December 2005 Archives

Here's something weird. I happened to find an old issue of Finnish computer magazine Hakkeri ("Hacker"), which was published in mid-nineties by Casamedia. I used to be a regular at the CasaBox.

This particular issue was 1/94. It had weird game-related news like "Doom has been released" and "A new version of the Commodore 64 emulator has been released". (Umm, yeah. The new version of "the Commodore 64 emulator". In retrospect it's pretty hard to guess which emulator that was, but I take an educated guess it was CCS64. There pretty much weren't other C64 emulators then! [Or was it this? My memory is a bit hazy.])

The most important thing, and probably the most educational piece of news in retrospect, was, however, an article titled "Commodore takes it like a man."

"...if the numbers have any other basis in reality aside of the market leader's hallucinations, the company seems to be doing just fine... ...the current sales... are approximately 30,000 per week, the total being close to 400,000 units already... ...is selling up to four times more than Sega's similar offering. The company has... heh, a 'problem': [David Pleasance says] 'Our problem is that we aren't manufacturing enough of the machines [to meet the demand]...'"

Sounds interesting, huh?

Now, you may think that's just a typical marketspeak, and you may have heard similar speak from most of the major console manufacturers of the day when they spew ramblings of their own consoles.

The bit I omitted in the dot-dot-dots was the fact that they're talking of Commodore CD32.

Which, you may be aware, didn't quite live up to the hype what comes to the sales. (Nor, exactly, did Sega CD, but that's just a small detail.)

People, please, remember this. Don't believe the hype. Here we see a company spinning "yeah, we're doing fine", and if you look at them a decade later, the frigging company doesn't even exist.

This is exactly why I hate the marketing bullshit that's being spewed around the new consoles. I hope this small example was enlightening enough in this respect.

The Game Politics posted about supposed Hot Coffee stuff in Final Fantasy VIII.

However, I'm not really that convinced - to me, it seems like yet another case of accidental video game porn (by the way, I'm quite glad this site is up - it seemed to disappear a while back and is now on a different host).

While we're at it, last night I played Final Fantasy VII, and now, in the daytime, I can see that I did, in fact, capture a rather... interesting screenie that can be interpreted in many ways.

(Sorry for the low quality - fed through my VCR to computer...)

Now remember how Cloud's head was thrashing back and forth...

Okay, some very tired thoughts at four o'clock in the morning...

Yesterday's big news was that I registered to play NetHack on alt.org.

It's a great big freaking time that I get over of my NetHack depression. I have to fight it. I bloody well will beat this game one day.

What NetHack depression? Well, NHD is a very very typical thing - I play what seems to be a rather decent game, get squished like a bug, and swear not to touch the game for the next six months. And after six months, the same thing.

And what makes it even worse is three things: I've played the game damn long already and still don't quite achieve good results; I consider beating this game to be the only criteria for being considered a Serious Gamer; and thirdly, if I see other people getting squillion times more points if I do, well, that certainly does put certain dent in my motivation... I have this annoying tendency to want to excel, and completely and utterly failing to do that does get me down - and no, quit saying that majority of the modern gamers haven't ascended either, dammit!

I've played the game for... hell if I know how long. The thing is, 10 years ain't even close. And my current NetHack skillset is somewhat similar to an advanced player that has maybe played the game for a half an year; I know the most obvious things that I'm not supposed to do, some of the things that are good to do, and that's that.

But the thing is, I've never really looked at NetHack in an analytic way. I've just pressed on, killed things, and then died a stupid death, thinking "well, I'd better not do that in the future!" I think NetHack is a wrong game to start with; I've now played a lot of other games and that's probably teaching me more on how to play games. All these years, I've never had the proper mindset for this kind of games.

I guess it's time for me to quit thinking this as a yet another CRPG and start thinking it as what it is - an action game with endless possibilities for minmaxing and stuff. stretching fingers:: Hmm...

I swear I'll be done before... well, let's be generous and say 2016. Well, at lest it's pretty safe to say I've done the Quest by then. =)

And finally, I'm very surprised to see "Killed by a fox" as the #11 cause of death. "A corrrnered fox is more dangerous than a jackal!" ...um, jackals are on the list too. At #3. Glad to see the old favorite (NOT!), water moccasins, on rank #2, though. =)

A few days ago was my Abuse Day. Held randomly every 6-9 months. If I try to play more Abuse than that, I get too... actioned.

Anyway, here's a silly idea that might just work. People are working on fan-made sequels to Metroid games. Abuse is a "what if Metroid games had a male protagonist" kind of game: More enemies, more stuff to shoot, less clever puzzles, darker atmosphere. (Okay, not that Metroid games are too feminine either.)

Anyway, what if, what if, there was a Metroid fangame... made... with... Abuse engine? ...that's a brilliant idea. Brilliant idea. I don't think I want to think of it more. Some good ideas might best be forgotten!