Aside from that, how long have you played Smash Bros for? There are tons of sites out there figuring out the best strategies, the best combos, and describing advanced moves.
It's easy to miss all of this if you only play it shortly, but there's a lot down deep. A good measure to go by is how it has consistently been in GameFaq's top list.
Underneath the surface, those games are amazingly hardcore.
Smash Bros is probably the single most diversely discussed fighting game ever. The amount of different strategies is amazing. Just look at the GameFaqs site.
Pokémon has a huge amount of people involved in stat-maximizing and team building competitions. Then there are thousands of people using an online Pokémon simulator to try out their tactics.
Most gamers barely touch the surface of these games.
I think it probably can be calibrated accurately. In Zelda you can set the pointer to change its vertical position, and when I have it on -2 or something, it more or less points where the remote is pointed.
A system-wide calibration is one of the things I've missed so far though. They haven't needed it, because the games work perfectly without it.
(Posting anonymously because not everyone will get it, and I don't feel like being marked Troll today.)
Just to clarify. (and maybe there's a bit of Karma Whoring too)
But that was actually only one year ago. Two years ago Nintendo had barely shown the casing, and the big mystery about the controller was left for a few months.
The funny thing was that the only demand was due to people hoping to make money off the high demand. Not many were prepared to spend even the retail price for the console, and a large portion of sales was returned, after people came to their senses (and probably spent a fair amount on ebay fees)
The only people who actually made money are the ones who sold the preorder slips, as there was going to be some imbecile ready to pay for it.
In Europe, the original XBOX was launched at 479 Euros, but the price was slashed to 250 within a few months. To prevent it from pissing off buyers, they gave everyone who bought it at that price like four new games or something.
Somehow I don't think the difference in sales of games between a DS and a PSP has anything to do with how easily the media is manufactured.
Exactly! It's something that isn't of concern to the consumer, and it definitely shouldn't be pushing back higher priorities in the system design. People don't give a shit how much it costs Sony to make a UMD, but the short battery life and the fragility of the System held the PSP back big time.
What's wrong with being as powerful as a home console? Well done games look beautiful on the PSP and play very well. The problem is there aren't very many good games like that. Sony didn't seem to do jack in getting third party developers to do anything other than port their games over to it.
You hit the nail on the head. The PSP got ports. The Nintendo DS OTOH came out with some really great games that really showed how the system could differentiate itself from other consoles. And I think it has a lot to do with the system design. If you design a handheld PS2, the developers are going to see it from a home console perspective, and make games like they do on the PS2. The Nintendo DS forced developers to go in new direction as they couldn't just port the PS2 games.
Of course, it also has a lot to do with how Nintendo paved the way by itself with their first-party games.
If you're a gamer, your main concern is about getting good games. You see, to secure third party interest, you need to have a pretty good position in the marketplace. And when I say "pretty good" I mean either market leader, or pretty much neck-and-neck. Alternatively, you might be able to secure cross-platform games, but that doesn't work out to well for the PSP, as there is no equivalent system like the PS2 had the GameCube and XBOX.
The result is the situation we see today, where new and exciting games seem to completely absent from the system.
The biggest fault is deciding to put a shrunk DVD drive into a handheld. Manufacturing may be easier for them, but the DS cartridges are selling a bajillion times more and there doesn't seem to be a problem keeping up there.
The problem with the PSP is that it tried too much to be as powerful as a home console. Most of it's games are therefore not seen as better than DS games, but as stripped down versions of home console games.
You're assuming there is a single definition of human races. Fact is, it's questionable whether or not certain human ethnic groups can be referred to as a "race" at all, in the way we use it in other areas of taxonomy. BTW, the term "Mongoloid" hasn't been taken seriously for decades. And modern ethnology has rejected the 3-race categorisation.
But when we use the term "racism" today, we use it for people from a different cultural or ethnic group. As such, it is perfectly correct to call the above statement racist.
as far as I remember, the optional ones were Ruby (in the desert) and Emerald (under the sea), whereas Ultima was the only one that had any significance in the story. It was optional to beat him (he was flying around on the third disc) but he was such a pushover that he was a joke compared to other Weapons (except in FF X2, where Omega weapon was a standard enemy at the end of the game)
Man, I still know all of this, although it's at least three years since I touched the game.
Those two are games I'm gonna have to play again. I only played them through once when they came out, but they were just so full to the rim with things to do, especially with the effectively double-sized game. Probably the best implementation of the "two versions" concept ever.
Part of the problem was the PSX's sound synthesis when FF started developing for it actually sounded worse than the SNES's at its high point
I'll have to listen to some of the Soundtracks to verify that. Final Fantasy VII was one of the first RPGs that gave us a large and diverse Soundtrack of near-CD quality music blended into the gaming experience. There are so many tracks from that game, but just to pick a few:
I could go on and on, but It would probably be better for me to say which ones I didn't think were absolutely awesome. Really, that's how good I consider the Soundtrack to be. In fact, after just listening to one of the tracks, there's no way an SNES can get such a perfect sounding bass guitar, no way in hell.
I believe you are mistaken. As iainl said, it has been "hacked" over and over, with Apple constantly upgrading the security and patching the hacks.
The deepest you can get with the current Fairplay is intercepting the Audio-stream, which requires you have Quicktime running and wait for the song to play. There used to be a hack called jHymn, which did actually crack the DRM itself, although it did need you to log on to Apple's server with your account. But that hole was fixed with iTunes 6.
Sure, they like the fact that only iPods can play the tracks, but if that were their intention they wouldn't be selling DRM-free tracks.
It's not a discussion about "worthy" and "worthless" (a decision which is made many times by insurance companies and health boards, BTW. Just look at the approval process for expensive cancer drugs and the like), but about allocating research funding.
I also oppose euthanasia, but when it comes down to deciding whether to put money into curing a disease that is easily manageable, and one that can kill you with the bite of one mosquito and devastates entire populations, I have to choose the latter.
You have to be realistic. And if you have limited funding resources, you have to set priorities.
Probably more people do die of "living circumstances" than infections, at least in the developing world. Heart and circulation disease are a major cause of death, often caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.
But they mostly only affect old people, who have just made themselves age faster. It's a completely different matter though, when millions of children and (productive) young people die from an infection.
It's not "Apple's" AAC tech, AAC is an open MPEG-standard, and anyone can implement it. A lot of Phones can play the files, and the only reason your $30 MP3 player can't is because the manufacturer decided not to pay for the license to decode AAC (which is significantly cheaper, simpler and safer than MP3 anyway)
Anyway, I believe that DRM-free iTunes tracks can be converted to MP3 by simply right-clicking them and selecting "convert to MP3" in iTunes.
DRM-free tracks are the ultimate compatibility to other players.
The reason Apple wouldn't license their Fairplay DRM is because that would endanger the "safety" of the DRM, and the record companies would be angry if it was easily cracked (or so they say)
No-DRM is better than licensed-DRM, however you put it.
No. Look where people go for their downloads. Especially, look at which store people buy DRM'ed tracks from.
If they want to keep the DRM, good look trying to sell it on anything other than iTunes with Fairplay. They'd be excluding themselves from the biggest market. If they're prepared to sell DRM-free, and want more than Apple's $1.29, they're screwed too, cause customers don't like being fucked by price hikes.
The fact is that by breaking their relations with the biggest distributor of downloadable music, they're only screwing themselves.
As far as I could tell, it seems the system will be default DRM'd. I wouldn't say anything if it were only third-party productions that had the DRM (how much of the BBC's programming does that make up anyway?), but content produced by the BBC should be free to use. It seems that no such distinction is made.
With encryption, I think it's a question of intent, or at least how much was intended: If you encode something to specifically hide it from a third party, it can be considered encryption.
But with watermarking, I consider it to be something that distorts the original content to apply a notice, and which can't be removed without reconstruction of the content it replaced. As such, any "normal" reproduction would contain the mark.
No, but the per capita figure does change a lot when you're considering global limitations.
How can you expect Chinese people to restrict themselves to lower energy consumption if they have a way lower output than a US citizen? It's as stupid as telling the US to limit itself to the absolute output of a much smaller country, say the UK. By the same reasoning, I could say "I hardly produce any CO2 compared to the entire country, so I don't have a problem"
If you have any sense of fairness, the per capita output is what counts. How is China supposed to take the efforts of anyone else seriously, if they all expect to be able to use much more than them? It's suggesting that US citizens are better than Chinese citizens, which is retarded, to say the least.
Slashdot Mirror
That reminds me... whatever happened to Project Hammer?
Why are the two things exclusive?
Aside from that, how long have you played Smash Bros for? There are tons of sites out there figuring out the best strategies, the best combos, and describing advanced moves.
It's easy to miss all of this if you only play it shortly, but there's a lot down deep.
A good measure to go by is how it has consistently been in GameFaq's top list.
Underneath the surface, those games are amazingly hardcore.
Smash Bros is probably the single most diversely discussed fighting game ever. The amount of different strategies is amazing. Just look at the GameFaqs site.
Pokémon has a huge amount of people involved in stat-maximizing and team building competitions. Then there are thousands of people using an online Pokémon simulator to try out their tactics.
Most gamers barely touch the surface of these games.
I think it probably can be calibrated accurately. In Zelda you can set the pointer to change its vertical position, and when I have it on -2 or something, it more or less points where the remote is pointed.
A system-wide calibration is one of the things I've missed so far though. They haven't needed it, because the games work perfectly without it.
Just to clarify. (and maybe there's a bit of Karma Whoring too)
But that was actually only one year ago. Two years ago Nintendo had barely shown the casing, and the big mystery about the controller was left for a few months.
You imported a daughter from Japan? I knew Thai girls were going cheap, but this is intriguing. Do you have a link to the online shop?
The funny thing was that the only demand was due to people hoping to make money off the high demand. Not many were prepared to spend even the retail price for the console, and a large portion of sales was returned, after people came to their senses (and probably spent a fair amount on ebay fees)
The only people who actually made money are the ones who sold the preorder slips, as there was going to be some imbecile ready to pay for it.
In Europe, the original XBOX was launched at 479 Euros, but the price was slashed to 250 within a few months. To prevent it from pissing off buyers, they gave everyone who bought it at that price like four new games or something.
Exactly! It's something that isn't of concern to the consumer, and it definitely shouldn't be pushing back higher priorities in the system design.
People don't give a shit how much it costs Sony to make a UMD, but the short battery life and the fragility of the System held the PSP back big time.
You hit the nail on the head. The PSP got ports.
The Nintendo DS OTOH came out with some really great games that really showed how the system could differentiate itself from other consoles.
And I think it has a lot to do with the system design. If you design a handheld PS2, the developers are going to see it from a home console perspective, and make games like they do on the PS2.
The Nintendo DS forced developers to go in new direction as they couldn't just port the PS2 games.
Of course, it also has a lot to do with how Nintendo paved the way by itself with their first-party games.
In the games system contest, yes it is.
If you're a gamer, your main concern is about getting good games. You see, to secure third party interest, you need to have a pretty good position in the marketplace. And when I say "pretty good" I mean either market leader, or pretty much neck-and-neck.
Alternatively, you might be able to secure cross-platform games, but that doesn't work out to well for the PSP, as there is no equivalent system like the PS2 had the GameCube and XBOX.
The result is the situation we see today, where new and exciting games seem to completely absent from the system.
The biggest fault is deciding to put a shrunk DVD drive into a handheld. Manufacturing may be easier for them, but the DS cartridges are selling a bajillion times more and there doesn't seem to be a problem keeping up there.
The problem with the PSP is that it tried too much to be as powerful as a home console. Most of it's games are therefore not seen as better than DS games, but as stripped down versions of home console games.
You're assuming there is a single definition of human races. Fact is, it's questionable whether or not certain human ethnic groups can be referred to as a "race" at all, in the way we use it in other areas of taxonomy.
BTW, the term "Mongoloid" hasn't been taken seriously for decades. And modern ethnology has rejected the 3-race categorisation.
But when we use the term "racism" today, we use it for people from a different cultural or ethnic group. As such, it is perfectly correct to call the above statement racist.
as far as I remember, the optional ones were Ruby (in the desert) and Emerald (under the sea), whereas Ultima was the only one that had any significance in the story. It was optional to beat him (he was flying around on the third disc) but he was such a pushover that he was a joke compared to other Weapons (except in FF X2, where Omega weapon was a standard enemy at the end of the game) Man, I still know all of this, although it's at least three years since I touched the game.
And maybe if you show them some porn, they could extend an extra pole to aid their balance.
Those two are games I'm gonna have to play again. I only played them through once when they came out, but they were just so full to the rim with things to do, especially with the effectively double-sized game.
Probably the best implementation of the "two versions" concept ever.
I'll have to listen to some of the Soundtracks to verify that. Final Fantasy VII was one of the first RPGs that gave us a large and diverse Soundtrack of near-CD quality music blended into the gaming experience.
There are so many tracks from that game, but just to pick a few:
Aerith's theme
Weapon's Theme
Cid's Theme
Cosmo Canyon
Boss Music
Highwind theme
Shinra theme
Jenova theme
Crater theme
Mako reactor
Opening theme
Tifa's theme
And of course the ending music, and the credits.
I could go on and on, but It would probably be better for me to say which ones I didn't think were absolutely awesome. Really, that's how good I consider the Soundtrack to be.
In fact, after just listening to one of the tracks, there's no way an SNES can get such a perfect sounding bass guitar, no way in hell.
It was Ultima Weapon that attacked Mideel. Ruby Weapon was the red one in the Gold Saucer desert.
I believe you are mistaken. As iainl said, it has been "hacked" over and over, with Apple constantly upgrading the security and patching the hacks.
The deepest you can get with the current Fairplay is intercepting the Audio-stream, which requires you have Quicktime running and wait for the song to play.
There used to be a hack called jHymn, which did actually crack the DRM itself, although it did need you to log on to Apple's server with your account. But that hole was fixed with iTunes 6.
Sure, they like the fact that only iPods can play the tracks, but if that were their intention they wouldn't be selling DRM-free tracks.
It's not a discussion about "worthy" and "worthless" (a decision which is made many times by insurance companies and health boards, BTW. Just look at the approval process for expensive cancer drugs and the like), but about allocating research funding.
I also oppose euthanasia, but when it comes down to deciding whether to put money into curing a disease that is easily manageable, and one that can kill you with the bite of one mosquito and devastates entire populations, I have to choose the latter.
You have to be realistic. And if you have limited funding resources, you have to set priorities.
Probably more people do die of "living circumstances" than infections, at least in the developing world. Heart and circulation disease are a major cause of death, often caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.
But they mostly only affect old people, who have just made themselves age faster.
It's a completely different matter though, when millions of children and (productive) young people die from an infection.
It's not "Apple's" AAC tech, AAC is an open MPEG-standard, and anyone can implement it. A lot of Phones can play the files, and the only reason your $30 MP3 player can't is because the manufacturer decided not to pay for the license to decode AAC (which is significantly cheaper, simpler and safer than MP3 anyway)
Anyway, I believe that DRM-free iTunes tracks can be converted to MP3 by simply right-clicking them and selecting "convert to MP3" in iTunes.
DRM-free tracks are the ultimate compatibility to other players.
The reason Apple wouldn't license their Fairplay DRM is because that would endanger the "safety" of the DRM, and the record companies would be angry if it was easily cracked (or so they say)
No-DRM is better than licensed-DRM, however you put it.
No. Look where people go for their downloads. Especially, look at which store people buy DRM'ed tracks from.
If they want to keep the DRM, good look trying to sell it on anything other than iTunes with Fairplay. They'd be excluding themselves from the biggest market.
If they're prepared to sell DRM-free, and want more than Apple's $1.29, they're screwed too, cause customers don't like being fucked by price hikes.
The fact is that by breaking their relations with the biggest distributor of downloadable music, they're only screwing themselves.
As far as I could tell, it seems the system will be default DRM'd. I wouldn't say anything if it were only third-party productions that had the DRM (how much of the BBC's programming does that make up anyway?), but content produced by the BBC should be free to use.
It seems that no such distinction is made.
With encryption, I think it's a question of intent, or at least how much was intended: If you encode something to specifically hide it from a third party, it can be considered encryption.
But with watermarking, I consider it to be something that distorts the original content to apply a notice, and which can't be removed without reconstruction of the content it replaced.
As such, any "normal" reproduction would contain the mark.
No, but the per capita figure does change a lot when you're considering global limitations.
How can you expect Chinese people to restrict themselves to lower energy consumption if they have a way lower output than a US citizen?
It's as stupid as telling the US to limit itself to the absolute output of a much smaller country, say the UK.
By the same reasoning, I could say "I hardly produce any CO2 compared to the entire country, so I don't have a problem"
If you have any sense of fairness, the per capita output is what counts. How is China supposed to take the efforts of anyone else seriously, if they all expect to be able to use much more than them? It's suggesting that US citizens are better than Chinese citizens, which is retarded, to say the least.