Even if Apple does prevent Windows from running easily on a Mac, you can bet it won't take long for a reliable emulator to come out that will be able to run Windows at near-full-speed. It'll likely be more costly and is ultimately unnecessary, but it WOULD happen.
Maybe it's because I've been playing the DOA games since the first one, but I have a few qualms with this review. First and foremost, while I'll be the first to admit that the DOA games, technically, haven't been up to snuff with the Virtua Fighters and the Tekkens of the 3d Fighting genre (DOA3 was an unbalanced train wreck), DOA4 is actually a pretty balanced and relatively deep fighter, probably tying with Soul Calibur after Virtua Fighter 4 and Tekken 5. Infamous developer Itagaki actually brought some of the "hardcore" DOA crowd in during the last stages of the game's development to balance out the characters and their fleshed out movelists, and the changes seem to be for the best... this could be the first Dead or Alive game to break the tournament fighter scene, usually reserved for the Virtua Fighters, Tekkens, and old-school 2D Capcom and SNK fighters.
My other issue is the claim that Fighting games require interesting and varied modes. Actually, they don't. They require a versus mode, where you can play the game against another person. I really don't care if my game has Tekken Ball or a World Tour mode.. I just want the ability to play the game against other folks, and in that arena DOA has an online mode, something no other modern day 3D fighter can boast (no, the new Mortal Kombats don't count). Peripheral modes are a bonus, not a necessity, and a fighting game neither lives or dies by them.
Points I do agree about include boobies, though. Those things are still all over the place. And if you're curious, Kasumi still kicks high.
This almost seems more like a list of classic classic compilations: outside of Sonic Mega Collection, these compilations are ten years old or better. Some of the compilations coming out today are just as good if not better than many on the list -- I'd say that Mega Man Anniversary Collection is better than Mega Man: Wily Wars by way of including all eight of the entries in the Mega Man series proper, as well as the two arcade games, as opposed to just the original trilogy.
I can get behind Mario All-Stars as Number One, though. The later edition of the game included Super Mario World, making the game an unbelievable value for Mario side-scrolling goodness. The individual games are apparently good enough to stand on their own as $30 rereleases for the Game Boy Advance, so getting five for the then-price of $50 was one heck of a steal, especially considering the games got a fresh coat of paint in the sound and graphics department (not to mention the ability to save, something SMB3 always needed).
Well, shucks, I'm about as likely to download something that's on Billboard's Top 20 as I am something by Pat Boone. Which is to say, not likely. And so the music I actually enjoy and listen to would be down to pennies in no time! So this is pretty awesome for me.
That selfish reason aside, this is an incredibly stupid idea.
The problem to me is that Ebert is automatically dismissing games as an art form because they cannot tell the stories that the greatest novels and the greatest movies have in the way that books and movies do. I can agree that a game trying to be a movie is probably better off as a movie. However, games as an artistic and storytelling medium have the added dimension of being interactive, something that film and word cannot claim. As a result, a player can take an active role in the story, and likewise the story can attempt to make an active impression on the player by putting them in someone else's shoes.
Ebert is right that games have to give up a certain amount of control by being interactive... that the pacing and even the narrative itself is often left to the whims of the player, not the writer. But can't these differences be used as an advantage for games to tell unique stories that passive entertainment like film and literature could never aspire to? I think so.
...it's an obvious cash-in on this XBox 360 shortage-hype. So I find myself secretly hoping that the lawsuit meets with some small degree of success, and says to those launching future consoles "SEE! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MACHINES TO MAKE ANYTHING BUT A HALF-ASSED LAUNCH! Now quit screwing your customers and ship enough units."...and I realize there's a logical disconnect in there somewhere, but hey, a guy can hope.
I'd be thrilled to see flexible pricing come to iTMS, because those higher price gouges would probably be attached to big-record, payola releases that I don't care for anyways, while smaller artists free of a corporate umbrella are able to charge less. As a result these "popular" songs I have no interest in sky rocket in price, while I can download songs from iTunes impressive smaller-labels catalog with hardly a worry towards price.
The lower prices for other, lesser known tracks might actually convince other people to try them! Well, in a perfect world anyways.
I ask, why not? iPods are already sporting color screens, video-out capability, and hard drives bigger than some computers, it would be a snap to give them video playback. If the concept doesn't take off, big whoop: Apple's already got the technology in place to support it and support it well, and if it doesn't go anywhere it's no big loss. And there's content out there, though it definitely needs to be made more organized and accessible. But, hey, if anyone can make it happen it's Apple, considering how entrenched they are in the MP3 player market: the way podcasting picked up when iTMS and iTunes officially supported it, you would have thought the technology had just been invented.
So yeah, makes sense to me.
A quick search for Bloggers in my home area of desolate Fargo resulted in 65,580 hits, but a vast majority of them are for Wells Fargo credit cards.
In other words, methinks this needs a little work.
So it's our fault if web advertising tanks and free 'net content goes along with it? I think someone should have warned the ad companies that user interest in their internet advertisements would tank if they kept making them bigger and louder. People aren't using ad blockers because they were pushed over the edge by banner ads, or even the occassional "punch the monkey". Ad companies were asking for it when pop-ups with flashing gifs or Flash-powered movie trailers started scrolling in on top of what I was trying to read.
No, they're pointing the finger in the wrong direction. If free internet content goes down the drain due to a lack of advertising support, my blame falls squarely on the people that killed it in the first place: the ad companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if Apple does prevent Windows from running easily on a Mac, you can bet it won't take long for a reliable emulator to come out that will be able to run Windows at near-full-speed. It'll likely be more costly and is ultimately unnecessary, but it WOULD happen.
Maybe it's because I've been playing the DOA games since the first one, but I have a few qualms with this review. First and foremost, while I'll be the first to admit that the DOA games, technically, haven't been up to snuff with the Virtua Fighters and the Tekkens of the 3d Fighting genre (DOA3 was an unbalanced train wreck), DOA4 is actually a pretty balanced and relatively deep fighter, probably tying with Soul Calibur after Virtua Fighter 4 and Tekken 5. Infamous developer Itagaki actually brought some of the "hardcore" DOA crowd in during the last stages of the game's development to balance out the characters and their fleshed out movelists, and the changes seem to be for the best... this could be the first Dead or Alive game to break the tournament fighter scene, usually reserved for the Virtua Fighters, Tekkens, and old-school 2D Capcom and SNK fighters. My other issue is the claim that Fighting games require interesting and varied modes. Actually, they don't. They require a versus mode, where you can play the game against another person. I really don't care if my game has Tekken Ball or a World Tour mode.. I just want the ability to play the game against other folks, and in that arena DOA has an online mode, something no other modern day 3D fighter can boast (no, the new Mortal Kombats don't count). Peripheral modes are a bonus, not a necessity, and a fighting game neither lives or dies by them. Points I do agree about include boobies, though. Those things are still all over the place. And if you're curious, Kasumi still kicks high.
This almost seems more like a list of classic classic compilations: outside of Sonic Mega Collection, these compilations are ten years old or better. Some of the compilations coming out today are just as good if not better than many on the list -- I'd say that Mega Man Anniversary Collection is better than Mega Man: Wily Wars by way of including all eight of the entries in the Mega Man series proper, as well as the two arcade games, as opposed to just the original trilogy.
I can get behind Mario All-Stars as Number One, though. The later edition of the game included Super Mario World, making the game an unbelievable value for Mario side-scrolling goodness. The individual games are apparently good enough to stand on their own as $30 rereleases for the Game Boy Advance, so getting five for the then-price of $50 was one heck of a steal, especially considering the games got a fresh coat of paint in the sound and graphics department (not to mention the ability to save, something SMB3 always needed).
Well, shucks, I'm about as likely to download something that's on Billboard's Top 20 as I am something by Pat Boone. Which is to say, not likely. And so the music I actually enjoy and listen to would be down to pennies in no time! So this is pretty awesome for me.
That selfish reason aside, this is an incredibly stupid idea.
The problem to me is that Ebert is automatically dismissing games as an art form because they cannot tell the stories that the greatest novels and the greatest movies have in the way that books and movies do. I can agree that a game trying to be a movie is probably better off as a movie. However, games as an artistic and storytelling medium have the added dimension of being interactive, something that film and word cannot claim. As a result, a player can take an active role in the story, and likewise the story can attempt to make an active impression on the player by putting them in someone else's shoes.
Ebert is right that games have to give up a certain amount of control by being interactive... that the pacing and even the narrative itself is often left to the whims of the player, not the writer. But can't these differences be used as an advantage for games to tell unique stories that passive entertainment like film and literature could never aspire to? I think so.
...it's an obvious cash-in on this XBox 360 shortage-hype. So I find myself secretly hoping that the lawsuit meets with some small degree of success, and says to those launching future consoles "SEE! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MACHINES TO MAKE ANYTHING BUT A HALF-ASSED LAUNCH! Now quit screwing your customers and ship enough units." ...and I realize there's a logical disconnect in there somewhere, but hey, a guy can hope.
I'd be thrilled to see flexible pricing come to iTMS, because those higher price gouges would probably be attached to big-record, payola releases that I don't care for anyways, while smaller artists free of a corporate umbrella are able to charge less. As a result these "popular" songs I have no interest in sky rocket in price, while I can download songs from iTunes impressive smaller-labels catalog with hardly a worry towards price. The lower prices for other, lesser known tracks might actually convince other people to try them! Well, in a perfect world anyways.
I ask, why not? iPods are already sporting color screens, video-out capability, and hard drives bigger than some computers, it would be a snap to give them video playback. If the concept doesn't take off, big whoop: Apple's already got the technology in place to support it and support it well, and if it doesn't go anywhere it's no big loss. And there's content out there, though it definitely needs to be made more organized and accessible. But, hey, if anyone can make it happen it's Apple, considering how entrenched they are in the MP3 player market: the way podcasting picked up when iTMS and iTunes officially supported it, you would have thought the technology had just been invented. So yeah, makes sense to me.
A quick search for Bloggers in my home area of desolate Fargo resulted in 65,580 hits, but a vast majority of them are for Wells Fargo credit cards. In other words, methinks this needs a little work.
So it's our fault if web advertising tanks and free 'net content goes along with it? I think someone should have warned the ad companies that user interest in their internet advertisements would tank if they kept making them bigger and louder. People aren't using ad blockers because they were pushed over the edge by banner ads, or even the occassional "punch the monkey". Ad companies were asking for it when pop-ups with flashing gifs or Flash-powered movie trailers started scrolling in on top of what I was trying to read. No, they're pointing the finger in the wrong direction. If free internet content goes down the drain due to a lack of advertising support, my blame falls squarely on the people that killed it in the first place: the ad companies.