Ack ack ack, dumb dumb dumb, I was so caught up in trying to keep an eye on E3 stuff, not that I accomplished anything in that area, that I left this column late. So here is the quick and dirty Agent rant for the day: Blah blah blah blah those bastards blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Sega blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Floigan blah blah blah marsupial blah blah blah blah blah I hate hardcore gamers all of them and their little dogs blah blah blah blah blah blah equality blah blah blah blah blah I'm controversial and I like it that way blah. There you go. Now, on to the letters. | Bargains | Hey Alan, If I take off my top, will you guys bring me to E3 with you next year? - Erika |
Depends. See, I'm normally not shallow and judgemental when it comes to appearance, but if you're selling yourself on the basis of sex appeal, remember the Godzilla adage. Size does matter. | Not live from E3, damnit | Morbid Greetz, Allan You lucky dog. You're at E3. I'm almost mad enough not to write you. Almost. Just a few things to say; I'll keep it short, since I know you've gotto get to that next booth to get their free demos. 1) Vault entry reccomendation: The Adventures of Lolo |
In the works. 2) Now that you're doing adventure games, yet another reccomenation:BLASTER MASTER! BLASTER MASTER! BLASTER MASTER! |
Oooooo... I don't know if it counts as an Adventure game, but I like, I like. 3) I stood in line for 4 hours to get Star Wars tickets for openingday. |
I didn't. 4) Do you think it's a coincidence that Fei Wong is singing the songfor FF8 and the hero of Xenogear's name is Fei Fong Wong? Do you? Huh? Well? |
Fei Wong used to be Fong Wong, a crossdressing dildo manufacturer. One bit of snazzy surgery later, and she was Fei Wong, songstress extraordinaire. But the Square people were fans of Wong long before she was important, so they named the man with two personalities after her/him. 5) While visiting my mom at the hospital, I went down to the cafeteriato get some lunch. I was wearing my Dr. Katz: Proffesional Therapistshirt, which has the Dr. Katz logo on the front, right where a tagwould be. It says "Dr. Katz" and then has a picture of his face, thensays "Proffesional Therapist" below it. The woman taking the moneyglances at my shirt, and after she rings up the food, she takes off anempolyee discount! She actually thought that I was a Doctor because Ihad that little logo there! That was cool! Oh, yes, I know you're being winked at by that cute booth girl overthere, so I better end this. -Aaron Littleton |
For the record, I am not, in fact, at E3. Drew is. AV is. Ed is. And Slick Glick is, though he's incarcerated at the moment. I am not. I wish I was. | Sharing with Sega | Greetings, Allan. Nice to see you again... About Sega/DreamCast... The DC doesn't look like it'll last. The modem doesn't look like it'llbe enough to save it. The PSXII specs and demos look spectactular incomparison. And Sega's general lack of any kind of marketing departmentAT ALL just dooms the whole thing. Now here are some ideas me, comrades, and a few other video gamepublications, online and offline have toyed with... 1. Sega becomes a software only company, developing for the 'otherguys'. 2. Sega becomes arcade only, and instead of porting their games over totheir own system they port them over to the 'other guys'. 3. Sega simply disbands, scattering their people to the wind to latch onto other companies or to form their own. Or to be forgottencompletely. Now, maybe there's an option in there that lets them stay in the consolewars, but other than Nintendo and Sony screwing themselves over reallybadly, (Which could, honestly happen, but seems pretty unlikely...) Idon't see one. So where's it go from here, Allan? ~Ian P, who's about to keel over dead-tired. |
I'm not convinced that DC is quite as dead as some of you do, but in the event that it does flop horribly, I suspect they'd go for a combination of 1 and 2. Sega has one of the best game development bases in the industry. It's hardware and licensing that kills them. They could make a very tidy profit developing for other home systems, as well as keeping up their arcade presence. | Yoda's new occupation | Ha! A fool is Geoff Finger! Foolish is he, to wish the death of the only non-vaporware next-gen system! Foolish is he for deluding himself as to the inferiority of Sega! (Whose actual crimes are, to date: Not painting themselves pastel to pander to 'the family'; not being Sony; and screwing up in the marketing area. The systems are sound.) Foolish is he to wish the death of a truly mighty console because of it's affiliations with the Evil Empire! (speaking of which -- He can't stand the thought of Microsoft making the Dreamcast easier to program for, but he has no qualms about buying a console from a corp that's released Mariah Carey CDs and harboured FF7? A fool is Geoff!) brand-name loyalty is a fool tat is geoff finger. --Ice-digger |
Geoff? Any response for Yoda, here? | Crystalis motivations | Hey Seb, Surprisingly enough, this letter's an honest-to-goodness question (almost). There's always been something about the game Crystalis that has bugged me. In the intro to the game, it says: "1997, October 1, the END DAY. Savagewar engulfs the world... Civilization is destroyed. An evolution had takenplace. The earth's axis shifted and all creatures became mutated. Lifewould never be the same... Those surviving vowed not to repeat theirmistakes of the past and erected a great tower in the sky... To oppressevil forever..." If this were so, then why is it that your final battle is against thetower's CPU? If that thing's trying to oppress evil, then one wonders whatmade it go bad. But reading yesterday's column, it all became clear to me. The silly thing wasn't Y2k compliant! When the original manufacturersbuilt it shortly after 1997, they must have forgotten to rewrite thesoftware (what with having survived a life-destroying war and all), usinginstead, a modified version of Windows 95 (Plus! so they could have thosenifty themes). The year 2000 rolls around, and what do you know, the towergoes berserk on them. Fortunately, the software is so buggy that they havea few hundred years to leisurely find someone to take care of the problemfor them. Secret Asian Man |
My George, I think he's got it. Who'd have thought SNK would be forward-thinking enough to predict the impact of the Y2K virus, so many years ago? Well, I guess that's why the Neo Geo Pocket is the roaring success it is. Back in reality for a moment, I'll freely allow corrections, but it was my impression that the tower went from being the cure to the disease. It oppressed so consistently and so effectively that it became a threat in and of itself. | Outtakes | I Think they should make a sequel to that old sega game Comixx Zone. Only it'd be Called "Comixx Zone: The Funnies" You assume the role of whoever the hell you were in the first one. Or Maybe someone else, who the fuck cares? Anyway you it'd be cool. You'd go through the comic pages slicing and dicing the "Evil" clones of those bastard cartoons charecters. You'd take a shotgun to Blondie, BOOM! And A machete to Garfield! EAT MY LASANGA WILL YA?! DIE ALL MEMBERS OF JUDGE PARKER! YOU STUPID SERIOUS PANSYS! Anyway it'd be cool -Owen Humphreys |
... riiiiight. Good. Sounds fun. Speaking of comics, (notice my clever segue), I would now like to take a moment aside from actual fact, and even mirth, and ask for your help. At this site, there is a battle taking place. Fans are asked to vote on a one-on-one duel between two comic book characters. Whoever gets the most votes kicks the ass of the other in a comic pubisher in early September. I don't care if you never read a comic in your life. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go to that address, and vote for Hawkeye. He's a pissant, cocky, loudmouthed braggart, and he deserves to win. So vote. Once, and only once, each day, until the vote is done, next Friday. This is what I'm asking you to do. Vote Hawkeye. I'm putting up a banner to that effect tomorrow. Vote Hawkeye, or I will personally beat your ass. | You said a mouthful, pard | When I took a look at the new PS2, Dreamcast and N2000, I discovered (and I hope you will see it too), that Nintendo and Sega don't have a chance. Need proof? Thought so. Playstation 2: After the success of the Playstation in North America and Japan, many are confident and loyal to Sony as they have picked upgamers that previously had only tried the Nintendo and Sega systems. Sony has proven that they knew what they were getting into when they began their venture into consoles by gathering software developers and putting development time into everything from the ad campaign to the shape of the controller to make a winning combination in today's gaming world. Not to mention that the PS2 has already outclassed the Dreamcast and has claimed most of the better software developers. (Read this column fully) Dreamcast: Sega has had the track record of being out first with the technolgy, not having enough developers, and then having the worst technology in almost every round of console wars after everyone catches up to them. Remember what happened to the crappy Master System, underdeveloped Game Gear, Genesis, short-lived 32x enhanced Genesis, stupid 32x enhanced Genesis with Sega CD , and finally the Saturn, which was so unadvertised that it never stood a chance against the Playstation. This is why Sega has such bad press, and the reason why everyone hates them for being so damn greedy. Nintendo 2000: Nintendo had it all going for them, they had all the prime software developers and had the greatest PR image and track record. Until of course the failed 32-bit Virtual Boy came out and was buried before stories about how much it sucked could surface. Then Nintendo decided that RPG's were not profitable when the consoles could handle more action based games and so told Squaresoft that they were no longer needed. Then they decided to abandon their no-violence policy, started putting out cheezy ads on videos, and put out the N64 which has a very small library of games, an even smaller library of quality games (some "Nintendo seal of quality" games still suck.) and has a control pad that is so radically different from the Snes pad that most people went to the Playstation because it seemed to be the natural evolution of the Snes's contol funstions. Also, the Nintendo 64 has a lack of polygon power and had a disadvantage with memory as the cartridges were too small to fit huge games. Now on to the N2000 which has a processor chip that works at 400MHz and a chip that runs at 200Mhz (This balances out to 300Mhz when they work in conjunction), and the 3.2 GB bandwidth has already been achieved by PS2. Right now I want you to take a look back at the article and see if it seems very familiar in the specs. Also fall of 2000 means it will be released only 4 years after the N64 came out which means that Nintendo gamers will leave because they got stuck with an undeveloped system that was skipped over in the console wars. Now I believe Nintendo has a serious problem on their hands as they will have trouble coping with the loss of gamers after the short lives of the N64 and Virtual Boy, and the loss of quality game developers such as Square, Konami, Capcom, and Namco. Nintendo has become just as greedy as Sega and for it they have a tarnished image and a dark future..... And this is why Nintendo and Sega won't win the 128 bit category. the judge |
And lo, the judge laid down the law. Rebuttal from the peanut gallery?.
Closing comments In the corrections department, Geoff Finger noticed that the FMV and gameplay of the FF8 demo at E3 sometimes skipped. The PSX was flat on the table. Silly Square. Always play your PSX on its side. Or upside-down. It just makes good sense. (Can we guess who watched Pleasantville today?) In other news, Robert notes that SD3 could have been put on 48-megabit cartridge, thereby eliminating the potential memory ceiling. This is true, Star Ocean used such a cart, but it should be noted that such things weren't in use until a good year after SD3 was release. SD3 was 32 megabits, at the time, the biggest cart size available. And Aaron Grover asks if the Pocketstation will see US release, which has not been confirmed either way, and rumor control holds that it will never see the stars and stripes fly overhead. Uh oh. Tomorrow, more insanity, and maybe even a before-midnight update! Hurrah! - Allan Milligan | | | |
