mikeszekely

I'm in no rush. There's still some good games coming for the current-gen consoles (and with X-Men Legends II, Burnout Legends, and a better Tiger Woods for the PSP, plus Castlevania and the new Super Mario on the DS, the handhelds too). I'm buying the Xbox 360 as well, since it seems to have some games I'm interested in. I expect that the 360 will serve my next-gen needs until the PS3 becomes affordable and has some games I really want.

It's a shame that there's no homebrew for checking out .pdf files on the PSP. I just picked up 40 Years of the Amazing Spider-Man, and I think it'd be easier to dump the pdf files for the issues I want to read onto the PSP's memory stick than to either be shackled to my desk or to dig out the ol' laptop. FYI, 40 Years of the Amazing Spider-Man is essentially an 11 CD-ROM set collectiong Amazing Fantasy 15 (Spidey's first appearance), plus every issue of Amazing Spider-Man from issue 1 in 1963 all the way through December of 2003. As mentioned, they're all set up as pdf files (and since it's two book pages per one pdf page, any size that keeps both pages on the screen at a time is two small to read the text), but that's a small trade-off to have 40 years of Spidey history for just $40.

Seconded. And I find it somewhat ironic that, despite several designs, a replacement for the shuttle was never chosen, with cost being the main reason cited. Meanwhile, they've spent over a billion dollars trying to get the shuttles back into space after the Columbia disaster (with no flights during that 2 and a half year period), only to have to ground the shuttles again because the problem hasn't been fixed. It might have initially been costly, but if they'd settled on a replacement, we'd have probably wound up with something that costs less to launch, and is more safe at that. I still support NASA, but space flight can't remain the exclusive domain of government agencies if we ever want to see the kind of technology you're talking about. If the computer industry was run by the government, computers would still be tape-reeled mainframes that take up entire basements of college buildings.

Hey, if the 360 is getting a Gundam, why not a Macross?

For as much as I've been looking forward to (and talking up) the Xbox 360, I'd been figuring that, maybe not at launch, but eventually, I'd wind up picking up a PS3. I mean, I might be dissapointed with it now, but eventually there'd be a game I'd want for it... like probably a new Ace Combat. Well, Taito has announced their support for the 360, and their first announced title for it might be enough to make me forget about Ace Combat for awhile. World Airforce World Airforce is a sequel to the popular, import-only PS2 game Energy Airforce. The promise of highly (and accurately, as Taito supposedly works closely with companies like Lockheed) detailed aircraft and photo-realistic enviornments has me keeping my fingers crossed that this one will get a US release.

Sorry, I just got promoted to assistant store manager... just in time for the store manager to take his vacation. So, I've had a stressful day at work trying to self-teach myself the stuff that under other circumstances, they would have taken the time to train me to do. Fixed it.

I don't know... yeah, I know the comic books didn't have much of it, nor does the new cartoon... but to me, I was in elementary school when the Turtles were big. And Turtles without Krang, Bebop, Rocksteady, the Technodrome, and the Turtle Van... just isn't the same.

...makes him sound like an arrogant "You'll buy it because it's PlayStation!" bastard. And the sad thing is, he's probably right.

Yes and no. The optional minigame itself might not be considered as bad, since the action is taking place off camera. The mechanics are the same, in that you're using the analog stick to get in the rhythm, but to goal is actually to knock a vase of the table beside the bed. However, it seems that everyone in San Andreas retains, at the minimum, lingerie at all times. In God of War, you will encounter several topless female characters, often in gorgeously rendered and totally unskippable cut scenes.

Model: 52HM84 It got pretty good reviews, HDMI in, and supports 720p and 1080i. I fell in love with it because the picture was better and brighter than the other DLP sets around it.

If I recall my retail product training correctly, the 360 is coming with component video cables (sorry, JB0). The 360 is also supposed to support HDMI, last I checked. In fact, that's what I'm reserving the HDMI port on the 52" Toshiba DLP TV I plan on picking up by the end of August (I'm splurging, since I got promoted to Assistant Store Manager ).

Hey, it beats posting in the Shadow Force thread... Hey, at least all my quotes are in quotes.

*Glances in topic, goes back to playing Ape Escape from the memory stick.* Sony's going to have to give me a lot more than a browser to get me to upgrade. Especially because the only place I've been able to go online with my PSP is at home...

I'd heard about it, and I'm interested... but I'll wait for the US release, and hope it's only $20 again.

Okay, I know I'm breaking the clean rule, but it's the first thing I thought of when I saw this original...

Exactly. Should the fact that one medium is passive, and the other interactive, allow for more graphic imagery in the passive medium? Perhaps, but it's a stretch to really say that the Hot Coffee mod is anything truly graphic, given that the participants are clothed. Why not just say they're cuddling, and call the "pleasure meter" a "femenine sense of affection and well-being meter?" I think it's worth mentioning that God of War also has a sex mini-game, that's actually IN the game (no hacks or mods required). And unlock San Andreas, God of War actually has plenty of nude female breasts. And yet, God of War gets to keep it's M-rating... This begs the question, who old is her grandson? If he's under 17, why was she buying an M-rated game for him? And if he's older than 17, seriously, how much damage could possibly have been done? And this is, of course, assuming her grandson even downloaded and installed the Hot Coffee mod. Well, the way I see it, a game should be rated for what's actually in the retail part of the game. If the user breaks the EULA (which is enforceable, whether it was actually read or not) to change the playable content of the game, be it with an original mod or by finding a way to access leftovers on the disc, then it's on the users head. Exactly.

Ah, who cares about Gundam. SUPER ROBOT WARS 360! 314317[/snapback] Anyone getting it ? 314439[/snapback] Mmmm.... Macross and Gaogaigar in one bright shiny 5" optical disk... if only I wasn't broke. 314498[/snapback] 1.) Strategy games, as I understand the Super Robot Wars games to be, aren't really my cup of tea. 2.) Seems like the only Super Robots I care for are in Macross or Gundam. The rest? Meh. 3.) I hate SD. 4.) While Bandai likes to milk Gundam for all it's worth (and has all but said that the Gundam 360 game would get a US release), Super Robot Wars never get released here. I still want to import A.C.E when I have a little extra money, if only for the Nu Gundam.

It does, and IIRC, Rockstar and Take-Two have already said that they're looking at taking legal actions agaist the poor Dutch kid who started this whole mess, as well as Datel (and I think Pelican). The operative word there being "currently." "Currently" the ESRB wants developers/publishers to disclose any disabled content on game disc that might affect the rating. When San Andreas was submitted for rating, that wasn't required. And change as made then, forced by a political machine capitalizing on an uninformed public's sense of moral outrage. Should the political machine start on something else, what makes you think that the ESRB won't change the rules again. Speaking of the political machine... I'd actually made a reference to that article before, but I'll thank Druna Skass for drawing everyone's attention to it again, because it illustrates my point fairly well. I agree, to an extent. I think a lot of what Rockstar included in GTA:SA and Manhunt was downright distasteful. But there was plenty of other content that was included in the retail version of the game that they could have been legitimately taken to task over. By changing the rules to re-rate a game based on disabled content, the ESRB has done more than simply slap Rockstar on the wrist. Their decisions have ramifications on every other publisher and developer in the industry, and there will be further ramifications still in the ESRB continues to change rules to avoid political fallout. And it's those publishers and developers I'm concerned with.

But they could always downplay him by making an Avengers movie. Business man puts on kick ass high-tech armor, then procedes to shoot lasers at a dragon, a dude that hits things with a whip, and a green Chinese guy with a jewelry fetish. Works for me. I think Wonder Woman is an all but done deal. I also heard they were making a Green Lantern movie (and oddly enough, that it was going to be a Mask-style comedy starring Jack Black). If Superman and Wonder Woman do well enough, I'd say the Flash is also a likely canidate. On the Marvel side of things, well, after Ghost Rider and Iron Man, they're going to be running low on characters. There'd be the aforementioned Avengers and the Silver Surfer, before they'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel for Deathlok, Morbius, Luke Cage, Arana, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the like.

I read an article about how the ESRB works. As far as I know, the process consists of nothing more than the ESRB rounding up some volunteers to watch a video submitted by the publisher of the games most graphic content. The volunteers do not even play the game. Are the publishers/developers required to make sure they're not hiding any graphic content in the game? Most likely. Are they required to disclose that they'd worked on a sex themed mini-game, but disabled it and decided to leave it out of the retail version, but that the possibility remains that a modder/hacker could re-enable it? I highly doubt it. Without a mod or hack, the content is not available in the retail version. Without a mod or hack, naked Sims complete with genetalia are not available in the retail version. The only difference between the two is that the GTA hack uses leftover content on the disc, while the Sims hack has to create new content. In both cases, though, the consumer downloads and applies the hack, so there's essentially no difference to the consumer. With that in mind, I just don't think a game should be rated or re-rated based on third party hacks and mods, reguardless to whether they used leftover disabled content from the game or created new content from scratch.

I know that they bought out Namco, and they had a pretty cosy relationship with Nintendo as of late, so it may be more them. Yeah, I don't like Bandai games at all. Unless it's a Gundam game, they don't care about the quality. Only reason we got a good Macross game out of them was because Sega worked on it. 314357[/snapback] Even with Gundam, how many good ones have there been? The Battle Master series wasn't too bad, and nor was Encounters in Space... but mediocrity shouldn't be the goal. The only Gundam games I've really enjoyed a lot were the vs. games... which were actually developed by Capcom.

Seconding the Crossbone Gundam motion. But, I suppose that (as well as Sentinel, Hathaway's Flash, or F-90/Silhouette Forumula) would work better as OVAs. As much as I love UC Gundam, Magnus is right. Another UC TV series isn't likely to work, unless they can create a series that can really stand on its own without newbies having to watch everything else first.

Oh, you can remap them, but no matter how you do, the controls are still a little akward. You could probably get used to them, but like I said, it doesn't change the fact that the game still sucks.

Developers, American and Japanese both (and European and Candadian, for that matter) have been making games for PlayStation systems, because they know that's where the largest audience is. The same developers aren't blind to the fact that simply making a console that can go online isn't the same as having a well-developed online strategy. Xbox Live has made the Xbox 360 an attractive choice to developers who want to make an online game. It's a little suprising to hear that Bandai is making a Gundam game for the Xbox 360. But when you read that part about the game being like Battlefield and intended for mostly online play, it's not all that suprising. And frankly, such a game sounds quite interesting... although Bandai's track record with Gundam games is less than stellar.

In practice, what is the actual difference? The ammount of work the hacker creating the mod has to do. The end result is the same... PC user buys game, installs game, downloads mod, installs mod, and gets to play at sex. The ESRB is supposed to rate the content in the retail version of a game. The ESRB shouldn't rate a game based on content deliberately disabled (because actually going through all the code, removing it, and then going back and making sure everything else still works takes a lot longer and is much more work) that requires a hack or mod to access. That's a step away from rating games based on hacks and mods that add content instead of merely enable disabled content... something that some people are already calling for. From there, games would have to be rated based on potential content from aftermarket modders, which as JB0 already said, would have every game carrying an AO-rating. And that, more than anything Rockstar did, underminds the ESRB's ratings. But do you honestly think that the appropriate action was taken? The ESRB took a game that was already rated M for a number of valid reasons, and re-rated it AO for content deliberately disabled that, in depicting sex acts with clothes on, would probably only get a PG-13 rating in a movie. Sorry, all I see is the ESRB caving to political pressure, and Rockstar suffering as the victim of an anti-gaming lobby. As I already stated, I think re-rating the game based on disabled content undermines the ESRB's effectiveness more than Rockstar having disabled content on the disc and not submitting it for rating because it wouldn't show up normally in the retail version. Oddly enough, I'm in the same boat, JB0. If this was about taking a totally amoral game to task, there is plenty of other legitimate content in the game to work with. I'll be the first one to say that sometimes, with the stuff in GTA and Manhunt, Rockstar shows less artistic integrity and more violence and controversy simply because violence and controversy sell. But focusing on deliberately disabled content as cause for having a game re-rated is a whole other can of worms that has ramifications that go beyond GTA, Rockstar, Take-Two, or the money retailers will lose from selling GTA. I don't agree at all with where the anti-game lobby and the government are going with this, and I'm dissapointed that the ESA lacked the courage and integrity to stand behind what was a proper M-rating.