ThunderPeel2001

Chepito, that's a moot point because the game DIDN'T teach kids how to steal cars! It was all publicity!

"Pigdog"? Anyway, I don't know if it's possible to go further off topic, so let's find out! 2001 was a clever and well made movie, but the one thing it lacked (for me) was personality. All the people in it are like robots, it left me cold. I still get goosebumps when I watch the first bit though.... duh.... duh.... dun-duhhhhhh!!! Great stuff.

Sounds like the start of an MJ discussion to me! Let's start right here!

Yeah, what spaceship789 said!

I'm leaning towards the latter.

Hermes, are you perpetually drunk? It's just that your last two posts haven't made any sense.

...

Lol! Actually, for any Amiga owners out there, Warblade is Deluxe Galaga for the PC -- made by the same guy but with a different title for legal reasons.

Hmmmm... not so sure about this "Gish" business. Played the demo and wasn't too impressed. Now Warblade, there's a game worth buying! It's eating my life away!

I see what you're saying. I love Dune and Dune II but as I remember it I don't see how they were explicity related. There was some basic "place harvester here" stuff, but it wasn't really real-time strategy, was it? -- it was turn based as I recall? Plus there were no "enemy units" to attack or anything like that, was there? I should have to play it again! Both were great games! If Dune was just resource management, then I think it may be related to an earlier strategy game. Speaking of which, does anyone know if Dune 2000 was better than Dune II? Should I just go retro and stick with the old gfx, or was Dune 2000 "the same, but better!"?

You know I still have magazines with interviews with top developers (like EA) back when CD's were the newest thing on the horizon. Y'see, up until then we all just copied our floppy software with X-Copy and there wasn't much they could do... and that was the official reason software was so expensive: piracy! So, the interview continued: "Since there is talk that CD's can actually be cheaper to manufacture, and since the hardware available to copy them in the home is years away and extremely expensive, will this mean that CD games will be cheaper than their floppy-disk counterparts?" The reply: "Oh absolutely! Since CD's will not be able to be copied it will mean we can lower the price of the software!" A few months later the first titles started to appear -- and guess what! THEY WERE MORE EXPENSIVE! I'm sure piracy is a factor in software costs, but the figures have always been blown out of proportion: The reason there's so many pirated versions is because they're CHEAP! The people with hundreds of pirated games would not have bought a hundred originals if the copy wasn't available! They only bought it because it was cheap.. Surely the software industry could learn something about this magical thing called pricing if piracy was really killing it, but it's not. The reason there are pirated DVD's is because they're films that haven't been released on DVD yet, not because DVD's are cost prohibitive. Anyway, I digress. I actually agree with Stuart Campbell on this one, he wrote an excellent essay on it. And for the record: I buy games that I want to play. That means about 1 a year (not including cheap classic games that I'm constantly picking up). I don't have access to any copied software (I certainly can't be bothered downloading gigabytes of information!) so this is the grand total of my expenditure. Create some games that I want to play, Mr. Software Industry, and I'll buy more

Dune didn't really contain any "real" RTS elements and Space Invaders is hardly the grandaddy of first-person shooters! But heck, if you want to be technical and just find the game that had the first "firing mechanism" in a game, then you need to go back to 1961 and play Space War!

Sorry. I was editing my message as you were writing your reply. I agree, there's no excuse.

I don't hate Microsoft, I never said I did. Nor do I hate EA. I think you too need to sit down and take a deep breath... being so "anti" or so "pro" is just as bad in my opinion. Both companies have good and bad points, I was merely trying to explain what manny meant. Both companies have repeatedly shown that they value money over customer satisfaction... but they eventually seem to come up with the goods! Plus it's hard for a company not to do that with shareholders etc, so I see both sides. But it doesn't mean that they're super-duper brilliant companies! Anyways, you're right (Yufster). Hating the company doesn't really justify breaking the law and stealing from it, but Manny never really said it did. He just said it made him feel good (which is a little peverse, I know ). There isn't really any justification for stealing software, you're quite right (IMHO). As for the "builder" analogy, well, I'm sorry but... (grimaces)... that's just the dumbest thing I've ever heard! Try cars and see what you come up with. Try a TV that repeatedly stops showing TV (you know, it's actual *function*!) -- and there's no other "real" alternative -- 99% of DVD and video players are designed to work only with this 1 TV. Why? Because the company has made sure (quite cleverly, and with great business acumen) that every house you buy comes with this particular brand of TV already installed. Anyway, I digress. I think Windows XP is rather cool and I never have any problems with it and yes, I BOUGHT it! (In best Twilight Zone voice... "Did you?" )

Lol! Way to twist what he said completely out of context! Not to mention the ignorance of not knowing how MS and EA operate. They're are huge conglomerates whose only concern is the bottom line: Money! They're both the largest companies in their field -- other, more ethical, companies have to work around them. Did you know that EA had a special agreement with Sony so they could push their PlayStation games through Sony's testing even if Sony found problems with them? The money (meeting the advertised release dates) was more important than fixing problems with the game.

Isn't anyone from England here?

Music is the cheapest of all, not priced higher.

What's this "Gunbound"?

The only games I download are games that cannot be bought any more... and I seriously doubt these games are ever going to get re-released: Dark Seed, Blood Net, D/Generation, Cruise For A Corpse, Prince of Persia. If these games ever were re-released (or, even better, released for my lovely GBA) I'd surely buy them. But I'm pretty sure it would only be me I don't download newer games because I can't be bothered waiting and I don't want some crappy hacked beta crashing my system (which probably wouldn't happen, but you never know ). Question: Are games are stupidly overpriced? Titanic cost $200,000,000 to make, but I can buy it on DVD for $24.95 or VHS for $12.95. I'm sure every big "pop" CD costs millions in advertising - (Britney promoting her ass off, and endless TV adverts, posters, billboards, magazine adverts the world over etc, not to mention the cost of actually recording the thing - studio, producer, mixer, sound engineer, musicians, writers, backing singers) Yet Britney's latest "opus" is available on CD for $13.49 and $14.99 on DVD. Doom 3 I'm sure cost a fraction of $2 billion but could have broached the million dollar mark (not sure) to make and I have to buy it for $54.95. (All prices from Amazon.com) Discuss.

Not really playing anything at the moment, but I find time to mess around with the excellent PC remake of Head Over Heels (it's a beauty!!). http://retrospec.sgn.net/games/hoh/

Please don't tell us any more about the little folded thing you keep in your pants...

I think we've all been there. Wether it was through a fit of frustration, or just an incredibly demanding game, what were you doing when your second favourite thing you like to have in your hands* gave out a mighty --creak-- and was consigned to Joystick Heaven . For me it was Supertest on my Spectrum +3. Supertest was a "waggle-em-up" (as this forgotten genre was known back then) in the same vein as HyperSports or the home-computer classic Daley Thompson's Decathalon (remember that?)! I'm fairly sure it was the "Tug-Of-War" segment, which by the second time through the game, completely unfair and insanely difficult. --snap!-- That didn't sound good... oh crap! My beloved Cheetah joystick!!! I upgraded to a Cruiser and never looked back (I still have it and I used it for years and years on my Amiga... ahhh, my Cruiser...) The first and only mouse I ever broke was playing Cannon Fodder on my Amiga 500. The last level, as anyone knows who ever got there, was pure evil. Not least because you had to explore the map in order to know what to do... and the second all your men were dead it was back 5 levels - argh! - to reload and try again. No easy "quick save" back then, folks, you had to work hard to complete a game! After the 10th attempt at working through the 5 levels to get to the evil 6th one... and then dying at the last possible second when I should have completed it... my mouse suffered the consequences what could only be described as "game rage". Still I managed to fix it and complete the bugger............. only to find an ending screen that subtley (but quite literally) told me to F-U-C-K O-F-F! Thanks, Sensible. Sorry if that was a bit long, but when did YOU break your first peripheral? * Your first favorite being the TV remote, of course.

A simple, innocent looking mouse would easily suffice if you could sneak up on your victim... that handy cable! Only?! In the days of the Spectrum it meant the world!

It's (new) news to me! Cool! Thanks for the link! (Maybe we should start a thread for "Possibly old but cool news items that you may (or may not) have already seen before" ) Edit: I forgot what an excellent game Lemming is! Shame there's only 8 demo levels!