Radd

I'm not surprised, look at what that man did to the Virtual Boy? He killed console VR and lost Nintendo one of their best hardware and software developers.

This will certainly be a coup for Sony if they can manage it. Especially if they manage $300 in the States. This would destroy one of the two main advantages the 360 was expected to enjoy.

I did hear that somewhere. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of that.

I'll agree that most of the overzealous fans love the game because of an unnatural attraction to their favourite long haired, bare chested yaoi poster boy. However, I'll have to disagree with the rest. Still, I'll leave that discussion for another thread, this is all about our mutual love of the DS. Currently, on the reccomendation of a good friend, Phoenix Wright is now second on my "to get" list only to Metroid Pinball. I'm a sucker for pinball games, and this one has got some pretty good reviews all across the board. Mario Kart will take the top spot as soon as it's released, though, and Sonic Rush will be up there, too. I'm still waiting for Nintendo to release some information, any information at all, on the new 2D Metroid game in developement. One source, I believe it was EGM though and I don't really trust them too much, claimed the title would be 'Metroid: Dread'. Hopefully Nintendo will really push the 2D capabilities of the system with this game.

While I agree that the graphics in FFVII were far overrated, I think the main problem has been that Square has been putting too much emphasis on visuals and story, at the expense of the gameplay, or rushing the games out altogether so that all aspects suffered. As far as story and character developement, I thought VII outdid VI by quite a bit, and was more on the level of my favourite of the franchise, FFIV. However the 'attach a crystal to a character' magic system doesn't make for unique characters, gameplay wise. I disliked that about VI, too. Still, the Draw system was the worst offender. But with the switch to 3D graphics, you also limited the weapons a character could wield, because for every type of weapon they could use, they'd need a new battle stance and new attack animations. Still, in VII's favour on the gameplay side, they kept in more of the sidequests than they did with VI. Of course, many of them they had to, because that' where you'd find most of the characters' backstories, plus more background story for the main plot.

Ah, well alright then. I can agree with that, if I understand correctly. It's just usually you see Nintendo singled out amongst videogame companies, "Mr. Potatomoto sure loves our money!"

Kids are like that about tons of junk. Nothing new there. Also, technophiles always want the latest gadget, even if they don't really need it. You might as well accuse the entire electronics industry of milking.

I know! That only makes it even more frustrating somehow.

Considering that you don't have to buy every model, and there tends to be a significant number of years between the neccessary upgrades, and since Nintendo tends to make stuff that doesn't break down every year or two, and they tend to bring new stuff out pretty cheap compared to the competition, I've never understood the whole thing about Nintendo supposedly milking customers for their money.

Ok, woah there, stop the presses! You're talking about two different shades right up against each other. That's not a gradient. That banding in 16 bit colour? That's not a smooth gradient. This is more or less what I'm talking about when I say an unnaturally smooth gradient: It's banding a little due to JPEG compression, but you get the idea. Ah, I'm talking of mainly of technical quality, the actual visible characteristics of the linework, colours, and animation quality. However, I don't put much stock in the idea that traditionally painted animation has any more artistic merit than digitally coloured animation, so long as the effort is put forth to make it look good. If you saw a piece of animation and believed it to be hand painted, but later learned it was done digitially, would that weaken the piece's artistic quality? I also prefere the stylistic metal shading, I employ it regularly in digital work. However, the second piece I do not believe accurately represents the style and quality of your average digitally coloured animation. Again, I believe there's a miscommunication somewhere. I find that digital art often employs more highly saturated colours than traditional media. You seem to feel that traditionally painted artwork has more saturated colour. There's your problem, really. You seem to have some preconceptions of modern digital work that just aren't true of all modern anime, or at all. Backgrounds are still done in a more painted style, with a seperate colour pallette from the foregrounds. Check out this screenshot from GitS:SAC And this, from Macross Zero: Also, the style of colouring, such as the stylistic, glossy metal of Gundam Zeta, is a stylistic choice, completely independant of the media being used. You sytill find it in modern shows such as Gao Gai Gar Final, or Gundam Seed.

If you're going to compare head to head, you have to do so right down the line. Comparing only the best of yesteryear to what is typically standard animation today just isn't fair. It seems to me that is exactly what a lot of people are doing. They are taking their golden memories, only the very best of what the 80's had to offer, and comparing it to today's typical tv show fodder. GitS:SAC may be high budget for a tv series, but it's still no movie or OVA. You don't compare it to A-Ko, the Daicon 4 opening, DYRL, or things like that. You compare it to the tv shows of the time. You most certainly don't compare those high budget productions to something like Aquarion or Naruto. You compare those to SDF and DBZ. Plus people continue to ignore the fact that not all modern anime uses CG rather than hand drawn mecha. Personally, I do agree that too often using CG in replace of hand drawn mecha is a bad trend, but to say there's no good anime these days, and this trend is a major factor in that, is turning a blind eye to some excellent anime. I keep holding up the new Tetsujin series as an example of great modern anime. The robots there most certainly aren't CG. Also, while digitally coloured, it's an example of the colourists not going overboard with the bright and overly saturated colours that most CG colour jobs seem to be guilty of. The new Herlock is another good example (though I noticed brighter colours in the DVD compared to the fansub, of course DVD distributers are often guilting of upping colour brightness and saturation when prepping the show for release). Plus unlike the bad trend of using CG ships in Matsumoto series, this show kept the ships all hand drawn. With this paragraph, your complaints begin to contradict with the reality of the situation. More often than not, it's the digitally coloured works that feature the unnaturally smooth gradients and overly bright colours. Hand painted animation has to deal with the limits of the media in this regard. Quite simple, you're again comparing short bursts of excellent animation, crammed amidst still frames and reused animation, to a full blown tv show wich has much longer bursts of hand drawn animation crammed amidst CG ,and an OVA with some truly excellent hand drawn animation in short bursts, crammed amdist some decent hand drawn animation, and some well above average CG. Do I agree with this? For your image example you have a still that in itself is above average for typical 80's anime, and next to it a Photoshopped version of that, wich can only be described as a caricature of modern style that isn't true at all.

That's a 5 minute short, that is well known to be a labour of love on the part of its creators, made for a fan convention. It's good. I've had it on my computer for years, and I love to watch it every so often. Nearly half of that 5 minute animation is still frames and a panning over the outline of a vegetable shaped spaceship. Additionally, a good half a minute to a minute of this animation is reused footage from the Daicon 3 opening. That leaves us about about a minute and a half of truly excellent animation mixed with about half a minute of minimalistic animation towards the end. All of this is wrapped up with an uplifting song and some very nice editing. Now normally, I wouldn't be so critical of this animation. It's trully excellent work and I love it a lot, but you insist on comparing it to 10 years of animation. So we've got here about a minute and a half of truly remarkable animation, on the other hand there's the second Ghost in the Shell movie. Sure, very heavy on the CG, all digitally coloured. Still, I bet you can find more than a minute and a half of hand drawn animation that rivals or exceeds that found in the Daicon 4 opening. That's using a movie that I felt the best feature about it was that it didn't suck as much as the original GitS movie. Dredging through Wasted XIII, Macross Zero, the recent Captain Herlock series directed by Rin Taro, and any Miyazake movie made in the last 10 years, I'm certain you'll find plenty of 2D animation that is equal to the Daicon 4 video, and you'll find it in greater quantity. I agree 100%. However, 99% of the time, hand drawn mecha are poorly drawn, horribly animated. 99% of the time, hand painted cells mean inconsistant colours, miscoloured cells, missing colours, and overall cheap looking. Need I sit you down to watch some AnimeFriend episodes of SDF Macross? How about the original Gundam series? The 80's Tetsujin 28 maybe? The thing with CG is, it is easier and cheaper to produce something that looks better than 2D on a limited time and budget. However, it is more difficult and more time consuming to produce something that looks exceptional, than it would take with 2D methods. On digital colouring I have to disagree with you even more, though. In the hands of people that know what they're doing, digital colouring can look better, and more consistant, easier and cheaper than hand painted cells. The problem is that when people with questionable colour theory skills are given an unlimited pallette of colours. They make their linework really dark, they make their colours really bright, and they do nothing to break up large expanses of flat colour, or unnaturally smooth gradfents. That's where the problems comes in. Finally, as has been pointed out, if you think all old anime was filled with tons of excellent motion, it's obvious you've never studied animation. Anime has always made use of limited animation techniques, such as still frames where nothing but facial features move, or maybe some limited arm movement. A big part of the reason so much western animation was done in Japan was because of how cheap it was, a big part of why it was so cheap (other than that they pay their grunt animators starvation wages) is that they cut so many corners. The philosophy over there has almost always been, very pretty imagery done with limited animation. This opposed to the western philosphy of making the artwork simpler, but giving it more motion.

I've played the first two Gamecube games, and a demo of Prime Hunters at my local Walmart. The controls were very different. First a bit of a disclaimer, from what I can tell the demo of Prime Hunters I played was either an early control scheme that has since been improved, or some wanker set it to the least intuitive setup they could. When I played, the action was on the lower screen, so your hand was in the way whenever you were using the touchpad to look and shoot. This is apparently not the current setup being employed in the game. Ok, that aside here's the main difference. Despite both games having a first person view, Prime Hunters is being developed with heavy FPS action in mind, the Gamecube games were most certainly not. In the Gamecube you press and hold a button, and you're automagically locked onto the nearest target. There's very little in the way of FPS skills invovled in these games. In the DS game, you use the stylus like a mouse, moving it to look around, and tapping the screen to fire, with the D-pad for movement, and the L-button to jump. There's also some controls on the touch screen, such as the morph ball. The thing about the switch from 2D to 3D with the Zelda games is that it's almost entirely an asthetic difference, with little change in the gameplay. This can be disconcerting at first, when you pick up Ocarina of Time and wonder why you can't jump, but then you realize the controls are pretty much the same as the 2D games, it's just that now you see more than just a top down view. In my opinion, this is the biggest reasons the Zelda games have lent themselves so well to the change. Of course, I do disagree with you on Mario 64. Just behind SMB3 it's my second favourite game in the franchise, with SMW trailing in third. Mario Sunshine is probably my least favourite in the franchise, with SMB2 ranking somewhat higher. I know a lot of people like that one these days, but I just never took much of a liking to it. I'm looking forward to both the 2D gameplay of New Super Mario Bros., and a new 3D Mario platformer so long as this time Miyamoto isn't working on half a dozen other projects at the same time.

GitS:SAC isn't really a remake, it's its own thing. It's based on the characters and world set forth in the original Shirow manga, but that's about it. It's not even a direct retelling of the manga. Or were you talking about the movie, wich was a retelling of the manga? Of course, that movie came out not all that long after the manga so that hardly counts, doesn't it? I took one look at BGC2040 and knew it wasn't for me. Bright and poppy, complete opposite to the dark and gritty world set forth in the cyberpunk classic. However, what do you say to Bubblegum Crash? A sequel to the original BGC made not too long after, and it stunk. If they made a new BGC that was good. I'd certainly take it over that piece of crap. Take a look at the new Tetsujin 28 tv series. It's a remake of a classic, but on the other hand, the original tv series and the 80's Tetsujin were hardly true to the original manga. Yet this new series is said to be very true to the original story. Plus the project is being headed by a guy who's in the past, with one of the classics of anime no less, proven he has the utmost respect for the material. The first episode is also absolutely gorgeous. I'll take this over the "classic" Tetsujin shows any day of the week. Remakes also aren't a new thing, and the aforementioned GitS movie isn't the only example of an "old anime" adaptation or remake. 'Do You Remember Love?' is a remake of the original SDF Macross. We've also certainly seen our share of Macross continuations. Did they stop being good once they became "new anime"? I'll take Plus and Zero over Macross II, thank you very much. On the other hand, I somewhat agree with your statement on overused CG. However, for not entirely the same reasons. Digitally coloured cels are fine with me, I think they can often be better than hand painted cels. The problem comes in when the people behind the tech misuse it. With the advent of digital colouring we've seen plenty of overly bright, and painfully oversaturated art and animation. Also, digital work always comes off as somewhat sterile looking because of an unnatural lack of any flaws whatsoever. People work on the basis that because those overly bright and saturated colours are there, they should use them. Also, they feel that since they can make art and animation with few flaws, they should, despite the fact that especially in art more than anything else, the flaws tend to lend character to the work. Personally, when I work digitally, I like to add in flaws to break up the unnaturally flat colours and all-too-perfect gradients. There are simple, cheap, and effective ways to do this, not the least of wich is simply having a good knowledge of colour theory and an eye for natural looking colours, so again I blame the people not the tech.

2D and 3D is like the difference between markers and paints. Acrylics and Watercolours. Apples and oranges. Having a game be 3D doesn't make it better, but doesn't neccessarily make it worse either. There are strengths and limitations to both. It also depends on how the game is made. Persoanlly, I thought Cv:LoI was more like Devil May Cry and less like Castlevania. I didn't care for it that much. Dawn of Sorrow, a 2D game, ranks among my favourites in the franchise. Then you look over at the Metroid franchise. Personally, I thought that Metroid Prime both felt much more like my perennial favourite, Metroid 3, and was just a better game in general than the 2D Metroid Fusion, wich was lacking as far as the franchise goes.

Yeah, I'd agree with Nightbat in that the internet is the predominant divider between the old and the new. If you ever hop on any digital fansub forums, or distribution sites like Animesuki, you'll notice most of the kids there are only familier with anime from the past few years, going back only to around the release of Evangelion, wich they consider to be 'old'. Plus, the further back you go the more likely you're only going to remember the really good titles, and a few exceptionally bad titles, and out of the titles you remember favourably, chances are you remember them being better than they actually were.

It's really difficult to predict what would succeed and what would fail. I've seen some top-notch, quality stuff just go completely unnoticed, and plenty of terrible crap succeed astoundingly. Of course, due to the licensing issues, and Macross being buried under Robotech for the most part over here, it's a meaningless thing to debate anyways.

So long as they aren't forced to drop gameplay elements to accomodate the 3D (such as in limited the types of weapons characters can use so that the animators don't have to create too many weapons animations) I'm digging the graphical jump. I enjoy 2D games, but it's not like 3D drastically changes RPG game mechanics, these aren't platformers after all. Still, it would be most excellent if there were a translated version of the original Famicom original hidden inside the game.

I wondered the same thing about a planner, but no. Not yet at least. It's one of many things that seems obvious for the DS and yet is not there. Still, the Dreamcast, Saturn, and other consoles have had a clock, and they were sometimes used to great effect by some imaginative games like Seaman and Nights. Hopefully we'll see some DS games where Christmas items and levels become unlocked when the Holidays arrive. I'm kinda dissapointed that we haven't seen any Halloween content in Castlevania or something. I've had my DS since a couple days after Advance Wars came out, and I have no complaints with the system size (it's comparable to my old, pre-SP, GBA), or the screen brightness. Has anyone really been complaining about the screen brightness? I know there has been some comparison between the various portable's screens, but I don't think the DS screen has been so outshined (no pun intended) that it warrants critisism in this regard. All I know is that it's a huge step up in quality from the original SP's screen. As for durability, well if you're determined enough in your endeavours, I'm certain you could blow $130 bucks and seperate the two halves of your DS. Not certain why you'd want to. I do know that the DS is durable enough for my uses, so far. I prefere to be somewhat careless with my treatment of handhelds. I can't bring myself to treat a portable system like some fragile, delicate piece of expensive machinery. I toss my DS haphazardly into my bag every night before work, or drop it into my pants pockets. It's held up remarkable well so far. Not so much as a scratch, despite a drop it took a while back. If I managed to get it into a box, sealed up and on store shelves, you'd be hard pressed to tell it was a used system despite my lack of care.

Well, FF3 has never been released this side of the Pacific before, and it looks like instead of a simple port or minor graphical facelift, they're going all out. In other news, it seems a new Mario Paint may be headed towards the DS. I was never into the original, but being an artsy type, the idea of having a minature oekaki board that I can take wherever I go definitely perks my interest. I just hope you can upload art to your computer.

We can stop any time.

Sadly, I think you're right. You know, aside from Homeworld, I don't even like most RTS games. Still, it just seems like such a waste to me. Someone did start developing an RTS for the DS, but the publisher dropped it. I'm pretty certain there's another RTS, set in feudal Japan, that is coming to the DS, but that's just one game. Can you imagine if the DS had a WiFi compatable port of Starcraft? How many RTS nuts would jump at that? Also, while I'm not usually big on virtual pet games, Nintendogs has constantly made me think of how great a Seaman game could be for the DS.

I think it's more telling about developers than the system. I'm surprised there's no RTS games out yet for the DS. Not even a port of Starcraft or anything. I'm dissapointed in Metroid Prime Hunter's use of the touch screen, I'd rather the action was up top, while the bottom screen had the map and simultaneously acted like a mousepad for the stylus, so your hand isn't in the way while looking around. Hopefully future FPS games for the DS realize this. Where's Mario Paint for the DS? Apparently on the way, but one would think that would have been a launch title or something. There's only a couple Adventure games out so far. Haven't heard much about Lost in Blue, but Trace Memory is apparently dissapointing. I want games like Castlevania that make minimal, but excellent, use of the touch screen (having the map right there has spoiled me, it's a nicer use of the second screen than I would have thought, and signing your name instead of selecting letters is also something I hope other games pick up on), but there's some obvious uses for the DS's touch screen setup that no one has taken much advantage of. That does make me worried about the Revolution. There's many games that the controller will be ideal for, that no other home console can do, but will we see RTS games? Actually good console FPS games? Third person platform games could also really benefit from the Revolution's controller, but will developers take advantage of it? I hope you're right about when the dust settles. As for emulation, I pretty much agree that it's no reason to buy the system, but it could be a nice additional feature. I wouldn't buy a PSP because of the emulators either, but if I had a PSP I'd definitely make use of it. JBO's probably right about a lot of people having no clue when it comes to game emulators. Look at how well UMD movie sales for the PSP are doing, despite the fact that you could buy DVDs instead, rip them, and play them on your PSP, or download anime fansubs or whatever. Think of how computer savvy the average Joe off the street is. Now realize that %50 of people know even less than that person does.

Like so many others my number one "Holy Grail" item would be a copy of the Macross Gold Book. I've always wanted one. I have a smaller 'DYRL?' art book, but it's just not the same. I also still need to grab one of the Miyatake Design Works books, but since that's still fairly common (unless they sold out faster than I anticipated) I don't think I'd consider one of my top 'Holy Grail' items yet. The Bandai 1/55th Elintseeker and Super Ostrich toys would definitely be on my list I'm still dismayed that they were never reissued. The Joke Machine toys would also be up there. I've always wanted one of the little guys to go with my collection. Who wouldn't want a transformable SD Valkyrie? The Bandai High Complete toys seem nice, too. It would be nice to have one or two of those just to have a 1/100 (they were 1/100 right? Or was it 1/72?) to go with my Yamato Konig (or my Macross Plus toys, if it was 1/72). Really, most of my 'Holy Grail' items are either out of print books, or old toys. Hard to find things, either way. Out of stuff that's commonly available, I have most of what I'd really want. I mean, I could always do with a few more 1/48ths, and having the complete 1/60 collection would make me very happy, but I've got all the current toys that are the most important to me. I've also got all the DVDs, legitimate releases of SDF and Macross Plus, and bootlegs of M7, Flashback 2012, and DYRL. Beyond what I have, and what's hard to find, is simply a money issue.

They stop working if you use too many of them. Same question came up in another thread. I forget how many is "too many" though.