Topics

1

Nintendo Gaming / Should/will Nintendo follow PS4 price cut

« on: October 08, 2015, 04:12:10 PM »

Sony just lowered the price of the PS4 to $350.  https://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/151008_e.html

So that puts it only $50 more than the Wii U's $300 price tag.  This price covers bundles too.  I look at Best Buy's site and the Uncharted bundle is at $350 so both Sony and Nintendo are offering pack-in games.

So does Nintendo cut the Wii U price now?  Of course we don't know if they actually can without taking a loss.  I also figure that "will they" and "should they" are different questions.

I want them to and I haven't shut up about that over the last several months.  They cut the price and I'll buy it.  Now that Sony has cut the price, and seemingly out of nowhere as I don't feel they needed to, I don't see how Nintendo can get away with not doing so.  It just seems like misplaced arrogance to keep the price up now, unless they really are facing serious losses if they do so.

2

NWR Feedback / Malicious URL coming up

« on: December 30, 2013, 07:13:46 PM »

Over the last couple days my anti-virus software has been bringing up malicious URLs warnings when I'm on the forums.  Something called www.javaonlined.com.  I'm guessing it's coming from ads.

3

NWR Feedback / Google nonsense goofing up back button

« on: May 09, 2012, 05:25:34 PM »

Starting today my back button effectively doesn't work on this forum.  If I look back in my history I get two "googleads.g.doubleclick.net" pages in between and I have to back up three times to get past those and then truly go back.  I know ads are needed for the site but it has never worked that for me before.
 
If you need to know, this machine is on Vista with Internet Explorer 9.

4

NWR Feedback / Getting some sort of ShareThis thing

« on: January 31, 2012, 02:33:55 PM »

Today I can't hit the back button because between each execution of a page on the forum I get like four pages called "ShareThis".  So I can hit the back button but I have to go back like four pages to do it.

5

General Chat / Movie theatre rant

« on: November 28, 2011, 02:37:19 PM »

So yesterday afternoon I went to the movies.  They were showing Ben-Hur as part of a classics series and I had to see that on the big screen as it is one of my favourite films.  The chariot race in particular was incredible on the big screen!
 
However, despite my love of the film, I asked for a refund for a reason I could not possibly imagine.  I could hear the movie in the theatre next door through the wall!  It was showing Immortals and that film must just go nuts with the subwoofer because every five seconds it sounded like thunder crashing.  In quiet parts of Ben-Hur we could even hear shouting dialog at times.  Ben-Hur had a five minute intermission that I used to go to the bathroom and I could STILL hear Immortals' rolling subwoofer in the bathroom!  This is across the hall!
 
I would assume that a movie theatre would be cleverly enough designed so that each screening room is effectively soundproof.  I have been to this theatre numerous times and have never encountered this.  So I'm wondering if there is a loudness war with new movies.  Perhaps Immortals is just so ridiculously loud that the theatre designers would never had assumed that any film would reach this volume and be audible in the next room over.  Immortals is a dumbed down idiot film.  The same target market that likes bad CG and bad 3D would also probably like loud rolling low sound effects every ten seconds or at least I can imagine the studio would think they would.
 
So is it a poorly designed theatre or a stupidly loud movie?  And if it's the movie is this going to be an unfortunate trend?

6

General Gaming / Games for adults

« on: September 15, 2011, 06:07:19 PM »

No I don't mean "games for adults" as in adult entertainment or anything like that.  I mean for actual adults as opposed to kids, teenagers, or college students.  I just read this article and it really rings true.  What I especially notice is the lack of time for playing games.  Developers will go on and on about how long their game is.  I just don't have time to play some 100+ hour game and I don't have a wife and kids.  I'm a single guy and yet my job and standard grown-up responsibilities eat up enough time alone.  For a family man, it has to be even worse.
 
Your standard videogame is targetted at young people with a lot of free time.  In that sense having some 300 hour quest makes sense.  That same type of game does not work as you get older.  A lot of adults enjoy casual games like Wii Sports and Angry Birds.  That makes sense as those games require less of a commitment from the player.  Something that you can play for about an hour or so, here and there, fits a typical adult schedule.
 
But I don't want to play games like those.  I find them incredibly bland.  The Wii Series is like a great example of how lame teenagers think adults are.  Everything is very safe and inoffensive and generic.  The Miis are like the Michael Bolton of videogames.  I'm not like that.  I want to slay dragons and fight aliens like I did when I was a kid, but I want a way to do it that fits my lifestyle.  I typically have an hour or two of free time on weekdays before I go to bed.  I live with my brother and I find that when we decide to play videogames during this time we've lately been sticking to retro games like SNES or Genesis titles.  It's just easier to get into one of those games and play for an hour.
 
What I really want are games that involve some sort of narrative quest, like a standard videogame, that aims for about a 10 hour length to beat the game.  It needs to be largely devoid of filler.  No long tutorials, no mindless fetch quests, no padding, no endless time sinks to unlock content.  One should be able to jump in, play right away and jump out.  Saving needs to be quick and easy since we don't all have time to hunt around for 20 minutes to find a save point.  The game also has to be friendly to the idea of not being played for a couple of months at a time.  The game needs to get the player back up to speed on what's going on when you load up a save or be short enough that starting over doesn't sound like an ordeal.  It has to focus on single player because old people can't get their old people friends together to play games and don't want to play with teenagers online.  Oh, and this has to cost no more than $30.  $60 for this just doesn't make sense.
 
It doesn't seem like there is really anyone targetting this audience (assuming this audience isn't just me).  If it's a typical "kill the bad guys and save the world" game it's made for teenagers.  Anything else is adult comtemporary casual fluff.  I think there needs to be something in between.  Something for a casual investment with core gamer tastes.

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General Gaming / SNES collection - big find

« on: April 11, 2011, 04:51:20 PM »

For those that don't know I collect SNES games.  Or I did.  The problem is I've collected almost all the ones I'm interested in so I later gave Genesis collecting a go (not so interesting) and recently took up NES collecting (very interesting).  However there were a few rare games that I had not yet obtained a copy of.
 
My general sort of rule is that I have to find these things out "in the wild" at a flea market or used game store.  eBay is kind of like cheating.  The thrill of the find is a big part of the experience.  A store I typically frequent is a video store called Willow Video.  Lately I have been popping by once or twice a week to check out NES games.  I still check out the SNES section, of course, for the odd title I still need.
 
On Friday they had Mega Max X3!  This is a pretty damn rare SNES game so I was overjoyed.  The clerk behind the display case asked what I wanted and I replied like this:
 
"I'll take Mega Man X3, it's in this row and.... HOLY ****!  And Mega Man X2!  I'll take that one, too!"
 
I had completely failed to notice that X2 was also there right below X3.  X2's cover art doesn't stand out as much as X3's so I kind of glazed over it probably assuming it was X1 (which I've had since I was a kid).  And yes I did say "holy ****" to the clerk.  Usually I am more polite but I could not help myself.
 
These two games have been at the top of my want list since I started.  I was especially excited because I was going to my parents and was going to have dinner with my brothers.  I had once, about ten years ago when I first started collecting, seen X2 at this store and ignored it, not quite understanding how rare it was and my youngest brother, Eric, in particular had been on my ass for years because of it.
 
I decided to surprise him by hiding each game in a pocket of my coat.  So I go in the house and start talking with him and mention "oh, want to see what I found at Willow Video today?" and I show him X2 and he is just thrilled.  So he pops it in the SNES and starts playing it.  Meanwhile our other brother phones to tell him he'll be a bit late.  Eric tells him "hey Ian found Mega Man X2 today!  Isn't that awesome!"  At this point I have not revealed X3 so I thought that was pretty funny as it allowed me to surprise my other brother as well without even trying.  So I wait until Eric has finished the intro level and then just subtly reach in my pocket and hold X3 in front of his face.  He was blown away!  That's what really made it exciting.  Not just that I found some games I wanted for a while but that moment of surprising my brother.
 
So that leaves Chrono Trigger, R-Type III and Harvest Moon as the remaining missing pieces for my SNES collection.

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General Gaming / Finally got an NES

« on: February 08, 2011, 12:26:58 PM »

So at least 20 years after I first asked my parents to get me one, I now finally own an NES.  We were celebrating my friend's birthday on Saturday and before I left for his place I stopped at my favourite videogame store (Willow Video, a local chain in the Vancouver area) to get him Gran Turismo 5 as a gift.  They had an NES for sale, plus A/V cables, a zapper and some extra controllers sold seperately.  My brother suggested I get it but I was unsure.  I get thrown off by unexpected purchases.  I came into the store specifically to buy my friend a game for his birthday.  I had not mentally budgetted buying a whole new videogame system for myself as part of it.  The NES is also notorious for being unreliable which had soured my interest somewhat in buying one.
 
So I didn't get it and felt like an idiot about two steps after I left the store.  I knew I would be in the area on Monday so I decided I would come back then and if they still had it, I would take it as a sign to buy it.  At my friend's party I ended up mentioning the NES to him and he said "well I have a spare NES.  You could always just buy mine."  I had totally forgotten that a friend of his had given him his spare NES and all his games years ago.  We had talked at times about me buying the spare but it never ended up happening.  So I bought it.  It didn't have the zapper though and the second controller was busted, coaxial only, but he threw in SMB/Duck Hunt and SMB3 because they were duplicates.
 
So on Monday I popped by Willow Video and the NES was gone!  Had I not bought my friend's I would have been **** out of luck.  Unfortunately whoever bought it also bought the A/V cables so I'll have to get those at a later time.  But I got the zapper and a controller to replace the broken one.  I also got Jackal and Code Name: Viper which are my brother's two favourite NES games.  I figured if I didn't get those when I had the chance he would never forgive me.
 
My brother also took the NES apart and bent back all the pins.  We knew this was the reason for the NES's unreliability.  And it works pretty damn well!  SMB works a good 95% of the time.  Some of the other games were a little more dirty so we had to work on them a bit more.  Code Name: Viper is really giving us a rough time.  We had the game outright crash only a few minutes into playing so I might have to return that one.
 
I used to collect SNES games, and I guess I still do, but I have pretty much every title I want.  Only some really hard-to-find titles remain.  It's exciting to have a new system to collect games for!  And having an NES just feels right!  My brother and I were playing it last night at our parents' house and it was like, yeah, this is how things should have been 20 years ago.  It always felt kind of... wrong that our parents never got us one.  I feel a certain fulfillment almost in now having one and us "kids" all enjoying it together.

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General Chat / DVR Hard Drive - need advice

« on: November 26, 2010, 05:06:03 PM »

So my Dad has a DVR (or PVR, I seem to see both terms used) and he always complains about running out of space before he can watch all the shows he has recorded.  So I was thinking that getting him some additional storage space for the DVR would make a good Christmas gift.
 
The problem is I don't know **** about this stuff.  I know enough that I need a SATA hard drive as that is the connection on the back of the DVR.  But looking into SATA drives they're all internal hard drives.  External drives are all USB.
 
If I buy an internal hard drive what do I need to do to get it to work with the DVR?  I can't just have an internal hard drive sitting on top.  Wouldn't it need some sort of case to protect it from dust and such?  And how do I power it?  Internal hard drives don't have a standard wall plug and I know enough that SATA needs an external power source.
 
If anyone knows anything about this sort of stuff and could give me some advice that would be greatly appreciated.

10

Nintendo Gaming / Theory about third party support

« on: July 29, 2008, 06:02:42 PM »

This theory was inspired by the most recent mailbag as the last part talked about the Wii's third party support.  I think the third party support absolutely sucks and that's a pretty common opinion.  It all seems so strange because the Wii is the clear market leader.  That's supposed to be how it works isn't it?  Atari, NES, SNES, PS1, PS2 - the market leader gets the most games.  The Wii is the exception and it seems very strange that third parties would not want to support it when it has the largest userbase to potentially sell to.

I suspect the reason is because Nintendo's attitude regarding the Wii clashes with that of the best developers.  Videogames becoming more complex over time was a natural end result.  It makes sense because creative people make videogames and creative people always want to move forward.  Now obviously there are dev teams that make nothing but junk but the best developers, the ones that influence the entire industry, want to push the envelope.  You can see the pride of the devs shine though in the greatest games.  Not all of this is in a good way but it's very much a "bigger is better" attitude.  Better graphics, bigger levels, more levels, more characters, more items, more moves, more options.  With the best devs you can often see the "wouldn't it be cool if we did this" effect.  There's this desire to top their previous game and top competing games.

The Wii is totally the opposite of this.  It's about intentional restraint.  It's about intentionally simplifying a game for a mainstream audience.  The console itself has glorified last gen specs.  How does one push the envelope with the Wii unless their idea very specifically requires the remote?  The "bigger is better" mantra doesn't apply.  So I think it's no surprise that we don't get the "real" third party projects and instead get thrown together spin-offs and last gen games - the sort of stuff the publishers will assign the rookie devs.  Meanwhile the big talent isn't interested.

You can argue that this attitude of more, more, MORE and going bigger each time isn't good for business.  But it is what a creative dev wants to do.  And that makes sense.  Remember that videogame developers are not non-gamers.  How could they be?  They're like the hardest of the hardcore for they make their OWN games.  So why would they be all ga ga over Nintendo's blue ocean stuff?  Businessmen and stockholders sure but why would someone who wants to make the greatest game ever care?  The Wii is a very blatantly corporate console so we're getting corporate games.

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General Chat / I'm making a film

« on: June 11, 2008, 05:56:56 PM »

If you look at the link in my signature you'll see that I've been involved in some amateur filmmaking.  A lot of that stuff is actually the work of my brothers (who were too lazy to make their own YouTube account) but I was heavily involved in the Fatal Bullet series.  I'm quite proud of the Fatal Bullet movies but they're short films and I've always wanted to make something full length.  They also have improvised dialog and are R-rated and I wanted to challenge myself to completely write a full length script line-for-line and make something clean that wouldn't have to be censored on TV.

Well it's taken over a year but I've finally finished my script and plan on filming in late July and August.  It's called Looking for Bigfoot.  It's a comedy about a group of guys filming a Bigfoot documentary.  So the film is a mockumentary like Spinal Tap.  The documentary theme allows me to film it on a very low budget.  Think Blair Witch Project style applied to a comedy.  In fact I come up with the concept entirely because it was realistic for my budget of virtually nothing.  I'm just making it for fun with my friends and figure if my some miracle it ever made any money I would split it with those that helped me, based on percentages agreed upon beforehand.

The lead roles are cast but I haven't finalized some of the smaller roles so I figured I'd invite anyone here to have a part if they want to.  If anyone is interested and lives in the Lower Mainland of BC or will be in that area this August send me a PM.

Personally I'm just excited that I'm finally getting to do this.

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General Chat / This free album stuff (ie: Radiohead)

« on: October 09, 2007, 12:49:02 PM »

Recently Radiohead annouced that they were making their latest album available for download by donation (for lack of a better word).  As Homer Simpson once said "what if I wish to donate... NOTHING!"  Now there is word that Oasis and Jamiroquai are considering free albums as well.

I've heard some people hail this as the FUTURE OF MUSIC and praising this idea as some great business strategy.  So I want to ask: does anyone ACTUALLY think this is a good idea or is it just "YAY! FREE MUSIC!" and they're trying to defend this idea so that they can get more free music?  Because this doesn't make any f*cking sense at all to me.  It reminds me a lot of the infamous dotcom crash.

The members of Radiohead are f*cking rich.  Ditto those other bands.  They can live a life more more extravagant than you or I probably ever will without working another day in their lives.  So donation music where 90% of the customers will just take it for free works fine because it doesn't have to work.

But how would something like this EVER work for a new band?  I write songs.  I play guitar.  My friends and I would love to record a professional album.  But if we did we sure as well would not give it away for free.  I don't want to anyway but even if I did I couldn't afford it.  I don't have a big nest egg to live off of.  I have to work for a living so it's either real job or music career.  Can't do both full time and whatever one I do has to make money.

So if this is the future then does that mean the future is that only rich people who are already successful can release professionally recorded albums on a worldwide scale?  Because that's sounds pretty corporate.

Thoughts?

13

General Chat / 2007-08 NHL Season

« on: September 27, 2007, 09:44:18 AM »

On Saturday the new NHL season starts with the Ducks and Kings having a pair of games in London, England.  It's funny because when they annouced that it seemed like the two teams were picked kind of willy nilly, though probably the idea was to pick two teams in the same market so neither benefits from the loss of a home game.  But the Ducks managed to win the Stanley Cup last season so the NHL is, by fluke, sending the champs to England.  Seems like such a brilliant choice of teams now in retrospect, doesn't it?

As usual I'm rooting for my local Vancouver Canucks.  They seem like a shoe-in for the playoffs but didn't really address any of the scoring problems they had last year.  The best goalie in the conference and and having huge depth at defense got them to the second round last year but with no change to the forwards I don't see how they'll do any better.  Next year is more what I'm looking forward to when Naslund's and Morrison's inflated contracts are up and we have some actual cap room.  Still I'm usually content with a playoff team as it makes the regular season worth watching.

My predictions are that the Anaheim Ducks will win another cup.  Maybe not this year but this lineup will win another one and hell it could be this year.  I don't see anyone better.  Though the New York Rangers are pretty much last year's team with Gomez and Drury so they're my top pick for the East.  The Penguins are close though.

Oh and you know those new uniforms that I ranted about a few months ago?  Turns out some of the players are complaining that they suck too.  Because the new jerseys are water proof the sweat doesn't soak into them.  So where does it go?  Into the players skates and gloves of course!  Did anyone even TEST these things in a game environment?

So the new unis:
1. Look like sh!t.
2. Have a major problem that makes them hard to play in.

So my prediction that by next year some teams will change remains though now it won't just be from lower jersey sales.  Though it wouldn't surprise me if legal mumbo jumbo allowed the league to prevent teams from switching back and that like the horrible schedule that every fan hated (which they will finally get rid of NEXT YEAR) they will stick to this dumb idea as long as they can.

Man that Gary Bettman sure was accomplished a lot, eh?  The NHL on Versus instead of ESPN, the lock-out, expansion teams in non-traditional hockey markets that struggle to attract fans, new rules seemingly every year, a league-wide change to new ugly uniforms that apparently were never tested for a very major problem until all teams switched over.  Has this guy done ANYTHING good for the league?  Considering the league was more popular prior to him becoming comish one might argue that DOING NOTHING would have had better results.

14

General Chat / NHL's wacky new jerseys

« on: August 29, 2007, 12:47:08 PM »

The NHL are kind of like the Nintendo of pro sports leagues.  It used to be huge and over the last ten years or so have fallen to the point where many non-fans don't regard it as a major sports league on par with the other three.  Well Nintendo is making a comeback so I guess the analogy doesn't work anymore but you know how frustrating it was to be a Nintendo fan and observe all the dumb sh!t they would do?  That's what being an NHL fan is like.  Hell just recently they annouced an outdoor game between the Penguins and the Sabres.  Sounds like a cool idea.  But the NHL has to goof it up just to remind us who we're dealing with and scheduled it for New Year's Day.  Rose Bowl day.  Ooops.  Enjoy another ratings disaster.

But that's not what inspired me to start this topic.  This year the NHL is introducing new uniforms across the entire league.  Reebok has some new space age design that all the teams will be using.  Most teams are also making some changes to their uniform's appearance to coincide with this.

My Vancouver Canucks debuted their new uniform today.  As is tradition with this team it looks like crap.  Well I like the colours a lot but it has two major questionable parts to it.  First the orca logo (which no one likes in the first place) has lost some of its colouring.  It looks unfinished.  That's not the really bad part.  For some reason they decided to have "Vancouver" plastered across the chest, cluttering the uniform and making the whole thing look like some farm team jersey.

This has been common with virtually all the new jerseys shown thus far.  The best ones (like Boston's) look virtually the same.  The new designs are at best tolerable but most of them look like absolute crap.  Plus while the new jerseys supposedly are better to play in they have a major flaw from a merchandising perspective - they're TIGHT.  The hockey sweater used to be an ideal accessory for fat, beer-bellied fans.  Now you have to be in decent shape or you'll look horrible.  So less people can pull off wearing the jerseys and thus less people will buy them.  The fact that so many of them look like crap will also hurt merchandise sales.

Plus the NHL has been accused of alienating their fans.  The rules seem to change every year.  Hardcore hockey fans were upset to see hockey markets like Winnipeg and Hartford move to southern US markets that don't seem to care about hockey.  Aside from these new jerseys going against DECADES of tradition they seem very much like a cash grab.  Every team changes their jersey to encourage existing jersey owners to upgrade to the new design.  The NHL seems to always be concerned about who ISN'T watching hockey and very little with who is (maybe that Nintendo analogy does make sense).  The fans don't trust the league.  It's too corporate and doesn't seem to respect hockey tradition.  No one alive has ever seen NHL players wear a different type of sweater.

I don't think the new Reebok jerseys will last more than a season or at least SOME team will abandon it.  They're ugly and the design isn't merchandise friendly for the average joe.  Jersey sales will drop and the whole thing will be forgotten in a few years.

15

General Chat / The NHL are dolts

« on: June 28, 2007, 05:41:55 AM »

So the Nashville Predators are for sale after being a total money pit since they joined the league.  It's not surprising as Nashville is a non-traditional hockey market.  So the guy who owns Blackberry offers to buy the team to move them to Hamilton, Ontario.  He's offering an inflated amount that is nowhere near what the team is actually worth, plus he's willing to pay a fee for relocating to Toronto's and Buffalo's territory.  He takes deposits for season tickets in Hamilton and they sell more of them then Nashville had.  Hamilton is of course in Canada where everyone is hockey crazy so it's pretty much a guarantee that the team will do better than pretty much all the American teams located where it doesn't snow.  This is nothing but good for the league.  Overpaying for the franchise drives the price of the other iffy teams up, Toronto and Buffalo get some free money (and Toronto sells out every night so they're not even losing business to another team in the same area) and the league gets a strong franchise which means that the weaker franchises will benefit from the profit sharing.

But instead the team is relocating to Kansas City.  The Kansas City buyer is offering 50 million LESS!  50 million down the sh!tter for what?  The only advantage Kansas City has is a brand new arena while Hamilton's arena is 20 years old.  But Kansas City doesn't have the same interest and the last time a team was there it bombed.  From a business perspective there is no reason to pick Kansas City over Hamilton.

But I'm forgetting that ego and pride are more important than making money.  To relocate a southern US team to Canada would suggest that *gasp* expanding into the American south where people barely know what hockey is was a dumb idea.  Now everyone except the league itself has always thought it was a dumb idea but that's not the point.  Some Americans don't even consider the NHL to be a true major league and this sort of dumb crap is part of the reason.  This league is so focused on who's not watching hockey that they're willing to crap all over who is.  The NFL is the biggest league in American and I don't think they got where they were by focusing at who doesn't like football and who they can try to make like football.

The league wants a big national US TV contract but I don't think this is how to get one.  Having five or six joke teams that no one gives two sh!ts about sure as hell hasn't done anything.  I think having 30 strong franchises that sellout every night has a better chance of attracting a big contract.  So they won't be located geographically all across the US.  Is that totally necessary?  The league seemed to be a much bigger deal with sports fans prior to Gary Bettman being in charge.  Maybe if the league had 30 strong teams in Canada and the Northern US they could be on ESPN again.  I don't see why they shouldn't try to maximize their proven market first before going off into the unknown.  Neglecting hockey fans to try (and fail) to establish new markets is not a good idea.  And that's been their strategy for over 10 years now.  Admit you f*cked up and make some money because that's the point of a business.  Who cares if you have egg on your face if you're swimming in a money bin?

16

NWR Feedback / Timestamp off one hour?

« on: March 26, 2007, 10:55:52 AM »

I'm noticing that the timestamp for posts for me are showing up an hour behind.  It looks like daylight savings time hasn't been taken into account.  I'm in the Pacific time zone.  This post is being entered around 4 but it'll say 3.

I'm a programmer who works in ColdFusion and recently we had to install a patch to correct for daylight savings.  Whoever decides this stuff moved the day to switch over up a couple weeks and a fix was needed for ColdFusion to recognize the change.  So maybe you guys didn't make the fix?

Does anyone else notice the time being off?

17

Nintendo Gaming / So I finally got to try out the Wii

« on: December 04, 2006, 05:46:41 AM »

EB in my area finally got a demo unit so I gave it a whirl on Friday.  Excitetruck was the only game available.

ExciteTruck seems like a fun rental game.  Nothing really amazing but I enjoyed it.  I seemed to have a lot of difficulty keeping my truck on the damn road.  Either it's going to take some time for me to get used to the controller or the controller's sensitivity wasn't set very well.  It felt like the slightest movement sent me off the side of the road so I'm guessing the sensitivity was the problem.  Unfortunatley I only got to place one race as my brother was with me and wanted to get lunch and acted like a big assh0le to get me off the machine.

ExciteTruck doesn't seem like an ideal game to demo the system with.  I really want to try WiiSports which the EB guy was raving about.  While playing I never felt like the controller made the game better.  I honestly wanted to just play it with a Cube controller.  But then again that might just be because of incorrect sensitivity.  If the controls were smooth I would probably think differently.

So my first impression of the Wii is sadly very inconclusive.  I have to say though that Nintendo needs to rethink their plan regarding in-store demos.  They need better demonstrations.  A game like ExciteTruck would probably work just as well on a normal controller and since no one I know owns a Wii I can't play it as it is meant to be played.  There was also no indication that the demo was even playable.  I knew, because of this thread, to ask at the counter for the controller.  My brothers were there a week before (lousy snow prevented me from trying it sooner) and didn't play it because they saw no controller and didn't know to ask about it.  There was no sign or anything.  That might be EB's decision but Nintendo should do something about it.  People need to know they can try the Wii out.

18

Nintendo Gaming / 1up has story about British Wii price and date

« on: September 08, 2006, 10:49:47 AM »

Link

I 'm not familiar with the source they mention so I don't know how reliable this is.  November sounds about right but this is for the UK launch.  I would assume the US launch would be before that.

19

NWR Feedback / Party Poker pop-up

« on: March 01, 2006, 12:32:05 PM »

Every time I go to the site and click on the "Forums" link a new window opens for PartyPoker.net.  It's as if I just clicked on a banner ad only I didn't.  It's like some sort of trick where I can't click on the forums link without opening this ad.

I just wanted to make sure the PGC staff were aware of this.

Update:  I'm getting it with other links too.  Like for example when I click on the link to view a review or news post.

20

General Gaming / Rumour: Sony plan to counter the Revolution

« on: February 24, 2006, 01:50:31 PM »

Gamespot has an article about a rumoured plan by Sony to combat the Rev by packaging the PS2 with the Eyetoy and their own remote style controller and selling it at a low price.

I think that's an interesting idea though it would kind of put the PS2 and PS3 in competition with each other.  Unless Nintendo's plan to avoid the competition turns out to be true and then the PS2 and PS3 could just co-exist.  It does show somewhat of a flaw in Nintendo's plan regarding sacrificing hardware for the low price.  Why does this "weak" hardware at a low price have to be NEW hardware?  Why couldn't Sony just do this?

And wouldn't these games thus work with the PS3 since the PS3 is backwards compatible?  Ideally the PS3 should be able to use PS2 accessories though that's not a given (but there's a plenty of time to include such functionality prior to launch).  If the PS3 did do this then Sony could have a mega-powered console that can also do the same things the Rev can.  And for those willing to sacrifice cutting edge technology for a low price the option's there too.

It's all very interesting.  One flaw I see in Sony's plan is that their attention will be split between the PS3 and PS2 while Nintendo can target all of their console related effort into just the Rev.  Sony might not be able to give the PS2 enough effort to aggressively compete it against the Rev.

21

Nintendo Gaming / Error 52100

« on: January 26, 2006, 07:42:37 AM »

I keep getting this error message where it says it can connect to the access point but I can't connect to the web server.  A lot of people on the Nintendo Wifi board are getting this error with several different routers but there's no solution.  So I figure I'll ask if anyone here has solved the problem.  The error message suggests to me that it might be a problem with the ISP.

22

General Gaming / Hot Coffee decision already affecting other games

« on: July 22, 2005, 02:12:54 PM »

To the surprise of probably nobody one of the lawyers involved in nailing Rockstar for the San Andreas Hot Coffee mod has another target.  Believe it or not it's The Sims 2.

He's complaining that mods can allow for The Sims nudity to be uncensored and since there are chlidren in the game it can be turned into a pedophilia simulator.  EA claims that without the blurring the Sims have no private parts.  They look like a naked Barbie.  If they're telling the truth this hopefully won't amount to anything but it pisses me off just the same.

It hasn't even been a week since the ESRB changed San Andreas' rating and already the precedence it set is affecting other games.  A publisher is now responsible for stuff that other people can do to their games.  This is scary stuff.

I'll bet DOA will get nailed next as the female characters have nipples and nude hacks are pretty common.  

23

Nintendo Gaming / Famitsu survey regarding next gen

« on: June 13, 2005, 12:48:09 PM »

IGN has info on a survey conducted by Famitsu regarding the next gen.

From the article:
"Will you develop for each console?
Revolution
0.0% - We are already developing.
23.1% - We will develop.
17.9% - We will consider development.
10.3% - We will not develop.
48.7% - No opinion/unknown."

That 0.0% is pretty, um, not good.  Nintendo has said that they feel that the huge post-launch game drought on the Cube hurt them a lot.  In order to avoid that on the Rev third parties need to have dev kits sooner and these results suggest that Nintendo hasn't sent anything out yet.  Though Square Enix supposedly is working on something so I don't where they fit in here.  It's possible that due to NDA's and such that no one is allowed to confirm they're developing and they might fall into the no opinion/unknown category.

On the plus side 23.1% confirmed support is better than I was expecting.  I was seriously worried the Rev was going to get almost nothing since the Cube scared off most third parties.

One one hand only 10.3% not developing isn't TOO terrible but it's much higher than the other two consoles.  The Xbox 360 has NO developers that will not develop and it has a higher is developing/will develop percentage.  That's unacceptable.  The Xbox was a complete flop in Japan.  This survey predicts MS as last place in Japan for this gen.  Therefore the Xbox 360 should NOT have better Japanese third party support than the Rev.  Better Japanese support is one of the few advantages the Cube had over the Xbox.  That advantage must remain, no excuses.

Nintendo has to get those kits out NOW or we'll get a repeat of the Cube post-launch.  That killed the Cube and it would kill the Rev.  I think Nintendo has to stop being all "OMG DON'T STEAL MY IDEAS" and get that 23.1% working on games.

One thing I like though is this:
"Which next-generation console will be the market leader?
Consumers
PlayStation 3: 52.8%
Revolution: 29.9%
Xbox 360: 17.3%"

These numbers are for more pro-Rev than that of the devs or retailers.  Since consumers are ultimately who makes or breaks a console I'm happy to see that consumers are the most interested in the Rev.

24

Nintendo Gaming / Miyamoto soundbites on IGN

« on: June 03, 2005, 06:21:04 PM »

Click here.

Shiggy's doing the "simple games" routine again.  And like Iwata he has something outrageous thrown in so that everyone thinks he's crazy.

"A lot of the games out there are just too long. Of course, there are games, such as Halo or Grand Theft Auto, that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."

He's suggesting that there's not a lot to interest gamers nowadays and then he references two games that significantly outsold every game Nintendo made on the Cube.  These games sold huge.  That means there's demand for them.  That means gamers want to play games like this.  So where is all this simple games stuff coming from?

I'm concerned that Nintendo is going to focus too much on non-gamers.  A lot of people say that I shouldn't worry and that Nintendo is going to target both non-gamers and long time gamers but here there is no suggestion of that.  He's suggesting "unique products" over "epic games".  I want "epic games".  I don't want Halo and GTA specifically but I want games with their kind of length, depth, and complexity.  He's really giving the image that the Rev's going to be the Electroplankton console.

Reggie does a good job of selling the Rev to me but anytime anyone from NCL opens their mouth I immediately get the impression that the Rev won't interest me at all.  I get a feeling that NCL and NOA are on completely different pages.

How the hell can he use the two most successful games of this generation as justification for gamers not being interested in today's games?  That makes no sense at all.

25

Nintendo Gaming / Square Enix Party - good time to reveal the Rev?

« on: June 01, 2005, 02:33:17 PM »

Gamespot's reporting that in July Square Enix is going to have their own "Spaceworld" type show called the Square Enix Party.  They plan on showing off Final Fantasy XII there.  I'm thinking that maybe that would be a good event for Nintendo to reveal the Rev in more detail.  So far the only third party game announced for the Rev is made by Square Enix so logically it would make sense to reveal that game and the Rev at the show.  Plus this show will attract attention from more than just Nintendo fans.  There are a lot of PS2 games planned to be shown so Sony fans will be paying attention.  It would give Nintendo a chance to sneak into what is largely a Sony show.

And even if they don't want to show the Rev controller at that point they can at least show footage of FF: CC for the Rev and thus respond to the speculation regarding the Rev's hardware capabilities compared to the competition.  And since they've seen the PS3 and Xbox 360 footage they can make sure that the Rev footage blows the competition away.  Nintendo did not have this flexibility at E3 since they would have had to guess how good the competition's footage would be.