onmode-ky

Okay, I think I should step in here and explain why it's called the i-Dong. This name was not chosen in order to be a joke in the West, though it certainly accomplished that. The "i" part was an Apple reference, sure, but that's as far as the Western influence goes. "i-Dong" is just how they've chosen to write 愛動 (I'm using traditional Chinese here, but as a mainland company, they actually write it in horrifically ugly simplified Chinese), which means "love to move." It's a name fitting for a motion gaming system, no? Normally, this phrase would be romanized in pinyin as "ai dong," and no, "dong" is not pronounced the same way as most Westerners would pronounce "dong." While you're most likely reading it similarly to "dah-ng," this is pronounced more like "doh-ng." As a name used in a Mandarin-speaking country, "i-Dong" is harmless, if silly (like "Wii"). But, yes, if they should decide to *ahem* penetrate the Western market, they really would need to release it under a different name. "Lovemove" would suck, too. Uh, what? You think everyone in China is living in poverty? Sure, maybe a humongous portion of the population is poor, but perhaps you should consider the fact that this supposedly communist country has a very sizable population of middle-class and rich folks, too. In fact, even if half of the 1.3 billion people there are below the poverty line, that still leaves way more than the US total population to be above it. onmode-ky P.S. For reference's sake, the two Chinese characters would be read in Japanese as "ai dou."

Don't forget that the region-free nature (for games only, not UMD video) of the PSP opens up the library to lots of releases not available in your own region. Some highlights from my own PSP library: - Salamander Portable, Twinbee Portable, and Parodius Portable (scrolling shooter collections, a spinoff series from Gradius Collection (Gradius Portable in Japan) that never left Asia) - Soldier Collection (four PC Engine Star Soldier-series titles collected together) - Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA (well executed music game based on the Vocaloid mascot and "her" music) - DariusBurst (first new Darius-series game since 1997's G-Darius) I also have a number of visual novels, which, of course, are nearly nonexistent as a genre in the West. onmode-ky

Microsoft has refuted this claim; it's apparently a case of poor journalism, though not necessarily intentional. onmode-ky

It's still fresh in my memory even though the last time I saw it was probably around a decade ago. "I know this ship like the back of my hand." *CLANK* "What is Emergency Landing Plan B?" "B, as in 'barricade.'" "He is my half brother." "I need to sit down." "I need to shower." "Yes." What a sad, sad fate for Pioneer 10. Oh, and there are nowhere near that many decks on the Enterprise-A, geez. And who numbers starship decks bottom to top? onmode-ky P.S. I apologize for continuing to keep this thread off the original topic. Thanks for the BSR's Intellivision III and IV links, though; they were interesting reads.

Thanks to Sony providing no possible way to deactivate a dead PS3 for video content, I'll be unable to take advantage of any of these. I've been wondering about that myself, so I did a Google search for "ps3 deactivate video." That brought up a few forum discussions about the topic, and it seems you can just call Sony customer support and get it done that way, pretty painlessly. E-mailing Sony seems to have a poor track record for this, but calling looks like it should work fine. Incidentally, since you have a PSP, you could also get and watch video content on either it or a PC (activated via Media Go). If you can connect one of those to your TV, then you're as well off as with a PS3, though only for SD video. Worthless Might save you some dollars, at least. Maybe Wizardry will have a PS+ discount. onmode-ky

I'm, uh, not sure I follow your reasoning. The credit card data is accessed via the password. That is, once you've changed your password, you've already reenabled security over your credit card data. What's the point in blanking it out? If credit card data was indeed taken in the attack, it's already been taken. Blanking it out now does not change anything, unless you're recommending they stop keeping credit card information permanently. It is not down again. It was taken down for 30 minutes yesterday in order to allow for the queue of password reset requests (which generate e-mail traffic) to clear through ISPs. Sony has no control over ISPs' traffic throttling. Of course, you are free to not believe the statements like this that Sony reports on their blog. onmode-ky

I've added a new page to my PnP Info website which I think will be of more use and of more interest to most AtariAge folks than a lot of the content on the main page. It's a page that compiles a large number of the various retro-gaming plug-n-play systems and lists all of the retro games included in each one. The only major manufacturer not represented is AtGames; they have released and continue to release many models of Sega game collections, with slightly different game lists for each, and I decided it was too much trouble to sort out which is which. Aside from them, I don't think I've missed any major makes. My site's main page has also had a small update, the major changes being some additional information on the unreleased Midway TV Game, an entry on the unreleased TV Games conversion of Jr. Pac-Man, and a new background color for certain parts of tables. onmode-ky

That is not the Chinese remake. The most apparent clue is that it's in Japanese, not Chinese. I searched YouTube to see if I could find the actual Shenzhen Nanjing product, and seems to be it. It looks and sounds completely different (and is thus much less similar to the PS1 FFVII). And as noted in the Wikipedia page, battles take a lot longer. The first battle in the clip I linked takes 1 minute 49 seconds instead of the 22 seconds in the above clip. Whatever it is that you linked above looks, sounds, and plays much more like the real FFVII than Shenzhen's. Perhaps it's a Japanese doujin project by fans. onmode-ky

Hehe, yeah, join the club. Does that mean ~20 million on Space Shuttle? I can't quite remember where its counter stops. Killer Funhouse score, by the way. Here are my high scores (the PS3 scores are from early 2010; the PS2 scores are, I think, from around mid-2008): Gorgar - PS3: 1,012,970 - PS2: 808,450 Firepower - PS3: 1,877,660 - PS2: 2,003,430 Space Shuttle - PS3: 9,074,330 - PS2: 14,184,460 Taxi - PS3: 18,152,090 - PS2: 10,397,240 Whirlwind - PS3: 39,362,440 - PS2: 116,409,920 Pin*Bot - PS3: 7,774,560 - PS2: 7,236,990 Black Knight - PS3: 3,212,080 - PS2: 4,341,840 Funhouse - PS3: 41,253,770 - PS2: 25,906,280 Sorceror - PS3: 9,559,020 Jive Time - PS3: 218,460 Tales of the Arabian Nights - PS3: 77,982,010 Medieval Madness - PS3: 340,471,040 No Good Gofers - PS3: 56,259,240 Williams Challenge - PS3: 341 I've only played the Williams Challenge once; here are the component scores from that (real score, followed by normalized score for the summation): - Gorgar 221,820 13 - Pin*Bot 1,501,990 12 - Black Knight 1,367,090 9 - Funhouse 29,597,490 54 - Space Shuttle 4,442,020 19 - Taxi 7,503,520 39 - Whirlwind 39,362,440 61 - Firepower 1,877,660 31 - Sorceror 3,881,190 37 - Arabian Nights 24,422,180 29 - Medieval Madness 62,619,210 20 - No Good Gofers 25,228,400 17 onmode-ky

Regarding nudging/tilting in Gottlieb Collection, I have it for the PS2, and when I got Williams Collection for the PS2, one of the improvements that I was delighted to see was the nudge control sensitivity. In Gottlieb, pushing the analog stick all the way to the edge would tilt the table; to nudge without tilting, you had to only move it lightly. This was difficult to manage under the conditions of intense play (and didn't mirror reality, since real pinball nudging does not depend on a soft left thumb). In Williams, you have to move the analog stick ferociously to have a tilt. Anyone up for sharing high scores? Or would that be too off-topic? I mean for every table, not the occasional mention we've had thus far. onmode-ky P.S. Anyone else really liked the music in Williams Collection? Some of it was composed by a programmer at the developer (FarSight Studios) at the time, Chris Kline, AKA Vertexguy, who is known for a very well done electric guitar rendition of the Contra Level 1 theme. He toured with Video Games Live for a bit, I believe. In Williams Collection, his is one of my favorite pieces in the soundtrack.

I get what you're saying, and I agree, too. It would be awesome if my site had both an abundance of data and a killer presentation, with descriptions, pictures, and screenshots for everything, and all of it running on a relational database backend (after all, see my username). Something like IPDB.org or Arcade-Museum.com. However, my strength--aside from architecting and administering a hypothetical database--is in the researching and interviewing; I'm ill-equipped to go beyond basic HTML and even worse off as far as images. I'd be open to collaborating with someone else (with their own Web space) to cross-link with their resources, but building a nicer front end on my own site would be a bit of a stretch. So, yes, it would be nice to have a slick-looking one-stop shop serving all your plug-n-play content needs, but on my own, I'm only able to offer some shelves of specialty content you won't [easily] find anywhere else. However, I'll see what I can do about adding descriptions, at least for the retro collections. I've had more than one occasion of trying to remember what classic games are in which plug-n-play systems, only to recall that I've never written any of that down in my materials. . . . Of course, this would only add to the wall-of-text effect. By the way, the revision history is really only for my own benefit. I'm accustomed to writing verbose comments in source control environments. I just linked to it in my previous post because I was feeling too lazy to type out a summary here of all the new stuff. onmode-ky

Damn, and I thought my 116 million was good. I got the PS2 version back in 2008, and my enthusiasm for it sold a few copies (probably mostly for the Wii) to some others. Last year, after the PS3 version had a price drop, I picked it up, too. The leaderboards feature finally let me see just how good I was in comparison to other pinball players. I don't really have favorite tables, though Funhouse and Whirlwind seem to mesh with my play style well. However, I do have a table I absolutely can't stand: Jive Time. Almost every drained ball on that table feels like highway robbery rather than a justified loss. Ironically, my score on that table put me really high on its leaderboard, within the top 15, back when I was playing. Also, Pin*Bot's left outlane seems to be a ball magnet. That's my only issue with it, though. Medieval Madness gets repetitive when trying to do the whole battle (which I've come close to accomplishing but never have; it's one of the very few table goals I never reached in the whole collection). onmode-ky

I need to revise what I said earlier regarding the conflicting data concerning the unreleased second Capcom TV Game, having gotten some more data, which depicted it as a project that evolved quite a bit in its intended presentation: The story behind the second Capcom TV Game seems to have been rather convoluted, as parts of it, including Gun.Smoke, may have originally been destined for the first Capcom TV Game, and it appears two separate studios worked on the component games in this project. At some point, it was spun off into a separate project, and it seems it may have been planned for release as a GameKey expansion cartridge (for which there is an ESRB rating) and as a standalone system at different times during its development. What is certain: plug-n-play versions, most likely running on the Sunplus PAC300, of Mega Man, Section Z, and Gun.Smoke were developed for the TV Games line but never saw release in any form factor. Also, I've attached pnpgames_supplement.20110504.txt to the initial post of this topic (some data backfilling; no new products in this update of the file) and added some more processor data to that post as well. For a full accounting of what I'm updating, I'll refer readers to the revision history section of my PnP Info website (since the edits/additions are going into the site as well as here). donssword, about the GameKeys being locked to specific models of TV Game only, that was a licensing issue; it was what the IP holders wanted. It does seem odd that Disney and Disney Princess ended up as separate branches, but I guess that was what Disney told Jakks Pacific to do. onmode-ky

I'm not sure I follow (either of you). How can Sony's data breach have an effect on the lifespan of the PS3? What were hacked into were servers on the network, not consoles; console-side security has nothing to do with server-side. Also, PS+ would presumably continue onto any PS3 successor, assuming Sony doesn't pull the plug on the service simply due to it not generating sufficient profit for the firm. onmode-ky

A few days ago, I played Exed Exes all the way to the end (Stage 16; it continues onward to Stage 17, but that's just the game looping back to 1) in Capcom Classics Collection. Not a very fun game, I think. The ship is hard to see on the screen, such that sometimes I revived and immediately died without ever knowing where I was. The ship is also really slow, and the whole thing with your shot range shrinking when moving backwards (i.e., toward the bottom of the screen) is a pain. By the way, I discovered that autofire actually is available in Capcom Classics Collection . . . but it's pretty useless in 1942. Instead of a constant stream of bullets, you end up with rapid bursts of around 3 shots, but with significant pauses between bursts--during which someone crashes into you. I'd hoped maybe it could help me reach the end of the game so I could get the 10-million-point bonus; that would be the only way I could meet the 200,000-point requirement for one of the collection's unlockables. onmode-ky

I've been trying to find the interview Toru Iwatani did with Namco during the 30th anniversary stuff last year, but I can't find it in English anymore. It's still there on the Japanese side of the PacMan.com site, though, and on page 2, Iwatani uses the term I was looking for, "power cookie" (English phrase transliterated into katakana, again). However, of note, throughout this interview, Iwatani refers to the enemy characters as "ghosts" (once again, the English word in katakana). The word "monster" does not appear anywhere in the interview. Maybe he's changed what he calls them over the years. Going back to the Japanese Wikipedia page, the term "power cookie" appears as well, but only in parentheses as an alternate for "power esa"; the latter word, pronounced like "essa," is the kanji 餌 written phonetically, and the word is a noun meaning "feed" or "bait," according to an online Japanese dictionary. What to make of this? It looks like the game's original creator does not agree with the game's general audience on the terminology (assuming that the terms as used in the Wikipedia article were not written by one rogue editor whom no one bothered to correct). onmode-ky P.S. I have never known what the power items were supposed to be called in English. I think I have used all 3 of the terms BrianC listed, without preference.

The sequel is for the PS3 and is already available for preorder at Amazon.co.jp, scheduled for release in August: Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 Limited Edition at Amazon.co.jp There's also a regular edition. Interestingly, the limited edition is currently the 13th best-selling video game product at Amazon.co.jp. Perhaps even more interesting, assorted models (colors) of PSP-3000 take up 4 of the top 10 best seller slots. Not sure if that's typical, but it's certainly impressive. As for the original Neptunia, I haven't gotten any of the other goddesses in my party yet. Fun game, though, with a great sense of humor. "Road pugilists" and "People say I only do everything" come to mind. Oh, and the NepGaGaGa Trophy. onmode-ky

The ESRB ratings database turns out to contain a rare glimpse into the world of unreleased plug-n-play systems. Games that are rated by the ESRB are at least complete enough for the publisher to submit gameplay footage demonstrating the titles' "pertinent content," as defined by the ESRB. Therefore, any unreleased title appearing in the database is at least in a nearly complete state, or perhaps even entirely finished by the developer. However, the database's entries are not entirely reliable; at least, some of them contain information contrary to other sources or even, sometimes, other entries in the database itself (that is, I have seen duplicate entries, sometimes under slightly different names, and entries with names indicating alternate release strategies). Also, some of what the ESRB has in its plug-n-play category does not normally fall under that term, like games downloaded directly to a TV. Still, if you can find your way through the irrelevant data, then you can discover a few plug-n-play games that were produced but never saw the light of release day. As it turns out, the vast majority of these were entries in Jakks Pacific's GameKey expansion cartridge line, the sole exceptions being their Tecmo and Super Brain Surge TV Game systems. Obviously, Jakks was eager to push the GameKey concept, but they must have encountered resistance at retail. These are the unreleased plug-n-play game systems recorded in the ESRB ratings database (presumably listed in chronological order, from oldest to most recent): Rated Title --- Rating --- Content Descriptors || Other Notes Midway Gamekeys - Joust/Sinistar --- E --- Mild Violence || This is listed at the ESRB as a GameKey, but there was never a Midway base unit into which GameKeys could be plugged. The contents of this and the other Midway GameKey listing were likely originally planned for a standalone unit, based on developer commentary. Midway Gamekey - Defender/Toobin --- E --- Animated Blood, Mild Violence || This is listed at the ESRB as a GameKey, but there was never a Midway base unit into which GameKeys could be plugged. The contents of this and the other Midway GameKey listing were likely originally planned for a standalone unit, based on developer commentary. Tecmo TV Games --- E --- No Descriptors Batman TV Games GameKey --- E10+ --- Cartoon Violence Star Wars GameKey-Catamaran Strike/Coruscant Fire Patrol --- E --- Fantasy Violence || Not to be confused with the released Star Wars GameKey. Dragon Ball Z GameKey - Butoretsuden 2/Capsule Conquer --- E10+ --- Cartoon Violence Fantastic Four Gamekey --- E --- Fantasy Violence Wheel of Fortune TV Games Gamekey Refill I --- E --- No Descriptors Wheel of Fortune TV Games Gamekey Refill II --- E --- No Descriptors Jeopardy TV Games Gamekey Refill I --- E --- No Descriptors Jeopardy TV Games Gamekey Refill II --- E --- No Descriptors Nicktoons Gamekey - Creature Capture/Bumper Car Rally --- E --- Mild Cartoon Violence || Not to be confused with the released Nicktoons GameKey. Dora the Explorer Activity GameKey --- EC --- No Descriptors || Not to be confused with the released, E-rated Dora the Explorer GameKey. Star Wars Classic Key-Imperial Gunner/Escape from Cloud City --- E10+ --- Mild Fantasy Violence Capcom GameKey-Gunsmoke/Mega Man --- E10+ --- Mild Violence || The games listed in this entry's title conflict with other data on what was to be in a subsequent Capcom TV Games product. Also, its being listed as a GameKey conflicts with data indicating it was to be a standalone system. Star Wars Classic Gamekey-Red leader/ Battle of Endor --- E10+ --- Mild Fantasy Violence || The games listed in this entry's title were later included in the Star Wars Original Trilogy TV Game system. Care Bears GameKey - Champ's Cloud Fishing / Cheer Bear's Umbrella Drop / Friend Bear's Castle Maze --- E --- No Descriptors Winnie the Pooh GameKey --- E --- No Descriptors Super Brain Surge - TV Game --- E --- No Descriptors Note: this data might be easier to read once I add it in tabular form to my PnP Info website.

Couple of days? You mean you restarted from scratch each day, or you left the Wii paused overnight? And if we're talking from scratch each day . . . do you mean you got there on one credit or with use of Continues? At best, I can only survive to somewhere in Stage 2 ("Last 31 Stage") on one credit in the PS2 1942 (the TV Game 1942 gives you 2 extra lives at game start, and the first credit can get me to Stage 4 in its Normal difficulty mode). . . . On the PS2, it may have been the second Ayako boss where I got stuck, rather than the third. It was years ago, and I can't remember now. I seem to recall it being a small bit harder than the TV Game 1942, though. onmode-ky

At Pac-Man's Japanese Wikipedia page, the term used is "Monsters." I don't mean the Japanese word for "monster" (化け物, "bakemono") but rather the English word "monster" transliterated into katakana. Personally, I always called them "ghosts," not because I played the 2600 port but because they looked like (colorful) ghosts. It was not until many years later that I ever saw the intermission with the ripped sheet. Incidentally, those segments in the game that we call "intermissions" in English are called "coffee breaks" in Japanese (as demonstrated in that Wikipedia page). Once again, it is the English phrase "coffee break" rendered in katakana. onmode-ky P.S. I don't see anything wrong with edible ghosts, AtariLeaf.

Ah, yes, I've had autofire interfere with game-external operations before. In Irem Arcade Hits, their implementation of autofire made all my name entries in certain games "AAA." Anyway, congrats on finding out the cause. Autofire in my 1942 would have been nice. It's not available in either the PS2 Capcom collection or the Capcom TV Game. Instead, I just played until my hands couldn't take the pain anymore! Even better, I got different kinds of pain between the two systems. I recently took another shot at reaching the end of the game on the TV Game. Again, I got stuck at the end of Stage 23, but switching the difficulty down from Normal to Easy finally let me reach the end of the game for my first time ever. By the way, what you do in 1942 is a loop, not a barrel roll. onmode-ky

After a few runs, 61,310. I've never participated in a HSC event before, but I noticed it was a Gradius title this week. However, I'm not quite sure how valid my score is, given that I occasionally encountered some very noticeable slowdown. I could definitely do better, most obviously because in the game where I got this score, I crashed into the ceiling while I had full shields up. D'oh! onmode-ky P.S. I'm not aware of continues being available in any Gradius title aside from Gradius V (PS2). As for III being unsatisfying, well, it is often cited as being abnormally difficult, more so than its well refined immediate predecessor, in what I've read on the Web. Something like it being unfair, I guess. Note that 10 years passed by before Gradius IV was made.

I own I through III, but I've never gotten very far into any of them. For the first two, I just went through maybe the first hour or two before putting them on the back burner (basically, they were additions to the already substantial backlog right at time of purchase, and I was just sampling them). The same was the case with III until a week or so ago, when I popped it in initially just to rewatch the intro. I ended up rather fascinated by the vaguely comprehensible story (mind you, I chose not to read the on-disc summaries and database information about what happened in the first two episodes) and played for roughly 15 hours, only quitting when I finally drew the line because I fully intend to play this game with clear data from I and II. So, I've had a disjointed experience with the story, but I really enjoyed what I did see. I've always liked the series' visual style (and the music is quite good, too; I have some of the soundtracks on CD), and it was a treat to see it with story actually going on. I don't see it happening, but I would love to get an HD collection of all three episodes on the PS3 (although, given that each non-HD game is already bigger than a single-layer DVD, an HD collection might have to be 2 BDs). This is a more cohesive trilogy than many of the HD-ified game collections out now. onmode-ky P.S. If you do decide to tackle another multi-game series, how about the .hack or .hack//G.U. RPGs? The former is 4 PS2 games, and the latter is 3; I think each one is rather a fair bit shorter than each Xenosaga episode, though.

To be quite honest, I think this forum is not the best place to ask about PS+. That's a program designed pretty much for people who are very big (current) PlayStation fans, people who already buy a lot of PS3 games all the time. In my experience reading the AtariAge forum, I have not seen anyone fitting that description. I've actually been rather surprised at how much of this PS3 subforum's discussion content ends up negative toward the system and its parent company. When I first entered the Wii subforum, I expected to see mostly people who were happy with their Wii, and that was indeed what I saw. When I first entered the PS3 subforum, I expected to see mostly people who were happy with their PS3, but that wasn't what I saw. It's not always undeserved, of course, but in most other video gaming communities I have seen, the scale is more balanced. If you base your impressions of modern video gaming in general on what you see here, it looks like the PS3 is really not very popular. However, if you look at other online gaming communities, that's not necessarily the perception you'll get (granted, the PS3 trails the Wii and XBox 360 in American installed base, but it's not exactly doing Mattel Hyperscan sales). Anyway, I'm not a PS+ subscriber, but I have seen comments (elsewhere) from subscribers who are very satisfied with their participation in the program. Essentially, it depends entirely on how voracious a PS3 gamer you are. If you were already spending a lot of money on PS3 content, then chances are PS+ would be both a good value and a satisfactory purchase for you. If not, then you would be wasting your money signing up. The program does seem to be popular with those for whom it was designed. onmode-ky

Have you seen the unedited Nausicaä? I don't think any anime fan thinks poorly of it; it's the edits made for Warriors of the Wind that fans object to. Nausicaä happens to be my favorite Miyazaki film, and that was even before Patrick Stewart was in it. Do you mean that you don't like anime comedies or that you don't like, well, material targeted at girls? The latter would be fairly common for males, I'd imagine. onmode-ky