JB0

Well, look at what the arcades were doing. The 2600 brought the games home, but they took a major hit.On the opther hand you didn't get ports that sacrificed playability for the sake of grapical accuracy(See: PS1 Xmen/StreetFighter) because graphical accuracy wasn't an option. Mmmm, let's see... Probably Asteroids Deluxe for fav game, just because I prefer shields to hyperspace. Quick action, but every motion has to be Probably the pinnacle of single-screen gaming right there. My tastes shift a fair bit with time, but 'Roids games are always near the top of my list.

It's one of my major hobbies, so I've got a lot of trivia in here(according to your profile, you're a year older than me). I actually went from a Vectrex(Bought on clearance when I was 2) and a 99/4a computer(same story) to an SNES. So I got roughly a decade of hardware evolution in one shot(of course I'd had NES exposure at friends' houses and store demos, but not a massive amount). Then I backpedalled to a 2600 and then an NES. My acquisition order encouraged an interest in the history of the market. From there... let's just say I have a dozen different systems and way too much trivia. There's plenty of high-quality games on pre-NES systems. And what happened to the system's first 3 years? It hit the US in '85, and actually dates back to 1983, when the FamiCom hit Japan. If you're cutting it off at 88, just say the Genesis was "the first console," with a 1988 release in Japan, and an '89 launch state-side. Not quite the same situation, since there wasn't any competition to the NES. The crash of '83 had cleaned the US market out. There were a lot of factors behind the crash, but it wasn't just people realizing that "Atari sucks." The primary one was bad business practices at the retail level. Stores were stocking equal amounts of all games. So a bargin-bin Mythicon title(you don't need to know who they are, just that they sucked) had the same shelf space as, say, Joust. The people BUYING the games, obviously, wanted the good ones and not the bad ones. So while the good games were flying off the shelves, the bad ones just sat there. And retailers, rather than looking at specific titles, just looked at "games" and saw that games as a whole DIDN'T sell well, and thus the video game fad was over. And when people started trying to compete with Nintendo in America, Nintendo'd already established themselves and was using their market power to prevent competition. Stores that carried 7800s and Sega Master Systems tended to have Nintendo shipments "mysteriously disappear" during the holiday season, for example. ... Of course, the competition didn't exactly make a lot of effort to raise public awareness in the first place. So it's more like if people had started making bad knockoffs of Comets, the kncokoffs gave jets as a whole a bad name, then the 707 brought back an industry that people thought was nothing more than a passing fad, and shot rockets at every non-707 in the sky. The games were sound, when any effort was put into them. That's why you keep seeing retro compilations crop up, is they're still fun games 25 years later. Asteroids isn't better or worse than Zelda, it's just diffrent. One focuses on completion, the other more on reflexes and quick thinking. Personally speaking, I don't care for a lot of the biggest NES games, including the immortal pack-in. Stuff like Gradius and Castlevania just gets on my nerves. I HATE memorization games, especially when your character is too slow to attempt free-form play(in Gradius' case, you can't even stick to the pattern if you die in the wrong spot). Games that require you to throw hundreds of lives away learning where everything is just get on my nerves. I never liked Space Invaders either. It's got the same problems. Just too mechanical. They got better later, some genres slower than other. I like Mario 3(and Mario 2, but that doesn't really count). Rondo of Blood's player character moves a lot better than the NES CVs did, bringing it to the level where pattern recognition is an aid instead of the entire game. I like the Gradius pseudo-sequel Salamander, which I've described on many occasions as "Gradius done right." My favorite games, though, remain ones where patterns aren't really relevant. Asteroids, for example, is pure randomness. The rocks enter from random locations, and the nature of the game is such that even if they do come in the same locations, slight variations in player input dradically change the game. End result: You'll never play the same game twice. Going a bit more modern, Mars Matrix on the Dreamast is a game that you can play by reflex and instinct(though a large screen and a good joystick are must-haves). And for raw eclecticism, everyone needs to play Qix. Totally random, totally freeform, and totally abstract. It's never been a very high-profile title(original arcade release failed because... there were no patterns to beat it with), but it's a damn good one.

Pre-console to me means the dedicated Pong units, and the Odyssey 1. The 2600 was the first machine to implement the programmable paradigm that has defined every game machine since, and the first to use custom hardware. It's very similar to a modern game console, from a design standpoint. In some ways, the VCS is actually more advanced than an NES. Not many, but a few. Mainly color depth and scanline-based special effects. The shift to sprite/tile graphics came with the IntelliVision, which also introduced the crime against humanity known as the gamepad(in what I consider to be a superior design to Nintendo's, if for no other reason than it was ambidextrous), and was the first to attempt to lock 3rd-party developers out(though it was done after-the-fact and failed miserably). Also brought us the BIOS splash screen, which was blessedly absent for many years afterwards. And was the first 16-bit console. The Vectrex introduced both the analog thumbstick and the "plastic cap on a silicone dome" button construction, in a package that's actually VERY similar to a really big NES pad(inch and a half tall, 8" long, 3 deep). Also made signifigant use of scaling and rotation through specialized graphics hardware(an integrated vector display tube), making it (possibly) the first "3D-accelerated" game machine. On a personal note, this baby was also my first game console, and sits a mere 3 feet from me at this moment(right next to my SNES). The Atari 5200, while missing the analog stick and silicone switches(which on the 5200 lacked the plastic cap of modern buttons) by mere months, and the BIOS splash screen by 2 years, DID introduce 4 controller ports on a console, the almighty PAUSE BUTTON, and the automatic RF switchbox(Whoo. RF. Yay. I should do an AV mod on my VCS and 5200.). I'm not sure what makes the NES so diffrent from its predecessors, aside from country of origin. </rant>

Or maybe HG's already done it themselves...

Anyways, let's get back on-topic. The topic, of course, being that Shatner has, by pissing a rock and turning it into gold, proven the alchemists were right.

*scratches head* I'd've swore the oldest system with games coming was still the 2600... http://www.atariage.com/store/

Mmmm, Twix...

I wasn't even particularly serious with the part you highlighted. But the first part of it is true. Some women DO claim it.

Well, given the female reproductive system is designed to pass a baby and the urinary tract isn't designed to pass a kidney stone... There's also anecdotal evidence that at least some women experience orgasms during the birthing process. So they don't get to complain. I think the main point with pregnancy is those of us with Y chromosomes don't run around with a parasite growing inside us for 9 months mucking with our hormonal balance and making us eat pickles and ice cream with ketchup.

Hums Star Trek Original Series deathmatch theme: Dun dun, dun dun dun, dun dun dun.... Passing stones. Owie. So are you supposed to help it along down the pipe manually? I imagine it'd be a feat pushing it down yourself by bladder pressure alone. And... does it ever get stuck... you know... mid-pipe? O_O 362081[/snapback] I don't really know. I strongly suspect it's just with piss power, and that they operate if there's a risk of getting lodged mid-pipe

Hmm? Oh, well that's great! Just to be sure though, I'm sending Elin over to check your Hard Drive and RAM, just to make sure that your unit is performing up to everyone's expectations... 361989[/snapback] Okie-dokie. I'll go through the full set of diagnostics, just to assuage everyone's concerns.

Dutch, not German. Also, in the US, nearly everyone pronounces "Fokker" as "Foke-er" AFAIK. It wasn't until I was in college and I had a Dutch guy who liked planes in my class that he corrected me that it was in fact pronounced "Fock-er". Just FYI. 361981[/snapback] Whoops. Like Spock. He's a nod to german plane manufacturer Fokker. The spelling's off, but pronunciation is the same. Hollywood agrees. Harmony Gold ran with spoke, but that's likely because they wanted to avoid any "ZOMG THEY SAID FUC|< ON A CARTOON!111 KILL!111" situations. Especially since they changed to the double-k spelling. Heh.... guess I was wrong on Exedol. No one uses the official spellings. They're too hard to remember. 361818[/snapback] Actually, you've got that backwards, The official Pronunciation is like "spoke," HG ran with the "spock" sound & double k spelling 362039[/snapback] I'd've sworn it was the other way around. Ah well, so I'm 0 for 2 on that one.

In this corner, we have the campy and humerous version of everyone's favorite superhoer! Nananananananana BAT-MAN! And in this corner! The one! The only! Captain James! TIBERIUS! KIRK!

To bodily go, where no man has gone before... I have to admire the fact that Shatner's willing to do this, despite it being kind of tacky. And in the end, the tacky's actually part of the charm, as Shatner willingly exploits himself for a laugh and charity. Wait, so you're actually suppose to... pass these things? Through there? *looks down* But... the orifice... is not... that big. O_o It's supposed to hurt like hell. And you're only expected to pass the small ones. Larger ones can't get into the pipe, and have to be operated on(especially if they jam befor ethey get to tbhe bladder, as the kidneys are vERY sensitive to pressure).

Yes.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story I think its the only movie that both are in. 361819[/snapback] Was Shatner in that? I guess it's the ultimate movie then. Come to think of it with that movie you get Hasslehoff, Shatner and Chuck Norris. 361823[/snapback] But no Vin Diesel or Mister T.

Ha! With the issue of system failures for some people, it just occurred to me that maybe the removeable hard drive wasn't such a bad idea after all. If my system one day fails after my extended two year warranty runs out, I can easily pop the hard drive off, buy a core system, and clip on the old drive. That couldn't be done with the original Xbox. You COULD just open teh original XBox and swap hard drives. Admittedly not as easy as a clip-on expansion, but they were a hundred bucks cheaper, too.

Like Spock. He's a nod to german plane manufacturer Fokker. The spelling's off, but pronunciation is the same. Hollywood agrees. Harmony Gold ran with spoke, but that's likely because they wanted to avoid any "ZOMG THEY SAID FUC|< ON A CARTOON!111 KILL!111" situations. Especially since they changed to the double-k spelling. Heh.... guess I was wrong on Exedol. No one uses the official spellings. They're too hard to remember.

Yeah, I mean, it'd be one thing if Shatner was just so full of himself that he figured he could sell it and use the money to build a statue of Kirk on his front lawn. But since it's going to charity, then it becomes kind of admirable. I mean, anything that can help the unfortunate without hurting anyone in the process is respectable. If he wanted a statue, he coulda just made one out of the kidney stone. Be the only Kirk merchandise in the world that was the 100% genuine article. "GoldenPalace.com originally offered $15,000 for the stone but Shatner turned it down, noting that his "Star Trek" tunics have commanded more than $100,000." His counteroffer was accepted." Ya know, I'm not quite sure that bodily waste and TV props belong in the same category... But really, I have to applaud anyone that can sell a kidney stone. He could've used the 25 grand to wipe his ass and I'd still applaud, just because he managed to sell somebody a piss crystal.

My unit's as good as ever. ... Or did you mean XBox 360 unit?

Officially, it's battroid with an R, Exedol with an L, Millia with an L, and TREAD with an R. Not really relevant, but all of them except Exedol/r roll off the english-speaking toungue easier that way. MOSPEADA was big on english acronyms, and TREAD is one of them(standing for TRans-EArth-Deployment). Unlike the other 3, there's not any room for translation variances here.

He IS an overdressed cyborg. Of course, a lot of the bulk is battle armor. That was out-of-continuity. ... *spoiler* He DOES get a new fleshy body back at the end of the series. */spoiler* Yah. 2 pairs of trucks(3 pair in Final), a cop car-motorbike-helicoptor set, and a lion-cyborg-train-jetplane-drilltankthingie combination, then Big G + a tank. HyoRyu and Enryu were designed primarily as support vehicles. Their main purpose is to protect civilians. Combat is a secondary role. That's why you have a crane and a firetruck. As far as FuRyu(cement mixer) and RaiRyu(dump truck)... well, they needed somewhere to stick the FuRyu's missile launcher, and RaiRyu... there's no excuse evident. They just wanted him to be construction equipment so he'd match his cement mixer "brother." The dimension pliers aren't really relevant. Trust me. No personality, and they show up all of... 3 times, I think. Once is just so they can get smashed. As far as original series goes, the 4 Ryus, GoldyMarg, Mic Sounders, and Volfogg are the relevant 'bots. And Gaogaigar, of course. It doesn't take itself very seriously. It's a super robot show, with all the cheese that entails. You have shouted attack names, trademark killer moves, mechs ranging from utterly absurd to almost plausable if you're drunk, giant alien monsters, little children running around underfoot, and all that good stuff. GGG isn't a deep program. There's no drama, the plot's paper-thin, plot twists are almost non-existant(and very deus ex machina when they DO show up), the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose, both sides are very clearly defined as heroes and villians, and so on. You're not going to spend a lot of time thinking about it afterwards. It's just fun to watch. And that's why it's recommended. ... And Taiga rules!

Another bootleg 361561[/snapback] As of right now, the ONLY complete legitimate english version is the 9-disk Animeigo set. If it's not 9 disks, it's a bootleg.

Bootleg, using Animeigo art.

Some pussies can cock hammers.