2006 December | The Games of my Life

Archive for December, 2006

The Wiimote class action suit

Published

1 year, 7 months ago

. 1 Comment

There’s not a lot to say about the recent class action suit against Nintendo.

What the news media are reporting is that the wrist straps are “faulty”, which, during play, caused them to break, which in turn made the wiimotes “fly out of the user’s hands”, breaking TVs and possibly simply injuring people.

In reality, this is not more than a bunch of dishonest idiots trying to get rich quickly without working, and taking advantage of the ease (and chances of working) of stupid lawsuits in America. If you can’t produce, steal from those who do.

Just a few facts:

- Nintendo warns users repeatedly not to let go of the wiimote while playing. Indeed, they might not have included the wrist strap at all. They did so as a courtesy, because they knew some people would get too excited while playing.

- Anyone who lets go of the wiimote is not following the usage instructions. In a sane world, this should cause the suit to be thrown out immediately.

- Nintendo has already offered to replace straps. Again, they didn’t need to do this; they could simply say that, if users follow the instructions, straps won’t even be needed. But they are being nice.

- This suit has as much merit as someone sticking a fork in their eye, and then suing the fork’s maker for not putting a “Do not stick in eye“ warning on it. Companies should make safe products, yes, but they aren’t responsible for stupidity. It’s revolting how people can be stupid idiots, and be rewarded for it.

- Finally… You’ve got to see this comic, and this one as well.

Bad news reporting: The Virtual Console Archive

Published

Dehumanizer

1 year, 7 months ago

in Commodore 64 games, Consoles, Misc stuff and Wii games

. 3 Comments

Since I bought my Wii, a site I’ve visited regularly is The Virtual Console Archive, which has news and reviews related — you guessed it — to the VC.

However, in one of the last posts, there’s so much ignorance that I’m not even sure it’s a joke or not. I believe it isn’t, however. The post is called Commodore 64 games to join the Virtual Console, and it includes this gem:

All in all quite underwhelming news. The Commodore 64 isn’t even a console! The games have dated too much for them to be worth downloading unless they were 50 or 100 Wii Points at the most. At least that way you could spend your change on a novelty bit of nostalgia and fill up yet another of the 48 channel slots!

I don’t even know where to begin.

Isn’t a console? So what? I’d see it as “the VC isn’t limited to console games! Cool!”. Besides, the C64 was turned into a console in 1990 (by then, it was admittedly too late, and it wasn’t successful), simply by removing the keyboard and disk interface.

Have dated too much? I can’t believe this one - either this is a joke, or the reviewer never had anything but consoles in his life. The C64 compares favorably to the NES! Better graphics, better sound, and more varied game genres. In fact, a lot of C64 games were converted to the NES, and the ports were usually much worse. The C64, meanwhile, could do a Super Mario Bros. perfectly well. If C64 games were to cost “50 or 100 Wii Points at the most”, then they’d have to give NES games for free.

Really, to suggest that the C64 is more “dated” than the NES… Ah, youngsters, these days…

Oh, and one more thing: unlike what the news (and I’ve seen it in other places, too) suggests, this is not “C64 games coming to the VC”. This is a company (System 3) releasing ports and remakes (of their own games, and Epyx’s) for the VC (and they’re releasing some for the DS and PSP, too). The Virtual Console isn’t just a means for playing old console games; new games will be released for it (much like the Xbox Live Arcade), and in this case some of them are remakes or ports of old games. It doesn’t mean that we’ll be regularly seeing new C64 games there, among NES games, SNES games, and so on.

Jets’n'Guns: Gold Edition

Published

Kanzentai

1 year, 7 months ago

in 2000s games and PC games

. 2 Comments

Well, as my first post, I’d like to point out something I just found out about.

Rake in Grass has just launched an expansion pack for their great game, Jets’n'Guns!!

More of a “ok, the game’s as it should’ve been now” than a “hey, new stuff!” package, the so-called Gold Edition brings new features (well, duh ^_^’) like:

the game now supports 800×600 resolution, which means more baddies on the screen, more items onscreen in the shop, etc.;
More weapons, more foes, more ships, twice as long story mode and more music from the norse gods Machinae Supremacy (among others)!

If you like side-scrolling, R-type-like shooters with very nice graphics, excellent gameplay and are known to have the occasional bit of spare time on your hands, make your way to the game’s website and indulge yourself on an early holiday gift.

Consider this though: if you already own the “not gold” version of Jets’n'Guns, the Gold Version will cost you $9,95. If you do not (and shame on you if you don’t!), then it’s $29,95.

(Should you find yourself thinking “Weren’t the ads supposed to be on the right?”, I apologize: it’s my fault. I just saw this and made it my immediate priority to share it with the world in the appropriate medium, this blog.

My next posts will be much better, believe me )

[it was already quite good, but… you forgot the link. Here it is: Jets’n'Guns. - Dehumanizer]

Nintendo Wii: first impressions

Published

Dehumanizer

1 year, 7 months ago

in Consoles and Wii games

. 2 Comments

NOTE: the following is translated and adapted from a post of mine on the Nintendo DS - Portugal forum.

I have it at home, since yesterday.

I’ve been playing with it for several hours, now. Unfortunately, my brother (who is the one who bought it for me; I wasn’t in the country on release day) was only able to buy the basic package: the console itself, Wii Sports, one wiimote and one nunchuk.

I haven’t been able to explore Wii Sports thoroughly, as my TV is in my bedroom, and the bed is in the way. I’m going to move the TV to the living room today or tomorrow, hopefully. I’ve won a couple of tennis games (which is much more fun than you’d imagine), but the “real thing” will be when I can play with more room, and with more people (which will require more wiimotes, and they’re completely sold out right now).

Besides disk-based games, the Wii supports several channels, and can go online. Connecting it to the Internet was extremely easy; there were no compatibility problems with my Linksys WRK54G router, which I already use for the Nintendo DS. The wireless range seems to be better than that of the DS, and it now supports WPA encryption (which I’m not using, though, because of the DS - only WEP there). As soon as you go online, the console updates its firmware, which takes a little while, but no effort at all.

News and weather channels are available on the channel selection screen, but they’re not working yet; according to Wikipedia, they’ll be up and running either this month, or in January. Same thing about the Opera browser, whose release date is apparently December 23.

One of the most interesting channels is, of course, the Virtual Console. Apparently, new games will be released every friday. I’ve already bought a few: Donkey Kong (NES) due to nostalgia (even though it’s a relatively poor version, quite inferior to the original arcade), F-Zero (SNES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive), Super Star Soldier (PC Engine) and Dungeon Explorer (PC Engine). A special note about Mario 64: I never had an N64, and, though I had already played the game using emulators, and later on the DS, I had never played it using an analog controller (in this case, a GameCube one) until yesterday. And the game really needs one; it’s like I was playing a different game! Moves and tricks that I had to struggle with on the DS come up absolutely naturally here. The N64 version doesn’t include the DS extras (3 new characters, more stars, better graphics), but this game really requires an analog stick…

A couple of PC Engine games support 5 players at a time. Dungeon Explorer is a more complex Gauntlet clone, and Bomberman 93 probably needs no introduction. Since the Wii can only support 4 wiimotes or classic controllers at a time, and up to 4 GameCube controllers, you need to use a combination of both. I have 4 GC controllers, so I will, hopefully, be able to play 5-player Dungeon Explorer after the next lunch here.

One warning: some (not all) NES, SNES and Mega Drive games (not PC Engine, oddly enough) weren’t, originally, properly converted from NTSC (60 Hz) to PAL (50 Hz); they had black borders on the screen, and were about 13% slower than the original versions. Since they’re perfectly emulated here, and the European Wii uses emulated PAL versions, the problem persists. If you’ve played the original versions and were OK with them, you won’t see a difference here, but it’s a pity that Nintendo didn’t do the extra work of fixing this problem… after all, the Wii supports 60 Hz PAL, unlike the original consoles.

And that’s it for now. When they’re available again, I hope to buy Wii Play (which includes an extra wiimote), a second nunchuk, and a couple of classic controllers. As for games, I want Zelda, Red Steel, DBZ: Tenkaichi 2 and Call of Duty 3. It’s likely that I’ll only be able to get most of those next year, though…

Blog moved!

Published

Dehumanizer

1 year, 7 months ago

in The Games of my Life (site)

. 0 Comments

If you’ve arrived here through the front page, you’ve already seen the redirection page, I believe. Any individual post, however, is transparently redirected, with no warning message. And, of course, if you use the RSS feed, you won’t even see a change.

Anyway, this blog’s new address is www.thegamesofmylife.com. Please, update your bookmarks. If you have a link to The Games of my Life on your own blog your site, I’d appreciate it if you updated it as well.