Meet the Revolution's controller.

[schild]

Awesome.

[Morfiend]

Somehow, I would have thought voodoolilly or signe would have posted this by now, or at least shockeye, so if they have...meh.

...

...

...


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.

[WindupAtheist]

Leet avatar!

[ahoythematey]

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.

[Aenovae]

The whole site is awesome.

Why can't the Japanese just leave gender alone?




Worthy of framing and hanging in your home to weird out guests:

[Kairos]

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

[Bunk]

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.

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Pococurante]

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.

[Margalis]

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)

[schild]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[schild]

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.

[StGabe]

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

[Sairon]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

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?

[HaemishM]

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.

[Sairon]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Sky]

You don't have an hdtv yet, do you? 

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

Me? I'm buying a Stratocaster.

[Sairon]

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 for example seems pretty impressive. I know chances are fairly high all these PS3 vids are just PR bullshit but they impress me atleast.

[Hoax]

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.

[Merusk]

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.
...

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?

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Llava]

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.

[schild]

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.

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Pococurante]

Maybe this feature will be part of the Revolution 2 controller... ;)

[schild]

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

[Margalis]

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

That said, it's fairly obvious your simply biased against Dead or Alive.

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.

[Hoax]

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?

[Margalis]

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.