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All Things Video Games Thread: II


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Technically the 360 and PS3 support 3D as well. HA! Who's antiquated now?! :p [Goes back to play Spacing Harrier 3-D]

I knew the PS3 supported it, actually.

When did they add 3D support to the 360?

Also: It will only work on SOME 360s, since the 3DTV standard only works with HDMI.

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What he said. Though mine has been visited by the Crimson Pacman, free repairs put it back in operation.

I still say MS is being a cheap bunch of crapheads by not upgrading them to HDMI at the same time, especially after they designed a new motherboard exclusively for refurbs that uses the new more reliable chips, but doesn't have HDMI. They spent EXTRA MONEY to ensure they didn't have to upgrade anyone's feature set.

But hey, one of your early adopters that made the system successful might not buy a replacement console just to get HDMI if you did that, and you'd be out a sale! And hey, it's not like your shoddy untested cooling design inconvenienced anyone when it failed miserably!

You know what? I've got a VGA cable, and I'm not afraid to use it.

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My December '05 Xbox 360 is still ticking...for the moment. It certainly came in handy when I had to wait for my replacment Elite--twice. :rolleyes:

Also: It will only work on SOME 360s, since the 3DTV standard only works with HDMI.

Well technically, the glasses for the SMS will only work on an old interlaced CRT. At this point, SDTV tubes sets are starting to becoming rare as well... :p

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Well technically, the glasses for the SMS will only work on an old interlaced CRT. At this point, SDTV tubes sets are starting to becoming rare as well... :p

Not true. The SMS LCD shutter glasses are the exact same tech used in modern 3D TVs. Just at 60 Hz instead of 120 Hz.

They don't rely on interlacing or electron beam scan, and the shutter signals come from the SMS, not the TV. As long as the TV displays the frames when it's supposed to, or lags by an even number of frames, you're good.

In fact, the SMS doesn't even output an interlaced video signal. Like many game consoles, it abuses the timing signals to create a 60Hz progressive scan display, a practice which is informally referred to as 240p nowadays.

You'd probably be right if we were talking about light guns, though.

But I still have me an SD tube either way, so :p

I'm actually concerned about the future of my game collection when these things start crapping out. Lot of modern digital displays don't play well with the funky signals output by most game machines. And composite video is being phased out(never thought I'd see the day). What's a guy supposed to do when there's no composite video input?

And the first era ALREADY requires mods to interface with new displays. They were all RF-only and there's no longer a TV available with an NTSC tuner.

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I bought a Component cable for my PS2, so that'll take care of my PS/PS2 collection for a while. Not sure about SNES... (of course, all the good games have save batteries--I haven't played Super Metroid or Super Mario World in years, I wonder if my saves are still there...)

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all the good games have save batteries--I haven't played Super Metroid or Super Mario World in years, I wonder if my saves are still there..

My NES Legend of Zelda still worked as late as 3 years ago, so I'd be pretty confident about your SNES games. My DC memory paks were always the ones I worried about but they were always good also, tough little bastards they are...

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Not true. The SMS LCD shutter glasses are the exact same tech used in modern 3D TVs. Just at 60 Hz instead of 120 Hz.

They don't rely on interlacing or electron beam scan, and the shutter signals come from the SMS, not the TV. As long as the TV displays the frames when it's supposed to, or lags by an even number of frames, you're good.

In fact, the SMS doesn't even output an interlaced video signal. Like many game consoles, it abuses the timing signals to create a 60Hz progressive scan display, a practice which is informally referred to as 240p nowadays.

I just checked and it does indeed seem to need an old SDTV. It wouldn't work properly on my computer monitor (HP LP2475w). I also tried using it on my direct view CRT HDTV (Sony 34XBR970) and, although it had fewer "artifacts", it still wouldn't display correctly. It did, however, work well on my old 32" in the game room. I'll admit it's anecdotal and hardly conclusive, but so far it does appear to confirm what I've always heard.

Yeah, it does use the same basic tech, but the implementation may not be the same. It could very well be that it requires a precise interlaced signal at 59.94Hz, and with modern displays you generally can't get that.

I'm actually concerned about the future of my game collection when these things start crapping out. Lot of modern digital displays don't play well with the funky signals output by most game machines. And composite video is being phased out(never thought I'd see the day). What's a guy supposed to do when there's no composite video input?

And the first era ALREADY requires mods to interface with new displays. They were all RF-only and there's no longer a TV available with an NTSC tuner.

You and me both. Hell, most of the new HDTVs and recievers that I've seen don't even have S-Video anymore. :(

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I bought a Component cable for my PS2, so that'll take care of my PS/PS2 collection for a while. Not sure about SNES... (of course, all the good games have save batteries--I haven't played Super Metroid or Super Mario World in years, I wonder if my saves are still there...)

SNES can do RGB(as long as it's not the redesigned SNES2, which can't do s-video either). Odds that a VGA input will handle the relatively low scan rates it generates are low, though. So it doesn't really help matters that much. Though I guess an RGB->component transcoder would work.

I just checked and it does indeed seem to need an old SDTV. It wouldn't work properly on my computer monitor (HP LP2475w). I also tried using it on my direct view CRT HDTV (Sony 34XBR970) and, although it had fewer "artifacts", it still wouldn't display correctly. It did, however, work well on my old 32" in the game room. I'll admit it's anecdotal and hardly conclusive, but so far it does appear to confirm what I've always heard.

Yeah, it does use the same basic tech, but the implementation may not be the same. It could very well be that it requires a precise interlaced signal at 59.94Hz, and with modern displays you generally can't get that.

But, but... the video chip used in the SMS can't GENERATE an interlaced signal, and almost certainly doesn't generate an exact 59.94 Hz vertical refresh, especially after a quarter-century of aging on the components.

And the LCD shutters are dead simple. SMS switches one lens off at VBlank, and then switches back at the next VBlank. It's literally the EXACT same implementation aside from the new ones running twice as fast and commanded wirelessly.

The TV CAN'T be displaying at any other frame rate than the SMS is generating, or it would get out of sync with the game(either running ahead of available frame data and start flickering, or running further and further behind until the buffer filled and the TV choked to death on it's own crappiness).

Remember, it's a one-way communication. The TV can't tell the SMS or any other analog input device what IT wants, so it has to adapt to what THEY want.

I'm not really surprised the computer LCD choked, though I AM surprised the HD CRT did.

Curious what's going on in the electronics to muck it up.

What kind of failure mode did you get, anyways? Simple double-imaging, inverted left and right, or something more complex/interesting?

Meh. I need some SMS shutter glasses to experiment with now.

You and me both. Hell, most of the new HDTVs and recievers that I've seen don't even have S-Video anymore. :(

They abandoned s-video before they abandoned composite. It's always been the bastard child of video connectors and, along with component video, exists solely to prove that consumer electronics manufacturers hate people.

...

Especially component. 3 RCA connectors, one sharing a color code with the paired audio RCAs? WHO thought this was a good idea? There's not even that much of a resolution gain over the one-plug s-video connector, since it's still chroma/luma. And don't EVEN get me started about the RGB lie!

Why couldn't we just get a pretty SCART connector like the Europeans? Best thing to ever come out of France, right there.

Hell, the japanese RGB-only SCART look-alike would've been nice too, if a tad less versatile.

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On the HDTV part, it was definitely along the lines of "interesting." It's hard to describe. Some of the the depth effects were there, but they were very strange. Some stuff that should have been at one distance were at another and there was more crosstalk. IIRC, my SONY CRT HDTV scales the image if it receives an interlaced signal (and I checked it with both interlaced and progressive modes too). I don't know if that or some other processing is the cause.

My monitor, despite generally looking like crap because of poor scaling and deinterlacing, hasn't displayed much of the strange artifacting with classic games like some of the other displays I've used. Since it's a fixed pixel displayed, I figured the lack of interlacing might be a part of it.

Either way, more testing and experimentation data are required. Time to test it with the other TV's lying around here... :p

BTW, this page might be helpful for finding display solutions with classic games: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

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Took my time and finally beat Fallout: New Vegas. Went with an independent NV route while keeping friendly to the NCR until the last minute. Unfortunately by playing as a goody-two-shoes, I came across the glaring problem of not enough bad guys to perforate with hot lead. My next toon will be Death Incarnate. If it breathes, it dies If it moves, it dies (not sure if Ghouls breathe) :ph34r:

Yeah, ghouls do bleed. They're just very irradiated humans.

My views on the multiplayer of these games:

Red Dead Redemption: Join a Posse if you're in Normal Free Roam, otherwise you're going to be looking a loading screen a lot. Fun when you get a posse going, though.

Medal of Honor: Combat so realistic that you will receive a lot of cheap deaths. If you can get past that, it's a good game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops: Multiplayer is fun, fixes most of the problems that Modern Warfare 2 had. I don't know which killstreak award is the most annoying to eat: Modern Warfare 2's Tactical Nuke or Black Op's RC-XD. Another complaint of mine that not only you have to buy everything, including perks, with COD points, obtaining the pro versions of said perks are a pain in the ass.

Of the recent military first-person-shooters multiplayer games I'd play Black Ops over Medal of Honor. I will play Medal of Honor, but only if I'm in a masochistic mood.

Edited by Wanzerfan
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Call of Duty: Black Ops: Multiplayer is fun, fixes most of the problems that Modern Warfare 2 had. I don't know which killstreak award is the most annoying to eat: Modern Warfare 2's Tactical Nuke or Black Op's RC-XD. Another complaint of mine that not only you have to buy everything, including perks, with COD points, obtaining the pro versions of said perks are a pain in the ass.

Black ops Multiplayer is broken beyond words.

first off a word on kill streaks. The tactical Nuke is far worse than any other kill streak in any of the games; it's laughably easy to get and is literally game breaking. The RC-XD is only mildly annoying, and actually has little effect on the game as a whole (given that you rarely get more than 1~2 kills with each RC and you frequently die in the process). Overall though kill streaks kind of suck in Black ops. All the good kill streaks are either gone (harriers, Pavelow, AC-130, Emergency airdrop) or have been completely ruined (sentry guns, stealth bomber, chopper gunner). Of the new kill streaks, the RC-XD is the only one that's any fun to use. WHY THE F*CK DID THEY HAVE TO BRING DOGS BACK?!?!?

worse than the kill streaks is how completely decimated perks are. most of the good perks have been stripped of their best attributes or removed entirely, with the few remaining being laughably weak. Now the pro versions are fairly good for most perks, but they all have ridiculous challenge requirements and you still have to pay for them once unlocked.

the Weapon selection is also unbalanced as hell. sniper rifles, shotguns, and handguns are utterly worthless; LMGs, while serviceable, handle exactly the same as assault rifles only heavier and slower to reload; and every SMG is inferior to the AK74u leaving only the assault rifle class with any kind of verity.

implementing currency is the worst thing ever BTW. It manages to devalue everything you do in multiplayer while simultaneously making it harder to actually get anything useful unless you contently grind contracts.

even with Nukes and noob toobers, MW2 is still better than black ops.

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Ok, Transformers fans are most likely familiar with Stan Bush' song "The Touch", which has been available for Rock Band. Many of us were thought it was kind of cool that he did a song for the ending credits of the War for Cybertron video game. Well guess what... that song, "'Til All Are One" is now available for Rock Band as well.

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Agreed.

I stopped playing Black Ops after a while, because it just wasn't as fun as MW2. I often wish that they would just release the Black Ops maps as DLC for MW2.

The worst part is that there's a lot of stuff that actually IS good about black ops. I like a lot of the new attachments, the custom reticule options, The crossbow ^_^

I feel like the guys at Treyarch have a very specific way they like to play multiplayer, and built a game that caters just to themselves. The Game design makes it abundantly clear that there is a specific you're intended to play, and if you play that way the game is fun. But if you want to do anything else, you f*cked. <_<

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Agreed.

I stopped playing Black Ops after a while, because it just wasn't as fun as MW2. I often wish that they would just release the Black Ops maps as DLC for MW2.

Agreed. I would love to play Nuketown on MW2. That map has got to be better to play on than Rust.
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So we get Final Fantasy XIII-2:

final-fantasy-13-2-2.jpg

final-fantasy-13-2-1.jpg

Oh, and here's a delicious new trailer of Versus XIII, with more gameplay:

FF-XIII2? 0.o;;

Don't know what that's about but loving Lightning's new outfit. Feathers is kinda last decade fashion faux pass though.

VERSUS XIII looks like Crisis Core. And it seems like there's a gun user and that a gun doesn't suck for once! Will be looking forward to it.

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I like the armor, honestly. It's more battle-worthy than her micro-skirt was...

Anyways---is Lightning's real name still a spoiler? I've avoided ever saying it here, but the first thought in my mind when I saw that pic--was her real name, and not "Lightning".

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Left STO, rejoined Griefing Online EVE! Right on time for new character creation, can customize full body now, but you still only see portrait, guessing "walking in stations" is going to happen soon.

I had a stashed some nice ISK before quitting last time so fitted 3 new ships and immediately jumped into PvP, joined a few gangs, got into some good killmails, let the good times roll .... :D

Crow Interceptor:

20110116153939.jpg

Taranis Interceptor:

20110116192955.jpg

Hardly got to use it... got blown up 10 minutes after I bought and fitted it.

Manticore Stealth Bomber:

20110119011506.jpg

...Absolutely love warping around cloaked in this thing and ruining would be 1 vs 1 fights by dropping a few torpedos.

All in all, got on 9 kills this long weekend.

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Though I only have about 2 import games on the DS, I've got many more on the PSP. I suppose as long as Sony keeps its multi-region acceptance, we'll be cool (Macross games & whatnot). It's too bad though, the 3DS looks like it will have a decent Gundam game on it too.

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Who called it? 3DS confirmed at $249.99 for the US launch.

Still, I'm eager to see what Sony does. The way I see it, a big part of the DS's success was that it was much less expensive than the PSP, and had significantly better battery life.

(Of course, the DS games library taking off much earlier than the PSP's, not to mention the DS riding the success of like a decade or so of Nintendo handheld dominance were also factors.)

If Sony can bring a PSP2 to the table with better price and battery life than the 3DS it could be a big advantage for them. On the other hand, it's Sony. The rumours right now are that the PSP2 will have graphics comparable to the PS3. I can only imagine a price tag to match and a serious hit to battery life.

Still, could be interesting. I'm looking forward to what this generation of handhelds brings.

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