spacecadet

The Sega CD, the Sega Saturn, the NEC PC Engine and probably others all used CD technology before the PS1 and they were pretty mainstream (the PC Engine obviously moreso in Japan, but it was huge there). I don't think you can credit the PS1 with starting this trend. I think people will obviously remember the PS1 in the future as it was a hugely popular system, but it's not aging well and it was not the first or even really the best at anything. It had a lot of great games, but nearly all of its best games have now been re-made or appeared as sequels on newer systems. Given backward compatibility, there is basically no reason to even have a PS1 anymore (unless you're one of the five people that actually has the LCD screen and the battery pack and uses it as a portable system). I think you can make comparisons to the Atari 2600 and there are definitely some parallels there. But the one important difference is that the Atari 2600 introduced a lot of people to video gaming where they had never even known such a thing existed before, whereas the PS1 was just another in what had become a continuing march of new consoles. The 2600 was sort of the Model T of game consoles - not the first, but the first to be truly popular and to bring gaming to the masses. The PS1 is more of a 1976 Chevy Nova - popular at the time, collectable today depending on condition, but not really all that important in the grand scheme of things, and probably not inspiring the same sense of nostalgia. I don't think the PS1 will be as collectable a system as some, especially given some of its pecularities (its unreliability, its ubiquity, the fact that all Sony systems going forward so far are backward compatible). The PS1 was not the first 3D system, it was not the first CD system, it was just another popular system in the 1990's. Most of its games are also really hard to even look at now, and have better versions available today. (This is another difference from the 2600 era, when uniqueness and originality were more prized and most of the games for that system are exclusive to it.) I really don't think the PS1 is going to inspire passion among future collectors for those reasons and others, although it will probably be a system most people have just because it'll likely be cheap and easy to obtain. btw, it's no coincidence, I think, that the Saturn and PC Engine (especially its CD versions) are already more collectable than the PS1... they were produced in fewer numbers and a lot of their best games have never been sequelized or remade. I think they will continue to be more collectable than the PS1 in the future too.

The swap disc most people use was released to the public domain (it's either fully public domain or its under the GPL, but either way you can get it free). There's no point paying for it, just find somewhere to download it and burn it. I'm sure a Google search would turn up something. Some imports don't work reliably, but most do. If you want 100% reliability, you'll have to get your system modded. I'm pretty sure NCSX.com still does it, and they're a reputable place.

Ok, just FYI, and for everyone else too (so nobody places some massively unjustifiable bid), these are not dev kits, these are debug kits. Differences are: a) you can't develop on a debug kit. b) a debug is basically just a regular PS2 that may *only* play non-retail games, depending on the version. (Some would play anything, others would only play games without the retail locks in place.) Debugs were/are used by developers to test and debug games and they're also used by the press to play preview (i.e. "prototype") versions of games. My guess is if you're seeing a lot of these lately, they're coming from less scrupulous members of the press. I'd like to have one of these, but they're not worth anywhere near what a real dev kit would be worth. The PS2 dev kits are basically just big, black Linux PC's with a case styled like a PS2. They're monsters. They say "TOOL" on the side if you ever see an auction and aren't sure if it's a real dev kit or not. These are tightly controlled by Sony, though (the debug kits are too, but not as much as the devs), and there are few enough of them that Sony basically knows where each one is at all times. Anyone that tried to sell one would get reamed by Sony; it'd be a real black market item at this point. In the future that will probably change, though.

Pretty simple - it's not a Dreamcast game. Technically, Soul Calibur is the sequel to Soul Edge There have been three different titles for this series. It's the Soul series; the second word has always been treated as transient by Namco. Although now that it's so popular, they seem to have settled in Calibur for branding purposes... when it was niche, they probably figured people would find it by the "Soul" name, but now that it's mainstream they've gotta make sure even the lowest common denominator knows what to look for on the shelf.

My Neo Geo Pocket Color: http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffw2002/games/ngpc.html I love the system. Best handheld ever up until the GBA, in my opinion. Still has a lot of great games, and not *all* of them are available on other systems (or ever will be).

I seem to recall the Japanese release had the red blood of the arcade, while other versions were "censored". IIRC, the US version had a cheat that let you turn on red blood. I don't think it was a menu option. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Hmmm: http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Genesis-3-button-...1QQcmdZViewItem http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Genesis-3-button-...1QQcmdZViewItem http://cgi.ebay.com/Sega-Genesis-Controlle...1QQcmdZViewItem Official pack-in Saturn pads are tougher to find loose. Genesis ones are still pretty easy, though. (I just bought one boxed on Ebay, which is really completely pointless, but it just struck me as so odd in this day and age to see a 3-button original Genesis pad in a box that I had to bid on it - I did need one anyway.)

Dev kit, not prototype. Big difference. Not that it's not a sweet auction or anything (though I'd beware of Nintendo's lawyers if this is yours). But it's not a prototype.

Space Duel was always one of my favorites.

Your saying so doesn't make it so. Yours is just one opinion, carrying no more or less weight than any other. Now, this is *not* an opinion. The meanings of words are clearly defined and are generally not subject to interpretation. An average is the numerical value exactly in between two extremes. I don't see how you get "good" from that - sounds to me like a cop-out of an attempt at a hedge. You're saying there are exactly as many games better than FF7 as there are worse. That strikes me as pretty ridiculous. FF7 is my favorite game of all time. By extension, that obviously means it's also my favorite RPG of all time, and I've played quite a few. Is my opinion more important than yours? No. But that is my opinion. And I can almost pinpoint the exact moment in time when it became fashionable to bash FF7 - it was sometime in early 1998 that I first saw people whining about it, because in their mind the continuing popularity of FF7 had meant a lot of other good RPG's had gone unnoticed. That may well be true, but so what? It's not FF7's fault that it's a great game. Other games may be great too, but it's their own publishers' faults for not marketing them well enough to get noticed, and in Atlus' specific case, for not producing enough copies of them that people who wanted to could actually buy one.

Well, I'd argue that "Gone With the Wind" doesn't appeal to kids today either. It does, however, appeal to adults that have a certain level of sophistication and knowledge of film history. I think there are plenty of games today that would fit that same description. This actually supports my analogy, it doesn't disprove it. But I still don't completely agree with this. The 1930's was the decade in which sound became entrenched and the first mainstream color films started appearing. It's similar to the move to 3D and then to high definition in video games. These are technical advancements that allowed filmmakers/game developers to do more with their creations, but it was still up to the content creators how or if they wanted to utilize those technical advancements. In 2050, it will be difficult for anybody to play a 3D game that runs at 320x240 resolution with only 512kb worth of textures and no anti-aliasing or filtering, just as it's difficult for a lot of people today to watch a 1930's era black and white film with mono sound and only a single stationary camera. But towards the end of the 1930's and into the 1940's, things started opening up, just as they are in the game industry. We're going to get to a point fairly soon where games are going to look basically as good as they're ever going to look from a technical standpoint - I mean sure, in film you've had some big improvements in special effects over the last 20 or 30 years, but the basic look of a basic film today is not really any different today than it was in the 1960's. That will happen in games within the next 10-15 years as well - polygon throughput and other technical issues will get to a point where further improvements will be hard to notice. Well, this was just as true of the film industry in the 1930's (the major studios controlling almost everything). Who do you think made "Gone With the Wind"? It wasn't an independent studio. In fact, this era was actually *more* tightly controlled by the major studios, as they owned not only the vast majority of filmmaking but they also controlled the distribution and theater channels (this is how they kept their monopoly on filmmaking - independent filmmakers could not get their films shown). This was busted up in the decades to come with some high-profile new laws. Adjusted for inflation, a blockbuster film in the 1930's didn't cost any less to make than a blockbuster today. And games still cost a whole lot less. So I still think my analogy makes more sense; the game industry is still in its infancy but is quickly reaching the point of maturity, and will get there in the next decade or two.

Seems kinda weird. No bids with a few hours to go and the guy places a shill bid of $420? Why? If nobody else bids, now he's stuck with a closing fee based on a $420 sale that didn't actually happen. Wouldn't it have been better to just leave things alone and re-list if it doesn't sell? Seems to me that's a big chance he took; it paid off, but his chances weren't very good of that happening. Well, anyway, it did sell, which I figured it would... surprised there weren't more (legit) bids, though.

Seems to me that he's the victim here; not sure why he's being villified. It shouldn't matter how much you pay; the item was described in excellent working condition, and it doesn't work for pretty obvious reasons. And he's being asked to pay $1.75 shipping to send it back when it would be extremely easy for VGLQ to absorb that cost in the interests of customer satisfaction given that it was their mistake in advertising the item as working. I've dealt with these VGLQ people before and they tried to scam me out of some extra shipping charges after I won one of their auctions... the stuff I bought (empty Saturn cases) was actually in good shape but I resolved never to use them again after that. Which kinda sucks because they do have stuff that's hard to find elsewhere sometimes, but after seeing stuff like this it makes me realize I should continue my boycott.

Fake. Just not Nintendo's style, obviously European in origin. Also, Nintendo has never "leaked" any shots like this before, and you've got to ask yourself what the point would be of either a) leaking these intentionally, or b) leaking them unintentionally. Why would these shots be out there? Don't they seem an odd selection of shots to have been showing to anybody? They sure look like something some 3D animation student at London Polytechnic threw together to me.

Too rich for me, though.

One point hasn't been made yet: First, Nintendo does have every right to act against pirates. But, they have no right to act against anyone that has reverse-engineered their hardware. That is perfectly legal, and that is how all of these Famiclone systems that I know of were designed. Now, companies like Nintendo have a long history of suing people and getting people arrested for one thing and implying they were arrested for another. The RIAA and MPAA do it all the time, when they have people sued for illegal distribution and then put out statements implying they were sued for downloading. Obviously, the intent is to scare people. The media plays along because the media doesn't know the difference between a pirated game and a reverse-engineered console. Notice the contradiction in these statements in the article: "More than 60,000 pirated copies of Nintendo Co. game consoles were seized Wednesday during raids in New York and New Jersey, prosecutors announced. Four people were arrested in the crackdown on the theft of popular games such as "Donkey Kong," "Mario Brothers," "Duck Hunt," "Baseball" and others, according to a release by federal authorities and papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan." Last I heard, Donkey Kong was not a game console. Duck Hunt is not a game console either. Neither are Mario Brothers or Baseball. We're not talking about Famiclone systems here - we're talking about pirated software. It sounds to me like these were all systems that included pirated games - which Nintendo does have a right to crack down on. But that doesn't give them the right to crack down on stuff like those FC systems you see all the time on Ebay, nor is that what they've done here, despite the implication.

I will start thinking about buying one once Nintendo announces some actual games, shows some actual screenshots and movies, announces some system specs, announces some pricing, shows some actual hardware and just generally starts acting like the Revolution is an actual system and not a piece of vaporware. About the only concrete thing they've even said about this system so far is that it'll support downloadable old games. Which is nice, but I mean, I have all those old games they're talking about being able to play on the Revolution already - why would I want to buy them again? I'm not entirely convinced this console is even going to come to market. After E3, Shigeru Miyamoto promised details "sooner rather than later" - well, they haven't said anything since, and they didn't even say much to begin with. All they did was show an empty box.

Actually, most of the time that's not true due to proxy bidding. The winning bidder may bid at $100 and if the one below him bid at $30, the final bid would still be $30.50 or whatever the bid increment is determined by Ebay for $30 item. 901195[/snapback] You missed the point. The winning bidder bid $100 because that's the most he thought it was worth. The losing bidder bid $30 because that's the most he thought it was worth. The winning bid is $30.50. If the loser lost the auction, it's because he thought it was worth less than the winner did. It really doesn't matter if the difference was 50 cents or $100. My point is it's stupid to cry over 50 cents - the fact of the matter is you lost because you decided what you were bidding on was worth less than the winner did. A lot of people go crazy because they lose an auction by 50 cents or a buck. They think "goddamn, if I had just bid 50 cents more!" But they didn't. They could have, but they didn't. And even if they did, there's no guarantee they'd have won. All you can do is bid the most you're willing to spend and hope for the best. Or, wait until the end and then see how much you have to bid. btw, my theory on snipers is that they lower the final cost of most auctions they're involved in. Think about it. The whole reason they're sniping is so they can pay the least amount of money they have to. They let regular people put in their lowball bids and then they snipe right at the end. The whole point is to avoid proxy bidding, to avoid having to decide how much the maximum they'd pay is. If they were bidding the same as everybody else, there'd be a lot more bids and there'd be a lot higher bids. The entire reason these people snipe vs. proxy bidding is so they can keep the costs as low as possible for themselves - and you can use this to your advantage too. Say there are 5 bids and 5 snipers. Say the auction is at $10 and all 5 snipers decide they're going to snipe at $12. If instead there had been 10 regular bidders, the price may go to $20 or even higher if a bidding war erupts. But with snipers using unattended apps, you can wait until 2 minutes before the end of the auction and put a bid of $13 in and you'll win. I've done it a whole bunch of times, and I don't use any programs to do it either.

I gotta say (though excuse me if I sound drunk, cuz I am) that I just don't get the whole mentality of being "pissed off" at people outbidding you. I mean I think some people just don't have the stomach for auctions, that's all. You gotta play it like a game in itself. You are playing a game against other people where there are real risks and real rewards. I find it exciting. I can take a $3 item and make it into a personal quest that lasts for three days. It's fun. That's how you have to look at it. If you lose, you say "awww, man!" but that's the breaks. If you really wanted it, you would have bid higher to begin with, or you would have been hitting refresh repeatedly on that auction page the last few minutes. Let's say you get outbid by 50 cents in the last minute. Who's fault is that?? It's yours! You lost because you were too cheap to bid 50 cents more! That's all. You could have big a maximum of $30.50 instead of $30 originally, but you didn't. So, tough luck. Maybe you'll win next time. But if it's something you really had to have, you would have bid $1000 on that $30 item and ensured that nobody else would get it. I mean if you've got to have it, it doesn't matter how much you pay, right? The amount you bid is the amount you've decided it's worth to you. If you bid $30, then that's what you're saying it's worth. If it's worth more, bid more! You will only pay as much as you need to in order to win... and if you lose, it's because someone else thought the item was worth more than you did. It has nothing to do with sniping - nobody will snipe at a price that's higher than they're willing to pay. Long story short, there is NO reason to complain about the Ebay process. If you lose, you lose. It's your own fault, and in any case, it shouldn't be something that pisses you off anyway. It should be fun in itself. It's a game, treat it like one.

I can see your second try fine. (In fact I can see it five times in a row fine.) Maybe your browser has cached your original try and is still showing you the corrupt one, but the rest of us see it. I wish I could help with the system, but I can't. I just wanted to let you know that your images are showing up now.

Hatred? Is that the word you really meant to use? That's pretty strong. Anyway I don't think many N64 games hold up well, and neither do most PSX and Saturn games. But some do. I think those of us who have been around the block a few times actually knew even back then what was going to age well and what wasn't. Any game that relied more on artistry than technique, and had the gameplay to match would age well, and any game that relied mainly on graphical thrills would age poorly. This has largely been the case. There's still no substitute for Guardian Heroes, Shining Force 3, the original Grandia, Final Fantasy VII, Sin & Punishment, Silhouette Mirage, and a lot of other games of that ilk - story-driven games don't depend so much on the number of polygons being thrown around and neither do old-school action games. I could play Sin & Punishment all day long and never get tired of it, even though it's a blurry mess compared to games today - it still has a really distinctive and beautiful visual style and it's just a lot of fun to play. A lot of games that were popular at the time just look like crap now, though, and there's no reason to play them. Go try and play Gran Turismo 2 after playing Gran Turismo 4. It's impossible. I can't even believe anyone was ever impressed with GT2, it looks so bad now. Same with Ridge Racer 4 and a lot of other games with graphics that were intended to be "realistic". Generally any game that went for realism in the graphical department on 32/64 bit systems looks like total garbage today. (I guess someone else also said this; I didn't read every post in the thread.) The Dreamcast holds up better both because it's newer but also because a lot of its games were so heavily stylized. Even the realistic games, though, still look pretty good because it's not that old (I've been playing Tennis 2K2 for the last few nights, and to me it doesn't look any worse than most current tennis games). I don't really agree with those that say 3D games will generally never age well. The earliest 2D games haven't aged well either - but 2D got to a point where game designers could do pretty much whatever they wanted (the 16-bit era) and 3D will eventually reach that stage too. I mean maybe the generation or so after the PS3/Xbox 360, we'll be at the point of near photo-realism at high-definition resolutions. After that, you'll start to get diminishing returns, and designers will have to focus more on style than on levels of detail, just as they did at the end of the 2D era. Either that, or somebody's going to have to invent some sort of holodeck-like thing that further challenges the hardware - but in terms of standard TV screens (even big ones), it's pretty much a given that eventually 3D graphics will reach a point at which you just can't really do anything more with them. It's like looking at a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey today. It was made in 1968, and you can see the difference in the era if you watch it, but it certainly doesn't look dated, just a little different. Film stocks have gotten better, styles have changed, but the quality of the cinematography and filmmaking are as good as or better than anything today. But if you go further back to, say, 1910, and try to watch films from that time, then you will see a major difference in real quality because the industry was in its infancy and neither equipment nor technique had been refined yet. I'd say if you want to compare the game industry to the film industry, we're about at the equivalent of 1935 or so in film years right now.

My contribution to the topic: http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffw2002/games/gba.html

I've won, let's see, seven auctions in the past two weeks, and I don't use a sniping program. I've gotten some good deals too (like Ikaruga for GameCube for $12 and a working, excellent condition Dreamcast with controller and all hookups for $9.99). On a few of my auctions I've put in bids literally at the last second to win. I do this manually. I don't see how this is "cheating" - it's just playing the game. And I've lost in the last second too - hey, it happens sometimes. Ebay is an auction site, that's how it works. Whoever bids highest last wins. If you don't want to play this game, you can only look at the Buy It Now auctions or use Ebay Stores. If you don't like Ebay generally, don't use it. But don't complain about it because other people are using it successfully. The original poster sounds like a spoiled child who's throwing a temper tantrum because he didn't get what he wants. That, to me, is "uncool".

Please, people, use standard English! The word is "used"! Don't fall into this corporate-speak... There is a distinction between "refurbished" and "used", most definitely. The problem is the way these stores throw around terms to avoid the word "used", you never really know what you're getting. It's a dilution of the English language, and it points to exactly why we should all strive to use real English, not this marketing-speak that corporations are trying to foist upon us these days. A refurbished system should always be in good working order. It should also be clean. It will likely not be perfect (though a lot of refurbished stuff I've bought has been... not necessarily game stuff, but anything can be refurbished), but it will be fully functional and should be free of any major cosmetic defects. You wouldn't expect a cracked casing on a refurbished unit, for example. "Pre-played" was originally a substitute for the word "used" - they meant the same thing. Pre-played systems are simply traded in and then re-sold. They may not be tested, they certainly have not been repaired, they most likely have not even been cleaned. These days, though, some stores I've seen use the word "refurbished" instead of "pre-played". To me, this is because "pre-played" is far enough away from the negative connotations of "used" that they think "refurbished" means basically the same thing. But it doesn't. So you need to make sure when you buy a refurbished unit that the store understands what the word actually means. IMO, the negative connotations of a word like "used" serve a valuable purpose. They're a warning - they tell you "somebody used this thing, and who knows how they treated it?" It forces you to be wary. A word like "pre-played", which is stripped of all such negative connotations, is a recipe for a ripoff. Of course, the big chains generally guarantee all their "pre-played" merchandise to at least some extent so they don't want to discourage people from buying it in any way. But do you really want to risk a trip back to the store for an exchange? I mean at best, it's still a pain in the ass. Bottom line is, "pre-played" is the same as "used" - be wary. "Refurbished" should mean the system has been cleaned and tested at the very least, but it's worth your while to make sure of this.

I thought it was boring. I didn't make it through probably more than 1/3 of the game. I had no problem with the visual style, though. It's pretty amazing to me that a game can get such universally great reviews, then people play it and a lot of people find the game boring, then the creator actually comes out and admits that some of it was boring. Really drives home how screwed up the gaming press is - they give high scores to almost every big game regardless of how much fun they are, especially ones made by Nintendo. And they're almost totally blinded by graphical quality over gameplay, style over substance. Drives me nuts.