Jake

Idle Thumbs 42: The Dreamcast

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Today can only mean one thing... or can it?

"The Dreamcast"

For just one night, into your face we cast not pods, but dreams. Our dreams are powered by robot hands with pistol grips, three part harmonies and too many microphones, but we're thinking you'll find something you like.

Games Discussed: The Beatles: Rock Band, Left 4 Dead 2, DeathSpank, Shank, Torchlight, Mass Effect 2 (spoiler free!), Supreme Commander 2, Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station, Novint Falcon, dreamcast, nights into dreams

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I have a minor video-gaming coincidence. I was sitting at my computer, playing The Wonderful End of the World and listening to a recent episode of the 'Cast. I came across a cobra that I wasn't quite big enough to absorb, and I kept getting knocked back. I thought to myself, "If only I could switch to the boy character, I could kill that snake." Shortly after thinking this, you read an e-mail from a listener who was going through the podcast back-catalog and had commented on the "Kill that Snake" song. I couldn't help but smile.

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I enjoyed your discussion on The Beatles. Especially when talking about Paul's bass playing. No matter what he's always grooving and has written some incredible bass lines. He's definitely my favorite bassist.

Left 4 dead sounds like a good time.

I'm really interested in that Novint Falcon now. Looks like something fun that would cause me to play some more stuff on the PC.

It reminds me of something I'd see in a bad movie with a kid playing video games(video-games?) in the future.

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Thank you for completely ruining the word "turret" :)

Also good to hear Deathspank will be awesome, also shank looks interesting. For what platform will it be?

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Terrific cast as always.

You can only imagine my excitement when my Monkey Island dream (The eyes of Guy) was read out!

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I really have no idea why the "space" stuff is so hilarious, but I'm sitting right now at my university giggle-squirming like an idiot and it's totally worth it.

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Great cast!

I've been thinking of maybe getting the Falcon, but it seems like something I would use a couple of games and then just leave it gathering dust somewhere. Should read some reviews of it. I would totally love replaying Penumbra & Half-Life 2 with this though.

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I was actually playing a Dreamcast game while listening... only to find out you only mentioned the Dreamcast for a few seconds... :hah:

I'm mildly tempted by the cyborg robot gaming thingamajig, but at that price I hope you talk about more in the next podcast to see how good it really is?

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Er... not to nitpick here, but I had to look at Shank because of the excited talk of all of the "hand-animation," which turns out isn't exactly true.

There is a lot of "tweening" and probably puppet (or new flash CS4 bone) tools putting arm and leg links together in the game, so it's hardly hand animated. Sure there are completely drawn frames on some parts I saw, but generally this stuff is making use of pose to pose shape swaps in Flash or Flash-like tools and is not what would generally be considered hand animating. With tweens you aren't drawing each frame one by one, so the computer does a lot of here to there stuff for you depending on an anchor point, parent, or bone structure, much closer to what you do in 3D animation. What they are using is definitely a more digital and money saving approach, which maybe isn't as difficult as you guys think as opposed to the old style full on animation or cell layers where you wouldn't have the luxury of moving body parts around on some sort of hinge without making physical cell or paper cutouts.

Anyway that bugged me. Sorry to be a dick. I love them cartoons and now I'm going to listen to the rest of this podcast...

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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You're right that it looks like there's tweening and joint stuff being done in Flash, sometimes making it look like a collection of illustrations of limbs being held together by brads or rivets (the Esurance ads do a similar thing), but it still looks a lot cleaner and has a lot more animation variety going on (for that level of fidelity) than most games attempting that style.

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... but it still looks a lot cleaner and has a lot more animation variety going on (for that level of fidelity) than most games attempting that style.

Yep, that's true. I guess the way you guys were describing it, I was initially excited it was going to be at the level of Dragon's Lair, Braindead 13, or that other throwback laserdisc type game you guys were talking about 10-15 episodes ago with a ton of traditional frame by frame animation inserted into a modern styled game with each state being covered in that manner.

But yeah, it certainly doesn't look bad at all.

Also, I caught that, Remo:

pEwjV5wt7ns&hl

FUCK YEAH DAD

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This is horrible - I actually hadn't heard about the Novint Falcon before you guys initially talked about it, and even then I didn't take too much notice. But after you talked about it again today, I just casually checked out their website and a couple of YouTube videos.

And... I really want this thing now. :hah: I have very little expendable income, but this thing looks pretty rad. And given how much of a tech geek I am, I can practically guarantee that if I bought the thing I'd barely use it... I'd really just derive a ton of pleasure out of owning one and using it once right after opening it up.

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Dear Thumbs:

Screw you too! :(

- Donald

PS: I didn't expect that e-mail I sent TWO MONTHS ago to show up on a cast.

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Dear Thumbs:

Screw you too! :(

- Donald

PS: I didn't expect that e-mail I sent TWO MONTHS ago to show up on a cast.

I have heard that we shouldn't believe your lies!!

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Also, I caught that, Remo:

FUCK YEAH DAD

Hahaha I'm glad that didn't go unnoticed. I didn't fully catch it until listening back through the episode.

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I'm really interested in that Novint Falcon now. Looks like something fun that would cause me to play some more stuff on the PC.

It reminds me of something I'd see in a bad movie with a kid playing video games(video-games?) in the future.

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Great episode and totally didn't feel overblown with having (effectively) four shows this week. The others were bite size. ;)

Anyway, I loved the discussion about the Beatles and thought I'd just throw my two cents in there about the mono vs. stereo aspect of the Beatles catalog. Chris mentioned how Sgt. Pepper's was a simple stereo mix (vocals on right, guitar on left, etc.), but the Beatles themselves had nothing to do with the stereo mixing, only the mono mixing. Many fans will argue that the true mixes are the mono mixes, which is a big reason the recently released box set in mono costs more than the stereo box set . . . it's more for collectors and they'll pay whatever Apple asks of them.

Moving on.

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Great episode and totally didn't feel overblown with having (effectively) four shows this week. The others were bite size. ;)

Anyway, I loved the discussion about the Beatles and thought I'd just throw my two cents in there about the mono vs. stereo aspect of the Beatles catalog. Chris mentioned how Sgt. Pepper's was a simple stereo mix (vocals on right, guitar on left, etc.), but the Beatles themselves had nothing to do with the stereo mixing, only the mono mixing. Many fans will argue that the true mixes are the mono mixes, which is a big reason the recently released box set in mono costs more than the stereo box set . . . it's more for collectors and they'll pay whatever Apple asks of them.

Moving on.

Yeah I know, but regardless I really like the stereo mixes, and prefer them to the mono mixes, regardless of intent or original involvement.

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Well, I bought Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road today, despite already owning a whole chunk of Beatles, so I guess I'm even more susceptible to buying the shiny new version of something than I thought. Also, got a Gretsch Rock Band guitar. So pretty. I loves me some Harrison something fierce. I'd kill for one of those McCartney mandolin-bass peripherals, but it seems they're only in the crazy $250 bundle. I even saw him play that thing live, and the second I had a chance to buy a RB replica, it would be done.

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Obviously I wasn't entertained by the Beatles section. However, I'm just going to explain what I mean rather than be a douche.

On other podcasts you have talked about games that I have very little interest in and or actively dislike but I have always felt that your discussions are balanced and interesting and I enjoy listening to you explain why you liked/loved a game for the qulaities it has and frequently it might change my mind about certain aspects of a title or if it doesn't it makes me appreciate why you like it.

I didn't get that from your talks about the Beatles game, nor did I feel like you were coming at it from an angle other than 'everyone must like the Beatles, those that don't are musical n00bs and that is why this game is great'

I also got the the feeling I was the annoying arsehole who would play all the songs you are sick of on all the other rock band games which probably didn't help endear me to the arguments.

Still, really loved the podcast and really enjoyed the talks on all the other games. Not sold on Left 4 dead but it was really interesting to hear how they are improving it over the original.

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