f13.net

Looks like Vanguard has a corner on the 360 catass market for the time being.

Ya know, I find it interesting that PCs have enjoyed something of a resurgence due to the money that can be made in MMOGs. However, I don't think this (the eighth) generation of consoles will be the big hit.

We know what the insertion of broadband is into the U.S.; however, I haven't found any statistics about the insertion of Wi-Fi in households yet. Unless people wire their consoles (possible if in a bedroom, less likely in a den, very less likely in a living room), the consoles may need broad adoption of Wi-Fi, even in their target demographic, for true success.

At the same time, if NC Soft just now announced focus on consoles, they're talking a few years from now anyway. Either the third-party add-on market works for this generation like it hasn't yet, Wi-Fi takes off like gangbusters, or they're taking PS4/XBox 720 ;)

That is very strange considering that a lot of NCSoft stuff uses the Unreal engine, and the xbox360 has epic onboard with great support for the newest unreal engine.

Maybe it's something to do with the CPU architecture but there seems to be plenty of stuff using the newest unreal engine on x360. Like Gears of War and Huxley.

All signs point to revolution being WiFi ready out of the box and very easy to set up for online play, if the DS method is any indication.  I doubt NCSoft would prefer Nintendo's machine over Sony's, though.

Unreal Engine 3 runs on the PS3 as well and in fact the UE3 PS3 tech demo was apparently one of the coolest demos at E3, particuarly since it was one of the few that was running in real-time on actual hardware.

Considering that NCSoft is an Asian company and the XBox sold 5 copies in all of Asia it isn't really that surprising.

Sweet christ. Was I asleep for 3?

NES Era -> Snes Era -> Playstation Era -> PS2 Era -> Next Gen

Pong -> Atari -> Atari 5200/7200?

You couldn't pay me to think of those as generations. I figured thats what he was getting at but it's damned stupid. Mass market penetration was meh. The technologies just simply weren't ready for primetime. Nintendo broke that barrier down. It was the real first consumer generation of home video gaming.

I would accept the argument of Arcade coming before the NES though.

To not recognize at least the Atari 2600 as a generation is silly. Stop being silly.

Or the ColecoVision.

Plus Intellivision, Vectrex, MSX... many waves.

Not recognizing the Atari or Colecovision as precursors is silly, sure. But counting them as a generation? I just can't do that. The modern console era started with the Nintendo. In the annals of history the early shit would be recognized as a blip on the map. The Nintendo is the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of gaming. It's the first thing that made everything really take off. It was the true modern console. It was Jesus. Year 0.

Atari 2600 had enough "market penetration" to count as a generation.

The Odyssey not so much.

Atari 2600 had plenty of popularity.

I would say the generations are:

Atari/Coleco/Intellivision
NES/Master System
SNES/Genesis/TG16
N64/Saturn/PS
GC/Dreamcast/PS2/XBox

Dreamcast is kind of a tweener.

It's a fact consoles started with Pong and Atari 2600 definatly deserves the first gen label. Many gamers, including me, started on that platform. Think Margalis has noted the generations down pretty accuratly.

They're even still in the news: Atari Invites Parents to Travel Back to the '70s (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101835.html) (think you need to be registred at the Washington Post for this though)

N64/Saturn/PS/Dreamcast

Dreamcast is a trouble-maker.

No, Margalis was right; Dreamcast is definitely in the PS2 generation. If you are discounting that, then it can be argued the PS2 doesn't belong in the same generation as the XBox and Gamecube.

Here I thought Schild was generally more well rounded and appreciative of the past than many others his age  :wink:. I, at least, can distinctly remember the day I got a NES -- And it wasn't such a revolutionary kick off for me (Besides that, the SMS was better in every way.....Except exclusive rights). It was just a better version of what I had already been doing.

If anything, Nintendo did something with gaming that made it part of general/pop culture. It made gaming mainstream.....But then again, Pac Man probably did this way before Mario.

2600 sales: 30m      http://www.atariage.com/2600/?SystemID=2600
NES sales: 60m         http://www.nintendo.com/systemsclassic?type=nes     
Dreamcast sales: 10m     
PS2 sales: 74m
N64 sales: 32m
Xbox sales: 22m
Gamecube sales: 18m

Pretty big blip.  Just saying.

Funny this sort of proves my point (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=129) ;) In any case, among other places, this one (http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=378141&rl=1) provides a nice list.

You just proved my point. It started with the NES (whose era includes the SMS and the 7800).

Soooooo

Generation 1: NES, SMS, 7800, Gameboy.
Generation 2: Genesis, SNES, a bunch of other shit.
Generation 3: PSX, Jaguar, 3D0, Gameboy Advance, and a bunch more shit.
Generation 4: Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Gameboy SP, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, NGage (Har, included for historical reasons - first cellphone/gaming system and won't be the last) etc.
Generation 5: Revolution, Xbox 360, PS3, and uhmmmm  probably a revamped PSP and definately a revamped Gameboy SP. I'd prefer a portable Gamecube.

You're as bad as the kids that think the Playstation was the first major console, and that no Final Fantasy games existed before VII.  Looking at those sales numbers, it seems like Nintendo and Microsoft would kill to have the Atari 2600's "meh"  market penetration right now.

Yea, if I thought Playstation was the first major console and Final Fantasy IV and VI weren't better than VII I might be one of those kids. Microsoft put a computer in a box. 8 Million more wouldn't have changed much. For Nintendo? They want their old numbers back, Atari wishes they had Nintendo's back in the day.

Also, what did the Atari compete against? The Intellivision? The more expensive Colecovision?

Even Atariage calls the 2600 the Godfather of modern video game systems rather than the great great grandfather. Two cans stuck together on string are not considered the 1st generation of modern telephones.

I can't even tell what your point is any more.  Let me put it this way:  The Atari 2600 was a home video game system that allowed you to play video game catridges on your television.  It had over 200 titles, and apparently sold around 30 million units, selling better than many systems would do over 2 decades later.  Tell me why this doesn't count as a generation of video games. 

(Hint:  "The NES sold better" and "The NES had better graphics" are not valid answers as both also apply to the PS when compared to the NES but you don't claim the PS to be the first generation)

Every once in awhile Schild is really wrong, but he never admits it, yet you people are content every time to argue for 3 pages with him knowing deep down it doesn't matter.  He is too stubborn to ever concede the point.

Just the way I see it sometimes...  much  :heart: and  :hello_kitty:

Atari/Intellivision/Coleco were clearly a generation. I have an Atari and Coleco with probably 30 games between them - not just imagining that. And there are plenty of genres that originated in that generation. But yeah, Schild will never admit he is wrong, though he obviously is in this case. :wink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:First-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Second-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Third-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fourth-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fifth-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sixth-generation_video_game_consoles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Seventh-generation_video_game_consoles

I don't consider the 2600 the influence for beginning the home console market as we currently know it. That's all there is too it. The NES penetrated the market in a way the Atari never could have. They are single handedly responsible for bringing Sony into the market - who now have the largest number of consoles sold out of any system and in turn, Sony single handedly brought Microsoft into the market. Nintendo created that market. Atari may have made the market a possibility but they certainly aren't responsible for where we are now.


Wikipedia, in one sentence, explains why I think this way. I'm simply not that concise at the moment.

Edit: And as if it's kismet, Righ and I manage to prove that using wikipedia doesn't work. Thus negating an argument made by Bruce 8 months ago (about people using wikipedia for serious work).

It's because they weren't Japanese, isn't it?  :-P

We don't deny the value or influence of the Greek or Roman civilizations simply because we had 'dark ages' in which many cultures struggled for supremacy, leaving little record.


I did no such thing. Leave me out of your delusions. Wikipedia works exceptionally well because it is a living document born of peer review. Certainly, if you have far out, wacky views that are generally unsupported, it wont reference those views unless they have been published somewhere that one of the writers has had exposure to.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=378141&rl=1
http://www.geekcomix.com/vgh/main.shtml
http://www.gamingw.net/articles/73

And so on. If you want people to subscribe to your view that video games began with NES, you need to do more than wave your hands around and say that contrary views prove the writers to be in error.

All I can say is that at least when Bruce said something batshit crazy it could be entertaining.

I don't know how it could be counted as anything else other than the beginning of the console market. It was a convenient device that allowed people to play games without going to an arcade. What more is there to it than that? It was also widespread and could be purchased anywhere from Toys R Us to Sears (i.e. it wasn't some niche item that could only be purchased at conventions....like, say, the Altair), and could be found at thousands of people's homes in any given city. It was so popular that nobody could exactly be considered "special" for having one (the special kids were the ones with pools and trampolines). Hell, it even had it's own magazines, ala Nintendo Power.

I know I have a console bias, but people who think gaming began with the NES bug me. Nothing personal. I just remember all the retarded band followers playing Super Motherfuck Bros in the living room while a few of us huddled over my C64 playing Ultima 5. That's really where it all started...

The pong consoles were the first generation of home consoles. I had one, had an atari 2600, too.

Back in the day I was busy preparing for our treadmill overlords with Dragon Warrior.  Secret of Monkey Island(CGA version with that fucking codewheel) holds a sacred place in my heart, but I still think the consoles of today began with the NES as their "year 0", with everything else Before Nintendo.  Everything else felt like incomplete personal computers.

Edited for one fucking letter making all the difference.

The home video game console era began when video games attached themselves to the TV and you could play them at home. It's really fucking simple.

Just in case, I was referencing the 2600 in that last post of mine. I read it over and thought it be construed to mean the NES.

Dude, you're wrong on this one.

Without Atari and the 2600, there would be no NES. That shit would never have come over here if not for the 2600. The 2600 HAS to be considered the first gen of consoles, because it sold that system like nothing before it. 30 million consoles in the days before the Internet, the days before TV's even had fucking RGB inputs. It sold 30 million consoles with CGA level graphics, when home computers didn't even have real penetration into American homes. It had big name movie licenses like ET (shitty game, but big license) and Indiana Jones. It flooded the market and caused the real creation of the video game market, and its subsequent implosion depress the market enough that the Amiga and the PC became a viable market for video games. Its success and its failure opened the door for Nintendo to come in and own the market. It was the first real piece of computer hardware most people had in their homes.

I actually agree on this. The Nintendo wouldn't exist without the 2600. Nothing inbetween the 2600 and the NES really matters though. And the NES is the only reason the current video game market exists. The market had all but died. Actually, it did die. And out of the ashes came the NES. A system that had a stranglehold on the american and japanese public in a way that no other system could ever dream of  - it was the beginning. It was year zero. It was robot jesus. Hence the reason I consider it the first modern gaming console. The 2600 was a nice prehistoric experiment. And did give way to the gaming market as we know it, but it didn't birth that market.

Sophistry: In modern usage a derogatory term for rhetoric that is designed to appeal to the listener on grounds other than the strict logical validity of the statements being made.

O RLY? Even if I were to buckle and say that the 2600/Atari era was the first generation it would still only put us in the 6th. But if we're going to count everything inbetween the 2600 and NES as possible generational masses, we better make room for a CDi/3D0 and Jaguar generation. Also, we might as well give the Dreamcast it's own generation as there is enough "strict logical validity" to make a decent argument that the Dreamcast was, indeed, inbetween the psx and ps2. So, does that put us in the 10th generation? When do we stop drawing imaginary lines?

I don't know about the entire industry, but from my point of view there was a hell of a lot of system prior to the NES.  My own purchases went straight from the 2600 to the NES, but I was cheap.  I held to the 2600 because of the other systems were near 2x the cost for the system and the games.  I bought more 2600 games than probably all of the games for all the consoles I've had since combined.

I wasn't common though.  Hell I remember when nearly every one of my friends had a different system from the Calicovision to Inteliivision to Odyssey to other crappy one offs from Sears or whatever.  Only one friend of mine had a 2600 so we could swap games, etc.  

I really didn't notice a lull in consoles before the NES came out.  Of course, I was ready for a next gen console by that point and jumped on it.

I'm still in the camp that I'd rather play on the computer than the console.  I spend 90% of my gaming time there and always have.   I always had a computer while I had consoles.  In fact, the highest percentage of my free time was spent with my VC20 than anything else since then (mostly creating new games in Basic.)

This chart has it much like I remember it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console#Timeline

Depends - is this absolute history or Schild's Favorite Flavor of History?

As a general rule people go all the way back to proto influences.  Otherwise we wouldn't bother talking about Da Vinci or the Wright brothers when discussing the generations of aviation science.  My recollection parallels Dren's.  NES is a tipping point but hardly a birthpoint.  The story of Magnavox's struggle to introduce a console is far more compelling in every traditional story element than NES' commoditization of a later market, a struggle that worked itself through the same time as the First Moon Landing, the end of Vietnam, and Watergate.

You'll just have to accept that some of us have a longer view of history - writing off two decades of significant console history strikes me as a much more cavalier use of "imaginary lines".

I'm not going to insist you're wrong.  Just arbitrary.

Removing the Atari VCS/2600 and the Magnavox Odyssey - the two initial commercially available game consoles - from the timeline, is like the retouching of that picture of Lenin speaking to remove Leo Tolstoy from the very history of the Russian revolution. Or perhaps ignoring any American cars made prior to the Big Japanese Wake-up Call.

Bad Schild!

Oh noes, history doesn't conform to my simple pigeonholing technique!

Why are you all arguing about something so arbitrary and stupid?  Does "generation" even mean anything?

AOFanboi, I hope you meant Leo TROTSKY, not Tolstoy.

If the Atari generation wasn't a generation, what was I playing on my Atari exactly?

You can quibble about how many generations there were exactly, but saying the Atari wasn't in ANY generation is retarded. Pick your battles dude.

Pacman, Mario Brothers, Jungle Hunt, Pitfall...you're telling me those aren't console games? This is the exact equivalent argument to the FF series really started with FF7. Yes, if you are a 15 year old moron with no sense of history it did. Otherwise it didn't.

Next week let's argue that Model T wasn't in any generation of cars. The first generation of cars actually started with the Toyota Tercel!

In a timeline I would come up with were I inclined so, I'd consider anything prior to the NES a proto-generation, or something.

Anyone besides me old enough to have played all of these consoles with a reasonable degree of critical thinking when they did?

I played PONG when it hit the scene.  It was followed by a number of PONG-like consoles (Magnavox, radioshack, etc) with games like hockey etc. as PONG derivatives.  Eventually, the PONG paddles were made to look like players.  I'd consider these all the same generation.  

Then... the Atari came out.  Space invaders, basketball, football, and others.  I think Adventure was the title that really made this a separate generation and of course, the introduction of Activision games (pitfall and co) really raised the bar on what the Atari could offer.  It's hard to argue that there was a significant difference between PONG and PONG-esque games and the Atari.  I would have to conclude that the Atari is the second generation of video games.

The difficult era was that between the Atari and the Nintendo.  Intellivision and Colecovision were head and shoulders above the current technology and the controllers offered much more options than the joystick+button.  The problem is that the gameplay was a tad more sophisticated than the Atari, but not quite on par with the Nintendo.  I guess they fall into a gap.

Yes, my bad. He fled and even lived for a while in Norway, actually, so I really have no excuse.

That sort of gives fuel to the kids who feel that everything before the XBox is shite, and don't consider them at all.

The Atari 2600 was popular, it had very playable (but necessarily somewhat abstract) games, and Atari the company fed the home computer wave that followed the first consoles - but also made a lot of mistakes. It was just as important for the video game industry as, say, Monkey Island was for the adventure genre. I mean, will you dismiss early LucasArts games just because they're not as pretty as Syberia?

Ahhh, because the eigenvalues of the mass matrices of the Atari 2600 allow you to approximate the degeneracy of the cartridge fermions?

Actually, Tolstoy did start a revolution of sorts before the actual "Revolution" (yes, the writer Tolstoy). It was religiously motivated, but he targeted the same thing as the Communists. At first, and for a decade or so there, his message caught on. By the turn of the century though, and with Lenin, the commies spread like a wildfire.

Tolstoy's methods and message were the very thing that directly inspired Gandhi's non violence philosophy years later....Then MLK after that.

So basically you are shitting over the consoles a good 40+ million people owned and more even played (given that the 2600 had 30 million owners, and its big 2 competitors had at least 3 million each, leaving 4 million of the niche systems.  Its probably closer to NES sales levels combined over all the pre NES systems.), because its either not your childhood or you are too much of a Japan worshipping schmuck to care about it?

PLEASE.

My cousin had the 2600, Colecovision, and a Mattel Aquarius Computer (a weaker computer version of the Intellivision really).  A loser friend of mine had a Coleco Adam, which was a Colecovision and a computer combo.  My second cousins in Alabama had an Atari 5200, which was effectively Atari 100 series computer hardware turned to a console with shitty controllers.  Another friend had the 2600 and Intellivision.  Almost everyone else I knew including myself had a 2600.  Shit, I got my 2600 for Christmas 84.  Many of us were still playing and loving videogames without even knowing there was a videogame crash.

Most people STILL wouldn't know there was a videogame crash in 83.  WE WERE STILL GAMING.  The NES was just the next generation and had new software available for it when the uglier graphics of the 2600 had very few new titles released for it, giving us ports of the latest arcade game.

Everyone I knew pretty much bought their NES systems because they thought mine was so cool.  ( I was less impressed, and got a Commodore 64 in Christmas 87 which supplanted the NES in my eyes that I had purchased the year before.)  The NES didn't have any genuine competiton which is why its sales were so high.  That and it was primarily for kids and kids all want what everyone else has.  So once little Billy had one, Jaime, Jeffy, and Johnny all had to have one too.  (Nintendo's evil business practices of the time didn't hurt any either.  Plus they knew how to market the thing.  I have seen more NES ads than I have of ANY other game system.)

But to say videogaming didn't effectively start till 1987-88 when the NES exploded in popularity is not only wrong, its stupidity and ignorance at its finest.

Odyssey 1 was Generation 0.  Pong machines were Generation .5  Fairchild Channel F-Atari 7800 were Generation 1 (Programmable consoles with seperate controllers and multiple game programs that could be plugged into it.).  The NES, Atari XEGS, Sega Master System, and Game Boy were Generation 2 (Improved and near standarized interfaces, heavy Japanese influence on the market and designs).  Generation 3 was Turbografx 16-3DO (Massive graphical, storytelling, and audio leap, first steps into CD Rom multimedia setups).  Generation 4 was Saturn-Nintendo 64 (First standardized analog control setups, 3d graphics made standard, Optical Disk format near total dominance of the field, flash memory devices start being used).  Generation 5 is Dreamcast-X Box 360 (Backwards compatibility becomes a major factor in gaming, computers become less important as electronic gaming alternatives, online play starts becoming popular, analog controls become nearly the default, flash memory type devices become widespread, beginnings of the "consumer owns nothing" corporate wet dream, videogaming approaches mainstream popularity).

Note the Revolution and PS3 might be part of Generation 5 as well.  If all they offer is improved graphics and nothing else, its really not a generational shift, unless one counts improved graphics as a generation.  I don't.  Its not just system power, its influence on the industry, and where it all goes from here.

Hardware wise, the NES isn't all that much more powerful than the Colecovision or Atari 7800.  Its the lasting impact on how games have been since that makes it a new generation.  Which is why the Dreamcast and 360 are in the same generation.  Outside of graphics, they really aren't THAT different.  Both with built in online play options, both have optical drives and flash memory for savestates, both with analog controls, both with high def video output options.  ( DCast with the VGA adapter, 360 with its heavy support of HD TV options.)

I didn't count pong machines because the only ones I've seen or owned came with 4 games built in and that was it. They were more stand-alone toys than consoles.

Our pong only had pong.  Yeah, that was more of a curiousity at the time than anything else.  I'm still amazed my parents got it.  I never thought of them as cutting edge at the time.  I've come to change that opinion over time.

You are being stupid to think of these in terms of hardware capabilities, and defensive over no attack of mine. (Notice how I said "were I so inclined", since I think the generations debate is ridiculously fucking stupid?)  When I would say something like "NES is generation 1", I'm talking about market penetration, lasting effects on the consumer and the industry, and how profitable the machine was.  I use these values because, to me, a console is a cheaply-produced game system designed for mass-market, made with ease-of-use in mind, and capable of generating obscene numbers in gross profit margin for the company.  If you want to continue calling me a japanophile nintendo faggot or some shit(which seems unfair since I actually lived there and am by no means like those calling themselves otaku's), perhaps you can kindly go take your odyssee II controller and try to scrape some of that sand out of your vagina.

You don't think a market penetration of 30 million machines is significant for the Atari when there really was no significant market penetration prior to that? You don't think that's worthy of being considered Gen1?

I'll save them the typing.

Considering I've been alive long enough, and have played most of the machines mentioned, I was going to comment.  However, after seeing the word "proto-generation", my mind simply went blank.

Here's a tidbit from ClassicGaming.com (http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/2600/).


I'm not sure how old many of you were in 1977, but I can tell you that I remember the day I got my system.  When they started porting arcade games (~1979 or so) like Space Invaders, the system popularity exploded.  I can remember having to go to multiple stores just to find a copy of a cart I wanted.

If you don't call that a video gaming generation, then you're too young to have experienced the evolution of the video game industry.

Signe: Is that a rice cooker?  If so, I want one!

Schild: I'll send you a check if you lose that avatar!

Yes, it's the rice cooker schild posted somewhere on this board.  I fell in love with it.   :heart: 

I ask about rice cookers in the camera thread, partly joking.
Schild responded with the iMac of rice cookers.
Mine should be here on Friday.

My first "multi-function" electronic gaming device was built in 1968 - at the time my dad worked part-time in the university computer lab and there is no doubt he bought the toy as much for him to play with as for me. :)   I still remember opening it under our aluminum xmas tree.  :P

It was really nothing more than a magstripe reader with a tinny speaker but looked much like the first Atari console.  It taught basic math and spelling - in seven different languages.  I played it by picking and combining plastic cards roughly the size and thickness of four credit cards stacked together - the cards had different sized notches that I used to connect them to create sentences and solutions.  By flipping a lever I toggled which language my cool combination spoke to me in, or the gender of the voice.

This game was amazingly high tech for its time.  1968 was the first year magstripe credit cards were released for public consumers.

My next high tech game was a mineralogy "computer" - again a gift from my early adopter Engineer father.  This was much later, about 1975.  It looked vaguely like a toy cash register, bristling with the small tools used to test rocks.  As I determined a value for a factor I put a simple plastic peg into the appropriate hole of that test's section.  When I ran all tests I pulled a small tray and the cards most likely identifying the mineral dropped to the bottom.  It was amazingly precise.

*Video* electronics were given their own niche because actually electronic toys in general were fairly sophisticated by the time the first consoles went mainstream.

It wasn't until I played the Adventure cart on the Atari that I really began to take video consoles seriously as entertainment.  I was holding out for the next generation of personal computers at that time.  In all this time I have yet to see a console that could outperform a contemporary PC.

Consider it done.

Edit: Ok, now consider it done. Took a while to pick something out.

When I plumbed the pipes in my bathroom, I was sure Samara was coming for me. Apparently the bitch who lived there before me had long black hair and bad sink habits, that line was clogged like a mofo. All that wet black hair snaking out....it was coming to GET ME!!

Where is this rice cooker?

I have seen and operated a hello kitty toaster that burned hello kittys image onto the bread, so I'm not sure if anything can be cooler than that.

I'm willing to look at other options though.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00007J5U8/104-9174621-1787121?v=glance&n=284507&v=glance

Not impressed with that rice cooker. I have an Oster steamer that cooks my rice just dandy.

But it's so cool looking... who cares about the other stuff?  I didn't buy one of

(http://www.products-as-seen-on-tv-store.com/images/kitchen/hot-dog-griller.jpg)

because I couldn't figure out any other way of making hot dogs, you know.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40480000/jpg/_40480423_dayjapan_afp220.jpg)

I think I have found my daughter's christmas present.

Lol....You make it sound like that'll be the only present.

If I give her that, what else would be worthy? With something like that, it can be the only present.

Hmm....Maybe lots and lots of bread?

Giving a small appliance as a gift to a child qualifies as abuse. 

Granted, it is a cool toaster.

If I was a dick (like my brother), I'd wrap each loaf of bread in a big box....And put something in there to make them feel heavy.

[edit] Seriously though, it's a great gift.

If we don't emphasize to girls their place when they're young they will grow up thinking they can be president.

I have a wife that does the same!  :rimshot:

We have a rice cooker that works quite well, but I will be buggered if I can remember what kind it is. It is white...does that help?

The rice, the cooker or the wife?

Yes.

I WANT THAT TOASTER. YESTERDAY. NOW. AND TOMORROW.

You are so weird.

What generation of toasters are we on now?

I loved my proto-generational toaster oven.

I looked up that stupid word and it doesn't exist.  Stop saying it, too, or it'll turn into one of those annoying buzz words which also usually don't exist.

I'd like to know when I'm getting my first generation nuclear pressure-toaster. I want it to be something like a pressure cooker for rice and vegatables, but shaped for toast. I figure, if I can cut down my sandwich making time by 1 minute, I can be 7,000% more efficient with work. Seriously. Sandwich-making is a taxing hobby.

I wish I knew what your avatar is.

Sadako from Ringu, crawling out of the intarweb. I'd done Samara from The Ring (the US release), but not Sadako.

I've always wanted to use this cool pic of Hiroyuki Sanada for an avatar (which I can't find atm...damnit), but I've always thought you've already used it at some point.

I've never used him as an avatar. But now that you point it out, maybe I should've.

I'm trying to effect a proto-paradigmal sea change.

I think I might have to kick your ass.

I'm just happy schild got rid of that other avatar.  The check is in the mail... really!

Speaking of avatars, what the hell is Signe's? Is that the toast of Turin?

Yes, it is Jesus on toast.  I was out of beans.

My google-fu gave me this on the first hit, page 10 first paragraph... (http://www.eclac.cl/publicaciones/UnidadMujer/3/lcl1063/lcl1063i.pdf) ;)  One of the pleasures of having a 19th century gentleman's vocabulary is watching the great unwashed scratch their heads.  Besides my hero Humpty Dumpty said it best:



So neener neener... ;)

You should have let them revel in their illusions, pocc.

I do something along this line to my younger sister every year. I think she would be seriously disappointed if I didn't. If its not the ridiculously big box, it's the item wrapped five times with layers of packing tape between each layer of paper.

My brother would wrap cat turds and rocks in a box. He didn't even try to hide his bullshit by weighing it down.

Still worked though. I thought it was a puzzle when I shook it.

I have the rice cooker, a few things are clear to me now.
a) Washing rice really means wash rice like you are panning for gold.
b) There is a utilzle who's solo purpose is to fluffy rice.
c) Playing "Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star" at the beginning and end makes all the difference.
d) The Japanesse take cooking Tasty Rice very seriously. The manual for my DVD player is shorter than the manual for this thing.

Fixed for you.

Cool toaster, I'd buy something pointless like that for my wife if she was into Hello Kitty, instead, she thinks she's getting either a foot spa-massager-thing or an Icecream maker. Little does she know I've already bought her a bunch of things, and plan to get both the icecreammaker and foot spa, and just hide 95% of the crap I buy her so she'll have no idea until I "go for a piss" in the AM of Christmas morning and put it all out.. muahahaha

It's tough for jokes to be funny when they take two weeks to formulate.

"The jerk store called, they're running out of you!"

Also, it better be a Hello Kitty foot massager. And the ice cream maker? Also better be Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty is the appliance equivilent of turning an amplifier up to 11.

Hey, your wrongness is something that can entertain the rest of us for months if not years.

So it took him a couple weeks.  The truth never goes away dontchaknow?

Nah it didn't take 2 weeks to formulate, it was simply what came up in my head as I was reading through the thread. I just don't read every one of them when they're brand-spanking new. Unfortunately neither product is available in Hello Kitty flavours here, so I had to settle for other leading brands.

Hello Kitty toaster on sale for $15 at Target. Waffle maker also $15. (http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/601-4776631-9790516?asin=B00021HBU4)

Personally, I think it's daft and wouldn't pay 15 cents for it, unless I had a small child or something.  I don't really understand the whole Hello Kitty thing happening on f13.  I don't even know WHY it's happening.  I missed something, I guess.

You're not even trying hard:

http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=kitty&submit=Go

Hello Kitty breath tester?  Fucking hell.

At first glance, I thought it was a breathalyzer.  I'm disappointed.  :cry:

(http://img.engadget.com/common/images/3060000000056973.JPG?0.7478889907484366)

Good Lord!

I know where Stray's bingo winnings are going next!