We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

How else will they outsell Nintendo and Sony and establish themselves in one in six homes on the planet, if not by only selling to half of it?

It’s like their strategy was “Let’s think of a device for the most average person we can think of and target that. The average person is incredibly dull, right?”

edit: Like I can understand not working in central africa or parts of SE asia but jesus they skimped on INDIA and CHINA of all places. No I'm done I can't even look at microsoft as money thirsty vampires anymore this is just too stupid.

Game consoles aren’t necessarily uncommon in China, but they sure as hell aren’t legal, and were they legalized today they’d have to fight an entrenched gaming culture centered around mobile devices and PC gaming at Internet cafés.

I dig the cel-shaded style of the 3DS version

I may be mistaken, but I do not think it is technically cel-shaded. It only has an outline shader, like Borderlands. Cel-shading is supposed to imitate flat cartoon shading, and the outline is sort of secondary (see: The Wind Waker). The screenshots I have seen seem to have more dynamic shading. Compare to games like Viewtiful Joe and you'll see what I mean.

Yeah, I don't think cel-shading is the right word, but I couldn't think of what else to call it. Comic-book outlines?

Oh cool it looks as if the item to get the cat suit in SMB3DW is a bell.

Can I just say that as minor as this is I enjoy having new powerups that aren't just [x] Mushroom or [y] Flower?

Yeah, I don't think cel-shading is the right word, but I couldn't think of what else to call it. Comic-book outlines?

I call all of it NPR for lack of specific terms that aren’t also awkwardly multisyllabic.

Now that college is out for the summer, I'm playing through Baten Kaitos to see if it was ever actually good or if I was just a tween. First impressions: holy shit, the character design is so gaudy. Fingerless gloves and flame-leopard-print wristwarmers? The cover looks ripped straight off of DeviantArt:

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Goddamn it Microsoft.

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I don't get how such a powerful company can keep providing such hilariously spectacular failures.

First couple of hours of Baten Kaitos have gone pretty well, although I'm not totally sure what I'm supposed to be doing. My biggest complaint: it has a pretty severe case of environment-looks-better-than-characters syndrome. Gonna post a little thing about that later today.

Carpet looks comfy tho

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Wind Waker never asked me to pledge and sent me a tote!

e: There are two things I admire about Pokémon X and Y that are not the tired, formulaic gameplay.



I like that the character customization includes skin tones. Even though Pokémon is years behind on this and their idea of a dark skin tone is just a shade lighter than chocolate milk. But it's good that Pokémon is expanding its player character experience.

I enjoy playing women of color in games with customization not just because I think they are attractive, but because seeing light skinned characters constantly gets pretty old.

The second thing I like is the worldwide release date and lack of region lock. It's cool to see such a big game be so progressive. This coupled with the better customization would lead me to believe that Nintendo finally realized that Pokémon has a global appeal.

agreed on both of those points wrt pokemon

So anyway, saw some more things on the problems with Xbun phoning home and being region-limited:
- (note: this article is satire) If you denied service to large swaths of the U.S. the same way it’s not going to serve in some reasonably important markets, don’t be surprised if you get an image problem. (also note: remember how iPhone used to be AT&T only and everyone hated it because there was no coverage in large swaths of the U.S.?)
- (note: this article is dead serious) Why should Xbox One essentially banish active duty military? There’s a loyal, paying part of the Xbox crowd if there ever was one.

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This is a video recording of a colorization hack [game modification]. The ROM image has been flashed to an EEPROM whereupon it has been placed in a “dev cart” hack [homemade hardware] and played via Game Boy Player on a GameCube hacked [hardware modification] to run off an SD card.

I must admit some jealousy here.

- The SD card is probably just for disclessness.
- Homebrew cartridge could easily be replaced by an off-the-shelf flash cart, but then there are no guarantees about what you’re getting (not that it matters a whole lot with this system, no). Spare EEPROM will probably be cheaper and more available in the long run, though.
- I imagine the Player is because this is technically a GB to GBC conversion, but he still wanted to see it on a TV.

So the only real goal for this case was to make sure that the ROM (and any future projects) works properly on real hardware—this hack was partly based on an earlier effort that didn’t. I suppose every other goal is a bit like seeing what proportion of a machine can be duct tape or WD-40 before you actually have to get new parts.

While modded consoles are impressive, I can't get behind anything that just loads game dumps. The console becomes a semi-official meta-emulator at that point. It has already ceased to be "the real thing" and it just seems like a waste of space if you're not collecting games anyway. But then I am a collectnerd so what do I know.

Well... basically, the accuracy of emulators in common use is actually worse than most people suspect. Way worse. Testing on something besides the actual hardware is fine and dandy, particularly if you need nice features like a debugger and all that, but when it comes to almost any game console (we may have to excuse some very rare / awful systems), the actual console itself is what it needs to run on; it’s the best bet when it comes to the ultimate preservation of what has been made.

It’s true, most people who use these sorts of things do it for piracy or some other nefarious deeds. But most of the people who work on these things are hobbyists, just like the prudent collector, preserving their own tiny share of our own cultural heritage (which is something of the rationale for why, from 2003 to 2010, doing the sorts of protection-bypassing you need to do to write an emulator was a DMCA exemption). And make no mistake, even practitioners of Dark Arts against whom I stand diametrically opposed* are doing this in their own misguided fashion.

Furthermore, I consider that the DMCA’s overbroad stance on circumventing digital access control must be destroyed.

*repro carrrrrts

Ultimate preservation needs to take into account the fact that someday, the original hardware will effectively cease to exist. Effort would be better spent improving emulators.

Here’s the thing: You don’t have a good emulator without a very thorough study of the hardware, and besides, the multiple projects all target the same hardware—ergo, there is only one “correct” model; all others will fall short in some way (even bsnes, even though the inaccuracies left in it are strictly academic). We already have plenty of Mario hacks that only work on ZSNES, which hasn’t seen an official update since 2007, and will almost certainly be incompatible with these hacks when there is a new release (I have faith, but I’d have more faith if they didn’t decide to hide their development activity years ago), and a good number of NES hacks that only work in That DOS Program with the Filthy Name. I mean, as long as I’m stealing quotes from some Ancient Roman dudes, who emulates the emulators?

Moreover, the SNES is mighty simple compared to a lot of consoles that came afterwards, yet getting every single game emulated correctly and each chip examined microscopically was a herculean task somewhat attributable to the confirmed fact my personal belief that byuu is some sort of Terminator sent to save a dystopian Nintendoless future. Not to discredit anyone working on any other emulator, but if people aren’t working insanely hard towards a similar goal for their system, they aren’t going to see those kind of results.

As for Nintendo’s being better at emulating things: they also happen to have access to the kinds of system specifications, probably original source material, and often even the original creators of the particular materials that would make it possible for them to do this. This is akin to how NASA can pull out a museum piece, study it in excruciating detail, and refine its design. No other space program has a successful moon rocket design, much less one they can crib notes from like that. Such is the kind of challenge when a small team of ragtag misfits tries to make a one-for-one copy of the workings of a complicated device bankrolled by a multinational corporation; not only is it a difficult kind of program to perfect, the only time I recall any console manufacturer lending a hand to any independent third party making one was when Sony bought Connectix Virtual Game Station (to cancel it immediately / perhaps put parts of it in the PS2) after losing the lawsuit.

(I hope this sort of pouring my brains out is not frowned-upon discussion, but this sort of thing has been a big part of my life since I was in elementary school and it’s too late to take it back.)

kk drum and bass

oh is that what it stands for

So, taking the current AAA gaming philsophy of "never let the player fail" to an absurd extreme, Crytek's new game Ryse literally plays itself.

Can't make this shit up.

I could write a whole rant about how the trend of making big-budget games more "cinematic" is sucking the life out of them, but I feel like that'd be preaching to the choir. Still, come on.

i am executive. need to sell consoles. console play video game.

people like movie? make console movie box. can play movie, television show. has game that is movie too. all the cash

I’m pretty sure I posted this in the other forum a ways back, but I’m pretty sure it’s worth bringing up again in case anyone forgot / hasn’t seen it. In case you don’t have time to watch a 15 minute video, it’s a guy just playing the the first mission of Call of Duty: Black Ops on the second hardest difficulty.

Except, as he notes, it turns out you don’t need to actually shoot to get through that mission, besides a couple of forced moments. We’re not talking a pacifist run here. In terms of game mechanics, it’s hardly even a tutorial level, unless the concept of standard FPS walking/looking controls is new to you.

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Fire Emblem: Awakening simultaneously nurtures a lot of maternal desires in me and twists them horribly as my fictional daughter seems to care more about her stupid dumb fictional dad than she does me why don't you love me will you love me more if we stab more guys together just tell me

In that video the guy also claims all console owners are "part of the problem" and to get the fuck off his channel. While it doesn't speak too highly of him, it also really doesn't say anything good about CODBLOPS, either.

I just like saying CODBLOPS because it sounds like a fish disease.

FACT: Playing CoD saps your intelligence worse than being on YouTube at all does.

ALSO FACT: Only thing I think good came out of that game was the practically endless puns you can make out of the title.

torchlight is free for the next two days

GET IT NOW

also i guess gog is doing their "fuck hurry up and do this summer sale before steam does theirs" deals thing

Having watched part of a Let's Play of Final Fantasy XIII-2, I think the quicktime events there do the same thing as ryse. It's used for cutscenes where the characters are doing anything cooler than you can do in battle.

Also ooo, torchlight. Thanks for the heads up!

"Thank you again for your candid feedback."