f13.net

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-23521-2567-x-x-x&tag=gs_hp_flashtop_bg&body_pagenum=1

(http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/443/shittycontroller4ws.jpg)

Wow, there went every single bit of interest I had in the revolution.

No. NO. NO.

FUCK.  I seriously hope this is some crazy Japanese thing.  Or some alternate remote for DVD/Sex Machine pleasure utility. 

Oh, I get it. Turn the remote part horizontally and it's an original Nes Controller. Add on the Analog stick to play N64 and gamecube games. Ho ho ho. Very clever Nintendo. Now how the fuck do I play Resident Evil 4?

Holy Fucking Lack of Sales, Batman.

It's Nintedo, let's see what craziness they decide to use it for.

So from a natural hand position on the "controller" you can only hit 2 buttons. To hit the X and Y you have to reposition your hand to the bottom and then slide it back? Wow, what good is this thing.

Edit: Ah I see now there is a couple shoulder buttons on the analog stick. Whoop.

Looks like there is a N64 Z-trigger on the underside of the *controller* as well.

I don't like it.  But, I can't tell if that's an honest dislike, or an I don't like changes, dislike.

I need to feel a controller.
I need a somewhat stationary controller.
I need that second analog stick.
I need something that won't BREAK when I drop it. Or throw it.
I need something that's big enough for my hands and small enough for a child's hands.
I need something without dangly bits.
I need something that has my right thumb pushing buttons and left hand using a control pad.

This isn't about insane. This is about basing a system around R.O.B.

What is this, Slashdot? Read the article. The console tracks where on the screen you are pointing the main controller like it would if it was a light gun. So you would move with the analog stick in your left hand and aim with the remote in your right. Given how sucky aiming is with the right thumb analog stick I don't see how this would be worse, though it might get tiring after a while holding the remote out in front of you the whole time.

Maybe the Revolution is about getting up once in a while and going for a walk.

Already read it. Once again, gimmicks. I would have preferred their innovation be a vibrating wireless keyboard and mouse as standard. THAT would have been innovation.

Or maybe it's coffee table art. I'm still buying the mustard yellow one. Damn the price of owning a console for no reason.

Wow, what a stupid looking piece of shit. And it's a light gun, too? Can I shove it sideways up my ass, because then it might actually be useful for something. If it vibrates, that is. Otherwise, it just looks fucking clown shoes stupid.

It vibrates.

This controller pretty much means that the Revolution will have exclusive games only.

The evolution of the console controller reached it's pinnacle with the Dualshock for Playstation: Easy access to as many buttons as any sanely-designed game should ever need, plus analog sticks in an accessible but non-intrusive location.  Everything else has just been varying degrees of too big, too complicated, and too ugly.

Edit:  I bet you could grab that thing by the TV remote thingy, whip it around like a medieval flail, and beat someone to death with the joystick part.

And no cross-platform titles. It's the home version of the DS. Someone better make Nintendogs quicklike.

Wow.  That is different.  I actually think it's really cool, it sounds like the thing would be plain perfect for First-person aiming, on par with mouse-keyboard even.

I wish I could say I'm surprised of such bitchy backlash from this community considering how much they want innovation in games, MMO's specifically, but then I remember that we fear chains.

Innovation isn't always good.

This isn't innovation. It's just a controller broken in half with less buttons and a motion sensor. It's truly half of what the other controllers are. Why couldn't they have just put the motion sensor in a motherfucking wavebird?

Granted, innovation has borne atrocities like Black and White as well, but you take the good with the bad.  Beside, barely any of those here are giving the impression of buying a Revolution anyways, and Schild can't ever refrain from mentioning how he thinks Nintendo should go third-party like Sega, so I don't care how silly and foreign the thing looks: I'll wait until it's in my hands with gameplay attached before I jump to hasty conclusions.  I like Nintendo, their games, their systems.

As far as less buttons goes: context sensitive.  It worked out just fucking dandy in RE4, thank you.

Black & White was one of those games that aimed at greatness and narrowly missed.  Then flew past greatness and landed in the toilet.

I don't understand what the cockblock is on me saying Nintendo should go third party. Before the DS, 100% of their wonky innovative ideas were dead on arrival. The DS was the least innovative of their wonky ideas and it's working because they made a tomagotchi with puppies that don't grow up. Having played (and owned) nearly every DS game on the market, I can comfortably say that the second screen truly is a gimmick.

Nintendo makes games. Their R&D is no longer impressing me. They peaked with the Super Nintendo controller. I would have zero complaints if I could buy all their games for other systems as they are mostly fantastic. But buying an extra console every 5 years or whatever to play 5-10 games is fucking insane. And if you can't see that, then you're insane too.

You are buying an Xbox 360 at launch, are you not?

And also correct me if I am wrong, but did you not say the Dreamcast is probably your favorite system apart from the SNES?

All the buttons are there, they are just in a weird awkward layout now. There are 6 on the remote (not including what looks like a green power button) and at least two, maybe three on the analog controller. That compares to 8 on the current GC controller including the Start button. The analog controller counts as one of the analog sticks (obviously), the motion controller on the remote acts as the other and you still have a regular D-pad.

That's a good question.

I agree, Black and White could have destroyed the world with it's greatness, but it missed, and that narrow miss turned into a big giant waste of potential.

Correct, correct, and correct. I'll buy a revolution at launch also, Ffs, I own 2 Atari Jaguars. Nintendo doesn't NEED to make home consoles anymore. Now, I think they should still make the gameboy. But if anyone here who doesn't have kids (or, hell - has kids), actually owns more than 25 Gamecube games that they bought new, I'd be impressed. And would love to see the list. I own 16 games. Two copies of Windwaker (one has the old zelda stuff in it), 3 that were bought used, and I imported Naruto 2 from Japan. Resident Evil 4 is coming out on the PS2 and I plan on actually completing it using a dualshock controller. Three of my Gamecube games are unopened. Point being - the gamecube didn't need to exist. Everything on it could have been on the PS2 and Xbox and probably would have sold more.

Edit for Trippy: Looking at the remote thing - where there's 2 sets of A and B buttons - you can't access them all at the same time in the same position. It's physically impossible. You'd need an extra finger either coming out from your thumb or wrist depending on how you're holding it.

I already have a PC to play video games that use a keyboard and a mouse. Reading the article more closely it sounds like the main controller allow for *8* degrees of freedom. It allows the same six degrees as in a plane or flight sim (pitch, roll, yaw) plus it can sense the controller moving closer or further away from the screen. Now that's fricking innovative.

25 games?  I guess I'm just not hardcore like you, Schild, but that's a lot of good games for one system, considering how expensive they are.  I own maybe twenty games for my cube, and with my ps2 and pc as well, I still haven't finished a good number of them.

I know that's why I said they were in a weird awkward position. They are all there, though.

Innovative for about 20 minutes of play. Then it eventually becomes painful. Go go repetitive stress injuries.

(http://www.f13.net/schild/games.jpg)

So not hardcore. Granted 2 of the gamecube games aren't mine and the top two shelves on the left part aren't mine.

Dude, you played Lineage 2? And what is that on the second shelf from the bottom?  A pokemon hippo?

.Hack//Sign thing that came with the first DVD and no, that's a Lineage 2 preorder box.

It's like I said, I guess I am not as hardcore as you.  I didn't need that many good PS2 games to feel content with my ps2 purchase, and nor do I need that many for any system really, as long as it promised to have good games that aren't just sequels and me-too clones.  ICO, Katamari, Eternal Darkness, Pikmin, Lost Kingdoms, those are the kinds of games I look for and that's all I really expect.  Sequels are just fine as long as they aren't the only thing available.

Possibly. It might explain the awkward button layout though. Each degree of freedom can act like a single button (or potentially more depending on how sophisticated the sensors are), a la the reverse of how some people map their mouse buttons to forward and backward movements in some games, so if you are only using the motion controller to aim on the screen you effectively have 4 more "buttons" to work so with the two buttons at the top of the controller (the one below the D-pad and the one on the underside) that gives you 6 "buttons" within easy access on that controller.

You've got me beat by a longshot on newer games.  If I lined up all my NES, Coleco, Atari, TG-16, SNES, and Genesis games up on shelves though...

Left most in the attic at my parent's house when I moved out west.

Here's the thing. I'm not hardcore, ahoy. I just like games more than you.

Is that...Daikatana? WTF?

You are seriously fucking full of yourself.

That wasn't easy to track down.


Media is my chosen "hobby." I like reading, watching movies, and playing games. It's what I do. There's probably something else you and I have in common and you have a lot more of it and I'd think you are hardcore. But really, you just like it more than me.

I have one of those remote mice/laser pointer thingies on my media room PC. It is too tiring to use for longer than ten or twnety minutes at a time. That makes me worry about this controller. :(

I predict an entire generation of bloated right forearm teenagers.

Too late.

I love destroying jokes.

Just saying, if the games are fun, kids will take the pain and play to win.

If it can sense, real-time, all axis of motion, then imagine the possibilities for virtual sports.

I wonder if there will be a GTA for the revolution with pistol-whipping. Or just wait til a kid chucks the controller during a hail mary.

Awesome.

This is the first time I've looked in this thread, so I just want to respond to the original post rather than take part in this conversation that has since developed:


rofl

Well, hey.  They could make a cool fencing game.

Just wait for the aerobics games where the game knows you are just sitting on your ass. Or an America's Army game where it forces you to do 25 jumping jacks to complete boot camp. Basketball games were you have to dribble with the remote.. er I mean controller. Wait.. wait.. a Karate Kid game with wax on wax off. And that port at the bottom? That's for plugging in your fufme device.

Look, Schild dusted all his games before taking the picture. Also, I have that same Shelf in my office, but in orange.

I just moved in. No need to really dust the games yet.  :-D

Actually, I didn't take that picture. I just cropped off the bottom and right part. Picture was taken while I was sleeping.

Just went and read the article on this. I think it has the potential to be "kind of" cool, with a select amount of games that are designed for it. I see it being a hit with younger gamers, which was kind of always Nintendo's market anyway. I would like to try it, but I really doubt I will buy it.

I also have to say that the PS3 controller like like total ass too. I cant say I am excited for any of the next gen controllers. And why are all these damn consoles so round, no way I can stack these with my DVR or my receiver and shit.

The 360 Controller looks like a nice fusion between the S and the Dreamcast controller. I've heard from lots of friends at E3 that it's the most comfortable controller they've ever held. I trust them.

About the Dual Shock - clearly you have never played a PS/PS2 game that needs the digital pad in any real way, because the digital pad on the dual shock is complete ass.

Anyway, the sad part here is, you knew Nintendo was going to do something wacky like this, and that people would make fun of it.

I'm sure someone will make a 3rd party controller that is much more typical. In the end there is an analog stick, a d-pad, and some buttons, just like every other controller in the past 5 years.

It does sound like it will be nice for flying and FPS games - two things I care nothing about.

The Logitech Wireless dual shock is probably the best PS2 controller I've used. The Dpad on it's actually pretty good. I'd like the Wavebird a lot more if that analog yellow nub thing wasn't so meh.

If they give me a sword fighting game where I use that controller as a handle to control the sword, I will buy it (at a reasonable price).  I don't think that will happen, though, because that would require a greater range of movement than just the screen.  I could see its potential for that, though.  Trigger the rumble when the swords collide.

It will never happen.  Imagine a controller that had the full range of motion.  You could commit virtual sepukku! Sweet!

This video implies that you will be able to (WARNING IGN LINK!):

http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/651/651334/vids_1.html

Let me point this out once again, because people are not getting it:

The controller has:
An analog stick
A digital pad
A,B,X,Y buttons
Two other shoulder buttons.

That is exactly the same as what the DC controller had. Keep in mind this controller is supposed to work with NES, NES, N64 and GC games.

Nothing prevents someone from simply creating a third party controller that is shaped like any standard controller. (With or without the motion sensor) In addition, there are already converters today that allow you to use PS2 controllers on the XBox and things like that.

It really isn't hard to imagine at all that there will be adapters to let you use a GC controller or whatever else, or 3rd or 1st party controllers that operate in more standard fashion. It's not like the controller is just a stylus or something like that. The fact that it is supposed to work with older Nintendo systems makes me think there will be some way to, you know, play those games.

My xbox controller works great playing all those older games. I'm far more interested in how they're going to handle the Gamecube games. No Z-trigger, no second analog nub. Methinks they're going to release an accesory extender thing, though it would be a lot easier to just let wavebirds work out of the box.

Edit: Having read Slashdot's responses to the controller, I can comfortably say they don't get it. Except for the guy who compared it to the powerglove. But he didn't get it either.

If I were them I would just release a $20 adapter or something that let you plug your GC controllers in. I mean, if you are going to be playing GC games on the Rev, you clearly own a GC and a controller for it. The adapter could take a controller or wavebird receiver.

They might create some random other attachment, I have no idea. But to me it doesn't matter, because I am 99% sure someone will just create a GC->Rev adapter. You can find one today that maps just about any system to any other one, including Sega Saturn to XBox.

For those of you that have forgotten or ignored what I've been saying:

(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2005/news/05/17/revo_screen006.jpg)

The wavebirds will work with the adapter out of the box. It'll be ugly, but it'll work. On that note, the new controller still feels like R.O.B. to me.

You know what I really like about that controller design?

That it represents the efforts of probably a dozen engineers as well as a comprehensive ergonomics study and thirty or forty meetings where people said "Yes!  Thats a GREAT concept design!  Let's go for it!!!"  Not to mention all the mock-ups and models and focus groups they probably went through before even considering doing an 'announcement'.

It just makes the Andy Kaufman in me cackle with glee.

I seriously think it's fantastic.

It will:

(A) Work, and Nintendo will give us games and ways to play games that we never even thought up.  The market will follow because the gaming will be so fun.

(B) Fail, horribly, forcing Nintendo to make gameboy games and finally go 3rd party.

Edit:  Funny thing is, whereas before I wasn't going to buy a Revo, now with the XBox line up announced I'm considering more and more.

Well, video makes it look like it can definitely do that.  My interest is piqued.  I will give it a try.

Jesus Buttfucking Christ, that may be more games I have ever owned/purchased, for all platforms combined.



Also, on the subject of a possible swordfighting/fencing game, there was a samurai swordfighting game I played at the Namco Zone in London.

It was kind of fun, but 2 gripes.

1) It was tiring

2) The sword mechanics were not intuitive or natural, at all.

Basically, you had a small foam sword which you held and swung around through an infrared plane in front of you....It just didn't work the way swordfighting should.

I want a game that's tiring.

There's a motion capture boxing game in arcades.  I love that game.  It's a fantastic workout in like 5 minutes.  A game that will motivate me to move around is a good thing.

I'm all for innovation that works, is useful and improves the games. I don't see this one doing that. Innovation on consoles would be a useable mouse/keyboard combo, not a dildo with a flail attached. Not a remote control. It just smacks of the out-there school of thought in Nintendo that brought us the Virtual Boy. Or the DS. Or the Micro GBA.

No that NOT fucking innovation, that's just trying to turn consoles into PCs because you're afraid of change. It's like saying that cars suck because you don't put horses in front of them. If you want mouse and keyboard on your console, throw some money at Infinium, they probably have a big hole to fill before they can launch the Phantom.

An N-way motion-detecting, expandable, combining, wireless controller? Yes please. And the games to exploit the new ways of playing. We're talking Samba Di Amigo maracas, but generalized.

Adding non-intuitive PC shit to a mass-market entertainment device? Sucks so badly it hurts. Have you left your brain switch in the "off" position?

Yes that is the definition of Innovation - perhaps the word in your mind is Creative.

Convergence is completely about innovation - taking the familiar and blending them to get the best of formerly-disparate conveniences.  I suspect keyboards are going to be with us for a very long while; it would take a complete neural jack to eclipse them.

I only read down to this point, so sorry if this has been mentioned.  The GC-style controller ports are present on the Rev for a reason, and I had originally decided that reason was because the new controller was going to be unusable for Cube games.  I don't consider this a big deal since I can just plug in my Wavebird.

Now, to read the rest of the thread.

For everyone of Nintendo's (or others) control innovations, there have been fuckall for games. Virtual Boy? Power Glove? DDR Mat? Eyetoy? Please name me 5 games for each (or even one) of those innovations that were all truly great games. They are gimmicks, just like this controller. Convergence is an innovation, and it's the one the consoles are following best. The X-Box 360, for all its stupidity, is also converging the Internet with a Set-Top Box. The Media Center? Also goodness which I can get great use out of.

I don't care what anyone says, there won't be enough games to make that little toy remote controller's unique features worth a damn. Just like the DS's touch screen, or the Power Glove or the Virtual Boy, or the EyeToy for that matter. But there will be a ton of FPS games that would benefit from a decent controller, and a mouse and keyboard is that controller. Not to mention making that whole typing thing easier. Shit, if my X-Box could surf the web, type a Word doc and download pr0n, I WOULDN'T NEED A PC.

I look forward to bowing down to our new console overlords. But I'll be doing it with a controller that's worth a damn, not this toy.

No, because you would in effect have one with the word "PC" crossed out and "X-Box" written on in crayon.

PC games use the keyboard and mouse because they are there and because PCs do not come with a controller. That doesn't make it a good idea to play games with them.

Or rather, you will be doing it with a controller that has hardly evolved from the PS2 DualShock 2, because it feels known and safe instead of new and frightening. Why did we ever leave the single-button, eight-way digital joystick is all I want to know.

Agreed. Which is exactly where our console friends misunderstand the trend.  A special purpose game machine with a few danglies is not going to eclipse a general purpose machine.  Right now that general purpose machine is the PC.  Consoles are becoming PC-ish - hell the next one's *are* PCs.  Stereos are becoming PC-ish, little more than circuitry integrated into the host platform.  Television is already well on its way to being a PC with onboard DVRs.

When my physical interface lets me do the taxes, pay the bills, catch some Daily Show, watch the video someone emailed me, play a few rounds of WoW with my kids, etc.... then it's going to look suspiciously like a keyboard with peripherals.  Not a trendy vibrator.

Consoles are a footnote to the path of convergence.  Not the focal point.

I think a few of us are misunderstanding the direction of the game industry.  Yes right now a lot of folks would rather produce for a few platforms.  But then there are game devs that think they're going to roll in Blizz-like money piles selling games for mobile phones.  Foolishness. In short anyone walking away from the PC games market is simply making opportunity for companies that want to expand revenue AND reduce production costs, not just reduce production costs.

And lo, the internet did say "LOL!"

http://nintyrevcontroller.ytmnd.com/
http://revolutiontv.ytmnd.com/
http://nintendowins.ytmnd.com/
http://nindancedotdoop.ytmnd.com/
http://nrc.ytmnd.com/

They are the focal point for games makers wanting to turn game licenses into multi-media brands.


Mobile games are profitable, and can be great funding apparati for other games. PC games will be more nichified so long as convergence machines become more prevalent and consoles keep being profitable. Of course, this next console gen could also be the harbinger of the next great video game crash, seeing as how none of the consoles have impressed me for shit over the previous gen.

Your last statement is the only one applicable to consumers.  Businesses have to do more than market goods that meet internal business goals - they have to sell goods that satisfy a demographic and raises barriers to adoption of competing businesses.  If EA decided Monday morning to never distribute another PC game again they'd simply become another Atari.

A KB and Mouse combo is better than a controller for a lot modern games, ESPECIALLY anything played from a FPS view.

Anyone who thinks they are better at something like Halo with a controller is a fucktard and should be summarily shot.

First of all, since most of you are primarily PC gamers, I offer a reminder that some of us prefer console games because a) they're more couch-friendly (without Sky's blinged-out system) and b) we are tired of keyboards because we spend all day working/fucking off at them. Second, lest we forget the system is called the Revolution. Perhaps Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by insisting that they are the new wave (as they've done in the past, evidenced by their drastically evolving consoles since the beginning), but I for one welcome a brand new toy, not just a shinier version of the old one. And a toy is really all it is.

I've gotten used to using a new controller before, and I'll do it again. I think that oftentimes what we percieve to be flaws in a controller are actually flaws in the programming itself; like games where you can't automatically position the camera directly behind you with the push of one button (I get dizzy having to swing the camera around manually with the analog stick, and dammit I shouldn't have to!). Or games where you jump before the cliff but the game thinks you were too late and you fall in the ravine. It doesn't matter which button does the job, as long as doing the job is enabled.

Yes, this controller is totally different. So the fuck what? Are we really untrainable monkeys?

Yes.

If you played MMOG's, you'd have known the answer to that question before you asked it.

(http://www.alansmind.com/feces.jpg)

It would have been a lot better if it just came with a mouse and keyboard. And a hard drive. And your choice of video cards, sounds cards, RAM, etc. That would have been great.

What I look for in a console is something I have to play at a desk. Desk = fun!

We joke about them coming with all that stuff, but I would kill for a unified platform that remained constant. Game may actually get some use out of a computer instead of maybe or maybe not running. The problem is standardization. Throwing a hard drive, keyboard and mouse on a console is one step closer to destroying the PC.

Something i look forward too. I'm tired of gaming at a desk.

Congrats to Margalis for being level-headed about this news.  This isn't anything to freak out about.  Of course, this is not a community where we come to be level-headed, so that may not be what we are looking for.

I skimmed the article and read up on the commentary.  I think the reactions are too negative, but I'm not going to tell someone what to think.  Of course, I'll have to use one before making a concrete statement, but it looks great.  I am sure that N has done usage testing, so I am not too worried.  I remember being sort of intimidated by the NES controller at first, and it was certainly tough on my hands at first.  Many cases of "Nintendo thumb" later, not only can I open pickle jars with my thumbs, I don't have any issues with that style of controller... that style being the one that dominates today.

I guess what I am saying is that if I got used to the damn NES controller, then the SNES shoulder buttons, then the tiny analog stick and trigger introduced on the N64, and eventually evolved into someone that can mow down crowds in GTA:SA with horrific efficiency using the god-awful number of control surfaces on the DualShock II, then I will certainly be able to adapt to this.  The part I acutally think I am going to dislike is the short cord between the two halves.  That shit should be longer or also wireless.  I can see myself all spread out on a beanbag, lazily blasting metroids.  Just need a bowl of bacon in my lap.

Or I'll just use my Wavebird.  The fact that Cube controllers are supported really negates any fears I might have about the new controller.  Plus, the inevitable MadCatz POS that will come along... in fact if history is a guide, this controller will inspire (arguably better-designed) features in future controllers if nothing else.  Like the D-pad, the analog stick and the trigger.

With that filed away, I think that this controller would be great for RE5.  Maybe RE4 too, but you'll want to buy the "Director's Cut" or whatever.


You are exactly right and this is why I dislike console FPS so much.  A controller is shit for that sort of thing, but at least everyone is crippled in the same way.  I submit that I could out-aim you in Quake if you used a mouse and I used a laser-pointer.  I'd also have less wrist strain.  That practice in the cineplex is going to pay off for the kidz.

I look forward to trying out the new controller. Whether it works for me or not is something I'll find out.

I'm holding out on all judgement for it due to the fact there hasn't been a controller of this type that has the features it does. It may be brilliant; it may be horrible. But no one can form an opinion based on facts about it because there's nothing to compare it to yet. There are things that may be vaguely similar, but a direct comparison isn't possible. So, I'm giving it a five out of sheer neutrality. It's a very flexible five through and will definintely change.

If there is one system that I think will live or die based on demo units in stores, it's this one.

The Gamecube demo units got me to buy that system, so it is certainly possible.  The controller felt smooth and silky, and Rogue Squadron 2 was all awesome looking and such.

Im gonna go wait and see on this one.

Very, very true.

I'd always assumed that Quality Control would prevent a company from ever releasing a truly useless controller with the console. That was until I met the Xbox - Sputnik Head Controller. I couldn't even reach all of the damn buttons, the stupid thing was so freaking huge.

Mind you, there was also a time when I assumed that consoles would always come with two controllers and a free game by default...

(http://www.arcadezone.org/emulation/nintendo/images/duckhunt-b.gif)

Not very different, methinks.

Err.  Did you live through the last 25 years and the open architecture revolution or were you in kind of a daze?

There are dozens of proprietary systems, a big obvious one being any line produced by Apple.  There are real reasons why they aren't what you think they should be.

You missed my point, but it's ok. The Xbox is the closest thing to a unified PC platform for games, but even then it's immensely underpowered. The 360 is the next step in that direction without a keyboard and mouse. The Phantom on paper - without the bullshit streaming service for games is where I'm going - it's a good idea.

For those who may not read Corpnews. (http://cube.ign.com/articles/651/651559p1.html)

You mean, for those of us who actively avoid IGN.

No.  Fuck you.  Give us an example of how it might work in a game that people would actually buy.  Oops, you can't.  The only interesting bit of information in there is the fact that you'll be able to plug this abomination into a shell that makes it into a real controller.

Oh right, I forgot that f13 is the zenith of class and maturity.  Just admit you are being a douche because Nintendo is doing this.  Nobody seemed too up in arms when Capcom did it with Steel Battalion for one game at probably the same price($200).

WUA: They did give examples, such as Metroid Prime 3 or Luigi's Mansion 2.  The thing also has force feedback, which gives me a great deal of hope that the Revolution will see some new version of the Time Crisis series without requiring me to purchase yet another goddamn lightgun, or maybe even Point Blank if Namco loves us.  And it could even work as a substitute for old-school stuff like Yoshi's Safari or that Battlemech superscope game, which I foolishly sold back in the day.

Ahoy, calm the fuck down. I was merely pointing out the fact that Corp linked to somewhere that Blues News linked to on IGN and you said that it was for those of us that don't read Corp. It had nothing to do with the controller. But I've realized the problem here, you designed the controller - it's why you've taken it so personally.

Edit: And last night I realized my big problem with the new Ninty controller. It's the sort of thing you sell as an accessory (as it DOES have limited use) - or bundled with a game, like a DDR Mat - I'd have much rather them put a Wavebird or two into the retail Revolution box. Wouldn't that be an insane idea. Put two controllers into the retail box. We haven't seen that in more than a decade.

I agree, it would be great if they reverted back to the old-school method of a world-class game and two controllers.  Also, considering the backlash I see the initial controller design is giving I'd suggest they package each system with the "controller-shell" they have planned, so developers can develope with that in mind too and not worry about having to build game schemes around the unique components if they don't want to.

I suppose I am being a bit combative, but I see the controller backlash and keep remembering how people reacted to the first Spaceworld videos of windwaker, which I thought were amazing myself.  It seems like Tom is rich man now because everybody owns one of his jumping-to-conclusions mat.

And after having a day to think about this, I've decided the same thing.  I genuinely hope it works.  But I hold no illusions that Nintendo's system will once again lack many of the titles that you see coming out for other systems that make you think "Oh shit, I want to play that game!"

Sometimes, it sucks not being able to afford to buy every major system.

Well, I was actually at TGS and saw Iwata-san's presentation.  If you haven't seen the promo video displaying how the controller can be used you can watch a streaming copy here (http://www.warcry.com/scripts/columns/view_sectionalt.phtml?site=15&id=108&colid=7964).  From what I saw, I think the Revolution is going to be a fantastic platform.  Obviously it is still in early development, but the concept is brilliant.

The "direct pointing device" in the tip of the contoller allows the console to track where on the screen the controller is pointed, how far from the screen it is, and what angle it is being held at.  This will allow for tennis games where you swing the controller like a raquet.  Action RPGs where you swing the controller as a sword.  Resident Evil type games where the controller acts as a flashlight.  FPS games where the controller acts as a gun.  The possiblities for this system are really mind blowing if the tracking and responsiveness can be fine tuned.   From the hands on reviews I've read it sounds like they are well on their way to doing this.

I saw the demos for the 360 and the PS3, but I left the show wanting a Revolution.

"Swing your controller as if it was the sword/racket/pole" is a gimmick, unless this controller can somehow strive to halt itself in midair, thus providing resistance.

Well, if you've ever swung a tennis raquet you'll notice that it's not inertia that stops it but your arm's range of motion.  There will be a rumble pack though, so you'll be able to feel it when you hit the ball.  I see your point about how it would relate to a sword, but these are video games.  A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required.

I understand the skepticism here and I share some myself.  I too remember the power glove.  It's all about whether or not they can pull it off, but the concept is, imo, undeniably brilliant.

Some gyro's and accelerometers do that easy.

The damn thing reminds me of those dodgy game systems they stick on the back of the aeroplane seats on long haul flights.

That isn't good. Obvioulsy.

I think the next gen of console games is going to be a low.

The NES basically invented modern gaming after the crap that was Atari. (Even at the time I thought Atari was kind of crappy) The SNES/Genesis brought good 2D graphics into the picture.

Similary, the first-gen 3D consoles (PSX, N64 and Saturn, obviously PSX moreso than the other 2) introduced 3D gaming, and the follow-ups again raised the graphics bar above what was pretty craptastic with PS2.

The thing is, 2D games today don't really look all that much better than SNES games. Yes, they look better, but not leaps and bounds better. Similarly, the jump from PS2 to PS3 looks nothing like the jump from PS1 to PS2. PS1 games look like the NES of 3D, most of them are just terrible looking.

The next generation of systems has what? Nothing. HD! Wow. What a joke. We get games that don't run as fast as they could solely for the benefit of the small section of the population that has HDTV, and that's the big "innovation"? Higher resolution - yay! And a whole bunch of warmed-over sequels. Typical Boring Driving Game 4, Future FPS 3, Ho Killer 5, Bouncing Boobie Fighter 4.

The "next generation" of games at this point is pretty indistinguishable from the current generation. I find it really hard to believe that anyone is truly amped about the next generation of games. The XBox launch list is a joke, and I'm sure the other systems won't fare much better. I have no doubt that the next Zelda will totally and completely own the entire next generation. None of the "next generation" games look like they couldn't just come out tomorrow with slightly worse graphics.

So far that's what the next gen is. The games you play today, only you have to buy another console and pay more for the games, and the plus side is higher resolution. At least on the Nintendo front they realize this.

Why would you buy a next gen system? Only because you have to if you want to play the games for it. That's it. Because the games might as well all be GC/PS2/XBox games. They are basically just current generation games with a switch flipped that let's you only play them on new hardware. Nothing we've been shown says otherwise.

Well, don't get me wrong.  The graphics I saw in the Xbox and PS3 demos were stunning.  The next generation is taking a step forward.  But they aren't stepping much farther than the PS1 to the PS2.  And the lineups I saw were the same games you can play on the Xbox or PS2 with better graphics.  Some of the new Live features they're planning look interesting, but the Revolution was the only thing at the show that left me saying, "Wow, that's fucking cool!"

Demos exist to make the most brilliant examples of something. Just like Yoshi Touch and Go seemed like a great demo for the DS, it made for a shitty game. I have a Ping Pong thing from E3 that I have to review that's pretty damn fun, but it's still just a gimmick and provides limited appeal.

But really, that's all it comes down too. The neat new stuff in the controller is gimmicky and I'll still say they should have just put the motion sensor in a wavebird.

I come back to form factor.  My hands just don't like to be cribbed into that position for longer than it takes to channel surf.  The closest thing I can think of is actual fishing, but even then I can move my hands in various ways so that I can still feel the bite while letting arms/hands rest in more natural positions.  And my fingers aren't doing much of anything the great majority of the time.

I doubt I'll be taken seriously when I predict at this time, but honestly this product will eventually be pulled due to controversy over tunnel carpal syndrome.

It looks like the perfect kind of thing a kid would put in his mouth or a dog would see bouncing around and decide it was food. Dangly bits are pleasing to the simple.

Edit: That's not to say it would matter at all in my house. But a house with a few young kids, this would really be the first non-dumb kid friendly Nintendo product yet. Or maybe I'm wrong. Just seems counter to everything safe. I'll just wait for someone to smack their friend in the head with the analog nubbin.

I don't see how it could act like a sword, or most of the other examples from that video.  If it is all being transmitted from that infrared part at the top it would be extremely difficult for the base station to detect the motion of the beam, especially if it is being bounced all over the walls.  Just the fact that they made people doing the demos stand on a big red X proves that.  You would have to have everything aligned perfectly, and I assume this was a large space that didn't have any walls to confuse the system.

Unless it is actually using some sort of gyroscope and transmitting all the info over bluetooth or something.

It's so different I can't really dismiss the idea until I have used it though, and I will be in a very pessimistic frame of mind when doing so.

And a quick physics question because I have forgotten most of mine - In the video they use what I will violently call "Stabbing motions", where they move the controller forward and backwards.  Would the base station be able to detect that using infrared, I forget whether or not there is a Doppler type effect for light and even if there is wouldn't you need an incredibly precise sensor?

My problem with the look of the thing is the left hand portion. Many people I know basically hold a standard controller with primarily just the last two fingers on each hand. I personally have small hands though, and those fingers are not enough to keep a controler stable. So I tend to rely on squeezing the controller between my palms to keep it stable. This also frees up more fingers for hitting buttons.

Now I look at that track ball-in-a-hand thingy, and I can just see it being a nightmare. One hand means you cant brace it against your other hand, and its going to take more fingers to hold on to. Tough shit for anyone who doesn't have the size of hands the ergonomics were designed for.

I don't care either way, I've never bought a Nintendo system and likely never will.

You use that word a lot; I do not think you know what it means.

Here, let Merriam-Webster help you:
The word is far more positively charged than you think.

So you are saying it's ingenious, novel, important and new. Yes, we know already.

See, unlike the robot thingy, the glove thingy and the goggle thingy, this is the MAIN input device for the console. You cannot compare those failures to this simply because it's in a whole different ball park. This is the 21st century, full of dance mats, EyeToy and Singstar. What you are doing is exactly what joystick fans did when Nintendo introduced the D-pad: "Where is the stick? This thing will never sell."

Mark my words: it will sell, but not to the market that worships the DualShock 2. But will they like the PS3 boomerang? Time will tell.

I think I will have to find a way to demo the system before I consider buying it. This controller scheme is just to different to buy on bline faith, or even because the games "look cool."

I may love the controller scheme....or find it excrutiatingly annoying.

I'm fairly certain there are sensors embedded in the thing rather than having the base unit try to figure out its orientation based on the strength and direction of the infrared signal.  This is actually fairly old technology by now; there are a bunch of sports games (http://www.f13.net/e3/day1/IMG_0073.jpg) that do the same thing, and they work surprisingly well.

I think we all know what he means, and whether or not that's the denotative definition, anyone familiar with modern day marketing is well aware of the connotative definition.  Matter of fact, dictionary.com presents a better, more accurate definition:


So let's not be douches playing semantics, okay?

I'm still looking forward to playing with it.  I can see how it'll work as a sword, even though it probably won't be able to force itself to stop in midair (duh).  Same reason players lean to one side when they're trying to make their character go that way- if they toss in a rumble effect as a tactile cue when the swords clash, I think you'll see a lot of players unconciously stopping the "sword" in midair themselves.  The other, easier but less interesting possibility, is that swords simply don't lock.  An attack is blocked and does no damage, but the sword just keeps on going until the end of the swing (see just about any fighting game for an example).

A quick nitpick.  Nintendo didn't invent the d pad.  Its basically an inferior and thumbs hurting version of the Intellivision controller turned into a cross and losing 8 positions of movement.  Lately all I hear is D PAD SO GREAT AND ORIGINAL.

Umm no, no it wasn't.  Just another innovation ignored till some Japanese company ripped it off, tweaked it a tad, and the ignorant spooge over it. 

And for the record?  The NES control pad SUCKED SHIT.  I won't play NES unless I can have my Advantage Joystick, you know, a sturdy controller for the discerning gamer.  Every game controller since shoulda been based on that design IMHO. 

I still remember some of the blisters I got playing fighting games.

Hell, my senior design project was a bunch of gyro's and accelerometers on a golf club.  It's not very hard stuff.

Is there any reason to think waving your controller around like the hilt of of an incorporeal sword is actually going to make for a more entertaining game?  Because it doesn't sound like it.  It sounds like a gimmicky pain in the ass game concept, cooked up specifically to defend this goofy-ass controller.

Sounds like it to me.  Sounds like there's potential for some extremely complex and involved combat.

I'm not so sure. You're still dealing with a 2D screen. Perhaps with some of that newfanlged VR stuff this would be more immersive of a control system. However, I'll still interested in trying it out and seeing how it goes.

I recall playing fishing games on arcade which functions in pretty much the same way, it makes a HUUUUUGE diffrence, it's heaps cooler. To translate it into a sword fighting game, swing the controller in the exact same manner as you would swing the sword and get the same result. You could have really cool stuff togheter with it. The faster you swing the controller/sword the more dmg it will do. You can have piercing, slashing and crushing and that stuff to it as well. If it's going to be cool or teh suck pretty much depends on how precise it is. Another cool thing could be if you have 2 controllers. Sword in one hand and shield in the other.

If I can't use a hanging guard, it sucks.

Think of the first-person lightsaber duel in the Star Wars Trilogy arcade game, the one where the joystick acted like the hilt of your saber.  Think of how much ass it sucked, compared to a good round of Bushido Blade.

Given that Nintendo will probably be making the most interesting stuff for it, I'm pretty sure this is just going to be another case of one interesting game a year. Despite all my complaining, I still want a mustard yellow one. And I'll buy that one game a year. But I'll still be playing my retro nintendo stuff on my Xbox.

Should consoles be merging with PC's?  Sure.  Whatever.  I think it probably will happen and I don't really care either way.  Although I have to say that the reason my PC is at a desk is because I have to use a mouse and a keyboard.  And a friend of mine has his PC setup so that he CAN use it with a wireless mouse and keyboard on his couch.  Mostly it's just a pain in the ass to do that though.  So I'm not seeing the big win of having a console with a mouse/keyboard as far as being able to play in the living room.

But a new and innovative control interface has nothing to do with this.  I would agree that we are seeing technologies merge.  I'm guessing that in 10 years your PSP will be your mobile will be your iPod will be your PDA, and eventually your PC -- or at least we'll be well on our way there.

But just because we are merging towards some common functionality does not mean that the point that we merge towards needs to stand still.  In other words, if there is a common thread to standardize, well, that doesn't mean that there can't be innovations on the periphery which may, or may not, end up influencing the standards.

And that's all very healthy, IMO.  It may work, it may not.  If it does then in 10 years the standard may be this crazy controller or some facsimile thereof and if not then nothing has really been lost.  I am impressed with the DS thus far, despite it's "gimmicky" nature.  And so I'll let Nintendo prove themselves here.  If it works then the game world has some new toys and tools to play with.  If not, then oh well, but I'll still applaud Nintendo for having the balls to try and do something new and different.

And it makes me more likely to buy a Revolution.  What I'm seeing here makes me very curious and I really want to try it out.  The day after release I'll drive up to some friendly Nintendo Fanboi's place and try it out.  If I like what I see I'll probably get it.  And I never considered buying a Gamecube nor do I have any intention of getting within 20 feet of a 360.

Gabe.

Well, I've read most of this thread and have had a good laugh at the expense of the Nintendo fanboys.

I love watching Nintendo implode in slow motion as all their arrogance slowly catches up with them. I own a gamecube, a ps2, and an XBOX and the Gamecube is the only purchase I regret out of those three.

Edit: Though RE4 went a long ways towards redeeming the GC. It actually caused me to dust it off and hook it back up.

They did invent the mechanics of their particular implementation - at least they claim to hold a patent on that (and the rumble pack used for the N64).

Getting back to how "gimmicks" can turn out to add to the gameplay, I present a sample of tasks I recently have performed in Another Code: Two Memories on the DS:

1) A wood printing block and an unfinished woodprint: The solution was to "press" the block on the paper by snapping the DS shut (which the game detects).
2) A picture covered by dust. Of course the solution was to blow the dust away physically by blowing into the microphone.
3) A hinged picture frame with some symbols on each side: The solution was to bend the DS so that you could see one screen reflected in the other to see the clue.

Solutions like that cannot be implemented on other platforms. The closest you get is old-school text adventures, which are far more versatile in what your character can accomplish simply because they don't add impose limiting action repertoire a "user interface" does.

Like the DS, the Revolution controller(s) add more ways of interacting that the "more of much the same" joystick mk. II controllers do.

Just caught on to that, eh?  Never let it be said that you aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

That entire shelf is a rather sad attempt at kewlness.  Who in the fuck saves boxes from games? 

I have assorted jewel cases floating around, yeah, but certainly in no particular order, and the vast majority of my games (and my movies and music) are stored in discrete, non-space taking up, black binders.  I may be a nerd, yeah, but I also don't need to create a shrine to my sadness.

It took two posts to convey that information?

You're a member of like 3-4 message boards pretty much devoted to online games, numbnuts. I highly doubt you're swimming in pussy.

Edit: The point being, I'm not ashamed of my games, and I like things organized. When I decide where I want to put them, I'll have another 3 of those bookshelves filled with DVDs.

It was me quoting different posts, so yep.  I won't read an entire thread before commenting; I see something I want to reply to, and I reply to it.  If that means stacking posts back to back, well, too fucking bad.

Yep.  As I said before, I fully acknowledge my addiction.  The difference between me and you is that I don't fucking care about being some l33t gamesmeister with a shrine.  You seem to have some twisted need to shout to the rooftops just how refined your tastes are; be they movies, music, games, or masturbating livestock.  Why this need?

I like shit organized. Everything. I don't like living in a shithole. I can't stand the boxes that aren't unpacked yet from the move a few weeks ago. All stuff in it's place, etc.

Also, if it's about acknowledging a addiction, why are you posting on any website? You do know that by your words you don't even remotely accept that fact you are a gamer, you're simply admitting to having a problem. Liking games and movies isn't a problem for me. You're a self-loather and you're trying to take your fat aggression out on my message board this morning.

You're too transparent, don't pull this shit again.

There's a big difference between this and a joystick.

A joystick can be designed to have a limited range of motion and have a real form of resistance resistance attached to it while most of the time the remote control will be flailed about like a flyswatter? There's a reason the Logitech Force Feedback Wheel is so much better than anything else for Gran Turismo 4. Having played a Lot of Virtual Ping Pong, I can say that this is the big issue I will have with that controller.

You don't have freedom of motion with a joystick.  It's stick to the desk/table/whatever.  At its base, no less.  An upside down joystick (one which was attached by the top to something and the bottom was left free) would allow for a much more 'realistic' sword fight.  Probably the best sword fight not involving a mechanism like this would have to be an upside down joystick placed in a semicircle with the open end pointing down (and you could move the joystick around mostly anywhere in this semicircle in addition to bending the stick itself, allowing you to change both the angle and position of the sword).  And that last sentence is the point- a joystick only really allows you to either change the angle or position of the sword.  Not both at once.  So with a joystick you're either playing the "try to parry this" game or the "try to time your attacks" game while with this controller, if it works as it would seem to work (and I understand that it may not), would allow for both at the same time.

I understand why it's better than a joystick and why on paper it's great. My problem is that the pitfalls of the controller are too readily obvious to me. While there will no doubt be a couple PERFECT uses for this controller, as Nintendo will make sure (or some clever third party will come out with something like Trauma Center), there's too many issues with a free range of motion. It will never truly be able to replace a proper peripheral like a light gun, samba, golf club, etc. Sure, many peripherals aren't safe in a house and a sword definately shouldn't be given to a kid, particularly not to flail around. But I fear that the controller will be in for a history of emulation. Though, they said any peripheral could be attached to it, I guess nothing is stopping them from making a 5 lb vibrating weight with like 100 levels of sensitivity to emulate the hilt of a sword. I'm going to stop talking because it's taking all my willpower to refrain from making more, somehow already cliche, sex toy jokes.

That's pretty close to right, though I'd think it'd be using RF instead, like the Wavebird does. It's absolutely not infrared, though.

Somehow, I would have thought voodoolilly or signe would have posted this by now, or at least shockeye, so if they have...meh. (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fasame2.web.infoseek.co.jp%2Fmariof1.html&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools)

......... I...... u... hma......... wh............. WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?

God.  I'm going to have nightmares.

Awesome.

...

...

...


That is some serously fucked up shit. I really feel my childhood was just raped. And some how I think it was two fucked up plumbers that did it.

Leet avatar!

(http://asame2.web.infoseek.co.jp/mariof174.jpg)

Easily the most disturbing image to me.  The "luigi" brother looks almost placid, as though he has just had some kind of great release.

Asia is a creepy place.

The whole site is awesome.

Why can't the Japanese just leave gender alone?
(http://asame2.web.infoseek.co.jp/mariof50.jpg)(http://asame2.web.infoseek.co.jp/mariof48.jpg)



Worthy of framing and hanging in your home to weird out guests:
(http://asame2.web.infoseek.co.jp/mariof24.png)

Oh, I was wrong. Revolution controllers do, in fact, use Bluetooth.

I think the shot of Mario and Luigi flying along with spinning racoon tails coming out of thier asses is the one that disturbed me the most.

It wasn't just the man flying via the tail coming out of his ass, it was the look of utter seriousness and grim determination on his face as he did so.

I'm going to re-rail this thread. A page or so ago I said that the next generation of consoles was a pretty weak step up from the current crop.

This is from an interview on gamespy with a guy working on Rumble Roses XX. (No, I am not going to explain why I am reading an interview about Rumble Roses XX, other than to say that I am still at work and pissed that I'm missing RAW)

"Actually at this point with all of the information that I've collected myself, it's going to be a tough fight for the PS3 as well. First of all, the console's very expensive. And the fact that most of the titles for these new consoles being sequels or reinterpretations of games that came out on the PS2 or Xbox... that's not really good. There wasn't much of an impact on games that we saw from the leap from the NES to the SNES, or then from the SNES to the first PlayStation. Those were very impactful. I don't think we'll see anything with that much impact. I personally think that both consoles will really struggle at launch. I don't think that there will be a big boom for either of them. Given that, maybe the fact that the 360 comes out first will really help for it to penetrate the market."

So basically he said what I said. The difference in next gen games vs current gen games is the smallest it's ever been.

Consoles chase a hardware standard.  It's like buying last year's PC and hoping for the best.  Otherwise PC assemblers would already have those channel deals.

The biggest pros of a console is that it is never maintained.  Intentional planned obsolesence.

Except the next gen consoles are PCs in everything but name.  So they too need to plan for hardware/firmware/software upgrades.  We've understood the first - buy a new console, it's the American way.  The "innovator" is I simply buy  new harddrive peripheral.  And we understand the last - the software is as you buy it.  Firmware scares even seasoned PC users.

Consoles become more PC-like.  Not the other way around.  Stereos, TVs, your house - they become PC-like.

Not the other way around.

I'm amazed this is hard to understand.

I think you are overstating how much consoles are like PCs. The XBox 360 is actually less like a PC than the XBox was. And my slim PS2 is nothing like a PC. I agree with your general point, but I still think consoles are more consumer electronics machines and less PCs. Just making a console easily upgradeable would mean totally changing the form factor into something much larger. The slim PS2 is barely bigger than a DVD case, I pity someone with fat fingers trying to replace parts on it.

For me the bottom line is new consoles have to offer a significant upgrade over old ones. The next generation consoles don't seem to. Supporting higher res is just keeping up with the status quo, and the jump in resolution is nothing like the jump in color palette from NES to SNES.

I was looking at some Ridge Racer 6 screens, which are from the 360. They look no different than the XBox or GC. Not at all.

The original 3D consoles all had major deficiencies. The PS had horrible loading times and terrible resolution. The N64 had blurry textures all over the place. However starting with the Dreamcast those problems were mostly dealt with.

I don't have problems buying new consoles, I just need a good reason, other than "well, only the NEW Xbox will run this game you want to play!" Is the new game actually better?

Of course the new consoles are an upgrade, but nothing to write home about. It's like when I played the first VGA King's Quest and was like "HOLY SHIT!" Then you could have 24,000 colors on screen at once and yeah, that was better, Then you could have 16 million colors onscreen and I could barely tell the difference. That's where we are now.

I've never seen an SNES game and thought "this could be an NES game." And I can't think of too many PS2 games (3d ones at least) where I thought "this could be a PS1 game." But I think that all the time looking at XBox 360 screens. Of course, the fact the the launch lineup of games are all basically XBox ports doesn't help. (Except for Kameo, which is an Xbox port of a GC port)

The 360 is more than a computer, not necessarily less like one. Who knows if those chips will be in a computer in a year. For once, consoles are ahead of the curve. Actually, for the first time since the Atari (2600 era Atari), consoles are ahead of the curve.

But really, if you're looking at the high-res videos of stuff for the 360 or the newly released Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 video and thinking they could be xbox/ps2 games, well...I have nothing to say except that you're nuts. The enemy movements in NinetyNine Nights (and the sheer number of characters on screen, acting independently in real time) and the cloth simulation in Dead or Alive 4, as well as the physics, could simply not be achieved on this generation of systems. Sure, some of the games are lackluster, but as we looked at it before - launches have pretty much been a case of ass. Comparatively, the 360 launch (well, the artificial 2 month launch window), is pretty decent. And there are a few titles, specifically the two I mentioned (though I'm also very much looking forward to Dead Rising and Frame City Killer) are stellar titles for a launch. DOA4 will be huge on xbox live with it's persistant systems and Mizoguchi is nearly a household name among gamers now.

FWIW, and I don't want to get into the typical flamefest here, I haven't actually *heard* anything that indicates that the consoles are really "ahead of the curve".  Anandtech had a really good roundup of the consoles including a lot of anonymous discussion and input from developers working with the 360 and the PS3.  The basic conclusion was: there will be slight improvements but most of the performance that developers wanted is not there and these guys aren't going to touch PC's yet.  Of course that post was up for less than a day (makes you curious as to which developer blocked it).

The main problem, and I've heard this echoed in a few places, is that the new consoles have complex CPU structures that don't really do what developers need and will require a lot of time and investment in order to use at a fraction of reported speeds let alone the over-hyped "teraflop".  And most importantly they lack the memory bandwidth they need to really throw out PC-qualiity graphics.  You could throw a 20 teraflop processer on a console and if it didn't have good memory bandwidth it would still be far below PC quality.  It's Amdahl's law.  Memory is the bottleneck these days for almost everything we do.  No matter how fast you can process an individual pixel if you can't actually get it through the bus and onto the screen then it doesn't matter and this is going to severely limit the usage of the parallel processing elements.

We should all know by now not to judge anything peroformance-related based on preliminary demos be they pre-rendered or not.  The hype-machine simply has too many tricks up their sleeves here.  Everything I'm hearing from actual development folk indicates that the delta is very small here, that the new gen is only barely going to be able to handle high-def displays, and that the new gen is still well behind PC's for most purposes.

And actually if you have some good commentary to the contrary I'd love to read it.  I'd love to be proven wrong here.

Gabe.

The article on anandtech which was like 7 pages could have been one page and just said:

"Oops, bottlenecks."

Dead or Alive 4 will probably be a good judge of what all early games for next gen will be like. Team Ninja is pretty damn good at squeezing out performance.

Analyzing erformance is equlvalent to an analysis of bottlenecks.  That's what Amdahl's law means.  If the processor element design and the memory bandwidth problems create huge bottlenecks then those alone will mean that this gen of consoles isn't anywhere near PC's -- prior to any discussion of whether their processors are even comparable to PC processors when considered in the abstract (which is also debatable).  You can't just say, "oops, a few bottlenecks exist but otherwise we're just fine and dandy".  Performance is defined by bottlenecks.  The slowest operation in the pipe is what determines the final speed of the system.

We will see, of course.  And like I said, I'd love to be wrong -- because I'd like some console yumminess.  But when reading about and talking to developers that have their hands on the actual hardware I haven't seen any indications that this "ahead of the curve" notion is anything but extreme hype.

Gabe.

edit to say that more succinctly

There's always a lot of speculating around the specs when a new gen arrives, how the specs sucks and the games won't be as amazing as people want them to be. However the PS2 are pure suck, heck they even were pure suck when the console arrived, and even if the games aren't super tech wise it's way above what was thought possible with the specs.

Now I'm a playstation fanboi since PS1, but if the PS3 comes anywhere close technology wise to the stuff presented at their press conference at E3 I would say it's a HUGE leap. Okay, chances are pretty large it was all just PR bullshit but that remains to see. Sony doesn't seem all that intimidated by MS so far, they don't seem to be making any efforts to release before or close to XBOX 360. And concerning prices, the only price which I've seen for the PS3 so far is $300, which actually is cheaper than the XBOX 360.

If the PS3 launches at $300 for the higher tier unit (they'll probably pull a double sku system as well), I'll eat my wallet after buying the system.

Oooh wow, cloth simulation!

I don't know why you keep pimping out DOA4. Do you nor realize that the DOA series is one of the worst fighting gamer series ever made? No serious fighting game fan thinks DOA is good.

I expect videos from the hype machine to blow me away. These guys put a lot of time and effort into creating misleading videos and screenshots. The fact that I haven't been blown away at all says very bad things.

So what is it that DOA4 has that couldn't be done on the XBox? Waving cloth? That's worth a new system and $60 for a game?

The Revolution will be a "gimmicky" controller in that not every game will use the capabilities of it. Sure, there probably will be some interesting gaming goodness that will come out of that controller type. But I don't see it being enough to justify the break from the norm unless it's in every game. Plus, the damn thing just looks uncomfortable. I still have problems with DirecTV Tivo remote, because it's all curved and the buttons are in non-natural places, much like what I see this controller being.

As for the next gen of consoles, underwhelmed is an overstatement. I see nothing that couldn't be done on the X-Box, PS2 or Gamecube, with less bump mapping and pixel shading. The games don't look that different from a gameplay perspective.

But did the gameplay aspect really change that much last generation? PS2 games in general are just PS1 games but better.

But the "better" between PS1 and PS2/X-Box was significantly better and noticeable from the moment you looked at screenshots. I struggle to look at screenshots of the gameplay from the 360 and PS3 and find any real obvious points of differentiation between the two. That's not a good way to get me to spend $400.

You don't have an hdtv yet, do you?  :evil:

The maddentards/halotards will buy up the low end, the hd folks will buy up the high end.

Me? I'm buying a Stratocaster.

I'm pretty impressed by pretty much everything I've seen of supossedly PS3 in game action. mms://a175.m.akastream.net/7/175/5372/1/gamespot.download.akamai.com/5372/netshow/gslive/2005/05/fightnight3_om_ps3_051905_700.wmv (http://mms://a175.m.akastream.net/7/175/5372/1/gamespot.download.akamai.com/5372/netshow/gslive/2005/05/fightnight3_om_ps3_051905_700.wmv) for example seems pretty impressive. I know chances are fairly high all these PS3 vids are just PR bullshit but they impress me atleast.

Replace fairly high with 99.9999999999999999999999997% sure, that is if you believe in history being a guide.  Sony is notorious for putting "in game" videos out that are nothing of the kind.

Better boobie physics.

"Heh.. she kicks high."

Even without ever having played a DOA game, I knew it was shit because all they could think of hyping was panty shots.  SC2 has that AND is a good fighting game.. whoda thunk you could get both!?

Still underwhelmed about the X-cox 3-shitty, but that doesn't mean I'm not entering as many cap codes as I can into 'every 10 minutes' to see if I can win one and e-bay it to some fucker on release day.   I'm still kicking myself that I didn't pickup more than one copy of the WOW collector's edition.

The DOA series is just a terrible fighting game. It's the fighting game for people who don't like, don't understand and suck at actual fighting games. I could go into technical reasons but 99% of the fighting game playing population agrees with me, so I don't feel like it. Suffice it to say the gameplay is just extremely simple and extremely broken at the same time. On a quality level it's worse than VF2, Tekken 2 or the original Soul Edge. It's better than Tekken 1, that's about it.

Pretty good animations, though.

Except the boobs.  For christsake if you're going to be a game that hypes bouncing boobies, at least make the boobies bounce like actual boobies.  You can't just put a point where the nipple would be and drag that up, set a keyframe, drag it down, set a keyframe, repeat.

But here's a better idea- don't be the dumbasses who promote your game as having bouncing boobies.

I can see you've never played it with someone who knows how to block and counter. The game plays surprisingly like Soul Calibur 2. But there's a caveat, you have to know what you're doing.

No offense, but I'm sure I've forgotten more about fighting games than you've ever known.

If you want to get into the technical details of SC2 vs DOA I would be happy to. I don't think that's a road you want to go down though. Most serious fighting game players complained that the GI system in SC2 was too lenient. The DOA counter system is like that times 1000. Chain throws that all have the same breaks and no mixups? Yeah, that's a great system.

Even the DOA makers themselves state that the game is not supposed to be a serious fighting game. Blocking and countering? That was novel in 1991 dude.

DOA does play like SC2 or VF. A stripped down, poor version of SC2 or VF. It's a game for people not into fighting games. Super Smash Brothers Melee actually has a larger, more serious following among the fighting game community. (Yes, I am 100% serious) It's pretty similar to what the newer MK games have become. Strictly for the casual crowd. Which is ok, just realize that. DOA is about shiny and superficial fun, not actual gameplay.

I'm sorry to say that I disagree with what you've said. DOA2 and by default, DOA Ultimate, is very much not about chain throws. I'll grant that the original DOA and 3 were total shit, it's why they went back to the same system as 2 in Ultimate. Get two proper Dead or Alive players in a game and it's much, much more fun. DOA2 and Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast were two of the best fighting games I've ever played, mostly because I was surrounded by people who knew how to play (which may be more like MMORPGs, even the shittiest game is more fun with friends). But Super Smash Bros Melee has advanced to where it is due to the environments and sheer number of characters. If anyone in the fighting community talks up the actual combat mechanics of SSBM I would be surprised. Unless he was the recent result of a botched lobotomy. The combat system in Smash Bros is total shit. Five to six moves per character? Put that on one of the flat stages in nearly any other fighting game and it's the most boring combat ever.

That said, it's fairly obvious your simply biased against Dead or Alive. Which is fine. I've logged a couple hundred hours in each of the games you mentioned above and I like them all for completely different reasons. But of all of them, Dead or Alive is probably my favorite when you've got proper players around. Following very closely behind that is Soul Calibur. As far as Mortal Kombat goes, if it weren't for the violence, it would have always been for the casual crowd as the controls were stiff and boring. Smash Brothers is strictly a great party game. And Virtua Fighter? Far too slow - just like Tekken.

Maybe this feature will be part of the Revolution 2 controller... ;) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4184160.stm)

They do seem to be running out of licenses they've revamped. Eventually they'll get back to Mario Paint.

I didn't say it was. I said the chain throws were stupid because they are brain-dead to break.


Um...no. That's not obvious at all. Go to any fighting game website in the world other than dedicated DOA forums and ask them what they think of DOA. You'll find that guys on a SF forum also play Tekken, VF, Samurai Showdown, guys on a Tekken forum also like VF, SC, etc. Nobody likes DOA. Some of the best Street Fighter players in the world are also some of the best Tekken players and VF players in the world, some of the best SC players are also some of the best VF players, etc. The entire community appreciates and plays good games - and everyone hates DOA.

You don't have to take my word for it. Almost every serious fighting game fan has tried DOA and almost none of them like it at all. Gameplay-wise it just does not stand up.

Edit: That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. You can. Clearly you are part of the target audience. The mark of a good fighting game is that it can be enjoyed casually and also at a highly competitive level of play. DOA doesn't stand up at high levels of play.

If you dont mention Powerstone on the DC soon Schild I'm going to be dissapointed.  Four player Powerstone is the greatest gaming experience ever.  Far above the stupid "party" games they have now with annoying mini games I can't even figure out if I'm not sober (fuck you monkey ball canoe racing fuck you in your silly monkey ass).


\/\/\/\/\/
Who the hell designs "party" games that are so complicated/difficult you need to be sober to play them?

PowerStone was fun. I wouldn't even call it a fighting game though.

Monkey Ball canoe racing is pretty fun though. Try it again when sober. it is pretty damn hard though. Monkey tennis is the best one though.

I'd actually like one of these "elite few" to come and discuss why Dead or Alive doesn't stand up at high levels of play. Because really, that's utter bullshit. It's not my fault they haven't taken the game seriously. Though I'd probably write off anyone who thought that as the same type of person who will stand in line for a raid.

I think of Powerstone as Dreamcast's Super Smash Bros. Decent levels, great 4 player action. Tremendously bad 2 player vs.

Umm...I'm trying not to sound like an elitist prick here, but it's hard.

There was a DOA (I forget which version, 2 probably) tournament held some time ago in Japan. The guy who won won by literally doing the same move 50 times in a row. And before you say well obviously he was playing some scrubs, he wasn't. Everyone there was quite good at DOA. The game is just broken.

There are people that take fighting games much *more* seriously than yourself. Without being a complete dick, I'm going to say that I highly doubt you play DOA at a high level by my definition. High level is has a legit shot to win a major tournament or at least understands the game enough to know what it does take to win one. It's not a matter of having played X hours, although X being high does help. Have you ever been to a national DOA, regional or even semi-informal DOA tourney?

There is an avid, large community of fighting game players that at least try out basically every fighting released. They have no incentive to dislike DOA. I'm talking about people who play in national qualifiers, fly around the world for events, etc. The latest Evolution tourney (SF, Tekken, couple other games) had players from Japan, Korea and Western Europe. (I'm sure other places as well)

There are people with a much greater knowledge and ability at DOA and fighting games in general than yourself. They think the game is crap, for good reason. They are the expert opinion, you are not.

Again, you can enjoy the game, that's fine. It's a fun game for beginning to intermediate players. The more you like and are good at fighting games though, the worse a game it becomes. Some games just break down at high levels of play because of degenerate strategies, horribly skewed risk vs. reward on some moves, etc etc. DOA is one of those games. The problem is that some people take these games much MORE seriously than you and have found huge problems with it.

I don't understand how this is a shock or an insult, considering the makers of the game say themselves that it is not aimed at hardcore fighting fans. And I don't think you are a hardcore fighting fan.

I just find it annoying how people on this site grumble about the lowest common denominator and the stupidity of the masses and such, then people pimp DOA. DOA is the definition of a lowest common denominator game. Discriminating fighting game fans all hate it for good reason.

Since the Margalis vs Schild slapfight is more interesting than the umpteenth page of "OMG ITS A TV CONTROLLAR" I guess I'll just talk about fighting games.  Keep in mind that I couldn't tell Soul Calibur from Virtua Fighter to save my life.

Killer Instinct - I had fun with this back around ten years ago.  The graphics were a bit weird, but I liked the fact that they didn't make the boxer a slow lumbering retard.  They also had him throw nice reasonably boxer-like punches.  (Balrog was terrible for this, nothing about his stance or punches evoked his supposed fighting style.)  I played this on the Xband modem for the SNES, and met some friends I know to this day.

Bushido Blade - I love this game.  I love the aesthetics.  I love the subtitles.  I love the lack of health meters and all that extraneous immersion-breaking crap.  I even love the instakills, because the developers had the good sense to make it super-easy to play huge numbers of quick matches while prominently displaying the overall score for that session.  When you're up 1 to 0, you might be lucky.  When you're up 15 to 5, you're just better than me.  (Do a Star Wars remake with lightsabers and watch me pee myself in joy.)

Street Fighter Alpha 3 - This was as fun as any Street Fighter, but what the fuck was up with the commentator's voice?  I don't need a cartoon interpretation of a gameshow host screaming Engrish non-sequitors at me between matches, thank you very much.

WWF Raw and it's ilk - Don't laugh.  At least not until you can show me a "real" fighting game that lets you design your own character and move-set from the ground up, then toss him into matches involving up to 4 simultaneous combatants.  I don't even like wrestling.  At all.  But I loved the games.

EDIT:  That last one + online play + rankings & virtual championships = moneyhats

Killer Instinct was fun, I used to play it a lot. The graphics were all pre-rendered which for the time was quite novel. What was the boxer's name? I want to say TJ Combo. Too bad the sequel was actually worse than the original. In the arcades this ran on the Nintendo "Ultra" hardware that came with a hard drive built in. Dudley from SF3 is probably the best representation of a boxer in a fighting game. The problem with Killer Instinct was that it had no throws and could become a real turtle-fest because the overhead attacks for most characters were slow and that was the only way to hit someone low blocking. (Other than jumping at them, which is very easy to block) It's another game that is not very good when played at an expert level. But it did have a lot of charm. (KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING COMMMMMMMMMMMBOOOOOOOO)

I kind of like wrestling games. I kind of like actual wrestling on TV as well. (Sadly) I wouldn't really say they are fighting games. Just wrestling games. Their own silly breed of entertainment.

Bushido Blade is by far and away my favorite fighting game. The insta kills were hilarious more often than not. I think it was the rapier that with one of the girls had a LIGHTNING fast lunge that often stabbed people in the face as soon as the bell rang. My brothers hated me for that one I'm sure.

Yep.  I had a record of 212-64 at Killer Instinct on Xband.  I could never beat the really good players, but I could thump the newbs and intermediates.  I'd have had a better record if it weren't for that damned 'random select' feature, since I only knew what I was doing with Combo.

Not to derail things even further, but Xband was the shit.  You'd plug it into the cartrige port, plug the cartrige into the top of the Xband, plug a phone line into it, and play against other people from your local calling area.  (There was a nationwide service, but that cost a monthly fee.)  Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat 2 were the big games, although there was a system for playing Doom that never did work quite right.  Once the match was over, you could chat one-on-one with your opponent.  Everytime someone mentions a console keyboard like it's an outrageous idea, I chuckle, because I had a keyboard plugged into the SNES ten years ago.

Funny thing, though.  Since it connected a bunch of teenagers within the same couple of area codes, the little social network migrated right off of Xband and into real life.  When it finally shut down, it had almost zero effect since everyone was talking on the phone and hanging out in person already.


Indeed.  Killer Instinct 2 was a universal disappointment amongst everyone I knew who had played the first.


How then would you define a fighting game?  Keep in mind that Smash Brothers apparently does count.  Just curious.

Since we're talking about fighting games, I'll just state my own opinion.

The DOA series, while very pretty, is a shitty fighter.

Super Smash Brothers Melee has more depth than DOA.

I would say that in a fighting game the central element is the fighting and that the game is meant to be played competitively. The fundamental trait of a fighting game is a test of skill. And of course robots or people (or dinosaurs) punching each other.

Wrestling games tend to be more for "fun" than for competition, in that the history of wrestling games is literally who can press the buttons the fastest. Also the fighting is wrestling games tends to go along with a bunch of other stuff like having the cool new stars on the roster, story modes, different match types from real life, create a wrestler, etc. If you read a lot of wrestling game reviews they tend to focus as much on things as whether or not Hell in a Cell is included as the actual game systems. I suppose it would certainly be possible to make a wrestling game that was very competitive in nature. But in wrestling games today that isn't really the main point. You don't see tournaments for wrestling games or anything like that. But again, you could, that just doesn't seem to be the focus.

Smash Brothers is mostly a multi-player game, and the multi-player aspect is all fighting. When people play it competitively they turn off the random items and only play certain stages. Smash Brothers is meant to be a wacky fun sort of game, but it is entirely skill based. (If you turn off the random items and such) I would say Smash Brothers is a borderline fighting game, but there is a significant community that plays the game very seriously as a test of skill. You can play it as a competitive test of skill if you want.

There are games like Virtua-On that are basically fighting games, even though people may not count them as such. I suppose those are more fighting/mech simulation, but the idea is the same. 2 men enter, one man leaves.

The reason I said DOA is a bad fighting game is that it's kind of dopey fun but if you are familiar with other fighting games and try to play it at a competitive level it shows some really ugly flaws really fast. It's like tic-tac-toe is fun until you realize there is one strategy that is always the best. Tic-Tac-Toe cannot be played competitively. There are some fighting games that are fine until you get to a certain skill level and then they basically become degenerate, where one strategy or a small collection of strategies is all that matters and the game becomes very simple. Those games still take some skill, but they aren't very fun or interesting games. It's like what you see in Madden online where everyone chooses the Eagles and just either throws a long bomb or runs with McNabb. At a casual level you play any two teams and just go at it with whatever, but at a serious level the game devolves into throw a bomb or run with McNabb and it stops being interesting.

Soul Caliber 1 on the Dreamcast was the best gaming experience I've ever had.

Edit:  No other fighting game I've ever played felt more natural than Soul Caliber (1&2).  Not having to memorize moves to be a great player really made this game special.  The fact that a complete noobie can beat you with button mashing is a great feature imo (can't be me though).  I won't play any fighting game that doesn't have the completely fuild movement system that this has.  The battles I had with my roommate at the time could only be called EPIC.  Random 8v8 Soul Caliber is the single greatest fighting game experience in existance.

I don't think whether or not their are tournaments for a game should determine it's genre.  Still, I can agree that your typical wrestling game doesn't "feel" like an official Fighting Game.  I think it's a matter of pace.  Both Street Fighter and Smash Brothers, different as they are, play at a pace much quicker than that of a wrestling game.  Part of it might also be that most Fighting Games have at least a semi-fantastical setting, while a wrestling game attempts to (loosely) represent a real-world event.

Could one theoretically make a boxing game which counted as a Fighting Game?  Would it cease to be one if you took the same engine and tacked on a career mode?

Tournaments don't determine genre. But my point is that it should feel natural to have a tournament for a fighting game. One of the basic questions is is this game meant to be a competitive test of skill? Some games are more wacky fun, some games more simulation. One indicator of this is that it's possible for an experienced player to be much much better than a beginner. Another indicator is there aren't random elements. A lot of fighting games have a tournament as the actual plot. That's the point of the game: a bunch of people get together and one guy ends up being the best.

A boxing game could be a fighting game. Boxing isn't that different from something like Tekken. In fact, Tekken has a boxer. But again, I think most boxing games fail the test of being competitive centric games. There are a lot of games where you compete but it's more of a "fun" competition than serious. Things like balance and fairness don't matter all that much. I don't think they spend a lot of time in boxing games trying to make sure all the characters are about equal and there are no exploits because people just don't play the games that way. The only boxing game I've played over the past 5 years or so is Ready to Rumble, which is pretty clownish.

Games like boxing, wrestling, UFC games and such tend to be more interested in simulation. Getting the named guys in the game, following the rules of the sport. Fighting games pay a lot of attention to engine details, making sure the moves all "feel" right, crisp controls - because that's all they have to offer. I would love a wrestling game with really crisp controls that was a pure test of skill. Most wrestling games feel pretty sloppy. Good fighting games have a lot of technical skill involved and demand crisp controls. You have to do things like move around quickly, distance yourself properly, etc.

In SFA3 for the PSX they added a "world tour mode" which was kind of an RPG thing, you could earn points and build up your character in that mode, but it was still very much a fighting game. I would say in a true fighting game the emphasis is what happens in the fight, not any surrounding stuff.

The question of whether X or Y game is a fighting game becomes splitting hairs at some point. As I mentioned before, Virtua-On is a 1 on 1 competition of pure skill. Is it a fighting game? I don't know. But I would say that most fighting game fans can at least appreciate Virtua-On even if they don't like it themselves.

To MrHat: SC1 was a good game, a lot of people consider it better than the sequel, which was shinier but had some gameplay issues the first one did not. Just as nearly everyone rates Tekken 4 below Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag.

One thing interesting about fighting games is that the emphasis is so much on gameplay instead of graphics and new shiny that people often like older versions better than newer versions. And I don't mean in a nostalgia way. There are still Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo tournaments, and that game came out in 1995! At the most recent big North American tournament there was also Tekken Tag (5 years old now) and an unofficial XMen vs. SF tournament. (Also about 5 years old) But no Tekken 4. People don't just talk about liking the old versions, they actually still play them. You also find a lot of fans actually own arcade cabinets! Again, this is because the main draw is good gameplay that lends itself to a competitive test of skill, and people won't just dump that for the newest version unless the newest version is actually better.

Imagine if a bunch of Madden players decided that Madden 95 was better than Madden 2005 and played that in the big Madden tournaments! It's almost inconceivable. Yet in tournaments people still play SSF2T and notSFA3, which came out 7 or so years later.

I love SSF2T. I dislike the crossover stuff (Marvel Vs Capcom, etc) immensely. I've _always_ hate Tekken and Virtua Fighter - though I logged a ridiculous number of hours on both. While I may have enjoyed Soul Caliber 2, I liked one more - due solely to where I was living at the time, in a dorm room. Soul Caliber 2 was the better game. Whether that makes it better in tournaments - that's another thing entirely. And doesn't mean two shits. Just as the top top top top tier grinding bullshit guilds shouldn't mean anything to MMORPGs. Unfortunately developers sometimes forget to remove their head from their ass when they wake up in the morning.

As for other games, I enjoyed Rival Schools more than Virtua Fighter. I enjoyed MKII more than Deception, which was a shame. I really wanted to like Deception. I also logged a lot of time in Tech Romancer, UFC, and Powerstone (as mentioned before) on the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was really where fighting games peaked for me. The controller never got tiring.

Meh, I knew someone was going to make that analogy, but it's a terrible one. Fighting games are a test of skill. That's really the point. A tournament if just a formalization of that. A fighting game tournaments isn't really different than having some friends over, it's just more structured and bigger. And unlike a MMORPG it's not about spending a lot of time, grinding, waving around an epeen or shiny items or anything like that.

Also, unlike in MMORPGs, there are not contrary goals. What I mean is, catering to uber-guilds can negatively impact other players. But catering to tournament players in a fighting game has a trickle-down effect that makes the game better for everyone. One of the hallmarks of a good tournament game is that it doesn't have a lot of abusable bullshit. Getting rid of that stuff is good for everyone. Making a game tournament worthy doesn't mean adding content only some people can enjoy or anything like that, it just means making the game more balanced and removing stupid bullshit while retaining depth and fun.

There is a very logical progression from casual fighting game player to tournament player. Obviously not everyone plays in tournaments, but it isn't a different style of play that appeals to a different type of person. Whereas in a MMORPG being in an uber-guild is very much a different style of play than soloing or playing with a group of friends.

Tournament fighting game players aren't looking for a different experience than casual players. The difference is, they are better at the game and more likely to break it by finding infinite combos, degenerate strategies and the like. It's not like casual players like those infinite combos and degenerate strategies.

If you look at a game like XMen vs. SF, it has infinite combos all over the place, and is a pretty poor tournament game because it devolves into who can land the infinite first. As a casual player you may not notice this until you go to the arcade one day and some guy keeps killing you with infinite combos off of one hit. Then it kind of ruins the whole experience. Losing to infinite combos is not fun for experts or beginners. As such, XMen vs. SF is only a fun game if you either don't know what you are doing or play with some house rules.

Fighting games are _not_ a test of skill. For 99% of the players, they are merely A Fun Genre to Play. You saying it's a poor argument when you're representing a very tiny sliver of a margin of the total fanbase means Nothing. While it's nice that tournament worthy games are better for everyone, it doesn't mean that every Tekken and Virtua Fighter ever released wasn't a sluggish piece of shit. They were - at least compared to other fighting games. I don't know how this conversation became about tournament players, but just like with any other genre, I'm not one to give two shits about the upper echelon of players who are good at one type of game. I don't even consider them gamers. Just like with any other sport, once it becomes about actual competition, game is synonymous with winning. I'm sure there are remote counter examples, but by and large, at this "level" of playing you're talking about there isn't any "fun" in losing.

They're not hardcore.  They just like it more than you.

Just like most casual MMOG players prefer World of Warcraft.  You might have thought it was shit, but the average MMOG player doesn't agree.

Aren't games supposed to test your skill while being fun?

--EDIT--


Maybe not?

Supposed to?  No.  Games are simply a way to tune out and relax for many people.  Anything that builds a skill unneeded in the real world is simply entertainment.

Well obviously testing and challenging at a skill level *is* fun.  To some of us.  Otherwise I wouldn't have logged 200+ hours of Lumines play.  Lumines has cool content with the skins and stuff, but let's face it, that's maybe a few hours of "entertainment" tops.  What makes it really fun is the challenge of getting better at the game.  Same with Tetris, Free Cell, a lot of FPS's, fighters, etc.  I'm still playing Lumines not because the music is great the 10th time I hear it or because it makes me feel like a hero but because I want to hit 100 deletes in 60s (current record 97) and I enjoy playing towards that.  I both zone out and relax while doing so AND get to achieve better skill and better results and both of those things make for the mythical "fun" that we all treasure so much.

That was really the point of Raph's book on games wasn't it?  That learning patterns and skills is what makes playing games fun?

I think that it is neither the case that a game cannot be fun without testing skill nor is it the case that a game that is based solely around testing skill cannot be fun.  Whatever rocks your boat.

But then absolute statements make one feel all cozy and warm inside don't they? :)

Gabe.

Well maybe it is just a matter of degree.  Certainly there is a level of competition in games even if it is just self-challenge.  But the degree I mean is when people begin thinking of "game skill" as an accomplishment often to the exclusion of not putting anything close to the same amount of energy into an alternate real world activity that does something meaningful.  The guy playing Bass Fishing is probably not thinking of what he does as skill, he's just killing time until he can get off shift and take the bass boat out for real.

I dunno about that.  I think almost all games have a very strong sense of achievement in them.  That guy playing Bass Fishing *is* going to enjoy getting a large fish, a larger fisher than his friend, or being better at the game today than he was yesterday (whatever that means in a Bass fishing game -- like I know).  And those accomplishments and challenges are fun for him whether he would directly mention them as such or not.

It's no different with those real world activities and I think a distinction between the two doesn't really help.  I enjoy playing volleyball.  For the sake of playing volleyball, yes.  I find it relaxing, a fun social experience, etc.  I also enjoy getting better.  I enjoy the feel of a really good volleyball hit or giving my setter a high-five after I put a good finish on what was a very difficult set.  And I enjoy beating another skilled team.  And I can feel the same sorts of emotions and "fun" in a videogame.

It is a matter of degree though.  And preference.  What is challenging to me may be catassery to you.  What is "fun" to you might be too easy for me and thus boring.  Or vice versa depending on the type of challenge involved.

But if the keyword is fun then you can't be judgemental about what fun means to any given player.  And I think to a lot of players, achieving better skill in a game is an accomplishment that is fun.  Without that challenge, without the ability to get better at the game (or in the game by earning in-game abilities) I think interest tends to wax quickly.  You either need to give the player the opportunity to achieve new content or the ability to achieve higher levels of skill.  I can't think of a game that doesn't do one of these two things.

Youre making the mistake of assuming games only build skills not applicible to the real world.  Yah, you may not be doing it to improve your critical thinking, pattern matching or hand-eye coordination and micro motor (finger dexterity) skills but they're inherent to many games and apply well in the "real world." (And by real world I'm assuming you mean the everyday ho-hum to get paid and cover your basic needs.)  If anything in an ever-increasing electronic socieity 'real skills' and strength built through traditional 'skill' games are less and less useful.  Strength and physical quickness matter little in the day-to-day of cubeworld.

My mom doesn't like video games in general, but she does play a lot of Doctor Mario when she wants to unwind.  I, on the other hand, have only played it a few times.  If she and I had a side-by-side competition at Doctor Mario, she would smoke me.  Not that she would want to, or care.  But any game that DOESN'T require skill, where the experienced player is no more likely to win than the newb, is just a slot machine and probably pretty goddamn boring if you're not a compulsive gambler.

Here's the thing, I doubt they do like them more than me.  :-D

Very newbie friendly and shallow games often do appaeal to the majority of casual players in any genre.

People who take fighters seriously are disturbed, any time you hear people talking about how many frames a block lasts or someshit dont make eye contact and back away quickly.

I have to agree with you here. I like fighters, but I get turned off by people who are really into them. I remember some game, maybe mortal kombat, my ex's little brother played it religiously. I learned the basics, punching and kicking, and played it kinda like Double Dragon or something. Turns out if you don't know the super combos, you lose. And I think winning by memorizing some stupid string of moves (up up down down left right left left right A B left A down up YOU LOSE KEKE) is retarded. It's great for those who are into rote memorization, but I'll take strategic use of a smaller skillset any day.

Oh irony, thou art divine.

Not to spoil the party by bringing up the Revolution controller again, but check out this article (http://lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-strategy.html) that talks about the possible method to Nintendo's madness.  (Linked from PA.)

Damn you Samwise

DAAAAAMN YOU

So his opinion is that to survive Nintendo needs to prevent hardware becoming commoditized by content producers, refuse to produce content for other platforms, and the "verbs" of the market by dictating standards to the other hardware makers, apparently through licensing fees though he doesn't bother to dig into this part.

Mindless idiocy.

Magnavox and Atari tried that and failed miserably despite that between the two of them they essentially created the console market.  Commodore? Failed.  Apple? Failed and is now nothing but a boutique player.

Platform hardware is a commodity. Peripheral hardware is at best a niche industry, albeit one with high potential volumes but that alone just gets them a seat on the wall and not at the table.  Microsoft as a content provider will ensure that, and Nintendo's competitors are not going to play Nintendo's reindeer games either.

All the pastel-colored remote controls in the world won't change this.

Edit: amazing the difference an omitted negative can make

I was at the Metreon in SF one time when they were having a Marvel vs Capcom tourney, by total accident, and I agree with the 'fighting game people are disturbed' theory.

These jokers made a Fur-con look like the Brady Bunch.

Elucidate.  It amuses me to hear of unfamiliar forms of catass.

Remember when SF2 was in every arcade and half the grocery stores in the country, and there was always a long line to play? There was a reason for that.

99% of fighting game players don't see it as a test of skill? What are you on, cause I'd like to have some! Fighting games originated in arcades where winner stays, loser pays. The better you are, the longer you play and the cheaper it is as well.

You're telling me that 99% of fighting game players want a game that is completely mindless button mashing, where they can play for hundreds of hours and not get any better or have any idea WTF if even going on? What's the point of that?

Edit:

It disturbs me to read something like this:


To me this is the same as:
I like Chess, but I get turned off by people really into it. I learned the basics and played it kind of like Checkers. Turns out if you don't know the opening positions and strategies, you lose. And I think winning by memorizing some stupid opening string of moves is retarded. It's great for those who are into rote memorization, but I'll take strategic use of a smaller skillset any day.

I mean, I can understand the attitude, but you must see why it comes off as a bit silly. It's like playing basketball with your slow, short, white friends then Jordan comes to your court and schools you. Damn that Jordan!

Nobody wins in fighting games (against other good players) by memorrizing moves and combos. That is, however, usually a prerequisite for being really good. The same is true in any competition. Knowing as much as you can is always better. Knowing how to do a slice or a drop shot in Tennis helps you. Knowing how to throw different pitches in baseball helps you.

I understand if you just want to goof around, and those games can still be fun doing that. But don't begrudge people who actually get better and learn and claim that it is just memorization. It isn't. That's like saying Roger Clemens is just some scrub who memorized how to hold his arm and fingers on a baseball. Yeah, it would suck if Roger Clemens was on your opposing College baseball team. That doesn't make him some sort of lamer.



The fun is getting better, and eventually being the guy who wins. You can learn and improve even while losing. Is tournament level Chess fun? I don't know, but it sure is compelling for some people.

As far as fighting game fans being weirdos or losers, this is a MMORPG forum. Nuff said.

That article is the biggest crock of shit I have read in a long time.

Just as a point of interest, how many people here have played Donkey Konga Jungle Beat?  And not found it fun at all?

Me.

Me too. Taiko Drum Master is just that much better.

@Margalis:
I'm torn here, on the one hand I really feel like if your going to bother to play a game you might as well try to be top tier.  But as my life has moved away from game's taking up the majority of my time I find myself frustrated with the amount of work it takes to get to top tier because some people just take the analysis of the game system so fucking far.

Fighting games it turns out are a perfect example of this, with people calculating risk reward ratios for every fighter's move, and figuring out the amount (accurate to a nano second) a block lasts.  This is no different and no more sick though then the people in MMORPG's who have played 12 characters to max level of the same class just to try out different attribute setups.  Starcraft players that spend entire games without ever actually watching the unit vrs unit combat because that would not be time efficient or top tier teams in fps who have 2-4 practices or scrimmages a week.  Just somehow it does not seem right to most people who only play a fighting game with their friends sitting around in the living room now that video arcades are such a rare sight.  Unlike online games where I really want to smash the face of 90% of the people I play against, why would I want to be able to demolish my buddies at a fighting game?  That is a short path to having no opponents.

The short version of all that is:  I begrudgingly agree with you.  :heart:

We generally solve that issue by having the experienced player play random characters, and letting newbs play with 1, so they can learn the moves of that character, where the exp'd player has more general knowledge of the game, and probably more exp with all the different characters than any one of the newbs has with any one character.  But yah, I can understand what you're saying.  Tho, it could be interesting to get together regularly to have mini-tourneys at Soul Caliber or whatnot, or just play and mess around.  Say, meet once a week to play against each other, so that you all get better at it equally.  As MMO players, we do this already, scheduling times to play so that we stay around the same level range.

Alkiera

Actually, Margalis, that's why I stopped playing against my chess buddy in jr. high school. Rather than learn by playing, he memorized a bunch of standard openings that utterly screwed me, who hadn't learned them. I just wanted to play a game, not pwninate.

I know it's silly, I'm just saying how I feel. I'm not hardcore about gaming, I just play for fun. Having to memorize a lot of stuff isn't fun...I play guitar but mostly improvise because I hate memorizing songs :P

I understand what people are saying. I made the mistake of trying to play Unreal Tournament online once. I basically could not hit anyone or accomplish anything at all.

I started off playing with my friend who was better than me, he is still better than me but I did lessen the gap. Going online and destroyed by people was not fun at all though. It was too big a step and too frustrating. And I don't care enough about UT to practice up that much.

But, I don't begrudge those people for being good or call them lamers or whatever. They like the game, they play it a lot, the try to improve and they have done so. There's nothing wrong with that. When I play with friends I just make sure the team with the best guy also has some of the worst people to even it out. I am certainly looking to improve. Improving in competitive games is where a lot of the fun comes from. I just don't care enough to improve fast enough to hang with even the average online player.

When I used to play in arcades a lot if someone was much worse than me I would go easy on them, give them some pointers, etc. I think everyone wants to get better at these types of games, and being a tournament level player is at least a somewhat logical evolution of that.

Online UT (the original) always pissed me off since it was a prime example of people using what are basically exploits to gain a major edge over regular players. I was damn good at the original UT and knew all the tricks, but I still thought the translocator made CTF just utterly boring.

The translocator certainly made it boring for me as it was imposible for me to actually hit anyoe. :)

Anyway, that's an example of a game that breaks down at high levels, or at least appears to. I can't say for sure because I don't know enough about UT, maybe you can simply adjust or their are some good anti-translocator strategies. It's quite common for a feature to appear totally broken to one level of player, and actually too weak to another.

A good example of this was Eddie in Tekken 3. For a beginning to intermediate player beating a random Eddie player who just mashes on kicks is actually kind of hard. At that level of play Eddie is too good. But at high levels of play Eddie is too weak.

I always hated that fucker with the staff in SC is he really weak if your "pro" at fighting games? Jin or Tim or something.

The solution is simple, everytime you win, you drink!

Kilik. He's cheap.

I like the crazy oriental guy with the masks. He's tough to play, but he cracks me up. Spawn's pretty easy to use, and I also use the big guy with the hammer. I love that guy, he's slow but his swings are nasty. I probably remember the most moves for him because I play him the most. The character I think has the most cheese potential is the chainsword chick. I can beat the eqholic with her without ever letting him close to melee range (he's not good either, heh).
Bah, why wait until you win? ;)

Yeah...he's one of the worst characters at high levels.

The best characters are generally considered Ivy (chain-sword chick), Cervantes, X (girls who's name starts with X). The game is pretty well balanced though, Nightmare does well, so does Voldo, etc.

UT might be a bad example, because a Large number of players used macros etc. to do things easier. That fucker that gets you Every Damn Time with the shock combo? Odds are decent he's not legit.

Also, the translocator....Totally takes the fun out of the game. Also, another macro example.





In SC I favor Talim and Taki. I like quick characters with moves that I can link into rolling combos.

Kilik is cool, I don't give a shit.

Bo Staff for teh win!! (or not  :oops:).

I always liked playing as Valdo, and he reminds me of that one creepy Marylin Manson-esque aeon from FFX. He moves all sinewy and weird, like it's backwards or something. I was deeply saddened that Link was such a lame character to play (I've only played the GC version).

Link kicks a fairly good amount of ass, probably my favorite character, followed by Cerv.

Taki, Mitsurugi, Cervantes, whatever. I haven't played it in a while, but I'm very much looking forward to making my own character in III.

And I would look forward to wtfpwning that character  :evil:.....if I was participating in the next gen.  :|

I liked Siegfried in the ealier version.  Just a crazy dude in knight's armor with a giant sword.

I know he's Nightmare in the latest version, but it didn't have quite the same feel.

I liked Kilik too, but largely because I'm a fan of staves as weapons.

Everytime I picked a character I liked, I'd get my ass owned to me.  Everytime I just let it random, I did much better.

I love Cervantes though.  Ivy high kick for the "out of arena' win

Never play anyone who's any good at throwing with Link.  I've won more of the hard matches in Weaponmaster through throws out of the arena than actual fights.  You just have to be within 5' of the edge and 'woosh'  out of the ring.

No next gen involved, SC III is for ye olde PS2.

 :heartbreak:

EyeToy Play2 Has one of those. If you wanted to play that sort of thing, like, now.

Interesting Miyamoto-san interview.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000297061506/

I jizz in Miyamoto-san's general direction.