Reach out and crush someone -
January 24, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot. And here I was saving the last of my strength to bite off
that damn woman's head...
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Ok, so I was kinda wrong yesterday - Sega's announcement today,
while not quite as much fun as Square's announcement earlier this
week, is still pretty cool. I'm not sure how well Sega'll be able
to maintain their inventive, original attitude if they're working
under another company, but I guess we'll all find out together when
the time comes.
Onward.
| Gloating is
unbecoming, philistine |
| CJ,
"We are currently in negotiations with Sony and Nintendo to provide our
game titles to PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance."
-Ding dong, the witch is dead. The wicked witch...-
*cough*
Um, back to...uh...the subject, unless Nintendo comes out with a real
killer app for the GBA, I don't see it taking off. Sure, all those billions
of Pokémon players would always have someone to battle with, but that market
of 6-12 year olds doesn't have easy access to cell phones. I would predict
they'd have to come up with something really innovative to hit the
teenage/adult market to justify making some kind of network to play
through.
Gotta admit though, the fact that Sega will be lending their considerable
software force to the GBA, it might not be as hard as it looks to deliver a
genuine killer app.
-Red Raven, just glad he won't have to buy a Dreamcast too |
Let me get this straight: we're talking about the successor to the
most popular gaming system of all time, over one hundred MILLION units
sold, and home of the most popular RPG series ever, and you're
not sure it'll be a success? Ok...
I'm not real worried about cell phones not being prevalent enough as
the GBA expands - those things are like cockroaches, filling every
available ecological niche. I think I can pretty much guarantee that by
the time the GBA hits its prime, there won't be a first grade classroom
in the country where less than half the kids have some sort of
portable communication. The real question here is one of standards - Japan
is already centered around a much more advanced wireless technology
infrastructure, and it'll take the US years to catch up in comparison. In
other words, many of the new cellular-based games that come out for the
GBA may never make it over here to the US, in which case, yes, the GBA
could be stillborn over here.
| Metal Gear Distributed |
| Here's a costly and unwieldy idea for a GameBoy cell phone game.
Metal Gear. Rather than having just text or trying to fit sound
samples into the game, though, when you're supposed to be communicating
with Snake's Little Helpers, it dials a Konami number, and you listen
in on the cell phone.
Actually, come to think of it, one of Sega's new "portable device"
games seems to be playing Samba de Amigo while listening to music over
the cell phone, so maybe things like this aren't QUITE as far out as I
first thought.
Or ooh... what about Phantasy Star Online or FF XI? I know they'd
have to be drastically different, but hey. It'd beat Pokemon for
building up characters portably and continuing at home.
Joshua Slone
|
You might want to take a portable, wireless Metal Gear game in an
entirely different direction: joint tactical espionage, where you have
to work in teams with other people from all over the country to
infiltrate a base. I don't think I'd want to spend a lot of time
reading the gobs of text an online RPG would have off of a tiny GBA
screen, but coordinating an action game with voice commands could work
really well. Now we just need to get Kojima to start work...
| Man, what a complete...
no, wait, it's just Drew. |
| Hey Chris,
To make sure the tone of my letter is in accordance with the rest of the column,
I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a dissenting prick. Relatively few console
gamers care about Bungie or Halo. In fact, the people most familiar with the
game are PC fanatics, and PC fanatics tend to fall into one of two groups:
1.) Die-hard PC nuts who would never purchase a console anyway, or...
2.) ...gaming nuts who have not only enough expendable cashflow to constantly
upgrade a PC, but certainly the means and the desire to get every console that
comes out anyhow.
If the X Box is gonna fly, Microsoft needs some titles the average consumer
cares about. Frankly, it don't have those titles; at least not yet. And if MS
doesn't have at least one of those titles ready for launch, it could be shooting
itself in the foot.
Of course, you could just point out that I'm a Nintendo whore, so of course
I'm going to say that. And you could also point out that people who assume the
PS2 is going to be the only worthwhile DVD system on the block are just Sony
whores. Which brings up another interesting point: so where are the Microsoft whores?
-Drew Cosner, amazing pedant |
Mr. Cosner, sir, I respectfully submit that you are viewing Halo's
value completely ass backwards. Halo is not a well-known title, and
Bungie is not a well-known company, except, as you suggest, outside a
fairly limited group of people. But Halo's strength lies less in a
brand name, and more in the basic quality of the game itself: if Bungie
can follow through on even half the claims they've made (and get it
out the door before others encroach on that potential) then Halo will
be an absolutely amazing freakin' game. Very much in the same
killer app category as Zelda and Mario, I think. True, nobody's much
excited about it yet, because nobody's played it and the hype campaign
hasn't started yet... but when it does, look out.
Meantime, Microsoft may well be able to fit in some titles the average
consumer cares about, like ports of Metal Gear Solid 2 and perhaps some
Square stuff. True, it won't be exclusive, but if you want to play FFX and
can't get a PS2, but can get an X-Box, will you honestly care that
much?
| It's always darkest... |
|
You used the phrase "if you gotta go, go out with a bang" in
response to a letter about Square's financial straits vs. their
obscenely large release list, and something hit me...
Isn't that how Final Fantasy got its name in the first place?
Last time Square was looking at the bottom of their bank account, we
got FF1. Beaujolais to Square's money problems!
- Zen, as he walks he's thinking of a new way to walk.
|
But will lightning strike twice? I'm dubious, personally, but
perhaps it's somewhat like FF8, where you keep your characters
purposely on the brink of death in order to use their limit breaks.
Hmm.
| "Omnislush! Wait, I
mean..." |
| Toy Story type out-takes? Yeah, I'd love to see
that in FFVII for the PS2. I could just see it now; Sepheroth coming
down for the kill, Aeris about to die...and suddenly Cloud lets one
rip, and they all loose it. Or even better, the sword goes through Aries'
chest, and out comes her still-beating heart! Yeah, I'd bet they'd be
laughing that one off on their way to their trailers.
Oh, and just so I'm on topic: The GBA with a cell phone. Game idea? How
about one where you have to call up your friends to gain back MP and HP,
and the longer you talk, the more you get back. I'm sure Sprint PCS would
rake in millions with a game like that helping them out.
-Banjax, hoping that, just once, Sepheroth cracks a smile and gives the camera the finger. |
It might also be cool to see an outtake wherein Tifa changes into
street clothes and burns the enormously padded bra she wore, or a
behind the scenes shot of Cloud going through can after can of
hairspray to keep his spikes up... but seriously, I doubt we'll ever
see such a thing from Square, since that kind of meta-humor seems at
odds with the general attitude the FF series seems to want to maintain.
| The Compleat Final
Fantasy |
| Chris,
Out of curiosity, why hasn't Square, with all its remaking on various systems,
ever gotten around to producing a high-quality, matched, box-set kind of
anthology?
If they figure they can sell FFA to PS owners, FF I-III to WSC owners, FF
IV-VI to GBC owners, FF VII-IX to PS2 owners that can already play the originals
on the same system, etc... Why couldn't they put together a nice-looking package
that has FF I-XI or something? Honestly, what FF fan *wouldn't* buy it?
Half the turn-off to me about all these remakes is that none of the are matched
in a coherent anthology attempt. (I.E. They could have included IV with FFA,
but instead choose to release it a year later. It would have been much sharper
to release them as a package.)
Maybe Square should contract WD to put together something nice. :-) Ys Eternal
I tell ya! (Although, as my sentiment goes, Ys Eternal would have been infinitely
better than 10 remakes of every game on various platforms with no version coherency
at all.)
-Evan M. |
I'm not sure Square would or could take that kind of tack, but they
could do far worse than release an anthology collection with Lunar
Complete-style extras. If the name of the game here is to get Square as
much money is possible, then they wouldn't want to release the games
as a boxed set, but a soundtrack disc per game plus some of the extras
like they had in their Millennium Collection would go a long way
towards making the games attractive, even if they didn't end up
changing any software at all.
| A week of binge
drinking, or 5 minutes on a cell phone |
| uh, considering that research I've done lately points to cellphone-emitted
microwaves causing the blood-brain barrier to leak albumin (damned engineers,eheh ),
i duno... but since my brain is probably already nuked at the key points, what would I
like to see? For one thing, I'd really like to get a try at multiplayer action-RPGing that
I missed out on with secret of mana... I'd also REALLY like that new FF to have a card
game, and maybe auctions, too, with an option for human opponents. It may seem rather
trivial; but I've been dying to challenge somebody ever since FF8.
There's really nothing else I'd want, save the ability for lewd graphical "away"
messages...
machka drek |
Considering that the number one complaint I get about Legend of
Mana is that it didn't have a decent multiplayer mode, any developer
would be doing itself a big favor to release a distributed SoM type
game. I'm not sure that you'd really want voice communication the whole
time, but if you could implement a PSO-style pictorial communication
system, you probably wouldn't need one.
But first, I gotta know... what's albumin? Or is your inability to
spell a result of albumin poisoning?
Closing Comments:
There be a topic below, so read, write, and respond. Until tomorrow.
-Chris Jones, feels like a
Microsoft whore every time he uses Windows
| Topic for Thursday,
1/25/2001 |
| Here's something that has bothered me for a while and that might be an
interesting topic for a column...
Someone asked me once if his PSX could get a virus trough a memory
card. "That's nonsense!" I told him. But the idea remained with me, and
now with the coming of consoles with hard drives and modems for internet
connection, I think this is now a reality.
Hard drives provide viruses with permanent storage. Internet connection
is a way they can propagate... So if the OS is flexible enough, the idea
of a virus doesn't sound so farfetched now.
Maybe I''m just being paranoid. Maybe such a thing is not possible.
Still, with X-Box being a windows based machine, I can imagine that a
few of those annoying pests will find themselves right at home in an
innocent console gamer's living room.
So are we now doomed to the same fate as the PC Gamers? Are we going to
have to watch out what add-on we are downloading or if this new level
comes from a trusted source? Will Norton release a PS2 antivirus? Will a
radical Nintendo fan create a virus with the sole prupose of erasing
every X-Box save file it can find on the hard drive?
If somebody asks me, the merging of computing and console gaming sounds
more like a bad idea with every passing second...
--
Carlos Rodriguez |
|
