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General Gaming / RE: Theory about $129 X-Box
« on: May 08, 2004, 12:51:58 PM »
mmmm.... Xbox at $129... I smell a cheap Linux server for Mystic Matt ;-]
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2
Nintendo Gaming / RE:2D games fading away...who else will miss Sprites?
« on: May 08, 2004, 12:50:28 PM »Quote
Originally posted by: couchmonkey
Meanwhile, show your support by buying 2D games on your 3D consoles! That will send a message to those suits in Capital City!
Agreed. People don't understand that where they put their dollar is a vote as to what will come to the market in the future.
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General Gaming / Viewtiful Joe 2?
« on: May 07, 2004, 09:43:35 PM »
Greetings! I was just wondering if any of you knew if Viewtiful Joe 2 is going to be shown at E3 or not. I got the first one for Christmas (with my GameCube) and just really started playing it today. I'm loving it! I could go into a rant about how much I love this game but I'm sure you've all been there and done that already.
Shame it's going to the PS2... I hope they don't dumb down the graphics on the sequel for the PS2 and then do a "paint by numbers" port to the gamecube. That would piss me off.
Shame it's going to the PS2... I hope they don't dumb down the graphics on the sequel for the PS2 and then do a "paint by numbers" port to the gamecube. That would piss me off.
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General Gaming / RE:Upgrading your PC
« on: May 04, 2004, 08:09:22 AM »Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
I'd suggest an Athlon 64, though, since it's a new generation of CPUs that is vastly superior to the 32bit x86-compatible CPUs.
I 100% agree. Also, if you can afford it, after upgrading the mobo, cpu, and video card I would make sure I didn't have less than 512MB of RAM. I have 1GB in my system, but that's a little overkill ;-]. Also, what's your current hard drive? After everything else mentioned I would consider upgrading that too. I've almost filled my 120GB drive with home movies.
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General Gaming / RE:XBOX II demo
« on: May 03, 2004, 08:32:01 AM »
On a smaller scale than what you're describing this kind of happens. It's not unusual for development houses to license their engines to other developers. Heck, that's how ID makes a lot of their money. The sheer number of games built off the Quake and Doom engines is amazing. The makers of Unreal also licsense their engines frequently. I've not heard of first parties doing this often though. Yet I can't help but wonder about some of the things we would have seen if Nintendo would have let third parties use the Mario 64 engine.
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General Gaming / RE:XBOX II demo
« on: May 03, 2004, 07:40:37 AM »
[sighs...]
Is anyone in here a programmer? Does anyone have ANY programming experience? Sorry, but your l33t HTML and Visual Basic skills don't count...
There are certain things that all programs have in common, yes including video games. Beyond that there are things that all video games have in common. In an ideal world you would be able to just write the code to do these things once and then reuse it for every project - at least this is one of the goals of object oriented programming. Unfortunately the developing for any platform is often times like trying to hit a moving target, consequently reusing even the best code can be a painstaking process. Usually what ends up happening is the developers just throw out the old code and start over
XNA is an attempt to stop developer from reinventing the wheel each cycle. It attempts to provide a standard that developers can use to automatically perform these mundane details for them. Back before Direct X came out each game had to be programmed specifically for the hardware it was running on, even if it was running windows (there are some exceptions but I'm leaving them out for simplicity). Microsoft had a disaster when they tried to ship this Lion King game with Windows on Compaq computers, unfortunately at the last second Compaq decided to change the hardware which in turn broke the game. Consequently the idea was born that developers would interact with Direct X, and Direct X would deal with interacting with the hardware. It prevented developers from having to do all the low level stuff.
XNA is the next evolution of this. Adding support for things like Xbox Live-ish features for Windows games, a common controller interface, and unifying other related tools. XNA is an attempt to identify the things that developers do over and over again, and automate them. IF Microsoft delivers on it's promise this could be the next big revolution after Direct X. Of course in these forums Bill gates could sent everyone a check for $1,000,000 and you guys would find something to complain about.
Those movies were just proof of concept stuff. They wern't supposed to be showing off any graphical advances. I still liked the car one though.
Let the flaming of Mystic Matt begin ;-]
Is anyone in here a programmer? Does anyone have ANY programming experience? Sorry, but your l33t HTML and Visual Basic skills don't count...
There are certain things that all programs have in common, yes including video games. Beyond that there are things that all video games have in common. In an ideal world you would be able to just write the code to do these things once and then reuse it for every project - at least this is one of the goals of object oriented programming. Unfortunately the developing for any platform is often times like trying to hit a moving target, consequently reusing even the best code can be a painstaking process. Usually what ends up happening is the developers just throw out the old code and start over
XNA is an attempt to stop developer from reinventing the wheel each cycle. It attempts to provide a standard that developers can use to automatically perform these mundane details for them. Back before Direct X came out each game had to be programmed specifically for the hardware it was running on, even if it was running windows (there are some exceptions but I'm leaving them out for simplicity). Microsoft had a disaster when they tried to ship this Lion King game with Windows on Compaq computers, unfortunately at the last second Compaq decided to change the hardware which in turn broke the game. Consequently the idea was born that developers would interact with Direct X, and Direct X would deal with interacting with the hardware. It prevented developers from having to do all the low level stuff.
XNA is the next evolution of this. Adding support for things like Xbox Live-ish features for Windows games, a common controller interface, and unifying other related tools. XNA is an attempt to identify the things that developers do over and over again, and automate them. IF Microsoft delivers on it's promise this could be the next big revolution after Direct X. Of course in these forums Bill gates could sent everyone a check for $1,000,000 and you guys would find something to complain about.
Those movies were just proof of concept stuff. They wern't supposed to be showing off any graphical advances. I still liked the car one though.
Let the flaming of Mystic Matt begin ;-]
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General Gaming / RE: Finding a New SNES
« on: May 02, 2004, 06:58:30 PM »
Look around for a "Mom & Pop" shop. There's one less than five minutes from my house that has them, and another across town.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Game medium: CDs, cartridges, and the future.
« on: May 02, 2004, 06:49:55 PM »
I believe one of two things will happen. Either cartridges will come back or game devices will come with built in flash memory and games will be downloaded to them via the internet.
I currently have a watch that has a USB plug on it. You plug it into your computer and you can save stuff on it. It was $120 for 256MB. (They now have a 512 version out for $199). The prices of these kinds of devices has dropped significantly over the past few years. I believe that this trend will continue until they're insanely cheap and McDonald's gives them away in Happy Meals. I mean, CD's used to be outrageous in cost and now look... (cough...AOL...cough).
Consequently there will come a point when cartridges are used again because they are cost effective & more versitle. I mean, the things already come up to 47GB... How much space does a game need?
On a side note, why does Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga take so long to save?
I currently have a watch that has a USB plug on it. You plug it into your computer and you can save stuff on it. It was $120 for 256MB. (They now have a 512 version out for $199). The prices of these kinds of devices has dropped significantly over the past few years. I believe that this trend will continue until they're insanely cheap and McDonald's gives them away in Happy Meals. I mean, CD's used to be outrageous in cost and now look... (cough...AOL...cough).
Consequently there will come a point when cartridges are used again because they are cost effective & more versitle. I mean, the things already come up to 47GB... How much space does a game need?
On a side note, why does Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga take so long to save?
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:My Nintendo DS mockups...
« on: May 02, 2004, 10:53:06 AM »
I hope the design is more GBA-SP and less original GBA. I understand that it will need to be larger because of the two screens, but I always thought the original GBA was a bit too clunky to carry around in your pocket.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Tales.namco.com is up!
« on: May 01, 2004, 11:39:15 AM »
I'll probably get flamed for this but here goes anyway...
I didn't know anything about this game when I clicked on the link. The first thing I did was go to the screens section. Honest to goodness, I'm not lying, my initial thought was "Oh, this is a GBA game!"
Color me unimpressed.
I didn't know anything about this game when I clicked on the link. The first thing I did was go to the screens section. Honest to goodness, I'm not lying, my initial thought was "Oh, this is a GBA game!"
Color me unimpressed.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE: 2D games fading away...who else will miss Sprites?
« on: April 30, 2004, 05:58:44 PM »
I think that more game developers should go the way of Viewtiful Joe. Granted, that game was more difficult than it should have been (I'm not big on frustration gameplay) but it got a lot of things right. Namely, it used a combination of 2D/3D... The developers wern't afraid to risk doing something weird. I think that everyone automatically assumes that everything had to be full 3D when a lot of games would just play better if they used the right medium.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE: GBA homebrew dotcode
« on: April 30, 2004, 05:50:48 PM »
Here are the instructions:
You need to print the dot code bitmap files using the "Nintendo e-Reader Dot Code Print" application which can be found on this page. Go to the default options of your printer driver and set the DPI to 600 or higher and put some sheets of high quality inkjet paper in your printer. Start the application and select your printer. Verify that the detected "printer resolution" is "600 x 600". Change the "dpi" option to "600" so it matches the "printer resulution". Select the dot code bitmap file (*.bmp) that you want to print. Print the dot code. The dot code will be slightly larger than a real dot code and will positioned at the bottom of the page, ready to be swiped through the e-Reader. Make sure the margin (area between dot code and border of page) matches the margin on a real card. Change the "offset x" and "offset y" value to put the dot code somewhere else on the page. The values are expressed as dots per inch at the current DPI of your printer (at 600 DPI a value of 300 would mean 1/2 inch). If you are getting read errors, then something is wrong (duh!). For best results use 1200 DPI (repeat the entire process except now select 1200 DPI instead of 600 DPI) and photo paper. Always restart the application if you have changed any of the default options of your printer driver.
http://users.skynet.be/firefly/gba/e-reader/index.htm
I'm interested in doing some homebrew game development for the GBA, but I'm having a hard time understanding why I would want to use this instead of buying a flash cartrdige. Granted, the flash cartridges are getting harder to find because idiots use them to steal games, but I think that development would be significantly easier with one.
You need to print the dot code bitmap files using the "Nintendo e-Reader Dot Code Print" application which can be found on this page. Go to the default options of your printer driver and set the DPI to 600 or higher and put some sheets of high quality inkjet paper in your printer. Start the application and select your printer. Verify that the detected "printer resolution" is "600 x 600". Change the "dpi" option to "600" so it matches the "printer resulution". Select the dot code bitmap file (*.bmp) that you want to print. Print the dot code. The dot code will be slightly larger than a real dot code and will positioned at the bottom of the page, ready to be swiped through the e-Reader. Make sure the margin (area between dot code and border of page) matches the margin on a real card. Change the "offset x" and "offset y" value to put the dot code somewhere else on the page. The values are expressed as dots per inch at the current DPI of your printer (at 600 DPI a value of 300 would mean 1/2 inch). If you are getting read errors, then something is wrong (duh!). For best results use 1200 DPI (repeat the entire process except now select 1200 DPI instead of 600 DPI) and photo paper. Always restart the application if you have changed any of the default options of your printer driver.
http://users.skynet.be/firefly/gba/e-reader/index.htm
I'm interested in doing some homebrew game development for the GBA, but I'm having a hard time understanding why I would want to use this instead of buying a flash cartrdige. Granted, the flash cartridges are getting harder to find because idiots use them to steal games, but I think that development would be significantly easier with one.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Zelda Bonus disc?
« on: April 30, 2004, 05:42:30 PM »
eBay has only like four of them.
Bloodworth removes enormous link
As of this posting there's one that's "Buy it Now" for $35.00
A couple months ago I would have sold you mine cheap. Then I popped it in one day when I was bored and started playing Ocarina of Time... Now you would have to extract blood to get it away from me ;-].
Bloodworth removes enormous link
As of this posting there's one that's "Buy it Now" for $35.00
A couple months ago I would have sold you mine cheap. Then I popped it in one day when I was bored and started playing Ocarina of Time... Now you would have to extract blood to get it away from me ;-].
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Gamecube Versions vs. Xbox/PS2
« on: March 30, 2004, 07:21:39 AM »
In my experience I've found that many multi-platform games suck. Not all, but many of them do. There are exceptions like Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Max Payne, and Tony Hawk but overall I have low expectations when I look at a multiplatform game. The reason is simple - the developers typically write a game for the lowest common denominator (the PS2) because it's easier to add a couple extra textures for the more powerful systems than it is to dumb it down for the Playstation 2. Like I said, there are exceptions but this is what generally seems to happen.
I bought a GameCube not so I could play general run of the mill crap, but so that I could play the genius games that can only be found on it. Games like Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. Recently I threw in the Zelda collectors disc that came with my GC and started playing Ocarina of Time for the first time (I never owned a N64). I was amazed at how good the game was and have become hopelessly addicted to it. You don't get stuff of this quality from run of the mill pop-culture games.
If you look at any casual gamers collection you will most likely find a similar set of games. Everyone mindlessly goes out and buys Tony Hawk, Madden, GTA, and a few other heavily marketed games that may or may not be good. Granted, these games are all descent but the point is they don't think about what they're buying, they just get it because that's what everybody else is getting.
So what I'm really trying to say is that I think multiplatform games don't do well on the GC because we simply expect better games. We care about what we play and we want it to be good. We're spoiled by the amount of effort, genius, and talent placed behind games made by the big N. How are games designed for the sole reason of making a fast buck supposed to compete with that? We simply expect more.
I bought a GameCube not so I could play general run of the mill crap, but so that I could play the genius games that can only be found on it. Games like Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. Recently I threw in the Zelda collectors disc that came with my GC and started playing Ocarina of Time for the first time (I never owned a N64). I was amazed at how good the game was and have become hopelessly addicted to it. You don't get stuff of this quality from run of the mill pop-culture games.
If you look at any casual gamers collection you will most likely find a similar set of games. Everyone mindlessly goes out and buys Tony Hawk, Madden, GTA, and a few other heavily marketed games that may or may not be good. Granted, these games are all descent but the point is they don't think about what they're buying, they just get it because that's what everybody else is getting.
So what I'm really trying to say is that I think multiplatform games don't do well on the GC because we simply expect better games. We care about what we play and we want it to be good. We're spoiled by the amount of effort, genius, and talent placed behind games made by the big N. How are games designed for the sole reason of making a fast buck supposed to compete with that? We simply expect more.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:GC dance mat game?
« on: February 17, 2004, 07:02:58 AM »Quote
Originally posted by: S-U-P-E-R
The incentive for XBox Ultramix was just to test out Xbox live and it should probably be dismissed as such - it wasn't as good as the recent PS2 DDRs and they basically just left it to their more inexperienced Hawaii crew.
Ah - I don't know about that. That's your opinion, not fact. I've talked to plenty of others who feel that Ultramix is the best version of the game out to date. I personally love my copy and I have a few friends who bought an XBOX just so they could play it. In their OPINION it isn't so easily dismissed.
Don't pass your opinion off as fact. Link to me an offical reliable source (not a lame 12 year old) that XBOX DDR Ultramix isn't as good as PS2 DDR.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:GC dance mat game?
« on: February 16, 2004, 06:39:03 PM »Quote
Originally posted by: S-U-P-E-RQuote
Actually, you know what would be cool? DDR on a GBA.
Did you know that DDR already came out for GBC? Three times? There was a wacky little finger pad accessory, too.
You've got to be freaken kidding me. Finger pad accessory? Wow... words escape me.
Quote
Lets think about this. Let's say konami had 120 songs. Each was a 50MB .wav file. Thats 800MB. They could literally put the entire ddr library on cube and still barely have to compress. The whole space arguement is just stupid.
I agree. I said in my post that I dropped the theory after thinking it through. Actually using MP3 or OGG they could get each song way down below 50MB. There is no technical reason for it. In fact, the more I look at it the simpler the game appears. It seems like they're losing more money by not putting it on the GC. You can't tell me that DDR takes the effort that say, Final Fantasy Crystal Cronicales (sp?) took.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:GBA and E-Reader for only 40
« on: February 16, 2004, 06:32:29 PM »
OK, I'm wrong. You guys are correct. I asked a friend of mine today how it worked and he explained to me that it worked kind of like the old style punch cards. That makes sense. I also didn't realize you needed to swipe multiple cards to get a game. While I don't understand why they didn't just put a magnetic strip on the cards it does make sense.
I apologize. The e-reader still doesn't appeal to me but the idea doesn't seem as dumb now.
I apologize. The e-reader still doesn't appeal to me but the idea doesn't seem as dumb now.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:GBA and E-Reader for only 40
« on: February 16, 2004, 06:09:32 AM »Quote
Originally posted by: PaleZer0
Matt, you couldn't be more wrong.
Um... Ok. Please tell me why - If I'm messed up on this I really want to know. Explain to me what's wrong with my logic.
Take for example - one of the e-reader cards appears to give you the ability to play Donky Kong (original) on the GBA. Granted, it's a small simple game but I still have a hard time believing that the game could fit on a piece of cardboard that would magically be read by the e-reader. Instead, it would be more logical for the e-reader to already have the game sitting in it and just be unlocked when a card is swiped. Consequently, all e-reader content would have to have already been created when it was released.
The one exception to this would be with "connectivity" gimmicks like in Animal Crossing. There all of the content would actually exist inside the game and the e-reader would essentally just pass a code to the game through the GBA.
I'm sorry but the whole e-reader thing seems to just be a gimmick to entertain 7 year olds who want to collect something different than baseball cards.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE: GBA and E-Reader for only 40
« on: February 15, 2004, 06:38:12 PM »
The concept of the e-reader never made sense to me. It would be impossible to put enough data to make up an entire game on a piece of cardboard, so everything you're "purchasing" with the cards has to already be in the e-reader itself. This means that you're purchasing the actual e-reader then purchasing cards to unlock all this content which, if you ask me, isn't really all that swift in the first place.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE: hey i have a regular gba should i go out and buy a gbasp?
« on: February 15, 2004, 06:32:43 PM »
I never played the original, I've only had my GBA for a couple months and I bought the SP. I consider myself to have Gorilla Hands (I thought the original XBOX controller was comfortable) and I find the GBA-SP comfortable to play. I also love the backlight because I can play in the car at night (not while driving) without ticking everyone else off by asking for the dome light to be on.
The only real drawback for me is the lack of a headphone jack. I'm going to buy the adapter soon, but it would have been nice to have been able to just jack some headphones in.
The only real drawback for me is the lack of a headphone jack. I'm going to buy the adapter soon, but it would have been nice to have been able to just jack some headphones in.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE: is XIII a cool game????
« on: February 15, 2004, 06:21:00 PM »
Played a bit of it on XBOX. Too many other good games out there for this one to get my playtime.
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:GC dance mat game?
« on: February 15, 2004, 06:18:36 PM »
Yeah, I own an XBOX and pretty much all I play on it anymore is DDR: Ultramix. I LOVE that game!
I had a theory for a while, but the more I researched it the more holes I found. At first I thought that perhaps DDR wasn't possible on the GC because it would be hard to fit all the music files on the smaller disc. Then I looked at DDR as a game and realized that while it looks good, it isn't nearly as complicated as some of the other stuff on the GC. With a decent compression scheme there's no reason why it couldn't be done.
Actually, you know what would be cool? DDR on a GBA. Before you all throw rocks at me think outside the box for a second. On Tech TV I saw a keyboard that was just a projection. It could be projected on to any surface and then you could type on it. Don't ask me how it worked but it did. Surly if you can do that with a keyboard you could do it with four DDR squares! The only thing would be taking into account that your Gameboy would move as you danced...
I had a theory for a while, but the more I researched it the more holes I found. At first I thought that perhaps DDR wasn't possible on the GC because it would be hard to fit all the music files on the smaller disc. Then I looked at DDR as a game and realized that while it looks good, it isn't nearly as complicated as some of the other stuff on the GC. With a decent compression scheme there's no reason why it couldn't be done.
Actually, you know what would be cool? DDR on a GBA. Before you all throw rocks at me think outside the box for a second. On Tech TV I saw a keyboard that was just a projection. It could be projected on to any surface and then you could type on it. Don't ask me how it worked but it did. Surly if you can do that with a keyboard you could do it with four DDR squares! The only thing would be taking into account that your Gameboy would move as you danced...
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Cool Idea that will Never Happen
« on: January 28, 2004, 04:25:06 PM »Quote
Originally posted by: thepoga
but actually i mannaged to make a gameboy cellphone. heres how: tape the cell phone to the gameboy!
lol... Duck Tape... The ultimate innovation material ;-].
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Nintendo Gaming / RE:I got to play Metroid Zero Mission! (Tiny Spoilers?)
« on: January 27, 2004, 04:07:00 AM »
When you first start the game you have two options: Normal and Easy. I chose normal and felt it was about the same difficulty as Fusion. The statues give you a point on the map to go to, but don't tell you what to do when you get there. I didn't get missles so I can't comment :-(.
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Nintendo Gaming / I got to play Metroid Zero Mission! (Tiny Spoilers?)
« on: January 26, 2004, 04:28:54 PM »
So Zero Mission is supposed to be out Feb 2nd right? Well today I'm at Target and I'm wandering through the GBA accessory section looking for a headphone kit for my SP. I look down at the GBA-SP demo display that they have out and notice that there's and advertisement on it for Zero Mission. I look down at the screen and well... It looks very much like Metroid... So I went to the title screen and sure enough... They've got Metroid Zero Mission on this thing!
I got to play through a lot of the first level before I had to go and let me tell you... This game is B-E-A-UTIFUL! The graphics are simply gorgeous! I would venture to say that they're some of the best on the GBA so far. You start out with like next to no abilities and you gain them throughout the game. In the time I played I got the morph ball and the long beam. There's also these huge statue like things that have their hands extended. You morph into a ball, roll into their hands, and get recharged along with occasionally getting told where the next point on the map you need to go is. Super cool!
Anyway, everyone go check your local Targets. I don't know if it was just mine or if all of them did this... It was an unexpected treat though!
I got to play through a lot of the first level before I had to go and let me tell you... This game is B-E-A-UTIFUL! The graphics are simply gorgeous! I would venture to say that they're some of the best on the GBA so far. You start out with like next to no abilities and you gain them throughout the game. In the time I played I got the morph ball and the long beam. There's also these huge statue like things that have their hands extended. You morph into a ball, roll into their hands, and get recharged along with occasionally getting told where the next point on the map you need to go is. Super cool!
Anyway, everyone go check your local Targets. I don't know if it was just mine or if all of them did this... It was an unexpected treat though!
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