Areala

Phillyman - Will you be accepting donations to the site of magazines specifically for sale over Chasethechuckwagon? I have a plethora of them, and I'm sure many are duplicates of what others have or will be donating to be scanned, and I'd much rather the money go to the site operation than just a couple dollars into my pocket here or there. A flat-rate box would let me send them within the US fairly cheaply, after all.

PSM Issue 8 indexed and good to go.

Hey, I'm not the only one. Thor, Biotrooper and E-Day have all been doing their fair shares of work as well.

I see a lot of talking and not much bowing... I will let this pass. This time.

I am officially the first follower of Retromags on Twitter! Bow to your princess. Bow to her!

How neat!!

Just in terms of potential vs. realization, the 32X wins this battle hands-down. It's the only system I know of that had more games cancelled for it than it actually had released. However, the 32X is not a system itself, merely an add-on component. For a full system, it has to be a 3-way tie between the 3DO, the CD-i, and the Jaguar. Panasonic and Philips clearly had no idea what they were doing when it came to entering the video game market, especially with Panasonic's effort to corner the market on console video game porn with the likes of "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties". We won't even discuss the CD-I Zelda titles; even Nintendo refuses to admit they ever existed. The Jaguar, on the other hand, had a modicum of titles released for it, but only Tempest 2000 and Alien vs. Predator could be really be considered "killer apps". The sudden appearance and equally sudden death of the Jaguar CD add-on is just another footnote in failed console history. But really, any controller that provides you with more buttons than you have fingers on two hands was just asking to be crapped upon by everyone in the known universe. As far as portable systems go, there's really only one true nominee for this category, and that's the unfortunate Virtual Boy. Although I never owned one, I still harbour a hatred for Nintendo management during this time for what they did to Gunpei Yokoi. Those of you who aren't familiar with the name will nonetheless know of his greatest gaming creation (Metroid) and his greatest contribution to the handheld market (Game Boy). And yet, the genius responsible for creating the adventure game design that is still emulated/ripped off by other companies to this day suffered a setback when it came to the design of the Virtual Boy. When it came time to show it off, Nintendo was so disgusted by the project that they basically stuck him in a corner of a booth somewhere at the Tokyo Game Show in the hopes that nobody would show any interest and that they wouldn't have to deal with the shame of knowing the Virtual Boy was a Nintendo product after all. A great man with a grand vision for gaming was ruined by the company he helped boost to number one, and was treated as an outcast afterwards; he resigned from Nintendo shortly thereafter. Yokoi never managed to regain his honour after the slamming the Virtual Boy took in the press and from Nintendo itself as he was killed in a car accident in 1997. Those are my nominees, and I'm sticking to 'em.

PSM Issue 19 indexed. But now...on to the most important issue of PSM ever...issue #1 which I just unearthed from my collection. Edit: Issue 1 now fully indexed. On to Issue #8...

The YLOD is a hardware failure related to heat that affects the PS3. It gets its name from the fact that the power light on the console, which usually is either red when the unit is off, or green when it is on, flashes yellow for a few seconds before turning red and shutting the system down. It's not cool, but it seemingly only affects the early-run PS3 hardware; newer machines have a smaller chipset and don't generate as much heat.

All the ads for "Fear Effect 2" were pretty much thinly-disguised porn, including one that actually got banned from print for being entirely too risque. One of my favorites I found while flipping through an issue of PSM: it shows Hana up-close with a nice cleavage shot, Rain in the background, and the tagline is: "Murder and mayhem interrupted by frequent dressing and undressing." The one that actually got banned from print was far worse, showing Hana and Rain in their underwear, one straddling the other, with a tagline akin to, "The game isn't the only thing that has thirteen climaxes." Yum yum.

Sweet! I wondered if that existed anywhere... I've infoboxed every PSM up to 110 on the Wiki. Now all we need is the heavy lifting of the indexing. I found around half a dozen more magazines that I can index there, so I'll play around with those for the next couple days. *huggles* Areala

They care because if you've opened your console, there's the chance you could have damaged something yourself. Since Sony doesn't want to spend money and time fixing something that a gamer deliberately did to his or her system, they simply won't service a console that has been opened. They were quite clear about this on the phone with me, in fact, before sending me the e-mail with instructions on getting it shipped out: I had to confirm that the damage to the PS3 was not due to abuse, that the unit had not been opened, that the sticker had not been detached or broken, and that the serial number was intact and untampered with. Also, if any of that stuff was found to be true, I essentially waved my right to get it repaired/replaced by them and would get my console shipped back to me in the condition it came to them. Serious business, these repair centers...

Another good idea, but alas I can't even get it to do the triple-beep reset. It beeps when it turns on, then beeps again and shuts itself off instantly as though some sort of system hardware test is initiated and failed about a second and a half after it starts. Also, I don't use an HDMI cable (just component video), so I don't know if that would be the problem. Ah well...it was worth a shot.

Going out on my own a bit here, but we'll see what y'all think. I found a couple of my old PSM magazines, and I threw together an index for issue 18. Check it out, let me know if there's anything I need to improve, and if not, I've got one or two more I can index. PSM Issue 18 *huggles* Areala

I can't get the machine to turn on at all; the yellow light that blinks isn't the orange one that indicates HD activity or the green one that indicates online connection, it's the power light itself. And, alas, I can't get to the recovery console at all. Nor did I replace my hard drive...it's the same 60GB that it shipped with. Opening up your PS3 voids the warranty instantly; there's a little strip that you break to get into the unit itself, and if that's broken or tampered with, they won't service the unit even if all you did was open it up to vacuum out some dust, warranty or not. All good ideas, but ultimately I'm afraid I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and send it off.

Infoboxes added to the first 28 issues of PSM Magazine (which brings the Wiki current through the 1999 year for that magazine). Thanks, Phillyman, for the assistance.

I don't have any to scan at the moment, but I recall from the early 3D card days of PC gaming that 3DFX ran some rather humourous ads for their hardware, generally revolving around one of their "researchers" standing around, eating a sandwich, while viewing something horrific such as a car accident or brain surgery and asking a dumb question like, "So, how many feet would you say the eyeball bounced after it left his skull?" or "How many different shades of red would you estimate it would take to create an effect like that?" The tag line was something about the lengths they went to for accuracy and realism. I will still swear that the meanest ads were back in the day of the 16-bit gaming era though. You think Microsoft and Sony snipe one another all the time now? That was NOTHING compared to the low-blows that Sega used to constantly throw at Nintendo in the mid-90s. After all, Sega's slogan for a long time was "Genesis does what NINTENDON'T!" And who can forget the "blast processing" buzz word that Sega's marketing department made up to describe how "fast" their technology was? Never mind that it didn't actually exist.

Just finished adding the infoboxes to the remaining pages for Official Xbox Magazine.

Yeah, if I could just get the thing to turn on for even 5 minutes, I could copy all my savegame data to my 4gb flash drive and be totally cool with shipping it off to be fixed/replaced. Really, the saves are all I need; anything I downloaded off the PSN can be re-downloaded, trophies are synched to your PSN account so they'll show back up as soon as I sign back on, and game data can be re-downloaded and installed including the relevant patches. I don't store movies, pictures or music on my PS3, so there's none of that to back up. No matter what, I'm up the creek with my Mercenaries 2 saves, since they're copy protected for God only knows what reason (stupid DRM...) For the record, it's costing me money to have the PS3 replaced because I'm out of warranty (I got the system in 07, so it's more than a year old). In addition, all those of you contemplating buying a PS3 but are worried because of this, rest assured that this only happens to the 60GB models; the new 160GB systems have a smaller chipset and don't generate nearly as much heat as the ones that were first off the line. If you don't need PS2 compatibility, or don't want it, then just get a new version and don't bother with the 60GB. For me, though, there's no choice: backwards compatibility sold me on the system as I have an ENORMOUS PS2 library and while I still have my PS2, it's a first-gen release and is nearly 10 years old at this point so I'd like to avoid having to use it as much as possible. In addition, replacing/accessing the hard drive does not void your warranty; the HDD access panel on the the left side of the console can be easily popped open and swapped out for a different size drive if you want. Any 2.5" SATA laptop hard drive will work, though if you get one that runs faster than 5600 RPMs, you'll generate more heat than what the system specs call for so beware. Sony is quite explicit in the owner's manual how easy this is, and they will service a PS3 that has had its hard drive replaced with another one. That's the only mod acceptable to Sony though; if you unscrew the bottom and dig into the guts of the system, they won't service your console period even if all you do is take a look-see at the interior. I'm feeling a bit more rational tonight, so I'm sure everything will turn out OK in the end. It'll suck to lose all that progress in those games, but I can just chalk that up to being unlucky and view it as a chance to play some really good games over again. After all, Uncharted and Fallout 3 are still amazing games, no two ways about it, to say nothing of Dead Space...

Turned my PS3 on tonight with the intention of jumping on Home for a few minutes, when it suddenly shut itself off without warning. I tried to turn it on again, but to no avail. Yup, the dreaded Yellow Light of Death has struck again, bricking my system. *sigh* Sony will replace my system, but it'll cost me $150 plus tax, and I'll likely lose everything on my hard drive. There goes my 90+ hours on Fallout 3, not to mention game saves totalling thousands of hours logged on the likes of Uncharted, Bioshock, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Star Wars, Mirror's Edge, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, Lego Batman, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Farcry 2, Bionic Command: Rearmed, Dead Space, Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2. I want to cry...

Just acquired Silent Hill Homecoming, Bioshock, and the collector's edition of Grand Theft Auto IV all for the PS3.

I think, through no fault of their own, Nintendo would have a very hard time catering to the kind of crowd that buys M-rated titles, especially now that the Wii is out. Nintendo, this generation, made an amazingly wise move and decided not to compete with Sony and Microsoft. Rather than getting involved in the system specs pissing contest with those other two companies, Nintendo was quietly happy to sieze upon the largely-ignored casual gaming market and capitalize on people who didn't even know they were gamers. These are people who wouldn't even own a game system, save for the fact that Wii Sports can literally be played by anyone with one functional arm. Nintendo went back to what made them successful with the NES in the first place: they are selling it almost more as a toy in the US than as a gaming system, while Sony and Microsoft are waving around data about who can push more polygons and who has a better online experience. Nintendo reached out to the 75% of the world that are casual or non-gamers, and snared them hook, line and sinker with the DS and the Wii. But casual gamers don't go for more complex titles usually. And many casual adopters of the DS and Wii are younger children or families who purchased the system for their whole entertainment. These aren't single 18-30-year olds for the most part, they are mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, even grandparents, who want something simple to play, to enjoy for a little while, and then put down and go back to real life. They don't want to get involved in the control scheme of a Resident Evil, they don't want the foul language of a Grand Theft Auto, and they aren't interested in the 90+ hours required to invest in a game like Fallout 3. And they don't want their children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren doing it either.

If I say yes...do I win the thread...?

These are the order I rank them, but it doesn't include any versions I've not played, such as the GC REmake, RE0, Deadly Silence for the Nintendo DS and so forth. Resident Evil 2 Resident Evil (the PS1 original, not REmake) Resident Evil Code: Veronica X Resident Evil 3: Nemesis Resident Evil: Dead Aim Resident Evil: Outbreak (File 2) Resident Evil: Outbreak Resident Evil: Survivor Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil 5

Sweet! I've added the infobox to the first 23 issues of the magazine, and I'll work on getting the rest in there in the next day or two. I was out of town for most of the day today, so not a whole lot of work done, but a few more baby steps for our Wiki!