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Posted on 08.19.05 by A 47 Danger @ 11:33 am
Make that GameBoy Micro a little bit smaller and put it on a wristband! Nintendo, you’re so very close to every school going child’s dreams! Remember the 80s? You had all sorts of wrist watches. Mario, Zelda, and the like. The GameBoy Micro is useless. Go ahead and draw some buttons on a post it note and try to play it for more than a minute. It doesn’t feel too good, does it? Imagine this, though. Move the buttons below the screen, so you can control them with one hand. Add that fabulous technology known as velcro straps to the back of the device, and you have yourself the most portable video game system ever.
You could even have it in a clam shell like the SP. The outside could look like a real watch for the grownups who like their video games, yet want to hide their addiction. Don’t stop there! Make a belt buckle that will hold two games in it! You could even make a game choker for your neck! The goth kids would love it! Just a little more effort, Nintendo. You’re almost there. If you tell me where you live, I’ll whisper it into your ear while you sleep. Then it will seem like the idea came from a wonderful dream. Mark my words, the GameBoy Wrist will happen. Filed under: A 47 Danger and GBM and General Comments: None |
Now that would be innovated. Tiny is just smaller. It’s not innovative, it’s the same. That’s why model trains suck so much.|
Posted on 08.18.05 by A 47 Danger @ 9:04 am
Eddie Gordo. A button masher’s dream. Random acts of violence strewn forth from his swinging limbs, while an unexperienced player smashes their fingers into the controller. The next thing you know, Bryan Fury is lying on the ground. The sound of his ghost clearly cursing all button mashers. Button mashers go against game theory. They understand that they are trying to win the game, yet the give and take of the mathematics behind all games isn’t there. Circumventing the logic behind the game, random buttons are pressed and soon they are declared the victor. Button mashing is unnatural. Like a duck tied to a potato peeler. It has no place in the natural order of things. Or so I thought. Maxim and I have taken to playing hacky sack with a couple of people during our breaks from the average work day. We are all terrible, and should not be playing hacky sack. If there were a king of hacky sack, surely he would cry and set his kingdom ablaze out of sadness. One player in particular stands out. They play hacky sack like a button masher. Two or three kicks in a row with a twirl in the middle, and they still don’t hit the sack. It is a sight to see. Button mashing seems unnatural. Like it shouldn’t be happening, and is cheating in someway. The fact is, there are people who are just button mashers. That’s how they go through life, why would their gameplay be any different? When you are bested by a button masher, don’t get angry. Give them a smile and congratulate them. Life isn’t easy for them. They play goofy hacky sack. Filed under: A 47 Danger and General Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 08.17.05 by beuks @ 3:43 pm
If you know someone who’s a great big nerd and into video games, who has a birthday coming up, you might think about getting them a copy of the IDC Teardown Analysis of the Nintendo DS. It seems to be particularly geared towards people with knowledge of macroeconomics, manufacturing, and bulk sales. It’s available as a downloadable pdf e-book on Amazon.com for $3500, but would be a steal at twice the price!
Filed under: Beuks and General and Nintendo DS Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 08.17.05 by A 47 Danger @ 8:45 am
Marc Ecko’s Getting Up, a game I have never heard of, is getting their free press today from Keep America Beautiful and the National Council to Prevent Delinquency. The game, which I’m sure both protesting groups have played (INTERNET SARCASM), features a main character that gains notoriety and “rep” by spraying. Spraying paint, not spraying like a cat. At least, that’s what I can gather. I haven’t played the game. This will be a breakthrough, as no other video game has ever dealt with graffitti. Not Jet Grind Radio, not Jet Set Radio Future. Wait a second, both of those games dealt with spraying graffitti to impress people. I hope Keep America Beautiful has their time machine finished so they can go back in time and stop those games. Because ever since those games came out, graffitti has been everywhere! Let’s get serious here. C’mon people, I mean it. We’re going to be serious. All these groups protesting video games are only raising awareness of the games. Not in a “we must stop it” kind of way, but in a “we must have this” kind of way. They are selling the games for the company. It’s their mindset to hurt, but they are only helping. Then again, perhaps they are right. Perhaps I’ll get out of the basement and start “tagging” things. Playing video games is such a horrible blight on society, graffitti is such a simple step up. And we all know that graffitti is just a stepping stone to murdering cops. Filed under: A 47 Danger and PS2 and Rant Comments: 2 Comments |
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Posted on 08.16.05 by beuks @ 8:20 pm
Let me pause and ask a question of Joe here, hopefully to be answered in the comments: remind me, did you pick up Star Soldier in Tokyo? The reason I ask him is that Star Soldier looks like a pretty spiffy little game. It’s a scrolling shooter in the Xevious/Gradius vein, and the hook here is that it is intended to be played with the Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM) tipped up sideways, with the d-pad/analog slider end at the bottom. I’ve always been pretty terrible at this type of game, but it does look pretty. The game is a sort of port of the GameCube/PS2 entry in a series that spans back to the original Star Soldier on NES (A creation of Hudson Soft, that first game is available as a Famicom Mini game in Japan).
It is curious and unexpected where we find the next-gen portable market right now. It turns out that despite developers still figuring out how to use the DS, the handful of decent games on that system, coupled with GBA back-compatability (and Nintendogs, oddly enough) has landed Nintendo in a much better position to compete with the PSP’s one killer app, basket of superfluous features, and Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM). Filed under: Beuks and General and PSP and Review Comments: 1 Comment |
As A 47 Danger writes below, the PSP game selection in the US is pretty stagnant. Thankfully for us, the little tag on the back of Japanese PSP games that says “for Japan only” is a bald-faced lie. They’ve got several more fun, non-Lumines games available, which may or may not be eventually heading our way. Tellingly, they’re all retreads of one kind or another, but they may nonetheless be worth a look.
Next is Puzzle Bobble Pocket. This is the latest installment in the puzzle series called Bust-a-Move stateside that started in the arcades in 1994, and has been released on pretty much every system since the Playstation and the Game Boy Color. The series has been a pretty serviceable good time all along, although the mechanic of shooting balls/bubbles/tiles up at the mess you’re clearing was maybe done better in the Windows cult shareware game 
Lastly is Taiko no Tatsujin Portable, known to us gaijin as Taiko Drum Master Portable. This hasn’t been scheduled here, and I heartily reccomend giving it a look if you like rhythm games in particular, or the American PS2 port of the arcade version of this game. The bright, bold, cutesy graphics look fantastic on the Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM), and the gameplay translates surprisingly well to button-pushing in lieu of expensive-peripheral-drum-smacking. I haven’t figured all of the menus and modes out yet, but there are a couple 1P and a couple 2p modes, including a battle mode based on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots - awesome. It’s no Lumines (what is?), but it’s the second-best game I’ve played on PSP.| « newer posts | previous posts » |
