Radd

I don't see Wii Fit as being something to write off, sight unseen. I might have before the Wii launch, but now I'm still playing Wii Sports and Wii Play pretty regularly. You are quite right about Marvel Alliance, and unfortunately we'll see more of that. Remember how the DS went a year or two before developers really began taking advantage of it, and learning when not to use the touch screen at all? It's the nature of the industry as it stands today, they'll keep trying to hammer out the old formulas until they see something else making more money. Graphics-wise...I dunno really. I see how one would get the impression that the Wii can't do Xbox quality graphics, because developers really haven't been pushing them. I have seen little things that pop out as stuff the Xbox couldn't do, or at least that I never saw. I really have to wonder if this is because of the console itself, or because developers are trying to push out titles as fast as they can, especially when no one really expected the Wii to be such a success. Maybe the Wii is limited to less than Xbox like graphics, but I'm not so certain. Of course, the point is mute if no one pushes the hardware to its fullest. I'm also not saying I want Nintendo to dominate, like the PS2 did last generation. If you ask me, that's the worst case situation for gamers, and last generation is a good example of why. The PS2 offered nothing that the other consoles couldn't do better, yet it dominated, and so the whole generation was held back to the PS2's pace. Nintendo didn't really offer anything new other than better graphics but that was still something, but the Xbox had Live going, and if it had done better last gen I'd imagine that both Nintendo and Sony would be pursuing that market more aggressively. Strong competition always works in the consumer's favour.

I'm kinda the opposite. First, I don't want to see consoles pushing the price envelope like the 360 and (especially) the PS3 have been. Second, I want to see more games where the controller, which I see as a long overdue push in an area that has been pretty stagnant for far too long, is put to good use. I would agree that likely we'll see lots of titles shoehorned into the Wii, rather than designed with the Wii in mind. Still, if honestly good games that take advantage of the remote continue to sell well, that may change with time. Third, competition. If the Wii continues to do so well this generation, we'll likely see games in HD with Dolby Digital that also make use of an excellent controller in the future. Whether Nintendo manages that within a decent price, or Sony or Microsoft make that push to gain back ground. Plus, just as there was never a reason to drop 2D games, the emergence of a new controller standard doesn't mean old style gamepads should dissapear entirely.

Even though it's old news, it still hurts. *sniff* Well, maybe the Masterpiece line will continue....I hope.

I have to disagree, in a way. It was never "explained" or even made out to be some kind of magic, but simply in the way the show was directed, with beams of light and whatnot accompanying "use" of spiritua, it does present it in such a way that to the casual eye, it would seem like the characters are flinging around magic energy beams and fairy dust. It did not seem this was the intention of the show, spiritua seems far less "magical" than, say, the example of "the force" someone gave above, in fact the idea of spiritua seems to do nothing more than give a name to energetic emotion, willpower, and belief, and turn that energy, real or imagined, into a food source for a group of extra-dimensional energy beings. It's how the show presented it, whether or not it was the show creators/directors intentions, with the accompanying "light show" which gave people the impression of it being some kind of magic force. The fact that so many do take it that way should be evidence enough that it was indeed presented in such a way that would make people think that. MZ went with the "magic" impression, but in a much more intentional and calculated sort of way, playing off the portrayal of the island natives and their beliefs. However, even in that it was not solely portraying spiritua that way, but also run of the mill Protoculture technology, the likes of which we see often in Macross. I doubt people would have had so much of a problem with it in Zero had it not come after Seven where the initial impression was made.

I doubt this will wind up being the case, if the Wii continues to ride strong sales figures. Developers make games for the console that is likely to make them the most money. When one console dominates, it gets the lion's share. When one console is lagging far behind, developers don't give it much of their attention. When the playing field is more level, developers try to get their games to all of the successful consoles. Also, following mention of Katamari for the PS3 getting canned: http://wii.ign.com/articles/800/800761p1.html

Hmm, I thought the creator had left the company after the first game, for the stated reason of not wanting to turn Katamari into a franchise?

I figure it's only a matter of time before the 360 version cancellation is announced, if the sole reason for the cancellation is that the creator didn't want to make it into a franchise. Also, he apparently has a personal grudge against Nintendo, I doubt a Wii version is forthcoming. The guy behind the series is kinda odd, in a respectable sort of way. He apparently hates the gaming industry, in particular he hates how slowly it moves forward, with the studios all milking the past for all it's worth and being afraid of pushing new ideas. He makes a compelling argument with Katamari, a little innovation done right pushing an obscure little title into stardom. **edit** Well, ignore that bit about not likely seeing a Wii version. http://wii.ign.com/articles/800/800761p1.html

The forums finally came back up in the link to the Hasbro MP Starscream photos. I can't help but think it's pure nostalgia that makes people believe this looks better than the Takara version. Still, it's 30 dollars cheaper and no shipping. I'll probably nab one. Hopefully it has joint improvements that make the parts that were fragile on the Takara version less likely to break just by transforming it.

Like the song goes, "It's all just little bits of a history repeating!". Nintendo pulled plenty of crap like this when they were king of console gaming. When making gamers pay more, making things difficult for developers, and trying to force the market in the direction they wanted to go even in the face of competition, they wound up tumbling down to the bottom of the heap. Sony is playing a bigger game here, though. They want BluRay to become their new money maker, even if it means driving their Playstation money maker into the dirt by screwing over their loyal fans. They know all this means the PS3 won't sell as much, but they expect brand loyalty will make it sell enough to make BluRay a bigger contender. If the PS3 lags behind the other consoles, it will become less and less appealing to developers, meaning less and less games. Sony isn't exactly bending over for developers like Microsoft and Nintendo have been for two generations running. Now they may not have the market saturation to warrant developers giving the console lots of support. Especially given how expensive it is to make a PS3 game. Developers will likely go to greener pastures, and gamers would then wind up with this generation's $500-$600 Gamecube as far as developer support goes. Well, probably not that bad, more like the Xbox. Or maybe the PSP versus DS. We'll see, though. Sony just needs to make a few right moves to turn it all around. Will they? Can they? I'm not certain they could afford to drop the console price at this time, outside of a temporary situation like this. They're already selling at a loss as far as I know.

True, true, but it's still hair! Personally, my favourite part of the whole scheme has been the Slusho website.

Oh come on, it's a fun little game. Though you're right, some people are taking it to hilarious levels. I was shaking my head every time someone tried to "analyze" what was between the two womens' faces. It's nothing but hair, with a light source behind it. Or the people running Photoshop filters over the images and declaring it produces "new insight" into the photos. Sorry Billy, running "emboss" over some windblown hair does not make it the Slusho space monster.

Personally, I think the greytoned illustration art only strengthens my point. Though I'm not familiar with most of the designs present in at least two of those images, I can pick out many of the individual characters rather quickly. When the characters are more complex, such as some of the more organic looking designs in the top two images, it becomes more difficult. The simpler, more iconic characters stand out much more easily. Still, in all those images, I suspect the average person would find it easier to pick out characters, but I'll let the point rest for now. Maybe you're right, and when the busier style becomes more prevalent (and I agree with you on the point that we'll see more of this as the TF movie has been so successful) ideas will change and I'll be eating crow on that. I disagree on the digits, thing, though, but I cannot think of a way to really prove the point either way since it's unlikely that we'll move to longer phone numbers any time soon. One could point at the web as an example, almost no one remembers multiple lengthy web addresses (I hardly think committing one late 90's style geocities web addy to memory only to forget it later once it's no longer of interest counts), but one could also argue that no one needs to since we bookmark everything we want to keep handy. Also, I think you can expand on the Alternator designs without moving into Bayformer territory. The aesthetic style is very dissimilar. I mean, the illustrations made for the Alternators packaging expend on the designs, yet don't look anything like the movie designs. Nothing says CG must look a certain way either. Still, I think I'm getting a bit too argumentative myself, so I'll leave the last words in this discussion to those who past after this.

I'm sure you're right. Should we start another thread, though? On second thought, probably not a good idea to introduce such a thread if we can expect comments like these.

Er, not really quite the same thing. Different periods of art, and the sort of art considered "acceptable", had more to do with ideas as to what made art "art". Like realism giving way to impressionism. *edit to try and make my point more clear* This issue has more to do with the basic idea that the more complex and cluttered you make a design, the more difficult it is for a person to clearly discern it in their mind. This is similar to why telephone numbers are only 10 numbers long. If you make everyone's telephone numbers 20 digits long, will people eventually come to accept this and that will make it easier to remember twice as many digits per telephone number? I highly doubt this is the case. Take an image of a bunch of G1 characters overlapping in a similar way to that movie image, and even remove the colours entirely, you will still be able to clearly make out each individual character. Break it down to linart, you'll still be able to clearly pull the characters apart. The simpler designs are, the easier it is to pull them apart and see the individual shapes, this is a level of complexity issue. Also, I seriously doubt JBO is suggestion that the Alternators designs, as is in toy form, blown up and done in CG should make acceptable movie designs. More like he suggested expanding on the ideas and aesthetics of those designs, and their ability to transform without mass shifting. Or, more to the real point he was making, there are a possible alternatives other than simply "either Bay's designs, or the worst of G1 toy designs!"

Gah, I'm not trying to get personal and say the guy is a bad designer, don't change the topic like that. I'm made a point about these specific designs.Also, being able to cite a vague description does not give any indication that you have a clear mental image of a character's silhouette and would be able to pick it out from a lineup of similar, yet distinctly different, silhouettes. Move parts around and add bits to G1 cartoon designs, just as an example, and you're far more likely to notice than if someone does the same thing with the movie designs. But fine, people disagree, I'll drop the topic. None of what you said about JBO's post really had much to do with his point, other than possibly strengthening it.

That looks nice!

You sunk my battleship!

While I'd definitely agree that was a bad one, I think there is one much worse instance of a company screwing the gaming industry, and another that is about on par with your pick. Aside from those, I think anyone who grabbed a 32x or a Saturn might have a thing or two to say about being screwed. However, as much as I'd be willing to discuss all these points, I think that's a topic which would deserve it's own thread rather than derailing this one.

I forget if I'd mentioned it here or not but: http://www.parasitemovie.com/ I found this a while ago and recently found my way back. The site has completely changed though. It was a lot more subtle when I first found it. There was nothing at all directly linking this site to Cloverfield or the trailer, now they mention both with links right on the main page. Also, the tossing games site linked at the bottom of the page appears to be a mockup. A very elaborate mockup, but unless I'm missing the obvious there is no way to actually post in the forum. When I found the site, the original post had nothing giving itself away as corporate advertising. No link to any trailer or anything, just a guy asking about his old friend Ethan when he mistook the site admin for someone else he knew. Also, the Parasite site itself, when I first saw it, it looked far more like a website for a low budget B movie, completely with cheap, rubber looking monster. No city skyline or anything like that. The page was mostly shades of red and orange. Combined with this "Van" character from the Ethan Haas videso, who appears tied to Cloverfield from posts made in the IMDB forum, I'd say the evidence is leaning towards the Ethan Haas stuff definitely being related. Paramount no longer seems to be having anything removed from YouTube, so I couldn't find out for certain if they had removed the Haas stuff before, but, man...the evidence is compelling if you ask me.

That last sentence was placed as a separate paragraph because it was not directly pointed at you as the "false dichotomy" statement was. I apologize if that was not clear. However, a lot of people do seem to be under the impression that you're a fanboy if you're not head over heels in love with Bay designs. From both a design and aesthetic standpoint I dislike them. I enjoyed the movie though. However, they do not all have clear and easily recognizable silhouettes, and are so cluttered that when overlapped, you have the situation the image I posted illustrated. I do agree this was less a problem for the Autobots because some, like Jazz, were more similar in design to the "classic" Transformers aesthetic and not nearly so busy as the others, and they all had very different colours. I never said it was difficult to tell who was who, nor did I even insinuate that. I apologize if somehow people got that from my statements. I also am not talking about "realistic" ideas on what alien robots would look like, I speaking (and I believe I've stated this several times now) from a design standpoint. Art education background and all that. Finally, as JBO has also stated, you seem hell bent on this ridiculous idea that it's a black and white, either or, situation when that is certainly not the case (JBO gave a single example of a third alternative, but even 3 alternatives are not the limit). While I understand eugimon's and other's arguments (what I've pointed out about the designs I still stand by as true, but ultimately a sense of aesthetic preference and artistic style must be considered as well and there is nothing wrong with that) this "it's either Bay's designs, or the G1 Bumblebee toy design" argument does your position absolutely no favours. Back on the topics of silhouettes, what I mean is if you toss a random character's silhouette onto a sheet of paper, it more resembles a rorschach inkblot test than a character. If you're artistically inclined, it would be difficult to cull a character's silhouette from memory and put it to paper. Hence the complaints of "crumpled tin foil" and "car wreck character designs" that crop up when discussing the movie. Again, I should maybe point out, I'm not saying that the Bay designs are objectively wrong and that no one at all should like them, I'm simply pointing out that there are very solid reasons why people wouldn't like them, reasons that would not make those people whinging G1 fanboys. There are certain art and design fundamentals that exist because they tend to appeal to broad numbers of people for specific reasons, and the movie designs seem to ignore those. As others have pointed out, it is perhaps intentional to make them seem more "alien". That reasoning will not make them any more appealing to those who do not like them.

The fact that you even pointed out "the bots are stacked in front of each other" is telling. Yes, you never see a bunch of them grouped together in the movie, but that doesn't make it less of an issue, especially if we're hoping for bigger, more epic movies in the future. The poses have little to do with obscuring their profiles. Can you honestly say you have a clear mental image of Barricade's profile from the movie? Starscream's? Frenzy's? Anyone? I stand by every single point.

Where's Waldo? http://farm1.static.flickr.com/201/4987042...b21368b11_o.jpg Seriously though, the designs weren't enough to cause me not to enjoy the movie, but they're not "fine". Whoever created the designs would have been flunked out of design fundamentals 101 if these had been turned in as their final project. That image illustrates the two big issues in the designs. Far too busy, and no recognizable silhouette. Classic case of a false dichotomy. Just because someone doesn't like the designs in the movie does not necessarily make them a fanboy.

If the Wii remains the fastest selling console and at minimum maintains a similar level of market saturation to the PS3 and the 360, developers will begin cranking out games for it in droves. Even at that minimum, developers stand to make far more money from Wii games, which are less expensive to produce, than from PS3 or 360 games. If the Wii exceeds the other two consoles, especially by a substantial amount, developers will be even more inclined to concentrate on the Wii. At that point, aside from being cheaper to develop for, there will also be a higher potential for individual game sales. From the sound of things, though, there are a lot of games coming, just no one is taking E3 as seriously anymore. I suspect people just didn't bother putting together much for the conference since they expect it will not have as big an impact anymore.

I agree the entire hacker bit could have been cut, and the movie would have benefited greatly. That's not what you said, however. Which echoes a lot of peoples' comments that the movies/shows/comics/et all should be entirely about space robots shooting and pummeling each other. At that point, you might as well make it entirely CG, if you ask me. Why even bother bringing them to earth? However, if that's not what you meant, then I think we agree. I do think the TFs needed more character developement, and shaving some unnecessary scenes and subtplots could have helped that a lot. This is why I also hope the sequels have a better director at the helm, and a better screenplay to highlight the characters (human and Cybertronian) as all the important characters in this movie went horribly neglected in the personality department. Sam got the most attention, and I even think he should have, however that's not to say it was handled well. Like Max said, it wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyably. I do hope they build on it and aspire to better things. Just going against the flow with my 2 cents that all the human characters should not be written out entirely, or marginalized entirely.

My God, an anime where the typical anime young boy lead goes on to become the biggest badass in the word...and achieves it at episode 15 of 26. The episodes can't come fast enough for me!