From BBC News on tomorrows PS3 launch: Neil Thompson, head of Xbox in the UK … said it did not matter which high definition DVD video system wins the format war.
“Whatever format wins it is highly likely we will offer a solution,” he said.
It didn’t take long: this slashdot post links to two sites with articles on taking apart the Nintendo Wii. See also Smash my Wii.
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These geeks… have no life. Video of people waiting in line to pay $600 for a pre-order of a PS3. I want to find this funny, but it’s actually more pathetic than anything.
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While reading notes for the Will Wright link (below), I found that Sim City 5 is in the works. Not earth shattering news, but it’s good to know that the series is still under development. I stopped playing the 4th edition when my laptop was stolen over a year a ago, as it had my only remaining Windows installation. Since the game does not run to my satisfaction on Linux, I haven’t much played it since.
I see that Sim City 2000 (which I have a copy of somewhere – at my parents house maybe?) runs nicely under Wine. I shall test this when next I get the chance.
Will Wright must be one of the most interesting individuals alive today – his body of work speaks for itself. Kottke.org has posted an extensive bibliography, detailing many of the works which have inspired Wright. I think it will be interesting to go through much of this list. Great amounts of it are not strictly technical or scientific, which is curious; though having said that, much of the material is drawn from the New Yorker, so maybe not.
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I’m a keen but not obsessive gamer (I left my TV and PS2 at my parents house due to needing to work this term), but there’s been a lot of news lately (mostly due to E3), about the upcoming battle between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for dominance of the console market. While I’ve all but decided to buy a Nintendo Wii (previously Revolution), this somewhat muddled comment on Slashdot made me think:
Seems to me instead of arguing which is better[,] we should be revelling in the fact these billion dollar companies are competing fo fiercly to create a product we’ll buy. Dance, monkeys!
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Tags: business, computer games, Wii
I’m always amused by mistranslations, and someone on slashdot reminded me of this:
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”
This site has some other amusing examples, including:
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, “Salem – Feeling Free,” got translated in the Japanese market into “When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty.”
Amusing. Much debate has already begun on the subject of the Nintendo Revolution being renamed the Wii, most of it pretty negative. I think it will catch on, especially once people accept that they mean “We” rather than “Wee”. Also, it affords them plenty of opportunity to show off the crux of the thing: those awesome controllers.
One thing is slightly annoying however: “Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.” (Gamasutra). What a terrible backward step. Never mind though, it’s not like I (or anyone else) will not have the facility to play DVD’s on other stuff that’s likely to be kept next to the Wii, it just seems like DVD playback should’ve been a built-in feature.
Tags: computer games, humour, language, Nintendo, Wii
Finished ICOw the other day, and in short, I wish they made more games like this.
You play Ico, a boy born with horns, who, when he is 12, is cast away from his village by his people. They lock him in a castle, and from here the object of the game is simply to escape. Things are complicated somewhat when you discover Yorda, a highly incompetent girl who is liable to be killed if you leave her alone for more than a minute…
But it’s not really the story or the characters which grab you, it’s the atmosphere of the environments, and this is only helped by the quality of the control system – mainly the fact that you have control over the camera, and not only does pressing R1 call Yorda to you, it swings the camera around to point to her.
The slow pace of the game allows you to explore, and commendably for a puzzle-oriented game, it’s impossible to get yourself stuck with in an unsolvable situation.
If this is any indication of the style or quality of Shadow of the Colossus, I think I’ll be purchasing a new game in the very near future…
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Tags: computer games, ps2, Sony
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