television producer, mostly of commercial spots, but I've always been a very strong advocate of keeping news and advertising away from eachother. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't tend to agree. Promotions and other advertising schemes have been spilling into news in greater and greater quantities. This is especially true for soft news, or morning news, which is virtually a marketting team's playground. The Today Show did this whole "Wedding Giveaway" promotion, where they chose a couple to help fund their wedding, in exchange for them using certain advertisers, and following them through their wedding preparations. So my local station decides to do the same thing, on a local level. I must say, as a whole, it turned out quite well, but it made me feel icky having to make news packages that had contracts sitting behind them. I raised a lot of complaints to the general manager, the sales manager, and the news director about this, and none of them actually wanted to do it, but had basically convinced themselves that they had to do it for the company to stay alive.
In another incident, one of our clients weasled her way into using some of our news footage for her commercial, and she pushed the general manager (who does some production) more and more, until he actually ended up using video of one of our anchors doing a tag, which goes against some of our basic principals. When the anchor found out about this, she was furious, and forced them to retract the ad. I went down to my boss and basically asked him, "What the hell were you thinking?" And the response was basically that he knew it was wrong at the time, but he couldn't figure out what to do, and added that the station was going to be pushing the envilope more and more just to keep afloat. I don't buy it for a second. I don't know what the hawks up at ClearChannel corporate have been feeding everyone, but there are other methods of advertising that work just as well. To appease the client (and at the same time, give her a big, "fuck you"), I setup one of our side rooms as a news studio, with a totally different backdrop, and one of our sales team as an anchor... and made it OBVIOUSLY fake. I did everything possible to keep it from looking anything like our news: I went as far as coming up with my own news color scheme, with lower thirds and over-the-shoulders to match... anything to keep this fucking ad away from looking like our news. Since this is a small town, and everyone knows the anchors, it would be immediately obvious that this was fake. Our client was furious. "What happened to the lower thirds? Why isn't it in the newsroom? What happened to the over-the-shoulders?". She didn't want to come out and say it, but she was wanting our news image to help sell her service.
I'm not as concerned with actors posing as reporters, what I'm more concerned with, at this point, are reporters that are forced into the position of advertising as part of their news.
Give "Kirby's Canvas Curse" a look. Quite possibly the most revolutionary platformers since the genre went 3D. the entire game uses nothing but the stylus, and in its most basic and truest form. Absolute blast of a game. It's a tough call between New Super Mario Bros. and Kirby's Canvas Curse, though, both games are excellent, in fact, Kirby might have an edge, just because it's so unique and fun.
Similarly, the actual gameplay of Metroid Prime Hunters wasn't bad at all... it's just that the level design, and the decission to make it more of an FPS than an adventure game ruined it for me. I'm kinda hoping that they someday port Metroid Prime 1 to the DS though, because it might be really cool with the stylus. Also, Animal Crossing is pretty nice with it's use of the stylus.
Oh, and Mario64, I've finally come around to greatly preffering the thumb stick method... sure it's not quite as solid as the A-Pad, but once you get used to it, it's a fine alternative.
There will always be games that are better suited to different control setups, which is why the Wii is including GCN controller support. The bottom line is, though, we don't even know what's out there yet that can be done with this thing. The mastery of the controller is probably not going to be evident in this first batch of games, but I expect solid results as well.