Comments on: Gaming Podcast 139: Pirate or Privateer?

By: Jonah Falcon

Jonah Falcon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:55:09 +0000

Two things about the original Pirates you didn’t mention:

1. You needed the cloth map to find out where you are, because you have to use a sextant to figure out how high the sun was in the sky at noon. (Now it’s just automatic.)

2. You could be the only member of your crew left during a fight, but so long as you defeated the other captain, you won. Picture you fighting a captain while 200 sailors are standing around watching. heh

By: Krud

Krud — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:20:08 +0000

Interestingly enough, there’s an Amstrad emulator for the Wii!

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiituka

(I mention this only for educational purposes, since everyone knows that it’s wrong to install unauthorized software onto a Wii.)

“Don’t Abuse Your Wii! Keep It Clean.”

By: Krud

Krud — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:25:06 +0000

*clears throat* Okay, I was going to ask Jonah to back me up on this, but why drag him into my nitpicking, right? ‘;D

The resolution issue? Is not an issue. If you have a 1080p HD screen, it doesn’t matter whether your viewing area is 24 inches or 60 inches, you’ll get the same number of pixels. So the bigger the screen, the less tight those pixels (if they even call them that on TV screens) will be. The spoilage I alluded to is not so much console-related (considering the only console I have is a Wii), but rather the PC*, which has been “Hi- Def” resolution for about a decade now. ‘;D [* - Or the Mac, if you like.]

Maybe PS3 games scale up well on 50 inches, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t really know firsthand. ‘:( *sniff*

Of course, if your basement (er, gaming cave) is HUGE, then you can sit far enough away for it to still be enjoyable.

BTW, by “whatever’s ideal for Natal,” I of course meant an exact replica of the living room used in Microsoft’s tech demo/video, just off to a corner of the imaginary gamer cave (which I admit I got carried away with, but I thought I heard Don say money was no object, which I took a bit literally. [Or perhaps I just ran with the cave metaphor a bit far, since caves are typically for hibernating. ':D]

By: eni_

eni_ — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:27:29 +0000

After having to listen to all the podcasts from episode 136 onwards to catch up due to being busy preparing for university and putting together my new gaming rig (Core i7 baby!), I can finally write an answer to a Question of the Week!
And so, without further ado, the first game that truly terrified me (and in many ways the last) was ‘Alien Trilogy’ for the PSX. Not in retrospect a very scary game, but I was only about 7 or 8 at the time and the game was rated as an 18… Not sure why I was allowed to play it. But after then, I never really got scared from games. Some games (like Systemshock and the Half Life games) managed to create a dull feeling of dread and foreboding, which in many ways is more ‘entertaining’ than straight shocking fear. In recent years the only game that managed to make me properly jumpy was when I was playing the Fear 2 demo, but the shock-factor soon wore off. None of the classically ‘scary’ games such as Resident Evil or the Silent Hill series ever scared me in the remotest, more often than not they merely bored me and so I got into the habit of simply ignoring games whose primary selling point is to create brown-trousered audiences…
As always, thanks for a brilliantly entertaining podcast, cheers and peace!
P.S: Monty Python quotes are always welcome… He’s not the Messiah!