DUH you can't come up with the money so you end up robbing a bank but since bank-robbing skillz are generally not picked up on the job if your job is selling video games, you're screwed from the get-go and so cops shoot you in the shoulder and then put you in jail. It sucks!
The donut battle level in MK64 was pretty poo, I agree. But DD's cake level with the zipper hill in the middle is dang-near the same thing as far as I'm concerned, gameplay-wise. The donut at least had those big stone structures you could hide behind and do Western-type showdowns with (both guys hide behind opposite sides of the structure and then drive out to shoot at each other with 6 green shells ^^).
Hehe the only thing I really enjoyed about it was the announcer. "Only one lap left, can Koopa still do it!?" and such; I found that somewhat amusing. Also I couldn't figure out how to powerslide which didn't help:-( (can you even powerslide in that game?)
MK64 had the most balanced characters, the tightest controls, the best music, and while I agree that only Block Fort and Skyscraper were fun to play battle mode on, I found 1v1 matches on those two to be really intense if between skilled players.
I play a hell of a Bowser in MK64 and MKDS (though yeah if I feel like matching up against some Japanese kid I have to go with Dry Bones or something cause Bowser snaking is, well, forget it). I can do reasonably well in MKDD, but if I pick up someone like Koopa it's just sick. Reason is, in MKDD it's not just handling that's different, it's kart size (the road is basically 2x as wide if you're not a big guy like Bowser) and special item (Koopa's triple red shell is easily the best), so there's 3 layers of imbalance there which makes for a really unfulfilling game if you like the Koopa King rawwwrrr
Also wtf is with Bowser's voice in MKDD? I can do a better Bowser impression than that! He sounds like Captain Blubber riding his jet ski from Banjo Kazooie.
Mario Kart DS was ten times the game that Double Dash was, because it was basically a MK64 clone and MK64 was a stellar game. Double Dash was WAY worse, with no character balance (if you were Boozar on his big 6-wheeler you had to pray your opponent isn't as good as you or his Koopa team would eat you alive) and the most rubbish battle mode to ever be in a Mario Kart game.
So, as long as Nintendo realizes what went right with MKDS and what went wrong with MKDD, we'll be fine ^^
Oh and let's hope Namco has nothing to do with the game at all; I've played the MK 4-player arcade while in Osaka and it's BAD.
I'm a combat type rawwwrrrrr and now I will finally not be homeless! For the last couple of years my character has been living in caves, stables, and hollow logs. On occasion I would beat up a bum and take his bedroll for the night, or smack a guard in the face so I could go to jail and at least have a roof over my head for a bit.
Now I can live in style, wootlar!
Oh and the free-for-one-week deal sounds good, I like that.
Right... I wasn't arguing the severity (or non-severity) of the fine, just the general outlook of "just avoid it and it's fine" ^_^ Anyway if you check my other replies and posts you'll notice I'm not really one to keep arguing anything and tend to try and meet most folks halfway, hehe
Well yes but that's not the healthiest of outlooks in the sense that it disregards the severity of the penalty entirely! ^^ What if it *were* something quite serious, and you had a friend/child/whoever working in a position where that penalty mattered? (Say a vg store clerk)
Oh, well I'm not going to argue much of what you said. It uses a lot of resources and to little benefit, at least as far as I could tell myself. But from a UI perspective, it's made few changes and most I've found to be either negligible or at least quite intuitive. "Programs and Features" shouldn't fool anyone, especially tech-savvy teens (and is no excuse to install XP, haha).
BTW, it's not prison. It's a maximum fine of $1000 according to the law. I don't know if it goes on your permanent record, that would still suck huge and IMO would outweigh the severity of the offense. Anyway, due to laziness I was spreading FUD woohoo!
Well yes, I didn't read the bill, but I am also lazy and don't live in Cali and like to argue with people.
Ok reading it, it's a maximum fine of $1000, not even close to jail time. Does this go on your permanent record, though? Can it screw you over in that sense? If so, it's still too harsh, although not nearly as harsh as I assumed based on the Senator's words.
I agree, it's silly to say that violent games teach valuable skills, and the Columbine incident is not an example of the victims reacting poorly due to being sheltered from violence or some-such (I'd say that was more an issue of the police being absolutely terrible at carrying out their responsibility, but I digress). The AC, although somehow on my side of the argument, misunderstood that my original point was one of *not shelteringn needlessly* rather than *teaching life skills*
Well yes I am aware that I treated my opinion as fact there, but when laws turn opinions into unavoidable "facts" as far as society is concerned if you know what I mean, I kinda play by those rules...
I'm the OP, by the way ^^ it's not that my preconceptions trumped new influences per se; rather, I find the Senator's motivations noble but his methods horribly flawed. And noble motivations driving flawed methods is in my eyes a dangerous thing. I can't help but feel that way. (As an aside that setup often makes the most interesting and dangerous villains in fiction. ^^)
Haha I tend to agree. I was mostly bothered by the article's author basically coming off as saying 'screw artistic vision' (at least IMO) when most of what he was talking about is, indeed, "basic steps" that shouldn't compromise artistic vision in the first place. It's not a topic he touched on, but his attitude made me think about it.
Well, if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't like that the tournament scene is as restrictive as it is when it comes to setup. Well, besides the fact that nothing is stopping you from hosting a local tourney yourself with whatever rules you and those likely to attend agree on ^_^, I do want to make the point that tourney rules are so limiting because Smash has SO many stages and options and such. Most games don't have such customizeability to begin with, and so there is no sense of "missing out" on something when they are played competitively.
Starcraft is a wonder of a game as far as balance goes, but it has taken a lot of patching to get to that stage and people played it competitively plenty before that. Smash isn't the most balanced game on the planet (few fighters are, to be honest; nearly every fighter I know of has "tiers" or "power rankings" of some kind), but because under certain setups your skill can really show through and very nearly make up for any imbalance that remains, people use those setups ^_^
It all just reflects a desire many gamers have to "get good" at a game and to be able to test their skill against others. In Smash the tournament rules provide a good way of doing it.
To say that "it's not Smash Bros" isn't really fair. What if you really enjoy playing 3-player Coin Battle with 5-min timer on Poke Floats all the time? Someone would have to be a jerk to tell you "that's not Smash Bros! play stock with all items except Heart Container, Tomato, and Hammer on! THAT's Smash Bros!" To say nothing of the other modes, like Homerun Contest.
I'm not saying playing Smash with MLG rules is the "right" way to play it, but I find it a fun way to play it and I appreciate that the game gives me the chance to enjoy it in that fashion.
I spoke in person to Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iwata, George Harrison, and even Shigeru Miyamoto (though he seemed not quite as interested, heh) about the Smash Bros tournament scene back in 2005 when it was growing and gaining a strong online community and they were at the least intrigued, and certainly understood that there was a strong fanbase for the game that played it "seriously." Nintendo Power had just changed looks then, and shortly thereafter even featured a story about smashboards.com (where most of the tournament community goes to organize get-togethers, discuss strategy, get to know each other, etc.). Speaking of which, Iwata told me back then that he was "trying to make the new Smash a release title for the Revolution," hehe. I guess we all knew it wasn't gonna happen.
Pick one or the other, man. Either this puts more power into the hands of the parents or it does not. Your last statement sounds like "it puts more power in the hands of SOME parents, less in others, but that's democracy so it's okay." Uh-huh. My whole point is, this Legislation should not exist in the first place! Naturally if it must, then you have to deal with majority vs. minority and perhaps finding some middle ground in the detail, but that's not the point I'm making.
As for the "controlled substance" discussion, ok that's semantics and I meant something like illegal drugs. So there, weapons and illegal drugs (and perhaps fireworks and other physically hazardous materials). When you start to criminalize something based on the moral view of some people and not others, it becomes a slippery slope. (The US may have been on it for some time already, though, but that shouldn't make my concern any less valid...)
.. Because this legislation CRIMINALIZES the sale of games to minors. *Criminalizes* is the key word, and you have to think about what that means. Your addition problem analogy is indeed appropriate here, because I simply cannot see jail time being a fitting penalty for selling a minor an M-rated game. To attempt to make a point with an extreme (bad tactic but I'll try it) why don't we just propose a law that states "if you sell a minor a game, you get lethal injection" because yes without that law it would be a lot easier for a child to bypass parent concerns. However, who is to say that parent concerns include making sales of violent games to their children a felony? Imagine if you are a parent whose child (18+, under 18, whatever) works at a game store in Cali? Now you have to worry about him accidentally screwing up, selling something like Gears to a high school junior, and facing prison time for it!
I find *criminalizing* a sale of a non-weapon and non-controlled-substance to anyone to be a "slippery slope" issue. Realize that it means if you sell a 16-year-old Gears of War you can face jail time. How the HECK is that a fair reflection of what parents would want? (Some parents maybe, but by golly not all!)
Hey good for you, buddy. You make a clever point and I should tell my friends in the armed forces that only airport security guards carry guns so they shouldn't worry about running into any any time soon. People only die of old age, anyhow.
It's not about teaching life skills, it's simply that sheltering kids from violence is nonsensical, likely pointless, and possibly harmful in the long run because people (including kids) are violent and in certain parts of the world (and the US) very much so. Of course you don't deal with it *better* by having been exposed to violent games or whatever, but if parents shelter their children too much then they end up with some complexes down the road and I have personally witnessed this. Besides that, if we consider simply the playing of violent games on its own (and assume children are not sheltered in other needless ways in addition) then it is not harmful and it makes not a bit of difference whether a kid plays them or not.
No I read his answers quite closely. He followed what you mentioned with something along the lines of "parents can't be there all the time," "parents work 12 hour days," etc. So him saying that he's putting all the power into the hands of the parents is a bit misleading. "Parents have full power, but since they can't exercise it, I want the government to do it for them." Oh and I suppose he also feels that if parents find out someone sold their kid an M-rated game they'd want the seller to get jail time, since that's what his bill proposes.
Wow yeah hiding utter ignorance with mindless sarcasm. Way to go, buddy. Nevermind that I *said* UAC is a nuisance. I think you've just seen that posts with [Allow][Deny] in them get modded +Funny by idiots and want to get in some of that action.
As reasonable as many of his answers were, I disagree with the entire notion of "sheltering" kids from the very real and ubiquitous violence around us, whatever form it's in. On top of that, you will end up with the *wrong* people in prison if you criminalize something like selling ESRB-rated M games to kids 17 and under.
Somehow I wish this guy was as loony as Jack Thompson so he'd be easier to debunk and toss to the wayside. There's nothing more dangerous than someone who can think [somewhat] logically and still pushes for harmful policy.
Slashdot Mirror
DUH you can't come up with the money so you end up robbing a bank but since bank-robbing skillz are generally not picked up on the job if your job is selling video games, you're screwed from the get-go and so cops shoot you in the shoulder and then put you in jail. It sucks!
The donut battle level in MK64 was pretty poo, I agree. But DD's cake level with the zipper hill in the middle is dang-near the same thing as far as I'm concerned, gameplay-wise. The donut at least had those big stone structures you could hide behind and do Western-type showdowns with (both guys hide behind opposite sides of the structure and then drive out to shoot at each other with 6 green shells ^^).
Hehe the only thing I really enjoyed about it was the announcer. "Only one lap left, can Koopa still do it!?" and such; I found that somewhat amusing. Also I couldn't figure out how to powerslide which didn't help :-( (can you even powerslide in that game?)
MK64 had the most balanced characters, the tightest controls, the best music, and while I agree that only Block Fort and Skyscraper were fun to play battle mode on, I found 1v1 matches on those two to be really intense if between skilled players.
I play a hell of a Bowser in MK64 and MKDS (though yeah if I feel like matching up against some Japanese kid I have to go with Dry Bones or something cause Bowser snaking is, well, forget it). I can do reasonably well in MKDD, but if I pick up someone like Koopa it's just sick. Reason is, in MKDD it's not just handling that's different, it's kart size (the road is basically 2x as wide if you're not a big guy like Bowser) and special item (Koopa's triple red shell is easily the best), so there's 3 layers of imbalance there which makes for a really unfulfilling game if you like the Koopa King rawwwrrr
Also wtf is with Bowser's voice in MKDD? I can do a better Bowser impression than that! He sounds like Captain Blubber riding his jet ski from Banjo Kazooie.
Mario Kart DS was ten times the game that Double Dash was, because it was basically a MK64 clone and MK64 was a stellar game. Double Dash was WAY worse, with no character balance (if you were Boozar on his big 6-wheeler you had to pray your opponent isn't as good as you or his Koopa team would eat you alive) and the most rubbish battle mode to ever be in a Mario Kart game.
So, as long as Nintendo realizes what went right with MKDS and what went wrong with MKDD, we'll be fine ^^
Oh and let's hope Namco has nothing to do with the game at all; I've played the MK 4-player arcade while in Osaka and it's BAD.
I'm a combat type rawwwrrrrr and now I will finally not be homeless! For the last couple of years my character has been living in caves, stables, and hollow logs. On occasion I would beat up a bum and take his bedroll for the night, or smack a guard in the face so I could go to jail and at least have a roof over my head for a bit.
Now I can live in style, wootlar!
Oh and the free-for-one-week deal sounds good, I like that.
... It IS??? :-( Don't tell my slaves this plz
Right... I wasn't arguing the severity (or non-severity) of the fine, just the general outlook of "just avoid it and it's fine" ^_^ Anyway if you check my other replies and posts you'll notice I'm not really one to keep arguing anything and tend to try and meet most folks halfway, hehe
Well yes but that's not the healthiest of outlooks in the sense that it disregards the severity of the penalty entirely! ^^ What if it *were* something quite serious, and you had a friend/child/whoever working in a position where that penalty mattered? (Say a vg store clerk)
Oh, well I'm not going to argue much of what you said. It uses a lot of resources and to little benefit, at least as far as I could tell myself. But from a UI perspective, it's made few changes and most I've found to be either negligible or at least quite intuitive. "Programs and Features" shouldn't fool anyone, especially tech-savvy teens (and is no excuse to install XP, haha).
Yes indeed, I was spreading FUD due to laziness. It's a "maximum fine of $1000" or something like that; not jail time.
Yeah banning Manhunt 2 is lame, even though it is totally a rubbish game and shouldn't have been made in the first place.
BTW, it's not prison. It's a maximum fine of $1000 according to the law. I don't know if it goes on your permanent record, that would still suck huge and IMO would outweigh the severity of the offense. Anyway, due to laziness I was spreading FUD woohoo!
Well yes, I didn't read the bill, but I am also lazy and don't live in Cali and like to argue with people.
Ok reading it, it's a maximum fine of $1000, not even close to jail time. Does this go on your permanent record, though? Can it screw you over in that sense? If so, it's still too harsh, although not nearly as harsh as I assumed based on the Senator's words.
I agree, it's silly to say that violent games teach valuable skills, and the Columbine incident is not an example of the victims reacting poorly due to being sheltered from violence or some-such (I'd say that was more an issue of the police being absolutely terrible at carrying out their responsibility, but I digress). The AC, although somehow on my side of the argument, misunderstood that my original point was one of *not shelteringn needlessly* rather than *teaching life skills*
Well yes I am aware that I treated my opinion as fact there, but when laws turn opinions into unavoidable "facts" as far as society is concerned if you know what I mean, I kinda play by those rules...
I'm the OP, by the way ^^ it's not that my preconceptions trumped new influences per se; rather, I find the Senator's motivations noble but his methods horribly flawed. And noble motivations driving flawed methods is in my eyes a dangerous thing. I can't help but feel that way. (As an aside that setup often makes the most interesting and dangerous villains in fiction. ^^)
Haha I tend to agree. I was mostly bothered by the article's author basically coming off as saying 'screw artistic vision' (at least IMO) when most of what he was talking about is, indeed, "basic steps" that shouldn't compromise artistic vision in the first place. It's not a topic he touched on, but his attitude made me think about it.
Well, if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't like that the tournament scene is as restrictive as it is when it comes to setup. Well, besides the fact that nothing is stopping you from hosting a local tourney yourself with whatever rules you and those likely to attend agree on ^_^, I do want to make the point that tourney rules are so limiting because Smash has SO many stages and options and such. Most games don't have such customizeability to begin with, and so there is no sense of "missing out" on something when they are played competitively.
Starcraft is a wonder of a game as far as balance goes, but it has taken a lot of patching to get to that stage and people played it competitively plenty before that. Smash isn't the most balanced game on the planet (few fighters are, to be honest; nearly every fighter I know of has "tiers" or "power rankings" of some kind), but because under certain setups your skill can really show through and very nearly make up for any imbalance that remains, people use those setups ^_^
It all just reflects a desire many gamers have to "get good" at a game and to be able to test their skill against others. In Smash the tournament rules provide a good way of doing it.
To say that "it's not Smash Bros" isn't really fair. What if you really enjoy playing 3-player Coin Battle with 5-min timer on Poke Floats all the time? Someone would have to be a jerk to tell you "that's not Smash Bros! play stock with all items except Heart Container, Tomato, and Hammer on! THAT's Smash Bros!" To say nothing of the other modes, like Homerun Contest.
I'm not saying playing Smash with MLG rules is the "right" way to play it, but I find it a fun way to play it and I appreciate that the game gives me the chance to enjoy it in that fashion.
I spoke in person to Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iwata, George Harrison, and even Shigeru Miyamoto (though he seemed not quite as interested, heh) about the Smash Bros tournament scene back in 2005 when it was growing and gaining a strong online community and they were at the least intrigued, and certainly understood that there was a strong fanbase for the game that played it "seriously." Nintendo Power had just changed looks then, and shortly thereafter even featured a story about smashboards.com (where most of the tournament community goes to organize get-togethers, discuss strategy, get to know each other, etc.). Speaking of which, Iwata told me back then that he was "trying to make the new Smash a release title for the Revolution," hehe. I guess we all knew it wasn't gonna happen.
o.O ... Clever words, but if you find jailing someone who sells a kid an M-rated game "unmistakably reasonable", then you're part of the problem here.
Pick one or the other, man. Either this puts more power into the hands of the parents or it does not. Your last statement sounds like "it puts more power in the hands of SOME parents, less in others, but that's democracy so it's okay." Uh-huh. My whole point is, this Legislation should not exist in the first place! Naturally if it must, then you have to deal with majority vs. minority and perhaps finding some middle ground in the detail, but that's not the point I'm making.
As for the "controlled substance" discussion, ok that's semantics and I meant something like illegal drugs. So there, weapons and illegal drugs (and perhaps fireworks and other physically hazardous materials). When you start to criminalize something based on the moral view of some people and not others, it becomes a slippery slope. (The US may have been on it for some time already, though, but that shouldn't make my concern any less valid...)
.. Because this legislation CRIMINALIZES the sale of games to minors. *Criminalizes* is the key word, and you have to think about what that means. Your addition problem analogy is indeed appropriate here, because I simply cannot see jail time being a fitting penalty for selling a minor an M-rated game. To attempt to make a point with an extreme (bad tactic but I'll try it) why don't we just propose a law that states "if you sell a minor a game, you get lethal injection" because yes without that law it would be a lot easier for a child to bypass parent concerns. However, who is to say that parent concerns include making sales of violent games to their children a felony? Imagine if you are a parent whose child (18+, under 18, whatever) works at a game store in Cali? Now you have to worry about him accidentally screwing up, selling something like Gears to a high school junior, and facing prison time for it!
This is "quite valid"?!?
I find *criminalizing* a sale of a non-weapon and non-controlled-substance to anyone to be a "slippery slope" issue. Realize that it means if you sell a 16-year-old Gears of War you can face jail time. How the HECK is that a fair reflection of what parents would want? (Some parents maybe, but by golly not all!)
Hey good for you, buddy. You make a clever point and I should tell my friends in the armed forces that only airport security guards carry guns so they shouldn't worry about running into any any time soon. People only die of old age, anyhow.
It's not about teaching life skills, it's simply that sheltering kids from violence is nonsensical, likely pointless, and possibly harmful in the long run because people (including kids) are violent and in certain parts of the world (and the US) very much so. Of course you don't deal with it *better* by having been exposed to violent games or whatever, but if parents shelter their children too much then they end up with some complexes down the road and I have personally witnessed this. Besides that, if we consider simply the playing of violent games on its own (and assume children are not sheltered in other needless ways in addition) then it is not harmful and it makes not a bit of difference whether a kid plays them or not.
No I read his answers quite closely. He followed what you mentioned with something along the lines of "parents can't be there all the time," "parents work 12 hour days," etc. So him saying that he's putting all the power into the hands of the parents is a bit misleading. "Parents have full power, but since they can't exercise it, I want the government to do it for them." Oh and I suppose he also feels that if parents find out someone sold their kid an M-rated game they'd want the seller to get jail time, since that's what his bill proposes.
Don't fall for it bro.
Wow yeah hiding utter ignorance with mindless sarcasm. Way to go, buddy. Nevermind that I *said* UAC is a nuisance. I think you've just seen that posts with [Allow][Deny] in them get modded +Funny by idiots and want to get in some of that action.
I wonder if that's a good thing, though...
As reasonable as many of his answers were, I disagree with the entire notion of "sheltering" kids from the very real and ubiquitous violence around us, whatever form it's in. On top of that, you will end up with the *wrong* people in prison if you criminalize something like selling ESRB-rated M games to kids 17 and under.
Somehow I wish this guy was as loony as Jack Thompson so he'd be easier to debunk and toss to the wayside. There's nothing more dangerous than someone who can think [somewhat] logically and still pushes for harmful policy.