bishopcruz

Gah, the trailer was better than I expected, but I can't be the only one who doesn't give a tinker's piss about Ghost Rider, I'm almost over the whole comic book movie thing at this point anyway,

As for Bond, I have hopes, anything has to be better than Die Another Day, I SLEPT THROUGH that film, literally. It was that bad.

Mother 3 did come out for GBA in Japan recently and there are mumblings of the game coming out here soon too. I think it would be great if they released it as a pack of Mother 1-3 since there was a Mother 1 and 2 release for GBA last year or something in Japan.

Oh, and for those who don't know Mother was the name of the game in Japan. Earthbound Zero (Translated but never officially released here) was Mother 1, Earthbound (Mother 2) was the second in the series.

Looks like the Hondonians across the pond are getting buggered up the arse:

From Joystiq:

Sony has officially announced the U.K. price of the Playstation 3 as £425, representing the fully featured PS3 which comes in at $599 in the U.S. and 599 EUR in Europe. GamesIndustry.biz suggests that Sony won't be selling the cut down model over the pond, although this isn't confirmed. The PS3's price in England is higher than the console's price in the United States and Europe but we're not entirely surprised by this: British consumers are used to paying more for their consoles (although traditionally the U.K. gets identical or lower prices compared to Europe). Here's a breakdown of the U.K. premium over U.S. and EU prices:

 

£109 more than the U.S. "Premium" PS3: the U.S. price is $599 which converts to £316. Take this away from £425 and you're left with a £109 premium.

£20 more than the EU "Premium" PS3: the EU price is 599 EUR which converts to £405. Take this away from £425 and you're left with a £20 premium

Now check out the price when compared to the Xbox 360:

£146 more than Xbox 360 Premium: the Xbox 360 Premium is £279. Take away this figure from the PS3's £425 price and you're left with a £146 premium.

£206 more than Xbox 360 Core: the Xbox 360 Core is £219. Take away this figure from the PS3's £425 price and you're left with a £206 premium.

If we were in Sony's shoes, we'd feel very uncomfortable right about now: the combination of a chunky U.S./U.K. price divide combined with the absence of a cut-down PS3 bundle doesn't stack up well against the PS3's main competitor: the Xbox 360. But wait! When we stepped into those Sony branded shoes we forgot to take the free prescription of Prozac hidden in the heel! Ahhh, much better. Now we'd say something similar to the Sony marketing rep tasked with announcing the news:

 

"I don't think it's an expensive machine; I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine ... If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be GBP 600-700, and we're coming in at just GBP 425 - it's a bargain."

 

Sony's "but it plays Blu-Ray" line works if you're addressing early adopters and hardcore users. However, the British public (the majority of which associate "PlayStation" with games console, and not much more) won't take kindly to hearing "bargain" and "cheap" in the same sentence as "four hundred and twenty five pounds".

EGM is giving away free 1 year subscriptions until friday or supplies last:

http://www.zdmcirc.com/forms/EGM_051706_form.html

After you register it will take you to a WCG page, but you don't need to sign up for them to get the sub.

FF1 was great for its time. I think it was the first JRPG with a full party, and had some great graphics at the time. Lotsa fun, and hella tough at times.

FF2 (NOT FF4) was the first FF game with an intricate plot. The first game with an evil empire, it was alright, had an interesting levelling system, but I never beat it. I played the PS1 version.

FF3 (NOT FF6) was the first FF to use the Job class system later used in FFV, FFTactics, and FFX-2, it was from my understanding pretty sweet, and is considered a fan favorite. Never played it though.

FF4 (US FF2) was an amazing game at the time, it had incredible graphics, one hell of a story and was a lot of fun. I can see more flaws in it now, but hey, the game is like 15 years old.

FF5 (US FF5) I was pissed when this game got cancelled. I remember personally bitching at Ted Woosley on a compuserve forum when it got canceled. They just figured there wasn't a market. Still, the game was AWESOME, it used the job class system well, and while you didn't have the variation in characters that you did in 4 it was still sweet. Not to mention it has some of the best music in FF history, "My Home, Sweet Home" is amazing.

FF6 (FF3): I remember the first time I played this game, when I saw the Magitek mechs walking across the snow I was in fucking awe. Great story, great gameplay, and a ton of characters make this arguably the best FF game ever. Kefka is one of the best villains ever, and the overall dark tone of the story was never copied as well as FF6. Great fucking game.

So dark the Contra of Man:

I found all four discs a bit ago, I could've sword I told ya. If you can find a saturn you can play it, or emulate the bugger, if you really need to I can probably try to yank my old system out of storage or some shit.

Problem is PC games have been doing high def gaming for YEARS and the size hasn't changed much. We're nowhere NEAR needing Blu-ray for game storage, with game development time going through the roof it wouldn't make sense to use all of that space, hell Oblivion is fucking gigantic and it doesn't come close to filling a DVD, and Morrowind which had hundreds of hours of gameplay was under a gig.

GTA IV is coming to both 360 and PS3 on the same day and somehow I doubt that Rockstar is gnashing its teeth at the lack of Blu-ray on the 360.

It's too early for Blu-ray, I have an HDTV and I think DVD is perfectly ok.

When the next grand theft auto comes out on the blu-ray how much bigger of a map could it be compared to san andreas? And how much more stuff could they stuff in it(abilities, cars, planes ect...)

I think it would be awsome to have a gta game the size of 3 san andreas sized maps. Or could they map the entire United States? Or Europe? Or other small countries? Just think about the potential.

Well, test drive unlimited mapped all of hawaii, and I'm sure GTA IV will be big. Look I'm not saying that it's not great to have space to work with, but I also know that in general formats have lasted two generations before being retired for the next one up. This is not the case with what Sony wants to do with DVDs. You say that if I want to play HD-DVDs that my 360 will cost more than a PS3, well, that's speculation and at least I have the choice.

At the end of the day I am sure that PS3 will have some great games. That does not give Sony a pass on the absolute arrogance and idiocy of it's design and pricing. The only reason Sony is so dead set on having Blu-ray in the PS3 is in order to assure that it wins the next gen DVD format wars, which IMO are too soon in coming.

I'm sure in the PS3s lifetime we will have 2 and 3 disc games, and I'm also sure that it will be as a result of having insane amound of High def, pre rendered video.

Sony has great brand loyalty and recognition and that will pretty much guarantee that the PS3 will sell out of its initial shipments, the question is going to be, will it be priced to hit the casual gamer? Will next november when GTA 4 hits will johnny whitebread want to pick up a 360 for let's say $200 for a tard pack, or $400 for a PS3 tard pack, and that's assuming there is a price drop for the PS3 after its first year.

In previous generations Nintendo made the mistake that gamers would buy their systems on name alone counting on big franchises to keep them going, but they were intelligent enough to make sure they made money on each system sold. Microsoft's GIANT fuck up last time was building a system that they couldn't effectively price reduce over time, making sure that they lost a fuckload of cash with each system sold. Sony is making both of those mistakes this time around, and they have added Sega's mistake of pricing too high.

I think that while Sony will do well, this generation is now up for grabs as far as who will gain the most marketshare. Especially in the US.

Ok, not all of these are at my apartmet, some are still at my mother's as she is a saint who stores my shit even though I haven't lived there in like 5 years.

Anyhow systems I own: NES, SNES, Genesis w 32x, Power Base Converter, and Sega CD, Turbografx w CD, Atari XE, Vectrex, Intellivision, Saturn, PS1, Xbox, Xbox 360, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance.

I also have a PS2, N64, Dreamcast and Gamecube courtesy of gunsmith. Fun rare games I own:

Every version of Lunar 1 and 2.

Every Phantasy Star including the Japanese PS2 remakes of 1 and 2.

Every Ultima for PC (1-6 are via collections XI is a collectors edition.)

Beta Version of Ultima Online.

Panzer Dragoon SAGA

Every Official Ys game

Dragon Force, Albert Oddyssey, Vay and Popful Mail

Super Famicom version of FFV

Policenauts

Snatcher

and a whole lot of other shit.

Got a fair bit of manga, but I'm esepcially proud of:

My complete set of Maison Ikkoku (15 volumes), my nearly complete set of Tokyo University Story (Japanese only, fucking crazy series.) and my Urusei Yastsura collection.

IIRC the performance on the PS2 one is supposed to be ass. I played through 1 and 2 on the Xbox and they were choice, I know the PC version has mods, but otherwise the Xbox version is a close second.

The game really is a fun as hell game to play through.

Word is, Red Steel is ass, but that Metroid is aweesome. With the new control scheme I may actually play this one, it seems cool. The old scheme made Baby Jesus cry. Super Mario Galaxy sounds cool, as does Zelda. Still the fact that Zelda won't support widescreen for it's gamecube version is horeshit.

Hands on with Wii controller:

Alright, we briefed y'all on what we knew so far about the Wii controller early this morning, but now that we've gotten our paws on the Wiimote itself, we wanted to let you know how it is in the flesh. Nintendo and millions of fanboys are betting a lot on this concept, and Nintendo itself said that "playing is believing" every other sentence of their keynote, so the real question is: do we believe?

 

The short answer is that we're just not sure yet. The first chance we got with the Wii was for a golfing game (the shortest line we found, go fig) and as soon as we got our hands on the Wiimote we knew it was something special. We slipped the wrist lanyard on so we didn't fling the remote across the room, and held in our hands the light weight, ergonomic, and simply beautiful controller. If this was as far as we'd gotten we would have gone home happy. The controller allows plenty of leverage for the trigger "b" and the large "a" button, and only slipped out of our hand once from a particularly aggressive sword strike in "Red Steel." Click on for the rest.

 

Unfortunately, we soon realized a flaw in the control scheme for golf, in that there was no frame of reference or feedback for our motions. A traditional analog stick lets you know how extreme your motion was, but we just couldn't quite get a feel for how much power we were putting into our putts. Nintendo's "Tennis" game was quite enjoyable by comparison, but it automates a lot of the control such as the movement of your character. You also can't miss if you time your swing well enough, so we can't say this really tests the controller. That said, it was quite fun and provided a whole new type of play experience that we look forward to more of in the future. Next up, the "Obstacle Course" tech demo, which was so painful to play we almost swore off the controller altogether. Yeah, that fast. The sensitivity was so high that we couldn't keep our character from bouncing all around and losing all his coins, but our opponent managed his character fairly well, so perhaps we just don't got game.

 

 

Our hopes were buoyed by the sight of Ubisoft's "Red Steel," but were quickly dashed by the incredibly awkward FPS aiming that this game is banking on. The controls were great and easily learned, and we were soon slashing, parrying, ducking, shooting, reloading, opening and pushing with more convenience than we can ever remember in a shooter, and never had to look down to find a button once. But our aiming could be best compared to that of a hyperactive drunkard, and we seemed to get worse at aiming as the demo progressed. This is bad news for FPS fans who thought they might have found a new home on the Wii, but we have heard that games will allow you to set the controller sensitivity yourself, and Ubi obviously has some polishing time left before release.

 

 

We had a much more enjoyable experience aiming in a simple Bomberman mini game in which we shot at balls of lava, but weren't required to pan the camera or anything fancy. The other Bomberman mini games were equally enjoyable, including a balancing act, and a old school Sonic-like tunnel run that had us twisting our wrists in some rather uncomfortable ways -- in a good way. We didn't get to Zelda or Metroid, but we heard conflicting reports as to the ease of aiming in both of those games, with one complaining of the oversensitivity of Zelda, and another claiming Metroid to be the very pinnacle of the series and singing the praises of the FPS control.

 

 

The overall story seems to be that Nintendo's Wii controller (along with the expertly crafted and very intuitive nunchuka attachment) is all it claims to be, but software manufacturers still haven't figured out how to get this wonderful hardware to control their games as easily as the gamepads of yore, and our skills have not yet progressed beyond a shaky noob. It might turn out that the controller is just too abstract for some actions, and too hard to hold and control for others (let's hope FPS doesn't fall into that category), but we're going to reserve judgement until the software is more mature and we get a Wii in our living room for a few nights of practice.

 

So, first impressions in a nutshell: mixed bag. Are we hopeful? You bet. Are we floored? Not yet, but we're not willing to rule anything out. We're expecting to get some more play time this week, so we'll check back with you.

I've been hearing a lot of mixed reports like this, some people are raving, and others, not so much. I respect the hell out of Nintendo for being ballsy, now we just have to see if this thing will work in the long run. Or is the learning curve for devs and users going to be too great.

Well, FFXII is by the tactics guy so that has a lot of promise, early word is it kicks ass and got a perfect score in Famitsu, but that may not necessarily mean much as the reviewers for that mag are kinda wonky. Still, 12 at the very least should be a unigue FF because after it was made, a bunch of the team left Square for Mistwalker.

I know everyone and their mother is supposedly salivating for an FFVII remake on PS3, but honestly, I kinda wouldn't care. I played through VII twice, and while it was great, I dunno if I would want to do it again some 10 years later, when the story isn't as fresh.

That and after watching Advent Children and playing the Kingdom Hearts games, I know one thing. Tetsuya Nomura is a fucking hack. I'd hate to see what storyline changes he would put into the remake that would make it worse.

I think it has been playing for years, I still see it on G4 sometimes when I watch that over at my mother's place. The fact that it is on the air today makes baby Jesus cry.

I figured Nintendorks could use a thread for miscelanious gaming shit that might not deserve its own thread normally, so this is the anything goes so long as its gaming thread, random bits o news, weird videos, or other cool shit goes here. Pretty much, if it is worth showing Hondonians, but not worthy of its own thread, plop it here:

To start off:

This is why I wanted to be a game designer, so I coulod be as cool at these guys:

Westwood College Baby!

Seven was alright, best RPG ever on the PS1 though was Xenogears. That game was far and away the best RPG of that generation. FFVII did tons for the blending of cinematics and gameplay (work that had started in previous generations on the first CD-ROM games), and it had some great moments.

FFVII was also the game that turned a generation on to RPGs, that's part of the reason it is so popular. It wasn't the best FF game (FFVI beat it hands down) but it came at a very vital time, and really pused the envelope of what we thought could be done in games.

Also, props for being the only FF where the characters actually curse. I thought that was a great touch.

Xenogears was just amazing! It was a longer game than VII, and it had one of the deepest, most touching storylines of any RPG ever. Some games have claimed to be epic love stories, Xenogears was the only one that actually fulfilled that claim.

As for Advent Children, it is really pretty, but the plot is ultimately useless.

No, it's the scene just before the first one on the list. Brutal as all hell.

Popping this one back out there:

The ending of Lunar 2, friggen awesome for the time, I mean the Sega CD was the shit.

Ninja Gaiden 1: The introduction, first time I had ever seen scenes like that. Hard friggen core.

Metal Gear Solid 3: The torture scene. Holy god, most brutal shit I think I have ever seen in anything.

The new trailer for this game looks fucking badass. I sega.

Again. Fucking badass.