ATARI7800fan

Do you think in a way that this constraint to make the game for consoles could be slowly killing of PC gaming or do you think it is still going strong. There is a question of definition to consider. By virtue of being an open anyone can play platform, how could PC gaming actually be killed off? The real question is whether it will remain a worthwhile venue for big budget productions to produce ports that make full use of the PC's cutting edge assets. The answer for a lot of companies is no. But that has been their answer for decades. Back when Cinemaware was circling the drain, the Ad Lib audio board had a small amount of support and its clone, the Sound Blaster was just entering the market. A year or so earlier Cinemaware had a guy doing a design for a PC audio that would be cheap enough to use in our games without universal market adoption. Sound Blaster eventually became a standard basis for how audio was done, at least until Windows provided enough hardware abstraction to make it a non-issue. But it took years before every game developer saw the Sound Blaster as something they had to do in their PC games. Just like it took years for sucessive generations of video cards to gain support. CGA was the one universally support video mode, followed by EGA, then growing support for Tandy 1000 mode (which was really PCjr. revived), followed by VGA. Again, until Windows provided sufficient hardware abstraction, it was all modifications of VGA. We were really excited about VGA back when it first appeared. Finally the PC could be a kick-butt game platform without the stigma attached to brands like Atari and Commodore. But it took a long time before anyone would ship a game that solely ran in VGA due both to the time it took to grow the installed base and have that coupled with a PU of sufficient power to get things moving. (Keep in mind VGA didn't include any hardware acceleration for line draws and blitting. That didn't really happen until ATI became a force in video chips and even that was driven by the need to speed up Windows rather than gaming.) So consoles and console-like computers had a big advantage for game developers since the earliest days of the industry. If you had 500K Atari 800s in the market, you knew what every single one of those machines would reliably do. The only concern might be how much RAM was installed. By comparison, a like number of PC can be wildly divergent in what capabilities are included. This was especailly a hassle in the DOS days when every hardware asset had to be addressed directly the memory map could change depending on the combination of installed hardware. This continues today. A PC produced since the launch of the Xbox 360 could have any of a dozen generations of GPU technology, plus numerous generations of CPU. This is why whatever graphics solution puts in their chip set, or now in the CPU itself, is so important as it sets the minimum developers can depend upon being able to use. 10 million Playstation 3s are ten million identical machines you can use to the best of your ability. Ten million PCs are... a whole bunch of platforms that just happen to have a lot of compatibility. On the other hand, consider Minecraft. You can be one guy plugging away after work and on weekends on your PC game project. You can walk into any store and buy the hardware and download numerous development tools, many of them free. No permission from a corporate gatekeeper required. For distribution all you need to do is upload to a wid range of hosting choices, once more , many of them free. Then go on some forums and tell people, "Hey, check out my game." Within 24 hours you'll be getting bug reports from places you never knew existed. You may even have some paying customers without having invested a fortune in advance on producing discs and manuals, etc. PC gaming can never truly die. It may not command the attention of companies spending tens of $millions and employing dozens of people on a single game, and those games that do get ported may make the fullest use of the latest hardware. But it will always be the place where new talent can try out an idea cheap, show themselves to the world, and start something great. Good points.

all good advice.

Those both look fantastic, I bet the 7800 could pull them off to.

not like it would be a big loss. The new series is a big soap opera compared to the original show, why can't studios just leave good shows alone and not screw them up.

Hope you are able to figure out the problem, Alien Brigade is a fun game from what I have seen.

Did they start going out the door as planned last week? If so can't wait.

Does sonic for the Neo Geo pocket color come with the clear carrying case.

You can blame Peter Moore who was president of Sega of America at the time for discontinuing the Dreamcast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Moore_(business) I hope I get to meet him one days... so I can kick him in the balls! I agree with that though it is not completely his fault. I blame the Dreamcast and Sega's fate on the head from Japan. They were the ones that said we have to sell this many consoles and make this much money or we are pulling the system, Plus they are the ones that fired Bernie Stolar. He was a honest business man plus had set up a Excellent launch for the system her in the US. He was the person who relised that the Saturn could not beat the Playstation and was honest about it by saying the saturn was not Sega's future which was true. What really ruined Sega name was Japan having Sega release the 32X then the money spent on advertising for the Saturn that never returned a profit and of course the biggest mistake was firing Bernie. Video at 5:04 his boss is the one to blame. video at 6:58

Hopefully it has the same innovative character as the Wii because if it is only slightly more powerful then the PS3 what is the point of buying it at all.

Nice find.

Shadow of the Beast, Ninja Gaidne, and Stun Runner(first time I have ever played that game).

Trust me the system is defiantly worth getting, makes me feel bad that it only lasted as long as it did but for that amount of time the games and library were amazing, makes me wonder how it would have gone if Sega had stayed in for a few more years.

good list and prices. Good price on the wonderswan too, too bad I don't really have the cash for it, good luck with the sell though.

some people are insane.

Wii: Sonic colors and Donkey Kong Country Returns Xbox 360: Halo Reach and Mass Effect 2 Gamecube: Zoids and Bloody Roar Dreamcast: StarLancer and Test Drive 6 Saturn: Panzer Dragoon 2

Considering Sony didn't give us our Playstation 3's for free and didn't give us our games for free, I think there was ample room for complaining. Sony doesn't offer online multiplayer out of the goodness of their hearts. I'm quite certain our purchases, that advertise such capabilities, are subsidizing the operations of the Playstation Network. You quoted and responded to a post I made almost a month ago. At that point, the PSN service had only been down for a few days. Now, having been down almost a month down - people definitely have a legitimate right to complain, free service or not. But at the time I made that post - not really. All online services have the occasional downtime of a few days here and there, be it because of general maintenance, server crashes, of hacks like this one. Plus its down again, guess they weren't expecting alot of people to be changing there passwords at once. not surprised though.

I see, makes sense.

bump. Also will the CCA mod work on a Sega Nomad.

Is it worth getting a Game Gear if I already have a Sega Nomad and Atari Lynx.

I do occasionally if a game catches my eye, also with consoles.

Mass Effect 2 and Halo Reach.

What does the modchip do on a Sega Saturn.

bump.

If they already have a better battery from a third party then why does the one that comes with the 3DS suck so badly.

interesting, take a free PC game add some extra content and then sell it for a profit. I wonder if they do this for other games.