N'gai Croal is awesome:
"Nintendo, the company for which records were made to be broken. It's now the second most valuable company in Japan, behind only Toyota. Yes, I did say wow. It took the third coming of Jesus the third entry in the Halo series for the Xbox 360 to surpass the Wii, yet the gap was a mere 26,800 units. I expect the Wii to resume its lead in North America next month and do so for the foreseeable future."
Read the full thing.
Because no one seems to get it right, I have posted the musical notes / music chords to "My Belruel" (actually Tycho's Ode) here:
A A - A
'twas the twelving day of Everfair
E E - E
when fell my maid of raven hair
D D - D F#m F#m F#m
beneath her cloven standard of the wren
E A A - A
and damn that roiling goblin horde
E E - E E
we'd almost slain the overlord
D D - D D F#m - E E
but i could never roll an elf again
A A - A
"The Queen of Bells and Battle-Downs"
E - E
she wore the title like a crown
D D - D F#m - F#m E
Foes so deep a man would drown, but she still stood alone
A - A -
a princess and a duchess both
E E - E
and sworn to nine prestigious oaths,
D D - D F#m E
her duties, they would take her to that twisting spire of stone
A A - A
Against his tower, a silhouette
E E - E
She called like a coronet
D - D D
And the green sea of his armies burst from warrens far below
A - A
The pacts he'd made with demonkind
E E - E E
Had rent his thin and tattered mind
D - D - F#m E
And hellish princedoms occupied the arrow he let go
A - A
They took her through the crowded square
E - E
And laid her at the temple stair
D D F#m F#m E
The sorcelled barb of Arudair beyond their healing arts
A
there stands a circlet on her brow
E
that turns the blades of men around
D F#m
But if Belruel could hear me now
E
This song would pierce her heart
A A - A
'twas the twelving day of Everfair
E E - E
when fell my maid of raven hair
D D - D F#m F#m - E
beneath her cloven standard of the wren
A A - A
damn that roiling goblin horde!
E E - E E
and damn their hell-bound the overlord!
D D - D F#m F#m - A E A
but i could never roll an elf again
Tycho from Penny-Arcade said this tune was based off of a default song in the preview build of Jam Sessions - I can't find any song that matches it in the final release.
He seems to poetically, or randomly, intersperse extra notes or fewer notes, and I have not annotated where he'd strum the guitar without holding a key, which makes a sound but produces no note.
NO one on TEH INTERWEBS has bothered to really try to write down each note on each line, just the notes that are on that line in the order they appear. I'm quite disturbed at the lack of interest of this particular piece - it is one of the finest pieces of work the author has ever done, and it's like it's just something he did and tossed, and so has everyone else.
In a way, that's the saddest fate of Belruel.
I am currently trying to practice this with my 10yo daughter, but without a proper music sheet and knowing what timing to set the metronome, it's about near impossible. I shall have to involve my lovely Latin wife, who plays classical piano, for aide. We spent almost two hours tonight (1:45) playing THE FIRST THREE LINES. After the first half hour even my well disciplined child asked "Do we have to keep playing?" I told her "This is drilling, sweetie." She was a trouper the rest of the time, no questions asked; we got our yucks in with all of our bloopers too.
or more)
"Nintendo's market strategy of attracting the casual gaming audience is having continued success. According to figures released by ELSPA and Chart-Track at the beginning of this month, over a million Wii units were sold in the UK over the last half year. [The Wii] accounts for over 50% of the overall market share in hardware units including the PS3 and Xbox 360."
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata is so happy he thinks the Wii could outsell the PS2's 120 million consoles sold record.
What does this mean? This means that the Wii's transformation of what gaming is - is well underway. Just as Sony changed gaming forever by marketing games to the cool joe, the average jock, the Wii will have a similar or greater impact.
It also means that all this stuff you read from videogame "journalists", and I use the term loosely, wherein they deride the Wii or cast it in an ill light, unsure of what it means, portraying it as a family, silly affair, is complete and utter crap.
Sony is struggling to keep the PS3 from becoming the next Sega Saturn. The 60GB PS3 is already dead - they aren't making any more.
There are many people who may be so stubborn as to never get buy a Wii just because, well, it's a Wii, or it was made by Nintendo. I find that silly. I have no brand loyalty. I left Nintendo when the N64 came out and never looked back, not even for the NDS (I acquired two after my kids got their Wii). Gamers can ride the revolution now or - wait.
There are two good reasons (for a gamer) to not get a Wii right now:
A friend of mine came up with a good answer to an earlier post:
Put the two together and I get all hot in my pants.
Dove cued me into an excellent revelation:
The real failure of the XBOX 360 and the PS3 are the same: Sony and Microsoft both made the console that their fanbase said they wanted. They assumed that people would answer "within reason" or "within how much they would be willing to pay for what they say they want."
Of course, people don't do that. The first rule of usability is "don't listen to users." (Instead, watch what they do.)
Nintendo came along and said "Well, our research says they'll spend $250. What can we cram into that?"
The PSP is what everyone said they wanted - a GameBoy Advance that plays 3d games. Then the NDS comes out with less power and trumps it - because it lets you do something new, to interact in a new way. The Wii is essentially the same. It's called "Blue Ocean" strategy in business leet speak.
GP2X versus PSP
This is something I see come up a lot, for some reason. GP2X versus PSP? Not truly comparable, because the GP2X is such a niche device. If you want a handheld that does non-3d emulation, you get a GP2X. You are already "not normal" for even wanting emulation, let alone open source.
If you could only get one, as always, the question boils down to "What kind of games do you want to play, and how much are you willing to pay for them?"
The wireless router (Ativa) that's gotten our Wii online also let Maria and I try out Mario Kart DS via WiFi. We both choose "Worldwide" and eventually came up with different opponents - sadly, it seems you can't game with friends and worldwide opponents, which is gay.
She's played the game extensively and claims to know every track. I sat there configuring her NDS while she played on my black one and after a while she said "He left."
"Who left?" I asked.
She looked puzzled. "The fourth player."
"The losing one?" I asked rhetorically.
Later still, she said "Now the third place person left! It's just me and the other guy."
I told her "They leave because they are tired of losing."
Before she won the cup, the 2nd place person quit too. She was not amused.
I figured she had a bad game - she'd won two cups before this, but then she kept winning and I realized "You're really good at this."
"Thank you, Papa."
"No, really. Anyone still playing Mario Kart DS should be good."
So we called up Billy's house and I thought Sarah answered, but the voice replied "No, I'm Zach."
Doh. Way to make a boy feel manly. Mistake him for his mother. I fall over myself by quickly saying "Hey I was trying to reach you anyway, what's your Friend Code? Maria and I have a wireless router and want to try out Mario Kart DS with you." Actually I wanted to chat with Billy but this worked.
Zach helped me find out where to find what our Friend Codes were, and I discovered that if Zach was my friend and I was Maria's friend but Maria wasn't Zach's friend - we can't connect. No error message, you just time out after 5 minutes of tedium. We rectified this. I let him and Maria chat on the phone a bit before we switched off again.
Zach then did merrily trounce upon our bodies, karts and all, winning three cups in a row. Partway into cup 1 I heard his mother call him and he whispered on the phone "I can't talk." I hanged up and hoped I wasn't supporting child delinquency and called Billy after the games.
I tried to tell Billy that Zach's achievement (the summary trouncing of Maria and I) was no small deal given that Maria had won nearly every online cup she'd played in "Worldwide" opponent mode, but of course Billy just chuckled.
I don't know. *whispers loudly* I think he knows.
I bought Etrian Odyssey and spent a very long time trying to hack the savegame - the game is gorgeous (see my review) and fun, but also unforgiving and hard. A party-wipe means "start over from the last time you were at the town's inn." Ouch.
My plan was to take one character and make her into a version of "Lord" Benedict, from Final Fantasy Tactics - a character who a faulty PSX 3rd party save card corrupted and suddenly could learn any skill (max it out) as soon as it was available. His level didn't change, but he was the master at anything he could do. It was like having Michael Jordan on your team. He couldn't carry the battle, but man he was awesome.
I did get Skill Points happening with my Protector / Paladin, Madrigal, and maxed a lot of her skills out, even though she's level 5 (now). Basically, my catch for trying to survive a party wipe. Sometimes folks drop, but not Maddy. Oh no, Madrigal's a resourceful gal. Not invincible, but how many level 5's do you know who can do almost every trick in the book? And, to keep the game fun, 98% of the time she either attacks or does Front Defense during combat, and that's it.
I had heard folks complain in the forums about a certain beast on the very 2nd level of the Labyrinth that was wiping parties out just because it could. The Ragealope. Some kind of angry Antelope or some such rubbish. I figured folks were diving in early.
Baring this in mind, I can tell you ... WITH ALL THE CERTAINTY IN HEAVEN ... with the very assurance that ON DAY, Jesus Christ will come again and judge the living and the dead... with this level of assuradness, I... assure you...
It is NOT the "Ragealope".
It is the "RAPEalope".
I seek the thing out with my party - Maddy's got Stalker up so nothing runs into us and wears us down. Everyone's 5th level. Standard party: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Cleric, Mage. Or is that Gay Germanic Word for Fighter (Landsknecht), Call it What it is Paladin (Protector), Rangers do More Than Survive (Survivalist), Clerics Without Gods (Medics), and Mages Without Magic (Alchemist)?
Anyway.
The battle starts and I have Maddy put up a frontal defense, and tell Pharra (my fighter) to Cleave, Glen (my ranger) to haste the party, Lia (my cleric) to brace herself, and Vera, her sister (my mage) to use Volt (a nice lightning attack).
Rapealope is MAD. Rapealope CONFUSES puny Ranger and Mage.
I think "Oh dear." I recalled in FF7 how my party of "rape the enemy and steal their candy" was annihilated by creatures who just kept casting confusion on them.
Rapealope is ANGRY. Rapealope hits ignorant intrudors for massive damage.
Lia (cleric) tries to remove status ailments, but it doesn't work on confusion. Glen (ranger) dies horribly, her guts still entangled on the beast's antlers. Pharra (fighter) uses Cleave again, while Vera (mage) casts more Volt. Maddy attacks. I have 4 out of 5 characters left.
Rapealope is DISPLEASED. Rapealope confuses pitiful Paladin and Mage.
Vera (mage) dies in a similar fashion to Glen (ranger). Pharra takes another stab at the beast. Lia tries to heal folks.
Maddy comes out of her daze in time to look around and sees only she, Lia (cleric) and Pharra (fighter) are up. She cheats. She breaks an oath and uses Smite. Calling upon her forbidden Goddess, she smashes the Ragealope. I have 3 out of 5 characters left.
Rapealope is AMUSED. Rapealope kills puny Cleric, and knocks Fighter silly.
I have 2 out of 5 characters left. With Pharra almost dead, and the Ragealope badly injured but still powerful, Madrigal flees to the first floor and takes Pharra and the bodies with her.
And that, my fellow, was my encounter, with the Rapealope.
Review of the Game
Fantastic game. There are four classes and four portraits for each class (two girls and two guys each). You collect items and equipment which affect how the game plays. The game is simple: a puzzle board wherein you move one piece at a time up, down, left or right and try to make a vertical or horizontal row of three or more of a kind. Each colored gem represents a kind of Mana (magic) that you can use for different spells that you have. Some are direct damage (skulls) instead of Mana, others are gold and experience point gems.
So, you can set whether or not you have a time limit to make a turn, the difficulty of your opponent, and go to town. You can buy a mount, capture prisoners and make spells - but only if you have the right buildings built in your citadel - you'll need stables and dungeons and mage towers for those activities. Plus you can have companions, apparently, but I haven't gotten there.
Leveling up seems fast with my Paladin (they get bonus XP) and good with all other classes.
Bugs!
The thing that troubles me is that console games are now coming out with BUGS, not just your minor glitches, but fucking obvious ones like "The game crashes after a match" which is rare, but taken in total across the Internet, folks talk about it, and it happened to me once.
Buried in the 2nd page of a thread on DS version bugs in "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" I posted this:
We're getting off-topic with the ROM morality debate; however, everyone please clarify if you are using a ROM or a Cartridge, because there can be issues with some games (Ultimate Spiderman loves to play poorly with MOD cards).
I am using a ROM (forget the dump team) and a G6 Lite MOD card with a Passcard 3.
Bugs I have found:
Bugs In Total:
I liked Yu-Gi-Oh: Nightmare Troubadour, but the cards were blurry and worst, you could only sort all 1,148 card types in your inventory by one criteria, and filter by one other criteria, which made creating decks by reading the cards in the game impossible.
So I tried Yu-Gi-Oh: Spirit Summoner. That version had much better card textures (not blurry) and you could filter by any combination of filters you wanted (say, all trap/spell cards of a given color), which was glorious.
Unfortunately, the new music is hideous and you can't turn it off, and the control system for using the cards has changed so that everything involves one extra click, and all of the buttons are now tiny. You have to click on a card, then click a tiny button (one of two) to sway what you want to do with it. Before, this was one step.
Summary
So Yu-Gi-Oh didn't kill Yu-Gi-Oh, the sequel did. It was so much better (creating decks, which is essential to play the game), but so much worse (music and a control system that kills interest in the game).
Sony PlayStation 3
While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.
That bet paid off.
Originally posted here.
I have a PSX, PS2, XBOX, Wii, GBA, GBA:SP, two NDS's, and a Wii in my house - these are not all mine per se (I have four children) but I play them all.
XBOX 360? Too many FPS games that require me to use my thumbs, not a mouse. Sorry, personal preference, I grew up with the original DOOM on 486 66MHz computers, and 386's and IBM XT's before that. Thumbs are not dexterous. Mice are. So are pointing devices like... the Wii has!
PS3? Far too expensive.
Wii? Perfect price (any higher would be too much) and my kids love it. The controllers are incredibly fun and make everything old seem new again, as the song goes. Still, I rarely play it. Why? Well I need RPG's, sandbox games, good FPS and games deeper than Rayman and Warioware. Zelda? After Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, and Ocarina of Time, I just couldn't plod through another. Terrible music too. My 9yo daughter loves it.
NDS? I play this lots and lots. Only my computer sees more love. Why? Well it's had time to mature, I bought it after the Wii so it has tons of games I've never played before that are unlike games I've played in the past (a problem when you've been gaming constantly since the Atari 2600). My hope is the Wii will have the same happy ending.
GBA? Too hard to see.
GBA SP? Easy to see and hold, but there were never any games out for it that really seemed to hold me. For some reason the NDS breaks this rule.
XBOX & PS2 were great to have in their prime - I never had to care which system a game came out for.
PSX? I got this over the N64 because I saw the polygon specifications, the cartridge based format, and knew it just wasn't going to do as well. I loved my PSX, but the games are hard to go back to - 3d games are. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is still fun, but that's not 3d.
Prior to that? I had a SNES late in it's life, NES all through it. I'm not into brand loyalty (used to love Squaresoft / Square / SquareEnix). Just so you know my tastes are games, not consoles. The Wii makes an exception due to its controllers.
The Nintendo DS and Wii, put together, are now dominating the competition. Even the PS2 is now outsold by the mighty Wii. All bow down to our Wiis!
See the NPD article on Gamasutra.
Straight from TotalVideoGames:
Well I beat Maria (my 9yo daughter) twice at lunch yesterday playing Yu-Gi-Oh Nightmare Troubadour for the Nintendo DS, then once more when I got home before trying to make my own deck (rather than use a tournament winning recipe deck from teh Interwebs). The new deck sucks so much! The only thing that competes with its suck is ... Maria's new deck! I won one game, she won the other.
She had no counter-spell cards, no cards that could kill my spells, and neither did I. I did have, however, a deck full of creatures with effects, and a number of permanent spells. Once that worked out for me, the other time we had a long, protracted game because she couldn't break down my spells and I'd locked her into only being able to attack with one creature at a time. She won that one eventually. Bad decks.
So, I couldn't resist - I ordered Yu-Gi-Oh! Spirit Summoner, as the Japanese version has English built in. I'll let y'all know how that is later.
Am I less of a man if my 9yo daughter outsmarts me at a collectable card game? Six out of seven times?
Maria de Guadalupe and I have been playing Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour (for the Nintendo DS); troubadour means "poet," and I'm not sure what a nightmare poet is.
How Yu-Gi-Oh Plays
Yu-Gi-Oh, for the uninitiated, allows you to either summon monsters, use spells, or set traps. Alternatively, you can also summon monsters that require you unsummon, or tribute, existing monsters you've placed on the table, or fuse together powerful monsters into an even larger monstrosity of doom. Tie in the traps which vary from making your life difficult to altering the playing field, and spells, and you have an interesting game, despite the child-like Anime that the game is famous for.
Nintendo DS Variant
On our Nintendo DS's, we each have a copy of the game (stupidly, Wi-Fi play over the Internet is unsupported, which doesn't effect us) and found a savegame on the 'net that gave us virtually every card available in the game. This saved us from plodding through the single-player grind and allowed us to immediately get to the fun parts: pitting our decks and strategies against one another.
May the Smackage Commence
The very first game we played, we each used a "Generated" deck of cards, because the starter deck sounded - lame. Maria won. We tried again, and she won. Then I found a deck recipe on the Internet and tried using that, and she built her own deck, and she won. Then I found a tournament winning deck recipe on teh Interwebs, only I only found the first half of the deck, so I filled it out with my own monster selections, and she won, and then I found the second half of the same tournament winning deck (duh, scroll down to the next post), and used that, and I beat her quickly! I thought "Aha! I have it. Now she'll have to make a new deck." Then I played her again using the same deck, and she won. This morning, we played one more time, and she won.
Limping, and One Example Game
At this point, I plan on trolling the tournament winning deck recipes just to see what good cards are out there and putting together my own deck, because Maria is slaughtering me.
My spells really messed her up last night, and I got her down to 2,500 health (from 8,000) and my health was 11,000 because I had a healing fairy out (she kept killing the poor little things, and I kept drawing another and summoning it). Finally she brought out a big, bad dragon, and then another, in two turns, and slaughtered me. I died in 3 turns to 3,000 and 2,000 damage combined each round. My extra health made killing me a road-bump, for all it mattered.
How She Does It
I asked her how she came up with her deck, since there are over 1,000 available cards, and she said "I just sat down and read them. What do you think I was doing yesterday? (while I was at work)"
Well. Homeschool. But I forget she does have time to herself aside from that.
Some say Nintendo DS means "Dual Screen," others say "Developer System," but considering the way Japanese companies love to advertise things in Ingrish, here's a plausible Nintendo of Japan advertisement, focusing on the DS's touch screen and hit title, Nintendogs:
Nintendo DS
Feels so nice
Doggy Style
The whole joke comes from Kotaku, though they say "Dog's Style" instead of "Doggy Style" which makes less sense.
Sonic Rush for the NDS is good. It's the only good Sonic game I have seen outside of the original 3 on the Sega Genesis over a decade ago.Basically, it's a Sonic game with updated graphics that uses both screens - sometimes you're on the top screen and sometimes the bottom and both display the game world. It confuses me, but I was never good at Sonic.
Maria de Guadalupe loves it; I told her it got good reviews but was hammered for being too hard - when I described specific details of the difficulty she dismissed it saying she'd already been through that and it wasn't much of a problem. She went on to tell me that she'd beaten five bosses (and their zones) that morning. I realized that she's a better sonic player than the average reviewer.
The game came out in 2005; better late than never.
The Nintendo DS is really as much fun as the sales figures indicate, but what's more is how games are changing - more on that after the statistics:
Handheld Game System Sales Figures
I ran into the one thing that isn't good in Hotel Dusk for the Nintendo DS - wandering around not knowing who to talk to next. Admittedly, it's partly my fault, I came out of my room and heard someone whistle, like they just saw a dame, but saw no one. I walked up and down the hall and no one popped out of their rooms, so I went downstairs, found no one, and tried every door. Then I came upstairs and did the same thing until I found, at the end of the hall I started in, the utility room which hid the bellhop who was oogling a girly mag.
So next time the game drops me clues I'll be sure to, at the very least, stay on the same floor.
My suitcase key broke and I need some wire to unlock it; there's a lone coathanger in my room but it's the kind that's permanently attached to the hanger. There's a cute, asian/american mute girl downstairs and a prissy princess upstairs, the dour owner, the hard working, gossiping cook/cleaning lady, the bellhop who was a pick pocket I arrested several times back in New York, the lonely little girl who thinks she's going to find her mom and her paranoid father and the author who seems interested in... Room 215 perhaps?
As I've said before, you get two lines of questions and never get to go back to whichever one you didn't pick, so you can miss out on a lot of dialogue if you aren't carefully thinking "What do I not know, what should be implicit and I shouldn't waste time asking?"
The interesting thing about Hotel Dusk is twofold:
