Consumer Reports on Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and PS3

This month's issue of Consumer Reports just arrived and I was intrigued to see "High-def DVD" mentioned on the cover. Wondering if they'd mention the PlayStation 3 as an option for a Blu-ray player, I flipped the magazine open to find myself on exactly the right page -- one of those annoying stiff cardboard inserts urging me to subscribe marked the spot.

The article gives "seven sobering realities" about being an early adopter of one or the other format. The second reality is "It's not cheap", which explains that players cost in the $500 to $1000 range and that movies will cost about $25.

The last paragraph of this section mentions the PlayStation 3:

You can get a more versatile high-def DVD player if you can wait until November. That's when Sony is supposed to roll out its PlayStation 3 video-game console, which will include a Blu-ray drive. But it will cost $500.

It occurs to me that this may very well be how Sony will pull a rabbit out of its hat. Compared to a $500 HD-DVD player, the $500 PlayStation 3 looks like a bargain, since it is a next-generation movie player that just happens to be on the low end of the price range ...oh, and it's a game console that happens to play three generations of software!

Between now and Christmas, I suspect that just about every medium-to-large newspaper will publish an article about HD-DVD and Blu-ray, trying to give some background for possible consumers. If this particular line -- that the PlayStation 3 is your cheap ticket to the next-generation movie player -- makes it out of Consumer Reports and into those articles, then Sony may get a favorable push in both the movie and game markets.

For those of us interested in games, this "cheap Blu-ray player" line isn't going to make the $500 or $600 entry fee any easier to swallow. But maybe Sony doesn't care about us -- maybe the PlayStation 3 Blu-ray player is Sony's cheap Trojan Horse.

Labels: ps3, sony

--jvm at 21:39

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Next-Gen: Games have head up butt

Another somewhat interesting commentary on Next-Gen today. You have to read a while to get there, but here you go:

So. Why aren't videogames popularly appealing? Because they've got their head up their butt. They're focused on being videogames - on taking their own metaphors literally - instead of on expressing something with the tools at hand. And also, maybe to some extent, because the tools at hand kind of suck, for the purpose of expressing anything meaningful. A developer has to actively work against the hardware, the controls, audience and publisher expectations, to get anything original done - and then those games tend to get buried.

Some good points on this last page, which is the one page I've had the most time to read. In particular, I'm pleased to see Silent Hill 2, perhaps the only game whose ESRB rating of Mature makes real sense, get the attention it deserves as a truly remarkable experience. I like the author's description of Shadow of the Colossus, even if I got something a little different out of it. And the mention of Silent Hill 4 and Psychonauts has me double checking that those games are on my to-do list.

Also, nice backhanded slap to the Castlevania designer.

Finally, you're a real fan if you spot the Silent Hill reference on the first page.

--jvm at 11:48

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Tomb Raider: Legendary Load Times

Unsurprisingly, I'm having an ok time playing Tomb Raider: Legend on my PSP. That's how fanboyism works.

To be clear, the playing itself is fine but the not playing isn't. That is, I'm very not impressed watching a load screen for FORTY SECONDS when I accidentally send Lara to her doom. Doesn't Sony have some quality rule that says a PSP game can't leave you staring at a static screen for more than 30 seconds? After all these years, is it really necessary for a hard load just to go back to a checkpoint that's 10 seconds back?

And, no, I don't think a load bar makes a static screen much better.

--jvm at 22:33

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Grumpy

To play Tomb Raider: Legend for PSP you have to upgrade to firmware 2.60. To upgrade the firmware you have to have a full battery. Not 2/3 battery with an AC adaptor connected, but FULL BATTERY. What kind of ridiculous overkill is that? Isn't 2/3 of a battery supposed to last 4 hours or so? Or maybe Sony just planned ahead for that point in a couple of years when a full battery won't mean more than five minutes of play. Still, if we can have dual-BIOS motherboards why can't we have a dual-firmware PSP for those occasions when someone wanks their firmware? Oh...right...stupid homebrew.

While picking up Tomb Raider: Legend at Rhino Games today I met the very first idiot clerk that I've encountered there in the past two years.

After 30 seconds in the store I got asked "So, you ready to reserve Madden?" A simple "No" seemed to stop him.

After browsing a bit, I ask for a copy of Tomb Raider: Legend for PSP and was told it wasn't in yet. After I bring to the counter an empty retail case, he checks the computer to find that ... WHOA ... they actually do have it.

"So, you going to apply your FIFA game credit toward that?" he queries. I reply that, sure, I'll take FIFA credit if he wants to give me some, but I actually don't know what he's talking about.

He did recommend the Nintendo DS for Castlevania. I guess he wasn't all bad, but it was close.

Update: Got the PSP updated. Yay. Tomb Raider has subtitles. Yay. But, like every other game, they're not on by default. Grrr.

Ah, well. Perhaps I'll get to play Tomb Raider tomorrow sometime. This took too long and now I've got to get to bed or I'll fall asleep feeding the baby tonight or at work tomorrow.

--jvm at 22:47

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WarioWare, Inc. - who cares?

I've spent about half an hour with WarioWare, Inc - Mega MicroGame$ and I don't see what all the fuss is about. If I wanted a dozen half-finished games with lazy graphics, I'd hit the games section on SourceForge. I've already moved on to Metroid Fusion, again.

--jvm at 00:19

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Save $99 at GameStop/EB Games

I'm still hitting the GameStop price drop link pretty much every other day to look for deals. Here's one I don't think I can pass up: the PSOne Final Fantasy VII demo reduced from $99.99 to $0.99. It's practically free! Too bad it's backordered...

--jvm at 10:55

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Nintendo: better at hardware than software

Just passing on this enjoyable commentary on Nintendo (at Next-Gen.biz). I'm still rereading it, but I'll pass along what I think is one of the more interesting claims (from page 3):

Unless the company finds some new and expressive voices, maybe at this point Nintendo isn't even necessary as a software developer. From Gunpei Yokoi on, its strong point has always been hardware.

This of the company that people have predicted, not so long ago, would pull a Sega and becomes a software-only company.

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 12:48

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Forget consoles. I'm selling out to BillG.

Cracked out Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the first time in what turned out to be nearly a year. My Logitech Dual Action USB pad has made the game quite a bit easier from when I tried to play with the keyboard, or even my old Gravis GamePad Pro. I still can't stand the way the camera shifts while driving in close quarters, and find myself often slapping the shoulder buttons to look backwards, releasing immediately, so that I have a straight-on view from the front again. Pretty sure there's an easier way, but not sure what it is.

Playing also pretty much solidified [claims of solidification subject to quick change] my desire to forgo the whole smear of next generation consoles for a video card upgrade in my PC. Right now I'm using Radeon Xpress integrated video, which is actually surprisingly good. WoW runs great, better than my iBook at least (wow, eh?), Doom 3 "runs", and I can nearly play GTA without major incident. Yet there are times where I wish I could see more detail in WoW, really play Doom, and not have GTA slow down to a crawl at random times puttering around town (much less when there's action).

As let's face it -- many of today's "must-have" games, from GTA to Madden to MMORPGs to the newest first-person shooters (I'd like to pick up a version of Half-Life episodes right now) are either WinPC compatible or WinPC exclusives. I know Matt cringes when he hears of Windows gaming, but even before the big "Gaming on Windows" initiative, I believe I'm back to drinking the Kool-Aid. For less than the price of a PS3, you can have one pretty good gaming rig, and it does, especially for us would-be coders, quite a bit more than an Atari+DVD player. In some sense, it seems to boil down to if I'd rather play Resident Evil or Half-Life, especially since I already have everything but the video card sitting right next to me now.

My only fear is a forced Vista upgrade in the not too distant future. That'd be painful. The Pax Microsoftiana brought on by stagnant developments in both OS- and IE/browser- lands have given us smooth and cost-free access to the latest in PC gaming tech (DirectX, etc) for nearly seven years.

--rufbo at 12:12

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Nintendo honesty on the GameBoy Micro

A couple months ago I asked whether the GameBoy Micro was a failure. Looks like Nintendo answered my question (from Next-Gen.biz):

Iwata: The sales of Micro did not meet our expectations. In the end, we failed to explain to consumers its unique value and they concluded that Micro is not worth the price they have to invest. Whichever hardware we talk about, platform business is the business of momentum. If we fail to build an initial momentum, we will have hard times. Simultaneously, it was the time when Nintendo had to expand DS sales, so we had to put more effort on DS, which were not contributing to the sales of Micro. We have to learn the lesson that we overestimated the success potential of Micro.

Seriously, that's about as straight as I think we're likely to get from a videogame executive. Perhaps this kind of frank talk is another Nintendo innovation that Sony could copy?

Now, I don't actually expect Sony to come right out and say "PlayStation 3 will be painfully expensive" -- in fact, I've said they should shut up. Nor do I think Microsoft will ever admit bluntly "we really botched the Xbox 360 production and distribution". But wouldn't it be refreshing if they did?

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 00:28

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Handheld games: excused for being short?

Buried at the end of GameSpot's review of Tomb Raider; Legend for the PSP is this tangential commentary on game length on consoles and handhelds:

Even if you haven't played the game [Tomb Raider: Legend] before, you can beat it in six hours, which is short for a console game (although it seems slightly more excusable on a handheld). (emphasis added)

How is being a handheld game in any way an excuse for being a shorter game?

Granted, most of my favorite handheld games are games that don't have a traditional narrative beginning and end like Tomb Raider: Legend. As I've said before, Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee is a brilliant game that I've come back to over and over again. Currently, I'm still steeped in pre-1980s pinball tables with Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection. Then there was my whole love affair with Ridge Racer. And I've certainly spent plenty of time with Lumines, even if it's not the digital crack that some might have you believe. Aside from those, I definitely enjoyed Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories a great deal (despite some flaws), and it does have a more traditional story mode. As a criminal sandbox, however, it doesn't lose all of its attraction just because the story ends.

The logical leap I don't get in the GameSpot review is that the length of the game itself is somehow mitigated by being on a handheld. How does my $40 feel any less blown because I played it on a PSP? Anyone?

--jvm at 23:50

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From Macworld's Peter Cohen:
"But I never intended to buy the game, so it's not really lost revenue," is a common refrain from people who steal software. That's bunk--you're still getting something for nothing. Looking at it another way: If you snuck into Disneyland and ride the Matterhorn for free, security should kick you out, regardless of whether or not you ever intended to pay.

This is from a relatively interesting article about piracy's affect on Mac "game makers" and porters, and what it does most effectively is show just how razor-thin the potential for profit in this business might be.

It is, however, missing several key points I would have liked to have seen, starting with the above quote. Sure, people who pirate games cost the game providers money. I'm pretty clearly on record agreeing that piracy, as it's commonly practiced, is a bad idea. Yet at the same time, if those pirates felt the game was worth more than the price (going to the store or firing up a browser, extending their credit via Discover card, etc) -- and yes, that is how capitalism is supposed to work. I think game X, which costs, say, $30 to make, is worth $50, pay $40, and we're all happy -- then we'd have a reason to argue about DRM, Steam, and friends. Let me rephrase: If pirates were all potential, full-fare paying customers, then this discussion, and discussions like it, would make more sense.

There's a [apparently very large] portion of the customer base, however, that doesn't think the $30 game is worth $30, nor do they, for whatever reason, believe it's worth the time to wait for the price to come down. Perhaps better stated, the longer they wait, the less they find the game's worth. They'll never buy. What do we do?

We sure as heck don't count each pirated copy as a lost $50 sale, and that's what drives me crazy. Would these schmoes pay $5 if you delivered the game to their door and lost $30 (remember, this is doorside delivery now) a game? Maybe. What the market is missing is a production and delivery method inexpensive enough to beat piracy's. Beating piracy's method is what the iTunes Music Store has largely done, by the way. Is it easier to find an old track by Bruce Ruffin on the iTMS and pay a PayPal dollar by clicking "buy" or search Limewire for a decently high-fi copy? Exactly.

The article has other flaws. I'm happy to see them talk to Macsoft, which is apparently putting Close Combat out at the same time as the Xbox and PC versions (kudos!) and Freeverse, which seems to be doing something similar. Yet they don't talk to Blizzard, the obvious big name in publishing Mac games The Right Way, nor Ambrosia, still a Mac-first company as far as I can tell, who have been most easily exploited by piracy but have stuck around for over a decade. Neither does Cohen talk to the PC side of the house, to see what the piracy rates are over there. (Yes, I realize if it costs you $30 to make each game but you sell scadzillions * [50% from piracy] * total possible full fare buyers == lots of copies on WinPC, you still make plenty of cash. Regardless, how is piracy seen by those guys?)

I'm not saying Blizzard, Ambrosia, or PC houses are going to change the moral of the story, but they would complete it. As happens all too often on usenet, this article creeps a little too closely to fanboyism and strays a bit too far away from what I feel is an implication of objectivity (here, read "journalism") in its omissions. "Our gaming houses are dying! Bring in Big Brother to fix it!" Here, we might all be better served by Mac game companies embracing the challenge of finding new means of production and distribution, much as Glenda Adams seems to do in Cohen's article.

--rufbo at 13:57

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Peter Moore quotes rufbo on controller complexity

Responding to my post about Atari 2600 game skills vs. PlayStation game experiences, Ruffin said:

Not only must one master a ten-buttoned, three d-padded controller in addition to complex HUDs

Today Next-Gen.biz quotes Microsoft's Peter Moore via GamerTag Radio:

"...Shoulder buttons, triggers, analog sticks, d-pads, I mean, there's a lot going on there when you compare it to the old Atari 2600 button-and-stick, which everybody could pick up and have some fun with."

Good to know the big guys are reading.

And Moore's kid and my kid have similar troubles when it comes to modern controllers:

"I look even in my house... there's no way that my 14-year-old daughter can really grasp [the standard controller]."

This is why I'm keeping my son on the NES and SNES for now. He can barely hold, much less manipulate, the PlayStation or GameCube controllers.

On a side note, I'm hoping that the boy takes to the GameBoy Advance when I finally pass that down to him. With a Nintendo DS in my future, I figure he can start with my Afterburning GBA as his first handheld. If I had to guess, he'll find everything but the shoulder buttons intuitive after his time on the NES.

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 13:02

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Finally in on the "secret"

Though I realize this is news for very few of you, let me tell those few of you that don't know that Scarface is absolutely required viewing if you've played or plan to play Grand Theft Auto: 3. Not only does it make the GTA3 soundtrack that much funnier, I believe we're also introduced to GTA3's 'protagonist' at the end of the movie.

Hey hey... I'm hot tonight.

--rufbo at 08:45

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Today's games about experience, not skillz

Back in the Atari 2600 and NES eras, you bought a game and mastered them by rote. The Metroid or Adventure muscle memory you sport today is a testament to the weeks and months spent practicing.

Today's Metal Gear Solids and Resident Evils are more about giving a kind of emotional experience than trying your physical skills. Just a modest amount of coordination is required to bumble through the majority of games as they feed you a little story on the way to a final cut scene.

--jvm at 23:14

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More on Backward Compat.

Adding to my previous post, a couple of more points on the backward compatibility article at Next-Gen:

• This quote from Christian Svensson struck me as interesting:
  

  As such, it has value as a bullet point in the system wars and the lack of it is perceived as a major deficiency in the face of consoles that do have it. In reality, people buy new hardware to play new games. (emphasis added)
  

  Seems to me the Wii virtual console could well disprove that last sentence entirely. We'll see how well Nintendo pulls it off this holiday season.
  
  
• This sentence from the conclusion could use an extra bit:
  

  Microsoft might just as well have made a virtue of its shortcomings, pledged BC for just a small proportion of really big hitting Xbox games, and moved on. We realize this isn't going to be a popular position to take but, Sony, under immense cost pressures, ought to consider the unthinkable and do likewise.

  The key word there is "unthinkable". Sony has made a pledge that the PlayStation 3 will be backward compatible to the PSOne and PlayStation 2. Even if it's just 99% like the PSOne-on-PS2 situation, they'll survive intact, I believe.
  
  But Sony has a big public relations problem, one that has gotten worse with nearly every announcement, clarification, and interview. The only bright spot is when they explained that the lobotomized PlayStation 3 model wasn't quite as awful as we'd been led to believe.
  
  Even if backward compatibility is not on the minds of most consumers now, it will be when they see a headline like "Sony Cuts More PlayStation 3 Features". Even if Joe Slashdot wasn't ever going to fire up a PlayStation 2 game in a PlayStation 3, the new that they're reneging on their pledge of backward compatibility will only cement the current impression that the PlayStation 3 is underpowered and overpriced.
  
  Again, the point is not whether that impression is accurate or not. The point is that if enough people have reason to believe it, Sony will pay a painful price.

That's all.

Labels: nintendo, ps3, sony

--jvm at 15:34

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TR:10A saved!

Core were a bunch of naughty boys, apparently. Eidos passed the Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary game to Crystal Dynamics, and it's slated for Windows, PlayStation 2, and PSP.

This appears to be the second time they've had Tomb Raider taken from them and given to Crystal Dynamics. That's gotta sting something fierce.

--jvm at 15:09

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Next-Gen on Backward Compatibility

Next-Gen.biz has an editorial today about backward compatibility in videogame consoles. The shorter version is that they think it's a nice but not necessary feature, and that Sony shouldn't waste too much energy on the PlayStation 3's promised 100% compatibility with PSOne and PlayStation 2 software. A bit I submitted luckily made it into the final article, and I also wanted to publish the longer version of my position. Here 'tis:

I'm in favor of backward compatibility, primarily because it's a feature that I use regularly. Over the more than five years that I've owned a PlayStation 2 my PSOne library has increased from 30 to 130 titles. I also completely replayed an old GameBoy game, Super Mario Land, in the past year, exclusively on my GameBoy Advance. However, I suspect I'm in a tiny minority that takes advantage of backward compatibility on a regular basis.

I do think there is business case to be made for backward compatibility.

A console maker send a strong message of support to its constitutents -- publishers, retailers, and of course consumers -- when it provides backward compatibility. Any publisher putting out a final big name game for the older platform, backward compatibility enlarges the pool of possible buyers by adding those folks on the new platform. For retailers, backward compatibility means that they are not immediately stuck with piles of software that no one will want to buy. And for the consumer, backward compatibility provides a huge catalog of older titles to enjoy in those first few anemic months after a new system launches. Certainly, one might reasonably expect that all three of these groups did benefit when games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Final Fantasy IX, both PSOne titles, arrived right around the October 2000 launch of the backward compatible PlayStation 2.

There is one other benefit I'd highlight for consumers: if there are exclusive games on the older hardware that the consumer never played, backward compatibility provides the obvious means for doing so. Many migrating PlayStation 2 and GameCube owners were probably gratified to finally pick up Halo 2 to play on their new Xbox 360. I'm sure Microsoft was pleased to welcome them.

There are, of course, caveats. The Xbox version of Half-life 2 launched the month after the Xbox 360 launch, and it wasn't immediately backward compatible. Valve subsequently complained about poor sales, so even good publishers and developers can get left behind when backward compatibility doesn't quite work fully. Retailers like GameStop are already already flooded with used games, and it is far more likely that they will be able to move those games, rather than any new product they have sitting on shelves. And, finally, any consumer reduced to playing last year's games on his new super machine is obviously going to feel a little letdown.

Stepping out for a bit, so more later.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 08:51

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Crap! Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Officially Cancelled

Update: See here.

The front page of Core Design relays the bad news:

Following speculation on the internet, we would like to offer the following clarification.

The video of Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition that appeared on certain sites was an unauthorised release of an internal presentation of a game that was being developed by Core Design until very recently. It was running on PSP and used a Core-developed engine. However, following a recent review this project has been officially cancelled by SCi.

Core is alive and well and working on some great new projects, and we are still planning to announce some exciting news very soon!

That pretty much says it all. It's a real shame, too, since that movie looks amazing. What lousy news to end the week.

In other Core news, they've been bought by Rebellion.

--jvm at 08:38

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LucasArts: Do it like we do *now*

Today's Next-Gen.biz reports that LucasArts president Jim Ward says:

We've adopted new philosophies at LucasArts which, frankly, the whole industry should adopt. We make kick-ass games, but on time and on budget. Failure on any one of those three points is failure for the project.

This must be a great consolation to all the Star Wars: Galaxies players, especially those playing the cancelled Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions. And a relief to those who bought delayed PC game, only to have it dramatically morphed into a different "kick-ass" game 2.5 years later. Or maybe he's just admitting SW:G is/was a failure?

--jvm at 10:22

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LowEndMac.com's Andrew Fishkin doesn't really want to know if it's better to upgrade an "old" Powerbook or buy a new Macbook, in spite of his stated intentions. Here's his quick summation:

Especially for serious gamers, the older PowerBooks with their graphics processors and dedicated memory run circles around the low-end Intel GMA950 graphics of the MacBook.

This is an strange way to make a decision on how to throw away $1100 or so, but let's play along. For him, the question appears to boil down to getting to play Quake 4, Rome: Total War, and SW:Sith Lords...

That means that the fastest PowerBook ever released (discontinued only a month ago) is the absolute minimum specification to play Quake4.

... on the move...

You see, I play games when I travel. Rather than spend too much money drinking in some rural motel bar, I'd rather fire up a game on my Mac and crush the enemies of Rome, flex my budding Jedi powers, or reduce the chest of some unsuspecting zombie to pulp with a well-placed load of buckshot.

... and on a 12-13" laptop he can take on a plane...

I also like to play games during long flights. Games and movies make the time go by quickly on my twice-yearly trans-Pacific flight.

Now the MacBook Pro is the perfect 15" laptop for me, but the problem is that I don't travel with a 15" laptop.

... and have that laptop run OS X. The MacBook's integrated video is too low end (Wait, what's the name of this site again?) and the the 15" MacBook Pro is too big for the plane. Um, okay, for this horribly specialized need, yes, you're stuck with an underperforming, old, 12" G4 Powerbook. (UPDATE: Now barefeats.com makes it look like the 12" ain't coming close, either. The 15" and 17" Powerbooks are throwing down 10 & 12 fps on Q4 in 1280x800 (the 13" Macbook's native screen res) to the Macbook's 9. Now there's no reason to bother with that 12"er either.)

That's a boring issue. Here's why I find the article interesting. There is a niche, and it's one I found out quickly when reviewing the Virtual Game Station on MacOS years ago at xlr8yourmac.com, for no holds barred mobile gaming consoles. My awkward use of "no holds barred" here is meant to describe something more than a PSP or Game Boy; you'll notice this guy is talking about not only the latest, but also the most hardware intensive games ("... I'm tired of those [one-year] old games," he remarks). People want to game without apology wherever they find it most convenient, especially in planes. These people usually have a good chuck of expendable income as well, I've noticed.

Just where does a serious gamer go for top of the line, compact, mobile gaming? I was surprised to find that Alienware's 12"er has integrated video too!, so the two-laptop, sell-your-soul-to-the-MS-devil approach may still not be the answer. If you keep up with MS's Origami project, you'll have seen another promised solution to the problem in the Origami video showing a fellow using it to play Halo, and he's obviously not at a desk. I'm suspicious such a box will fill Fishkin's needs, however.

In any event, there's a [very small?] market for high-end, ultra-compact gaming laptops, and we're reaching the point where mobile gaming is ready to happen.

Let's face it, anybody whining about not being able to game on a new MacBook is obviously missing something. I mean, heck, grab a copy of Half-Life or Madden for your MacBook, for crying out loud. They're missing something, that is, unless the person doing the whining is one of these folk -- the type that wants to have the image of -- to want to be able to enter the conversation about -- playing the latest, greatest, and most hardware intensive games, and wants to have experienced doing it on the go.

Labels: apple

--rufbo at 18:02

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Akumajo Densetsu doesn't work on a NES

The Japanese version of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, known as Akumajo Densetsu, does not work on an American NES using a Famicom-to-NES convertor. It isn't the adaptor hardware at fault, I don't think. Rather, as JohnH found in Wikipedia's NES/Famicom article, the NES is missing two audio pins that were on the original Famicom. Since I'm only hearing the harmony and not the melody and Akumajo Densetsu has special audio hardware on the cartridge itself, I'm guessing those missing pins are the issue. Reminds me of the time when my Commodore 64's SID chip started to die and I could only hear the white noise wave sound type.

Anyway, who knows a good source for a real Famicom?

--jvm at 17:29

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Blizzard drops the DMCA crap

Back in March I posted about Blizzard taking down some guy's eBay sales for his unofficial World of Warcraft guide, specifically invoking the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and his suit to make them stop. By way of Terra Nova, I find that CNET is reporting that the parties have settled and Brian Kopp, the plaintiff, can continue his sales. Looks like he won.

Now if we could just get the DMCA neutered or taken off the books, that'd be even better. Unfortunately, it's going to take more cases like this one, showing how the law is abused by big companies to slap little guys around, to make that happen.

Kopp, incidentally, isn't going to miss an opportunity to make a little more money. He posted a comment on the CNET story with a link to his site where you can buy his book.

--jvm at 23:56

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Impressions: Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

Can't post about T--b R----r, so it must be time for a Castlevania post.

Anyway, I snagged a $10 copy of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for the PlayStation 2 from Amazon/TRU over the weekend, and dropped an hour into it over the past two nights. This is a huge improvement over the regrettable Lament of Innocence, which isn't really a Castlevania game in the traditional sense. In particular, Lament dropped "exploration, item collection, ability evolution, and platform jumping", all qualities that the 2D handheld games and Symphony of the Night on the PSOne had used to such great effect.

The good news is that Curse of Darkness gets most of these qualities back, but in some important ways is even less of a Castlevania game than Lament. That's right: good news.

The abandoned castle, where the game opens, actually has some non-essential areas that are worth exploring. You can now collect items and experience, both of which evolve the abilities of the main character, Hector. I'm already using the material I've collected to forge my own weapons and armor. Certainly not the same as a rare item drop from an enemy, but charming in its own way.

The addition of dino buddies, sidekicks known as Innocent Devils, is a good move. These familiars float around Hector (free of the path-finding problems that plague dino buddies in other games) and can be put on autopilot or given explicit jobs to assist you. The little fairy I started with acts like a cleric in the back of my battles, pouring on the extra hit points as I get whacked. Already it's evolved to a new, more powerful form, and eventually I can even use it to forge new familiars. Basically, it appears they've bolted on a tiny bit of Monster Rancher. An odd choice, perhaps, but it seems to work.

The designers, at least in this first castle, have given up entirely on jumping 3D exploration. While the castle floorplan itself is three dimensional, you can only explore the third dimension through ramps or stairwells. In this important sense, the Castlevania formula is being well and truly left behind by the 3D games. From this perspective, Lament of Innocence was a necessary step, and I can forgive it a tiny bit for its sacrifice. Lament was the first 3D game on a truly capable system (let's admit it: the N64 games were crap), and it demonstrated just how the third dimension and jumping don't work together for vampire hunting. So Curse of Darkness appears to be a true 2D game with only a few necessary 3D accoutrements; you could have done it as a top-down 2D game on the GBA. It isn't a platformer any more, but it is at least a satisfying replacement. (Note: I'm not finished with the game, so perhaps things change later.)

So far, I like Curse of Darkness. Too bad we had to endure the first game to get to this point.

--jvm at 18:05

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DSQuake

Saw this apparent port of Quake for the Nintendo DS via Josh's post at Cathode Tan. I'm a sucker for Quake on any platform, so this just makes my desire for a Nintendo DS all the stronger. Hope it doesn't turn out to be a fake.

Watch the video.

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 10:51

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Core: We're not dead, yet! Honest!

So maybe the Tomb Raider remake is dead and maybe it's not. By way of the Tomb Raider Chronicles news page, I see that Core Design has updated its site:

Following forum speculation that Core Design is no longer trading, we're pleased to say we're still very much here, so worry not. In fact, we're waiting to officially announce some very exciting news very, very soon. Watch this space.

I hope that the current Tomb Raider: Legend release is the reason they chose not to announce something at E3 2006.

Let's say they are planning a rerelease of Tomb Raider with all the enhancements seen in that unofficial trailer. Isn't it kind of sad that the only thing worthwhile they will produce this year is a remake of the game that made them so famous 10 years ago?

Ok, no more Tomb Raider posts for a week. Honest.

--jvm at 21:51

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TR 10th Anniversary: much more than a port, but cancelled?

Watch this very impressive movie claiming to be the PSP version of Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary, on Google Video by way of Kotaku. As a certified Tomb Raider nut, my heart thrilled at seeing updated versions of St. Fancis' Folly, The Colosseum, The Cistern, and the Obelisk of Khamoon. Lara also shows off new moves which I'd like to think would lead to new puzzles and ways to tackle the existing levels.

The bad news is that the Google Video page indicates the game has been cancelled. Just recently, Kotaku had an insider's report on how well things were going.

In case Core or Eidos give a rip: if this plays as well as it looks, I'd buy it on the day of release. (Along with Tomb Raider: Kart Racing.)

--jvm at 10:55

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Rule of Rose developer interview

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks Rule of Rose could be controversial this year. I enjoyed Brandon Sheffield's interview at Gamasutra with director Shuji Ishikawa (of Punchline, developer of RoR) and Sony assistant producer Yuya Takayama, and I am simultaneously more intrigued and disturbed by the game's presmise. In particular, the interviewer presses on the question of the disturbing sexual overtones, which the director and producer then attempt to explain.

If you read nothing else, let me offer up this snippet:

GS: What was the inspiration for using the sexuality of prepubescent girls as a theme in the game?

YT: We wanted to depict the darker side of children. Not really dark, per se, but if you really think about kids, they aren't really afraid of the same things that adults are, and often aren't aware of the consequences. Something that may seem benign to them may seem wrong or frightening to adults, but it's really just a form of innocence.

SI: We sort of wanted to show not only how scary adults can be from a child's perspective, because that's been touched on many times, but also how scary children can be from an adult's perspective. We want to see that contrast.

Sheffield observes that they didn't fully answer his question, and gives an appropriate follow-up question. Pay attention all you other big media types!

There is also an interesting bit in there about another game from Punchline called Chulip, described as "a game in which you kiss people at the lowest point of their lives to make them feel happy, currently planned for a U.S. release in October, 2006 by Natsume". With EA telling us they're developing all kinds of new "IP", I really wonder if they would ever come up with something as wild as that?

--jvm at 23:47

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TR: Legend (PSP) pulling an Angel of Darkness?

I'm still waiting to read some opinions of Tomb Raider: Legend for PSP, but it's been pushed back again and again. First, it was to have a concurrent release with the other versions. Then it was going to be a month later, in early May. Then it was mid-May. Then it was early June. Now it's 20th of June.

I'm reminded of the delays that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness endured. When it was finally pushed out the door, it was clearly unpolished in most areas and even unfinished in others. Is the PSP version of Legend headed for a similar fate?

I don't mean that it will be unfinished, since it is a handheld clone of the console versions. Rather, I fear it will be unpolished and, worse still, buggy.

And every day that the PSP version is delayed makes its $40 price tag look too high. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions have already dropped to $35. The PC version is at $40. If they're lucky, the PSP version will still look like a steal next to the $60 price the Xbox 360 version is still commanding.

Which is all to say, with every delay my interest wanes and my hopes diminish.

--jvm at 22:10

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Sony doesn't read Curmudgeon Gamer

Sony just doesn't know when to shut up. Today we get this from Kaz Hirai:

With the PlayStation 3, we are keeping to our belief that we have the true next-generation console. It's all about the games. We all know that. It's about delivering compelling entertainment to the consumer once again. We are well on our way to showing that. We are in a very compelling position. I'm confident we will stay in the lead.

Except that we all know it's not about the games, at least to Sony. It's about the success of Blu-Ray -- oh, and the PlayStation 3 too, while we're at it. If it were really about the games, we wouldn't be hearing grumbling about developers not having a mature development environment with only 3 or 4 months left before the first games need to be finished.

Labels: ps3, sony

--jvm at 11:44

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PS3 may fail not over technology but bad PR

Watching the Coyote fall off a cliff for the umpteenth time can be funny. Watching Sony get sideswiped by another PR gaffe isn't.

Today we have The Inquirer saying the PlayStation 3 and Cell have critically flawed design and SCEE president and CEO David Reeves saying Sony wants "to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years" but whether they "have 40, 50, or 60 percent market share is not that important."

In the past weeks we've seen them struggle to explain the high price of the PlayStation 3, argue that they didn't copy the Wii controller, explain that the features removed from the cheaper PlayStation 3 don't cripple it quite as much as previously thought, and that they don't have plans to ban the sale of used games. (Sorry, I'm not digging up links for all those right now. You can find them.)

Is it any real surprise that SCEA publicity chief Molly Smith resigned last week?

The lesson of the "64-bit because it's two 32-bit processors" lie that plagued the Atari Jaguar is that some lies are so simple and compelling that they're impossible to kill. (Of course, this isn't limited to videogames of course. Most people still think Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats. He didn't.) When such stories come up, I think it best to apply overwhelming force , through the press, and stamp it out immediately. If you're lucky, you'll kill it. You can't rely on the press to fix it for you on their own.

My fuzzy recollection of the 1999-to-2000 period is that Sony dominated the press, burying the Dreamcast and hobbling the Xbox and GameCube before they were even born. Today, a not insignificant segment of the population want Sony to fall apart completely, so it's tempting to ascribe the recent public gaffes to a mass realization that Sony's a big sham, that the Emperor has no clothes. There is certainly some thread of truth there.

I think more importantly we have all changed and Sony's playing catch-up. Six years ago most of us probably got our information and opinion from the big videogame media sites. Magazines were more important for breaking news stories. And as a result, I think people were a little too caught up in the Emotion Engine hype.

Now I almost never see news stories through GameSpot or IGN. Rather, I see them linked to by a blog, and along with that link comes some nugget of commentary. Actually, not just one blog, but dozens of blogs. The result of this filter is that I'm less likely to get the company line first and more likely to hear news with an instant shot of opinion.

Whereas there might have been one or two highly publicized reports on Sony's pricing back in 2000, you now have hundreds of bloggers talking about it simultaneously. Earlier this year, the same thing happened to Microsoft with its Xbox 360 shortages. What did they do? They shut up and fixed the problem, for the most part.

Similarly, Sony needs to get out of the headlines for a month or so. When a bad story comes up, respond with overwhelming force to stamp it out immediately, but otherwise shut up. Stop trying to justify the price. Stop trying to explain the controller. Just put your launch together, and let people decide when they see the games on shelves.

Labels: microsoft, ps3, sony, xbox360

--jvm at 15:06

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Famicom imports on my NES

I finally got around to snagging the necessary hardware to play Famicom games on my top-loader NES. I tested the 60-to-72 pin adapter with my two Famicom games, Karateka and Bubble Bobble 2, and it works just fine. I'd never used the actual physical cartridges, so they had the usual videogame cartridge gunk on the contacts. With a little alcohol and a cotton swab, they cleaned easily and booted right up. One interesting point: when assembled correctly, the game's label faces the back of the machine, not the front like you see with domestic NES games in a top-loader.If you're looking to do the same, I got my adapter from Rob Webb in the UK. (The adapter is in the NES/Famicom section.) With the standard shipping it took 7 days from payment to my doorstep.

I've also ordered a copy of Akumajo Densetsu, known domestically as Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. The Famicom version reportedly has extra hardware built into the cartridge, and it will be interesting to compare with my American copy of the game, provided the Japanese game works properly through the adapter.

One last comment: I've spent some time looking more closely at my Famicom copy of Bubble Bobble 2 and I'm a little suspicious that it's a pirate. Compared to Karateka, a game I figure no one would make the effort to pirate, it has a cheaper looking label and uses a different plastic housing. Anyone have concrete tips on how to tell pirate Famicom cartridges from the real thing? Nintendo's anti-piracy site doesn't appear to cover the Famicom...

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 00:46

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Violence equals controversy? What about sex?

GamePolitics has posted a list of contenders for the most controversial game at E3 2006. I thought it a little unusual that no sex is mentioned in any of the games, aside from the obligatory Hot Coffee reference. Were there no games featuring sex at E3 this year?

For example there is a creepy edge to the trailer for Rule of Rose, which I mentioned a while back, that GameSetWatch described as "dressed in an odd mist of amateur pedophilia". Mightn't that stir up some folks at NIMF?

What about Rumble Roses XX, which is just one X short of looking really naughty? And isn't there another voyeur volleyball game on the way?

I realize that Jack Thompson has us all a little conditioned to think violence is the height of controversy, but isn't it far more likely, especially after Hot Coffee, that it is sex -- not violence -- that will draw the headlines?

--jvm at 13:16

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Microsoft odd-man-out on backward compatibility?

First, the context, from Kotaku:

Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that. It's a very complicated thing... very complex work. I'm just stunned that we have hundreds of games that are backwards compatible.

He added: "more are coming, but at some point, you just go, there's enough, let's move on, or people aren't as worried about a game being backwards compatible - and I like to think we've upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compat."

Sony set the standard for backward compatibility with the PlayStation 2. We already know that the Wii will be playing GameCube games. (This is because Nintendo didn't really design a brand new system; instead they focused on a whole new control interface and simply turned the hardware they had up to 11.) Furthermore, the Wii virtual console will give access to much of Nintendo's back catalog, so in that sense it is more backward compatible than anything else available.

So why is Moore so down on it? Perhaps it is because it's one of the things that they know they won't do as well as the other guys. They won't have a motion-sensing controller, either, so instead of getting with the program or simply touting their own advantages we have Microsoft reps pushing the "Sony copied Nintendo" line pretty hard.

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 10:54

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Carnival for June 2006

The Carnival of the Gamers is being hosted by Kim Pallister this month. The point of the carnival is to let the community, such as it is, self-select a few blog posts to highlight from the past month. It's currently double-posted, so try here or, if that doesn't work, here.

--jvm at 09:51

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