Artlover

I think the bottom line is that a sucky game sucks no matter how good it looks. Nice looking realistic games are always nice. But at some point, you're going to have to sit down and play and not pay attention to the marvel of played out 3D polygon based pseudo-realistic visuals. And if the game isn't there, it gets old. If I'm just pushing buttons to see more eye candy, then it might as well just be a self running demo. Let me sit down with a bag of popcorn and watch it. Better then wasting my time with pointless moments of dribble for the sake of interactivenesses sake. There is also a new trend of artistic quality being used now. Games like XIII, and AutoModellista. Looks like digital rotoscoping. BEAUTIFUL. Oh my god, eye candy to the max. But I found the gameplay isn't all that solid, atleast to me. XIII is watch 2 minutes of FMV, play for a minute, watch 2 minutes of a semi interactive (make you walk from point a to point b without allowing anything else) FMV, play 3 minute, watch 5 minute transition FMV. I find myself skipping the stuff everywhere the game allows. Since the game basicly has a forced direction, I don't think I'm missing much by skipping the FMV's either. AutoModelista is just a horrible racer as far as controlling the car goes. Unrealistic. After I did an ultra tight 180 degree turn at 180mph without evening drifting or sliding, and being brought to a complete 0mph dead stop instantly by running off the road into the dirt.. Well, I turned it off and haven't played it again. But far being one of the worse unrealistic driving games ever, it sure does look purdy. Whatever thats worth. Kinda like no matter how much makeup you put on a pig, it's still a pig. So I say to the game writters: You're not making a movie. Don't build a game around the visuals. Don't compromise the game for the visuals. Make the game first, then wrap the visuals around it. PLEASE! Before AutoModellista 2 comes out.

$67,659,048 - Twilight Turmoil

Normaly, I would aggree with you 100%, except for the fact that you said this in your original message:

This past christmas holiday. http://cube.ign.com/articles/463/463155p1.....html?fromint=1

Circa 1940's radio comedy.... ---Woman walks into a garage, see's man holding big wench--- My what a BIG tool you have. Why thank you, Ma'am. I bet you know how to use it too. Well I can get my nuts off with it well enought if thats what you mean. I want to come in for a tune up. Well, I'll like to give you a tune-up. ---Womans walks off and returns in car.--- All the way, come on all the way. Is that good? .. Tune in again tomorrow at the same time to find out what happened next ..

From the sellers side, to basicly prescreen bidders to weed out delusional & misguided ones that he doesn't want to deal with ahead of time. As such, I wouldn't be suprized to see more people doing this. I suspect someone who has taken the time to read the details, and is really interested in winning it, and isn't going to dick around after he's actually won.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bid-preapproved.html

Well, since your conducting business through Ebay, their rules are the only ones that are legaly relevant.

Please show me anything in Ebay policy that says this is the case.

/action wonders if he should throw fuel on the fire and make a reference to this situation and another currently active thread ........ Naa, never mind.

I'm sorry, what is your point here? Because I'd sure as hell notice if my car was scratched or moved 1 foot from where I left it.

Probably. Isn't most news. Relatively speaking, compared to past sales and number of units the other 2 systems made. It's a fair comment. Xbox is ranked 3rd out of the big three for a reason. As far as the videogame market goes, yeah, they are. They were the last entry in the field, and only entered at all to jump on the gaming bandwagon. Then do it by throwing off the shelf hardware together into a console, that while quite powerull and technicaly better then the others, isn't exactly "innovative" in any signifigant way. Maybe they are not followers persay, but I'm pretty sure being 3rd out of 3 is not leading.

And I quote. And you said you don't have any problems because of that. So why are you suggesting other people buy lesser lower-end entry level gear? Low-end entry level hardware is low-end entry level hardware, no matter how you cut it and regardless of the chipsets used. And thats where the problems will start manifesting themselfs. Plus, this is not a one time cost. Because in 4-6 months that will all be outdated (the video card you suggested already is), and I'll have to do it all again. So we're actually looking at a considerably higher cost when applied. Especialy when you add in some other basics you forgot, like case, PS, HD, monitor, CD/DVD and so on (tho I assume you were probably thinking in terms of upgrading, and not building a new machine when you suggested those parts). Also, you have to take into consideration that not everyone's computer needs are the same, and if you have special needs or hardware requirements you find that your choices will tend to drop. A $61 dollar mobo is only good for someone who can actually get away with working within the confines of what that board will allow. And the availablity of such a board don't help you if the only board that does what you need cost $200, now does it?

Then don't let her make a profit by not bidding. Why do you have a problem with THAT concept? Again: No one is oblogated to sell their stuff on ebay for you, you are not oblogated to buy anything. Just because you want something and can afford it doesn't automaticly entitle you to have it, or give you the right to demand the seller change the terms of his sale to conform to your wishes (especialy if it's done after the fact). It's not your item, you're not the one selling it, you do not have the right to dictate how it should be sold. If you don't like how someone is selling something, then don't buy it. If you don't like the terms of someone's auction, then don't bid and move on. If you just absolutly have to have this particular one right now, then bite the bullet and bend over and give the person what they are asking for (and what you aggreed to by bidding) to aquire it. You're only serving to come off as a lasy e-bay buyer who didn't bother to pay attention and made assumptions, got stuck with the winning bid, and now after some rethought, you're unhappy with the deal and expect the seller to change the terms of their auction to appease you. If you don't like the terms of someone's auction, then don't bid and move on. If you don't like the terms of someone's auction, then don't bid and move on. If you don't like the terms of someone's auction, then don't bid and move on. Keep repeating the above 3 lines for a while.

You're honestly the first person I've ever known that has said that. I also bet you couldn't find another person on this site that could say the same (Linux users excluded, sorry. ) I did happen to mention in my responce that if you build a machine with highend... and so on = ...decent gaming machine. There is no denying what you are saying there. But believe it or not, not everyone can affort to buy a new top of the line computer every 6 months. Some of us actually have to, hold on to your seat, use last year's model. "With weekly registry upkeep". Because any good OS shouldn't be expected to just run for days or weeks or months without having to be f--ked with and tweaked in some way constantly. What exactly do you define as major & minor problems? Also, do I detect by that carefull wording that at some point, there was something that didn't actually work 100% perfectly the first time around. You have games let you configure the registry entires they make, or what system critical .dll file they are replacing? Wonder why none of my games ever let me do that. Seriously, I understand what your saying there. Like advanced sound & graphic settings can effect performance and operational stability. But at the same time that doesn't help if the problem is that the Nvidia 3d glasses video driver doesn't co-exist with the graphics engine of such & such game (Like Black&White-Creatue Isle). No amount of "perfect" configuration can do anything about two pieces of code that simply do not work together. No amount of "perfect" configuration can do anything for a poorly written application. Obviously, don't run crappy apps, but again, thats not always an option either. Especialy if no other app exists to do what you want, and in the case of oddly specific special interest apps, this tends to happen a lot. I'm not trying to be a windows basher. I've been using Dos & Windows for years & years, and probably always will. I kinda like the stupid thing, and almost can't wait for Longhorn to become stable enough to use. However, I'm not a windows lover, either. Out of over a 100 people that I have known or interacted with that use windows, not a one can say they never had a problem. And I'm talking people with MS certifications and windows programmers and junk. Not people that should have any problems, but they did too (and tended to hate windows a little more then everyone else and repeatedly suggested switching to a linux based OS.).

Look here for some info on it. http://www.xboxsolution.com/printout546.html It should be noted that unless you know how to speak Japanese and have a xbox live headset (maybe also works with the Music Mixer mic?), it won't be much fun. (I was able to get her to turn something on, and she said something when I said "hiroshima". What either somethings were, I haven't the foggiest notion. I dunt speek Japanese none to well. )

Because that statement is just so flat out wrong that there is no way I could possibly explain it even if I spent my entire life writting 6 billion pages of text, I still wouldn't be done. Sorry, but 98/ME/2K/XP have all the same problems. Driver issues, memory issues, hardware compatabilty issues, program conflicts. At the very best, the situation is no better then it was in the DOS/Win3.1 days. I've totaly given up on PC gaming since going Win2k because so far, more often then not, I can not get games to install & run. There is always some issue. And DirectX is a joke most of the time. It breaks easier then a 1970's Western Digital HD. If you build a top of the line, made from the best highest end hardware, and have a fresh brand-new install of a modern MS OS, and don't use the machine for anything else other then playing one game at a time between reformatting and reinstalling, then yeah, you can probably get a decent gaming machine out of it, otherwise, it's hours of head banging blue screens, random game crashes, lock ups and general fubaredness. Let me give you an example of my machine. Running Win2k, and here is "some" of what I have installed: Office 2000 Professional MediaPlayer (4 versions) IE6 DirectX 9b Adobe Premiere 6 Adobe Photoshop Paint Shop Pro 7 Photo Impact (2 version) Pinnacle Studio (2 versions) MS Picture Real Player Real Producer Quicktime 6 Vegas Video Acid BSPlayer Vidomi The Playa Cool Edit 2000 Gold Wave Alcohol 120 Roxio 6 Platinum B's Recorder Gold 5 NTI CD Maker Record Now DX WinDVD PowerDVD WinAmp Netscape Opera Xnews Agent WSFTP LeechFTP TurboFTP AOL IM Trillian Yahoo IM mIRC Fireburner EZCDDA (2 different versions) CDRWin 5 CloneCD 4 Instant CD+DVD DVD-it PE Disc Juggler (2 versions) Nero 5 Ultra McAfee Virus Scan 6 Adware 6 Adwatch 3 Meaya Pop-up Killer PeerGuardian 1.99 pr13-6 WeatherBug T-Clock Seti (cli & win versions) FixIt Utilities Partition Magic 7 Sun Java WinAce WinRAR WinZip SmartPAR QuickPAR FSRaid 7-Zip Yencode32 ISO Buster UltraISO Virtual Dub (4 versions) Windows Media Encoder 8 WinTV PCTV Around 30 audio codecs Around 100 video codes Thats about 2/5 th's of what I have installed on my machine right now and my machine takes over 2 minutes to boot from power off. Ask me how well it likes trying to have a game installed on it.

I can't even think of how to begin to address this. Congratulations. You're the winner of "Stump Artlover" the home game.

Thats already happening here & there. Like here in OKC, OK. Last time I was in best buy (2 weeks ago), their PS1 collection was down to a single 4' wide display unit on the backside of the PS2 isile next to the GBA's. And CompUSA (was there yesterday) only has about a dozen PS1 games left, all marked clearence.

Like Scarface (1984 Al Pachino version) on broadcast TV.

You do know what you're paying for. You're paying an arbirtrary amount that the seller came up, because it's his crap he's selling, and he can impose whatever value, costs, terms he wants (within the allowed limits of the system he is doing it within). It doesn't matter if it's a made up number for the sake of profit. That number was there for all to see from the start and is part of the terms of the sale. End of story. No one is oblogated to sell their stuff on ebay for you, you are not oblogated to buy anything. Just because you want something and can afford it doesn't automaticly entitle you to have it, or give you the right to demand the seller change the terms of his sale to conform to your wishes (especialy if it's done after the fact).

Grrr, you tryin to start a war son?

And from that article: Ok, you got a hot looking girl sitting next to you having an orgasm, and you're still more interested in playing video games? THERE's a TRUE diehard gamer!

Or usenet. (Unfortunatly, thanks to the increasing number of morons, don't expect to find N64 stuff in the N64 groups. Try Xbox, there have been several complete N64 postings in the last few months there. {Sorry, this comment probably should be in the newsgroup thread. })

http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/txt/genvdp.txt http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/fil...ega_genesis.txt Just the usual faq's & junk. But in reviewing them, they have some good info, and deserve mentioning regardless. In looking at the controller data, I get annoyed. What happen to the good ole days when every direct & button had it's own wire? I'd almost rather have joysticks with 1/2" thick cables comming out of them with a scsi sized connector on the end then deal with all this logic crap.