I'll add another big Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! recommendation.  I'm so glad I gave into the peer pressure on this one, it's a very fun little game.  The music is great, but the hilarious scenes that play out because of your cheering are the icing on the cake.  I was skeptical of all the praise I was reading about the game, but they really do pull off a sort of 'stylus choreography' that connects you to the music.

My girlfriend and I have even started yelling "Ouendan!" when we're in some kind of frustrating situation, like having trouble cooking dinner or if we can't find our keys.  ("Ouendan!" is what the people-in-trouble yell (dramatically) to get the cheer squad to come help them with their woes.)

Oh, and you can find it for $33 + $6 shipping from this ebay seller.  He was recommended by a bunch of people on another forum.  I ordered from him and got my copy in 3 days.  In case that link dies, the guy's ebay name is "kyoto_temple_artist".

Best Japanese Arcade Game That We'll Never See in America:

I don't know the name of it, but this game seemed like it was the hottest thing in every arcade I saw in Japan a couple months ago:


You collect/trade game cards that have various troop types.  You could have archers, mounted units, spearmen, etc., and it looked like some had special abilities as well.  You play the game by moving your cards around on the game surface.  That's right, somehow the game table can scan what your cards are, where they are, and which way they're facing.  

In this picture the guy has all his units pulled back in his fortress, I think he had just made his archers retreat to defend against some uber-unit his  opponent had advanced.  After defending that attack, he'll try to advance to that horizontal line on the table.  It's some kind of forward defence wall.  Oh yeah, and this guy is playing head to head with another person sitting opposite him.

Shogun: Total War meets Magic the Gathering, mmm...

...genuine and intentional level design used to slow the pace down a bit, and raise the heart beat.

Nothing raises up the game tension like Kryptonite Fog!


damn you tripod! *shakes fist*

The smoke in Call of Duty 2 might be close to what you're thinking of, very well implemented.

They'll just have to make up for the poor per-unit profit with volume.

I haven't seen the inside of the 360 architecture, is there an airflow cooling system inside with fans?  Or is it just heatsinks over the processors?

Two rear fans, right heatsink is CPU, left one is GPU.

(From anandtech's dissection)

By your standards, when should November-December titles be eligible for an award?  You say World of Warcraft shouldn't win anything since it came out November 2004, but you also say King Kong/Aeon Flux/True Crime shouldn't win because they just came out November of this year.

If you take out the arguments related to Nov-Dec release dates, in your article you don't seem to have much problem with their choice of winners.

I'll assume you're talking about the xbox x2vga cable mentioned in the other thread? It looks like you're supposed to plug it into your computer speakers or a theater system.

Have King Kong: Special Edition on its way from Netflix today.

My next EMERGENCY! disc has just been moved up the Netflix queue.  Now that Season 2 is guaranteed, I don't have to ration my EMERGENCY! experience as carefully!

Microsoft has a lot more Japanese support this time around.  I can't quantify how much, but it has been talked about quite a bit.

I think it really comes down to how well the XBox 360 sells in Japan. If MS does as poorly as it did in the last generation, I doubt too many of the Japanese companies will feel compelled to jump onboard.

I'm very curious to see what happens on the Japanese 360 launch day.  I just don't see how it would be possible for Microsoft to make the 360 a success.  They're starting from scratch, the Xbox 1 essentially never existed in Japan.  

I was in Japan a couple months ago, and even in the biggest toy stores Xbox games had zero shelf space, out of 6-7 rows of Sony and Nintendo.  In fact, I think the only American piece of electronics I saw for sale over there was the iPod.

I think the x2vga adapter does what you want, I have no idea how good it is or what other options there are.

16 bit RPG, I have to admit you're really tempting me to dust off my PSP.  If they had released this during an RPG drought, I think I'd even be able to overcome my fear of "over $30" portable games.

What's the length of LoH supposed to be?  And is there any character customization or some other mechanic that'd encourage playing it a 2nd time through?

The girlfriend wanted to see what all this "360" hubbub from me is all about, so we did a drive-by of two Best Buys and a Target in Boston.  It's cold and rainy, and it looks like only half of the people in line thought to bring an umbrella.  The Target had about 10 people, and the strip mall Best Buy had maybe 30-40.  The Best Buy by Fenway had the most, maybe 50-70?

Good thing it's only 47 degrees tonight, it was below freezing a few nights ago.

Oh yeah, and there was a police presence watching over one of the Best Buy lines!  :shock:

Damn you, human nature!  I can't help but find myself wanting a 360 more and more as it keeps getting more impossible to get.

But as good as Kameo is, it still can't compare to the mother of all launch titles, which needs no introduction:


As hard as it may be for some of you to believe, Oblivion has lived up to all the hype.  It's everything I hoped it would be, and more.  kathode, I don't know how you guys managed to get this game finished by launch, but thank you!

edit: this would be funnier if imageshack was working at the moment :P

I'm still horrible with HDTV terminology...my non-HD Sony Wega would be 480i, right?  And that means that compared to the shot on the left, my TV would have the same resolution, but half the framerate?

Hetz, would it be possible to do a comparison shot with and without high def turned on?  I'm trying to figure out what the 360 would look like on my mere mortal television.

Never seen a single one of these. Are they worth it?

Skip the first two movies, they try to hard to include everything from the books and ended up as a spastic flipbook of 5 second clips.  Instead, read the first two books, they're quick reads and you could easily go through both in one night.

The 3rd and 4th movies are definitely worth seeing, they finally realized they were allowed to cut scenes out of the book.

Whoa!  That was damned cool!  I'd like to see that in non-postage-stamp size. :D

Go see the new Harry Potter.  Both Warner Bros. movies and the internet trailer released the same day as Goblet of Fire hits theaters?  My guess is that it's attached.

Yup, I saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter last night and it had the Superman trailer.  Nice surprise. :)

When you psych up, your tension raises by 5, then 20, and then 50.  That last psych up also puts you in "high tension," which means big damage.

Besides the extra damage, I've encountered an enemy that's more dangerous every other time they get hit.  I'll get injured more if I hit him twice, I'm better off hitting him in one smack on the 2nd turn.

Back to FF12, I'm excited about the changes.  Square hasn't made a less-than-great main series FF game yet, and I doubt they're going to start now.  Tradition is fine (DQ8 proves that), but change can be good, too.  Honestly, I'm a lot more excited about FF12 than I would have been if I knew it was playing it safe.

You still haven't played the demo! :)  Even if I did want FFXII to be an offline MMO, there's still just something that doesn't feel right in the demo.  Besides not being fun, it just seems...awkward.  Again, hopefully it's just something you need time to get used to.  Too bad they didn't include an intro/tutorial style level with the demo, maybe that's all it needs.

I'm praying they'll have a growing tension between Mr. Eko and Locke.  My two favorite characters, both have more survival skill than everyone else, and they have very different mindsets.  This has so much potential!

I'm extremely disappointed as well.  I don't get what they're trying to accomplish with this new combat system, I guess they really liked the system in FFXI and wanted to have something similar looking?  

Maybe I just need time to get used to it, but it just felt like I was playing a clumsy MMORPG.

At least the cutscenes were great, this demo made me more excited for Advent Children than for FFXII.

edit: just saw your post Gratch, I hadn't read any of the press on the game and I instantly felt the MMORPG vibe.  Terrible idea.  And I'm one of the few people who liked FFXI!

Quickie impressions, I'm not even past the first quest:

[*]I love love love the way you travel in the outside world.  There's no little minimap in the corner, so you actually get to explore.  I think it's a great way to make you feel less on rails.
[*]I like the visuals very much.  The characters and enemies seem nicely detailed, and the animations are especially good.  Attacking, enemy abilities, even sheathing your sword--it all looks great so far.
[*]The game is hard.  I hear it's easier than other Dragon Warrior games, which are supposedly really hard, but this is the first time I've played a Dragon Warrior.  It's entirely doable at this early point in the game, I was just surprised that I had to spend time wandering around levelling up in random battles before being able to complete the very first mission.
[*]I love the enemies.  I'm guessing these crazy creative critters are a staple for the series, but this is my first time meeting a Bunnicorn (bunny with a horn) and I thought he was hilarious.  I haven't even beaten the first boss yet, and I've already seen a very wide variety of monsters.[/list]
Big thumbs up so far.  I'd write more, but I'd rather get back to the game. :)

Now Qbe does Japanese, I can do a tiny bit of Spanish, and can recite the German alphabet - from high school, for some bizarre reason it's stuck with me.  And of course, you know high school languages - I can also ask Rolf to pass be the bread and butter, or I can ask where a library or a toilet is...  And, for me - the numbers mean nothing, soooo.... :roll:

The screenshot text doesn't really say anything interesting, basically:
"If you choose this new setting, you're going to be asked if you see a picture.  If you don't see the picture for 10 seconds, your console will go back to your old settings.  Press 'A' to return to David Hasselhof's Greatest Hits."

I think it bears a closer resemblance to icons Rich used before yours, but I agree it's most likely a coincidental resemblence.

This is the closest lookalike I could find in the GIS archives, but I thought there was an icon on the sidebar of the old GG site had an even closer match.

What's the buzz on the Armored Core game coming out?  Is it supposed to be any good?

Probably in no small part because it takes quite a bit of gas to deliver the mail...

Aren't most mail trucks electric powered anyway?

The planes run on hamster wheels?

Wee!  It's fun to play telephone!

Let's start with a rumor that Sony has patented this technology.

Then let's have joystiq.com make a sensational "PS3 won't play used games" headline, even though the article itself thinks that it's "not likely" to happen.

Now we can ignore the body of the article and treat the headline as news.

Next step?
Sony is going to put little tracking devices in their games purple monkey hopscotch

I think I've lost my willpower as well. Male cheerleading, I'm ready for you.

[lso don]

I also don't get why you bolded what you did.  Why did you?  I don't understand . . .

Why don't you try to think a little before posting what you did.

Don't try to argue with this new form of debate.  It's unarguable!

FYI, the "Baba Yetu" song in the menu is a Swahili rendition of the lord's prayer, "our father who art in heaven, etc."

Woo!

"Oh NO you di'in't!"

Oh man, someone please post the one of him eating a watermelon, please!

If you're having trouble with cities growing too fast and turning sick or unhappy (worry about unhappiness more than sickness), try turning some of your population into specialists, or onto foodless production tiles.  If you're using the automated citizen allocation, there's a button to "halt citizen growth" that'll do its best to keep the food income neutral.  Or, you can set it to prioritize production and commerce, and it will put food tiles at a lower priority.