JB0

I'm curious. I doubt it'll live up to my expectations of a liquid-metal controller that reforms to fit your hands and the game, but I AM curious.

Actually, you CAN think about other things, provided you don't flip out like Guld did when Isamu interfered with his demonstration run. It's not clear if you HAVE to close your eyes or if Guld just thought it was a good idea. There's not really a good reason to keep them open either way, though. No real difficulty to cut the wires. True, true. Max DOES kick some serious ass in the VF22, though it's a woefully short sequence. ... I need to get around to watching the extra shows, just to see Millia get some ass-kicking in. Her VF22 time in the show proper was... disappointing.

They haven't made it out to be very impressive, really. Just a new idea. Most credible rumor right now is the pressure-sensitive handles, but it's still just rumor. I do think it'd be nice if they'd show the damn thing.

There weren't always ways around it. The SNES physically lacked the processing power to do a lot of fast action titles. It's a large part of why there's so few shooters on it. By the same token, you will never get high-quality sample-based sound out of a Genesis, or a 15-bit color pallete. The reason I used street fighter II as an example was because this was one of the games that really needed to recreate that depth of gameplay you had in the arcades or people would really complain. Given the limits of consoles, and the budget of the average kid who is a fan of the arcade version of the game, the consoles versions would have competed with the arcade versions for money had the conversions been accurate enough gameplay recreations of the better arcade versions of the game. Ya know, as a kid I didn't buy games. I talked my parents into doing it. And this was what mattered: people saw that gameplay was the focus first, and could tolerate the reduction in graphics and sounds if it meant the game PLAYED the same. You see, it no longer mattered now that neo geo as a hardware platform kicked the sega genesis or the snes's ass in all those technological areas and that they as little kids with little pocket change couldn't afford to have the system due to how expensive it was: because so long as the gameplay was accurate on a sh1ttier system we would be happy enough. A slight lower res sprite, a crappier choice of colours were cosmetic trivial things to important factors like: the game controlling perfectly, the combos working as they did, the collision detection being accurate etc... ie gameplay-related sh1t. You kind of missed the point. The gameplay on the NeoGeo was 100% accurate. Every move was timed exactly the same, every hit-box exactly the same, every trick, bug, and quirk identical. Because it used the EXACT same games. And the sprites were WAY lower-res, not slightly lower-res. Also, NeoGeo fighter ports always took a hit in the gameplay because you had to restrict the available playfield. SNK had an awesome scaling routine they used that allowed for large sprites when you were right next to each other, and everything got smaller as you scooted out further until you were on opposite edges of the playfield and reduced to flea-like sizes. Ports had to force it to a Street Fighter paradigm with a set viewing window, which drastically altered play. But yes, it WAS way too expensive. Only well-off adult gamers had the thing. Which goes back to my rude remarks about SNK's marketing team. But on Street Fighter... Genesis version. 3-button controller. Enough said. Ditto for Mortal Kombat. If you think very carefully about why the arcade industry has slowly died out over these past years you will see it is due to home consoles being more powerful and competing with them. Home consoles are less powerful again. But not terribly so for the most part. I do agree that riding a system as long as possible was one of the downfalls of the arcade industry, but it started going downhill well before the system boards. Now that the conversions of arcade games to the home are very close, and so long as they keep the crucual important gameplay intact (in a fighting game, slight changes may be big enough difference to tournment players) people disregard the platform they are playing that game on. Which is my point about previous generations: they were more gameplay conscious about the reasons for why they would buy something - not necessarily caring about the hardware itself. I disagree, having been involved in some fairly heated SNES VS Genesis debates. There were hardware loyalists then too. You just didn't see them venting on the internet. And this is why I believe next gen systems will fail to live up to the hype of the fanboys because they want high technology but to the rest, if there is very little difference in gameplay of games in the next gen, all it will do is fragment the industry more. The incentive to wanting a new system is to play a game you have never experienced before. That's funny, given how the industry has become increasingly reliant upon big-name sequels, and new game ideas are avoided like the plague by consumers. The incentive for most people isn't a new game. It's a new rehash of the same old game. The difference I wanted to make was that today if you have an increased level of detail in a game environment, automatically people think that this = a much much better game overall. (emphasis being on the cosmetic stuff) People then use that as a basis for thier argument that owning a high spec system means more fun. It may be true for certain genres, but I think we have reached a level where companies will try to one-up each other by only attacking thier competitor platform's tech specs, ignoring the quality of the content, the ideas behind those games, the depth of the games themselves, and whether they are actually any fun. But that's ALWAYS how it's been. I linked the Intellivision ad earlier. Mattel's ENTIRE campaign was screenshots of 1st-gen 2600 games VS latest-and-greatest INTV games. Fanboys join in and take sides and nobody cares about how good the game's gameplay is. (because they will never try it firsthand - they'd rather be part of a system war which divides the gamefans into platform loyalists rather than apreciators of the games) IMO, you're just hearing a lot more from the loyalists. They're the ones that talk about it mostly. The people that play everything just pay their cash and go about their business. This is why we saw the death of 2d gameplay because what happened was that these types of games do not display a system's 3d capabilities to the masses and wow the "platform loyalists". The platform loyalists prefer a game to sort of demonstrate what the system's hardware can do against the competition, (a pissing match) disregarding whether that game has been carefuly made and crafted with refinements that make a gameplay difference. (something that you can't actually "see", but something that is noticable and that you can "feel" after many hours of playing the game first hand) Actually, it has more to do with Sony's PS1 marketing techniques than it does fanboys equating penis length with hardware power. Sony drew a LOT of new people into the game market that, even if they didn't become hardware loyal, fervently believed that 3D = better, because it's what Sony used to convince them that they needed a PS. It's hard to sell a sprite-based game because they're viewed by most of the market as old and crappy. Sony's taken video games totally mainstream. Which means that they're now catering to the same idiots driving the movie, TV, and music industries. There is a difference, some people just won't admit it because nowadays games are just ported over from system to system. (not necessarily a bad thing, but can be annoying for those who want to see new content, with new ideas rather than a quick cashing in or a milking of a tired franchise through yearly sequels.) I DO dislike XCube2 games, mainly because they're fit to the lowest common denominator and don't take good advantage of ANY of the systems they're on. When you develop an exclusive title, you take advantage of the target system's strengths, and build the controls around that system's controller. And what I'm saying is an advancement in specs to a lot of game types or throwing money around isn't what is needed to necessarily make them better. It is a bit like watching a movie with very high production values and admiring the amount of effort that went in to the making of it, but realising that the movie really sucked still. It was an expensive turd. Then watching a movie which is very entertaining, was made cheaply, and one you'd watch over and over again and not get tired of it no matter when it was made or caring about the limits those people may have had in making it at the time. The quality is there despite the amount of money thrown behind it. I don't disagree with that. Just that the industry is running a lot diffrently than it used to.

If my memory is right, the answer's in the legs. That's the Macross as seen in Mac2.

You have the final conclusion. Hikaru picks Misa over Minmay, and our heroes successfully repel the assault of the Bodol fleet on humanity. 321890[/snapback] well, I watched the 36 episodes including DYRL and Macross Zero, but I wasn't happy with the 36th episode because it was an open ending, talk about a cut-off there. I don't see how it's an open ending, except in the sense that every show that doesn't kill everyone has an open ending. Correction: NEVER wanted to. He did DYRL, and said "this story is through." But by putting that in the continuity he could tell all the fans 100% definitively that he was never going to do anything with it again. Not just because he didn't want to, but because he killed them off. Was it mean and spiteful? Maybe. Does it get the point across? Definitely. Everyone dies eventually. If you keep begging for sequels, eventually you get death. Not really. The show ended on a positive note, laying out humanity's plans for the future. But it also ended with a definitive tying off of all remaining plot threads. It WAS. But people weren't happy with it, and didn't care that Kawamori was through with it, and kept annoying him for more. And no one kept nagging Kawamori for more Max and Millia. They let him just leave it alone until he wanted to do something more with the characters. Characters that actually had a lot more room for development due to their back-burner status during the original series. But even then, they weren't the stars of Macross 7. They were a side story, on the back burner again. ... I wanna see a series focus on the bridge bunnies. Actually, it was the love triangle between Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay.And Kawamori didn't cut it off, he finished it. ... He finished it three times, actually. Last battle of Space War 1, then they needed to extend the show for another season, so Hikaru starts screwign around with the whole Minmay thing and he finishes it again for the final episode, then they do a movie retelling of the story and he finishes it a THIRD time. All three end with Hikaru turning Minmay away for Misa. The love triangle was over. It was a line and a point, with no room for any further development. Fact is, a story revolving around a happy couple that just sits there being happy isn't really that interesting. And it REALLY stretches credibility to make Hikaru have ANOTHER change of heart and start pining after Minmay AGAIN. Anbd people wonder why I hate sequels...

I'll just be pulling parts of this post out. Parts of it just don't interest me, and others I don't feel like commenting on right now. Personally, I never cared for Street Fighter. Fasn't into fighting games in general in my youth, actually. But I've always had a soft spot for Samurai Shodown. It wasn't just the fighting games, though. AeroFighters and Metal Slug stick out as other "must-plays" of the NeoGeo library. Anyways... it was a FAR more sound concept as originally pitched. They wanted NeoGeos in Blockbuster, or something similar. You plunked a few bucks down , dragged home your arcade sticks and game deck, and enjoyed arcade-perfect gaming for the weekend. Beat the hell out of a 600$ game deck and 200$ carts. Also note that SNK lied about system specs in their ads. They ran the silly 24-bit ad campaing insisting that 24>16, and the SNES and GEnny were only 16. But they glossed over the fact that the NG used the EXACT SAME processor setup as the Genny. A 16-bit 68000 CPU and an 8-bit z80 sound processor. SNES had a 16-bit CPU and... I THINK the SPC700 sound processor was 8-bit, but I'm not sure. Yes. It IS all about the software in the end. I've got a bit of everything from a 2600 on up because of it. I intensely dislike Sony, but I've got a PS1 and PS2 both lying around simply because there were a lot of good games on both. http://www.atariage.com/forums/ AKA my haven from idiocy(no offense to anyone here). There's healthy discussion about everything up to and including the upcoming 3 systems. And a lot less "OMG MY MEGAHURTZ CAN BEAT UP UR POLLY COUNT!111" and "THE XBOX IS 256-BIT BECAUSE IT KICKS THE PS2'S ASS AND PS2 IS 128-BIT!111" (fun fact: XBox is a 32-bit machine, just like your standard IBM-compatible PC(unless you're running an Athlon 64). I've thought people get pretty irrational about sports and politics too, personally. I've heard of fistfights started over 2600 VS INTV. That was was a little before my time, but I've been interested in the history of the industry for some time, and I've picked a bunch up form people that WERE there. *nods* I have to say, even though they rode it WAY too long, I was sad to see SNK retire the NeoGeo last year. Was the last dedicated sprite hardware on the market, and having it axed was the end of an era. Yah. The entire industry moves in cycles. Even in terms of retorgaming. I guarantee you, a decade from now people will moan about how there's no good games anymore and the PS1 was so great the same way they moan about the SNES/Genesis now. Pr'ly done in software. The Genesis video chipset only provides for 2 background layers. But if you have the power available, you can re-draw it on the fly, to create an arbitrary # of "virtual backgrounds" on your 2 real backgrounds. And it's easy to do on the Genny due to the raw CPU power available. Most impressive example I've seen is Metal Storm on the NES, which has three independent background layers running at once on a underpowered system with only one hardware layer. ... Or you can just fake it by scrolling diffrent parts of the screen at diffrent speeds to create the ILLUSION of diffrent layers. The train scene in Ninja Gaiden... 2, I think... does this. There's only one layer, but it's animated in such a way that it looks like multiple layers scroling in parallax. there are probably various ways to cheat the effect of having more depth in the backgrounds of games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scroll but me != a games programmer I don't care how it works, so long as it looked pretty and gave a pseudo 3d effect it was enough. I'm not a programmer either, really. But I've picked up my share of trivia, along with 4 other people's. And multiple background layers was more common on the SNES because it was easier to do. Sure Sega had the power, but Nintendo had a hardware interface for it, so you didn't have to write a software routine. Nah. There was a lot of vehement sparring about which system was technically superior, too. Sadly, I took part in it, and I knew very little of what I was talking about. Truth is it just depended on what you were doing. Blast processing was VERY clever. It was a way to explain to people that had no clue what a CPU or megahertz was that the Genesis' 68000 could run rings around the 65816 of the SNES when they were clocked the same, and the Genny chip was clocked faster anyways. Fancy marketing buzzword for a very valid advantage.

You have the final conclusion. Hikaru picks Misa over Minmay, and our heroes successfully repel the assault of the Bodol fleet on humanity.

I got mine long time ago....just like Ico... 321835[/snapback] Then you're not one of the guilty.

Don't forget the neogeo ads complete with specs showing the superiority of the beast in graphics and sound and how it brought the arcade home. Ahhh the days of fighting over crappy system capabilities and minute crap instead of focusing on the games. Brings back memories.. Well, they had to do SOMETHING. Marketing took a system that was inteded as a reantal and made it for sale, and it was priced WAY over the competition. Having said that, it I Strue that you get what you pay for. The NeoGeo was damned impresssive hardware, and unlike everyone else that claimed arcade quality, it actually WAS(identical hardware save the BIOS, and used the exact same software. They didn't even burn new ROMs, just stuck them on a new board). Ummm.... the genesis only had 2 background layers. And 1 had to be used for the game field. So there was only 1 parallax layer. The SNES, by comparison, had a max of 4 layers(which varied with mode, down to NO background layers for any screen region in graphics mode 7 unless you count the 3D object), for 3 parallax layers. Flickering was a graphics chipset problem, actually. I forget the exact cause, though. Slowdown, though, was the CPU, and one of the SNES' great handicaps. It had incredible AV hardware, but lacked the processing power needed to make full use of it except in RPGs and action-adventures. Damn right. Most companies are content to ride the hardware they have until someone else starts making a competitor. Damn right.I tend to be somewhat anti-sequel. Not because the sequels are inherently bad, but because I'd rather see the effort they poured into Legend of Zelda 37 expended on a fresh new title. And all of oyu that kick back and wait for an interesting non-sequel to hit the bargin bins... YOU KILLED BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!

STEALTH!

I can remember in the 8 bit days when a system had to survive or fail on it's own merits... I really don't recall that much competition between the NES and the SMS. They both seemed to exist in on their own and have their own circle of users and a few, here or there, had the good fortune of owning both (and had a store nearby that actively stocked stuff for both systems) One of the few stores in the nation. The NES didn't survive on its own merits. It survived on the fact that once Nintendo America picked up some steam, they used their position to bully everyone else into backing them. A lot of stores that carried SMSes and 7800s started "mysetriously" losing shipments around Christmas time. Stores that carried unlicensed games(specifically Tengen's) recieved notes TELLING them that they would start losing shipments if they carried said games(allegedly because they didn't meet Nintendo's rigorous quality control standards and damaged Nintendo's reputation... yeah, sure, uh-huh...). And most developers on the NES had to sign exclusivity contracts. If you developed for the NES, you ONLY developed for the NES. Because NINTEY-FIVE PERCENT of the market was the NES. Step back a bit to the 1st era. 2600 VS Intellivision(first system war). Followed by 5200 VS INTV, INTV VS Colecovision, and 5200 VS CV. All were hotly debated subjects, with people on either side insisting their system was the only one worth owning and infinitely superior to the others. All were also successful consoles that enjoyed healthy competition from other platforms. No one ever argued the merits of an Arcadia or Channel F against a 2600, because there WERE NO Arcadias and Channel Fs out there. Legacy. The developers weren't going to break away from Nintendo and risk their necks on an unknown. And then when the Genesis took off and developers decided it was worth the risk to jump the NES ship, SEGA started in with exclusivity contracts. "Genesis does what Nintendon't." Enough said. I've already documented the history. Every time there've been two serious players in the market, there've been fanboys duking it out. A PS1 game that's a bad port of an SNES game, at that. Personally, being late to the game, I'm dumping my free time into Star Ocean 3. The staff at tri-Ace are like a bunch of little gods.

That's what they call "thievery" 321438[/snapback] I thought it was called "getting raped in the ass."

Except that MS is matching the rumored PS3 pricepoint, with a "lite" model to undercut the PS3's rumored tag. It looks an awful lot to me like PS VS Saturn all over again. ... The early days when both sides were sitting there undercutting each other, not the later days when Sega said screw it and dropped US support after pissing retailers off bad enough that a lot of them wouldn't carry Saturns anyways.

Yah. They're using a proprietary comm protocol and encrypting it, as I understand things. Any attempt to break the encryption puts you n the wrong side of the DMCA, and MS sues you into oblivion. Hence, no unlicensed peripherals. Funny how everyone gets bent out of shape when MS does it, but no one cares that Sony's been doing it for 5 years with PS2 memcards. 321245[/snapback] That's been a Sony complaint as far as I can remember...but I suppose it's a fact of life for everyone now. I don't recall ever hearing much noise about it. Ah. I hadn't heard that. Just that there'd be no unlicensed controllers.

Or think at all. When I was a kid, right alongside Voltron, Transformers, Robotech*, and Captain N, in the list of shows I watched regularly was Mister Wizard. In a prime afternoon time slot, no less. That sort of programming only exists on PBS anymore. And evne then, it's (generally) dumbed down severely, with a lot more smoke and mirrors added. *RT was notable in it's own right, despite the decidedly negative view most of the board members, mtyself included, have of it. Hell, most ADULT entertainment doesn't/didn't have the balls to decimate the planet and then NOT go back in time to stop it so it never happened. Actually, kids back then had video games. A little thing called the NES launched in the early 80s. You may have heard of it. Of course, the games WERE far less detailed. I don't know about other kids, but I used my imagination to fill in the blanks. Was actually one of my comments about WindWaker when the first previews came out, was that it looked the way I'd always imagined the original game looking when I was a kid.

Yah. They're using a proprietary comm protocol and encrypting it, as I understand things. Any attempt to break the encryption puts you n the wrong side of the DMCA, and MS sues you into oblivion. Hence, no unlicensed peripherals. Funny how everyone gets bent out of shape when MS does it, but no one cares that Sony's been doing it for 5 years with PS2 memcards.

The Transformers got blown away occasionally. Not that it mattered since you rebuild them, unless they died in a theater.

Ahhh.... it's just like the old days... Saturn VS PS1... And the 360 "lite" is the first shot in the price wars.

*blinks* The 1J is beating every VF-1 but the strike-pack 1S? Is it true? Has the world finally realized the 1A is ugly? JOY!

Milia's in the lead, with Misa a close second. All is right with the world.

This thread sucks super monkey balls.

Msut... stop staring... long enough... to... comment...

I did consider this, but then I remembered that Veffidas in comparison to Millia. Veffidas ' build is closer to a body builder than someone of Millia's size. She was a professional street fighter at one time and she did have to play with the boys who were also quite well built. So they do retain strength (imagine have 7 kids, where 2 of them were twins) but beyond a certain point, it falls to the individual, otherwise Millia should be able to do what Veffidas did, which she probably can't. 320649[/snapback] Yah. I chalked it up to a combination of superior fitness and "karate focus thing" as opposed to a human-zentran disparity. It's also possible that Veffidas' bloodline was engineered for raw physical strength and Millia's was for speed and agility. ... Or that Veffidas is decended from an upper-echelon breed and Millia was a rank&file soldier with the mindset needed to rise above others of her genetic stock. I believe it's established that, at least on the male side, the higher-ranking officers are(for the most part) larger and stronger than the common soldiers(Bodolza towers over Britai, who looms suitably large over the average zentran).

uhmm, I actually did. 320855[/snapback] That's actually a vague sentence. It could mean all transformation-capable VFs featured in animation, or all VFs with an animated transformation.