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Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 8.18.06

World Games is another awesome/terrible Epyx title.

Classic Epyx games coming to current consoles
Impossible Mission and California Games remakes coming to the Wii, DS and PSP and they’ll be in 2d. Now I can finally finish Impossible Mission, let’s just hope it doesn’t have a bug in it like the Atari version (the bug made the game unbeatable). California Games should be very interesting because it’s debatable that the original was actually a piece of shit. Through the glasses of nostalgia I remember the game quite fondly but it’s true that the actual gameplay is similar to Wario Wares, only minus the creativity, humor and instead of 105 there are 5 games to play.

“Classic” Electronic Arts compilation coming to the PSP
What’s this, another compilation featuring games from my beloved C64? No. By classic, they mean Genesis era. They also don’t necessarily mean “good,” either. Mutant League Football was fun, and the Haunting was very original, but most of these games just won’t excite anyone. Electronic Arts has a vast catalogue of actual classic games, like Archon, M.U.L.E., Racing Destruction Set, Dan Dare and Mail Order Monsters. I guess there isn’t much motivation to acknowledge these titles when even game journalists seem placated by this lame compilation.

Text in Dead Rising illegible on standard definition televisions
This is completely stupid. Apparently, Capcom optimized the Dead Rising game for HD televisions so those playing on standard have a hard time reading the game’s text. They’d better be working on a patch because I planned on buying this game when I get a 360 and I can’t afford an HDTV.

Literacy is overrated anyway.

My favorite solution voiced in gaming forums is, “buy an HDTV.” Some kids are attempting to make a logical argument that it’s the consumer’s fault for not having the right technology to play the game. According to the omniscient Wikipedia, it’s estimated that by the end of this year 10% of Americans will have HDTVs. That makes the market for Dead Rising some percentage of that ten percent who have televisions capable of displaying the game properly. My sassy comeback for the kids on the forums, “If you’re so rich then buy me an HDTV.” Oh, snap.

Microsoft guy claims the PS3’s superior resolution is “meaningless”
1080p versus 1080i… on most people’s TVs HD output at any resolution, progressive or interlaced, is meaningless. But I digress. It seems that the progressive display is not really noticeable on normal sized TVs. This article says to contemplate buying a progressive scan only if you’re going 60 inches or more.

This may be a rare case where I don’t fault either the Microsoft or Sony guys who make stupid claims. The 1080p is not meaningless, only near meaningless. But then Sony is right to say “…PS3 supports high quality display in resolution of 1080p as standard, which is far superior to 720p/1080i,” because Sony employees have a medical condition that prevents anything but hyperbole from coming out of their mouths. Also, the people who can send $600 for a console may already have 600 inch televisions so they’d reap the benefits of having a progressive display.

Best game ever…I’ve been told.

All the illegal homebrew crap you can do with your DS
Playing any software on the DS that isn’t Nintendo licensed is a real pain in the ass — you need a flash cart and probably some sort of technology to connect the system to your computer. The DS also has enough good games to keep me occupied. But then I saw the adventure game emulation software.

A bunch of Lucas Arts classics, including Sam and Max are now playable on the DS. I can finally play these games and earn the street cred I always pretend to have. I can finally mock Lucas Arts for making only stupid Star Wars games with some actual authority. And most importantly, I can finally bemoan the death of a genre and blame capitalism for all the ills of the world without admitting that I’d never played any of the old adventure games. The guy who made the software that allows these games to be played insists you have your own copy of each of the titles but feel free to protest Lucas Arts by downloading them illegally. Something those anti-piracy people don’t tell you is that companies write off stolen software that wouldn’t have been bought if it weren’t stolen. So that $7000 copy of Maya you (I) have really didn’t hurt anyone because you’d (I’d) be homeless if you (I) actually bought the thing.

But then again those adventure games are amazing (so I hear) so maybe you should buy them legally. The best part of doing it the legitimate way is Lucas Arts doesn’t get the profit and the games won’t run on your modern computer.

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Stefan
Stefan
18 years ago

How did you never play sam and max?  Didn’t I loan you the CD at some point?

pat
Admin
pat
18 years ago

if you managed to borrow sam and max from stefan and then lose it all hope is not yet lost. i have a copy somewhere in one of my many piles of crap in my parents house. your lack of adventure game experience is pretty impressive, although i guess you spent those years on sega rpgs instead.  i played some of the important titles, although the ones that stick out are day of the tentacle, sam and max, and indiana jones.  right now im trying to talk a co-worker into lending me grim fandango as ive heard its outstanding. will i be able to play it?

Christian
Christian
18 years ago

I played Summer Games.  And Winter Games.  California Games even!  On a real C64.  How dare you tarnish my childhood memories.  Everything was sponsored by Casio. 

max
max
18 years ago

Hmm, this homebrew crap sounds kind of cool.  If they port Quest for Glory, I might just bite the bullet and try to figure out all the annoying hardware crap :)  Btw, anyone know if this stuff works with the DS Lite? 

Christian
Christian
18 years ago

Grim Fandango works on my XP box, but there’s a patch you can and should download, since there’s a scene that sometimes runs too fast on XP machines, causing a puzzle to be unsolvable