Welcome to the early edition of the gaming podcast, because I’m going to be in Germany this week we had to record a bit early and post the podcast for listening. Hopefully this won’t screw up too many people’s schedules with a day-early release! This week we’re flashing back to Sid Meier’s Pirates and learning about women’s rights (or lack of) in the life of a privateer. We’ll talk a bit about the history of the Amstrad CPC 464 and cover some news:
Nintendo Wii Rumor: Price Rollback- Wii Sales Down 50 Percent
- Bethesda Sues Interplay Over Fallout License
- Bungie Says Natal Won’t Be Implemented To Be Gimmicky
The community questions were great, gave us lots of nice ideas for a future gaming cave! This week we’re riding on the community listener, Onyersix who wrote a good question of the week: “What was the scariest moment you ever experienced playing video games? We’re talking the type of shock that makes you need to go and put on a new pair of pants!”
Hey, did you notice our new microphone quality, Jennifer and I have upgraded our studio setup (by about $1,000!), hopefully you’ll notice the more dynamic vocal qualities.
Before Sony fans unite to comment storm, remember, the PS2 had a lot of great games and continues to have games coming through for its console. People are still debating the life-span of the Wii product line, regardless to overall sales figures while the PS2 no doubt had a long live and still continues to have a long life, heck 30%+ of gamers still play the darn thing. Sony has been able to utilize the PS2 and its profitability to glide through the initial PS3 sales slump and get the momentum growing for their current generation console.
Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson sat down with 
Gating the users ability to heal is a classic RPG/Adventure game mechanism for changing the playing field in terms of difficulty. You can make a game with weaker enemies in abundance and still cause you harm, take a look back at Gauntlet in the arcade for an example of this method. You can build challenging enemy styles and dungeon traps to cause the player to mind their step, look at the classic Zelda series and some of their crazy enemies. A great example is the Darknuts from The Legend of Zelda, it was a small knight that could only be attacked from behind but had a sharp little dagger if you bumped them from the front. You had to use tactics to wipe out a full room of Darknuts.
The game industry, like other entertainment avenues, is a risky business in which publishers have to pick titles they “predict” will do well in the market while passing on other “risky” propositions. While a the good ol’ shooter title will break sales records, the market cannot rely on one genre to carry the business especially considering many of these titles are forgotten within two months from launch. Publishers are going to be forced in expanding their reach to “family games” in order to finance new blockbuster titles.
The idea of designing a “family” game isn’t new to our industry, as a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest cornerstones of video game entertainment. Pong, Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many other classic titles were no doubt playable by the entire family, but things have changed. We’ve evolved from hit titles like Donkey Kong to hit titles like Halo. We migrated from 2D gaming to full 3D adventures and pixel graphics to pixel shaders, but where do we go next?
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!
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!
*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]
*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]
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.”
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.”
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
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