loonyboi

That's because from his point of view, there isn't. You'd need a USB box from someplace like Lik-Sang, and you can't possibly expect joe schmoe at some random Best Buy to have any idea that such a place exists anywhere in the world. Now if he tried telling you there are no native PC gamepads, then he'd be a complete jackass. But this doesn't qualify.

It's hardly old (november of '04), but i've been playing Ratchet & Clank: UYA, and hot damn is it fun. Seriously polished, fun gameplay. Were the other games this good? I figure I can probably pick 'em up cheap by now.

I'm not going this year, but I went last year...I had to work the show, but dear god, it was awesome. Overweight jedi as far as the eye could see. I wish I were going this year. It's like the nerd capital of the world.

Because I spent about seven years as a journalist before jumping the fence, i have a lot of game-related shirts. Naturally, I can't wear any of them to the office (shirts with games from other publishers wouldn't be a good idea to walk into the office with). But I still wear them around the house and occaisionally on the weekends. The new thing to do is to make shirts that people actually *want* to wear. Rockstar is the king of doing this. Their shirts look really cool, and aren't overtly nerdy. We've done that to a limited extent with our 2K shirts we had at E3...they're very subtle (solid color with a very small embroidered logo). Those I wear in public with pride. I still have a couple of shirts from GameSkins that I wear from time to time. Those are nerdy in the extreme, although they're a little dated (even hardcore gamers may have forgotten what LPB stood for). But then, I'm proud of my dorkiness. :nerd: Actually, I got my wife one of one of these shirts for Valentine's Day a couple of years ago, and she still wears it.

Yeah, I made fun of it for those insane Zodiac icons. They changed the buttons in the shipping version to be less insane. http://gizmondo.com/unit/feature.asp?no=9

And the already creepy thread gets creepier... (Plus, for those of us that missed it, what was Yufster's sig?)

There are many of them, and yes, publishers do cater to their needs. Or at least, I do. Maybe not on the development side, but I always work with those sites from a PR perspective, and not in a pandering way. Here's one site: http://killerbetties.com/

It wasn't banned, they just never released it. But...I have it! I have a full copy, complete with the intro movie. The problem is, I can't get it to run in any emulator. I think my DVD drive may not be emulator friendly. I saw the game many E3s ago and it was hi-larious. Midgets on stilts fighting dominatrixes? That's a good time. Or at least, mildly amusing for about ten minutes.

Anyone out there play non-video, non-PC games? I'm just getting into Warhammer 40,000 (the tabletop game, not the RTS...although that was fun, if short) and am just curious if anyone else around here is as nerdy as I am. :nerd:

There's no way I'll ever get good enough to compete, but I'm definitely getting the hang of it. I've been trying to figure out a way to photograph or scan my models, but so far I'm having no luck at all. My digital camera(s) can't zoom in enough for a clear image, and my attempts to scan them haven't fared much better.

Damn, you got around. I'm just getting started...I picked up the battle for macragge set, and am having a blast painting and building the stuff. That has starter sets for the Ultramarines and Tyranid armies in it, so it's a good place to dip my toe in the water. My wife has volunteered to play with me once I've put it all together, so we'll see how that goes.

Sorry, no dice. I went looking for it yesterday in downtown brooklyn. Couldn't find it. I have a good idea where I could probably find it, but that's also one of those places where I'm really not comfortable going. Maybe I can ask one of my gentile friends to try.

It depends. Is this a superintelligent bear with a mounted assault rifle vs. a giant mutant albino gorilla from mars? In that case, the gorilla would win by clawing out the bear's eyes with his steel-reinforced razor claws of death. But if the bear happens to have leg-mounted turbo thrusters, it's no-contest, the gorilla's toast. Not even an electrical field generator could stop that assault.

Me too, and I live here! Supposedly they're for sale on Coney Island Avenue. I generally don't go anywhere near there, but I'll be in the general region tonight, so I might go looking for it.

Your honor, I was merely establishing character which was relevant to the subject at hand. I don't claim to be unbiased. I relish my bias. Bias rules.

Nintendo was cheap enough to charge $20 per title for old NES games on GBA with zero extras. Do you honestly believe they're going to make 200+ games available for download for free? Seriously now. I will almost certainly never buy another Nintendo machine (for myself) ever again (when I have kids, maybe) but it doesn't take a hater to recognize the idiocy in giving away games they could be charging $10 - $20 per title for.

The funny thing is that several of those used to be in my logs for loonygames back in the day (and still might be -- I don't bother checking those anymore). For some reason "how to steal cars" always brought in the referrals, although my all-time top two were "breast implants" (that was the name of an article about Lara Croft we ran), and "sims sex" (because we had an article about the Sims that used those particular words).

I knock the DS because I think it's gimmicky, but I think this game sounds pretty cool. An excerpt: Spore seems to be a concise summary of Wright's virtuosic approach to game design. In tackling the most significant issues and trends facing developers moving into the next generation of games, he appears to have designed a project that gracefully encompasses a wide array of genres while giving players an unprecedented level of control over their game experience. What appeared initially to be a demo of a new approach to low-effort game design (game assets are created with procedural techniques, or with user-based tool sets, rather than pre-defined) slowly revealed itself over the course of an hour to be one of the most comprehensive games ever attempted. Wright describes it as an homage to his favorite games, from Pac-Man to Populous, from Diablo to Civilization, with a heavy dose of classic sci-fi. However, the overall experience is ultimately defined by the user; user-created civilizations on display included both organic, Roger Dean-like cities and cold steel fortresses that wouldn't have been out of place on the Death Star. It might not work at all. But I think Wright's wacky enough to actually pull this off.

Well gosh, thanks. I wish I had seen this on my birthday, but I still feel the love.

netmonkey: If you're dead set on getting into the industry but don't have the experience yet, go for QA. Companies always need QA testers. ...mostly because there's such a high turnover rate for that job. QA is NOT easy. In fact it's hard. Brutal even. You might enjoy playing a specific game, but imagine playing it for 10 or more hours straight every single day for a year or more. I don't know how those people do it. But it's the best way to break into the industry, as far as I can tell. I took an unorthodox method myself (I put in 7 years as a journalist before moving into PR), but then I was never one to do things the easy way. One other thing to keep in mind is how much more important experience is quickly becoming in this industry. With next-generation games in particular, technical skills are highly prized and downright necesary for even low-end jobs. It's scary how much work goes into a next-gen character model. I'd hate to be trying to break in on that part of the industry now.

I've got some bad things to say about Alienware laptops... At my office we used to have an Alienware. It weighed a ton and was downright ugly. If you want a gaming laptop, go with Falcon NW. The FragBook we have now is awesome. It' still weighs a ton, but the screen is a work of art. And it runs games really, really, really well. Plus it comes in a giant metal suitcase that makes you feel like a CIA agent. Just don't buy a gaming laptop for its battery life. They all get like five minutes of battery power. Oh, and don't buy one for value, either. They're all hideously expensive.

I'm guessing you're a Mac or Linux user then? Without MS Office or Internet Explorer installed? Chances are at some point in your day, you're going to encounter some necessary Microsoft technology. I'm a Mac user at home, but even there I need to use MS Office. Accept it, Microsoft has wormed its way into your life and there's nothing you can do about it. Welcome to the machine.

I'm talking in general terms, not marketing. But yeah, "vibra" is pretty hideous. And let's not forget the bizarre name Sega gave the FF add-on for the dreamcast controller...the "jump pack". I guess the idea is that it would make you jump from its unexpected vibrating action.

Only Nintendo uses that asinine and childish term. I always hated that. "Rumble" implies a gimmick and simplicity. Nintendo gamepads "rumble" everything else uses true, multi-level force-feedback.

I had those same questions when MS was here a few weeks ago. Microsoft will sell a rechargeable battery pack, and the nice thing is that when it runs out, you just connect the controler to the console with a USB cable and it recharges while you keep playing. Very slick. And yes, they have force feedback.