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27 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Mario has been mass murdering countless "enemy" creatures populating the Mushroom Kingdom for over 30 years and no one has seen fit to protect the children yet.  Where are you when we need you, ESRB???

A little bit of animated violence is innocent enough but this new possession mechanic I believe crosses a moral line.  It is not about merely squashing Goombas and riding turtles anymore.
It is now permitting the player to control an object to reach their own ends.  This is a clear violation without receiving verbal consent and without duress before taking something or someone captive.

Remake is not the appropriate word but regurgitate might be a better fit.  Super Mario Odyssey regurgitates it's colect-a-thon style end game from Mario Sunshine and it's physics from Mario 64.  Furthermore, Nintendo have taken design choices from Sonic Adventure.  Specifically the multi-character assisted goals, Sonic being rendered in a real city called Station Square as well as the action move double dash.  The way Super Mario Odyssey blends the stages between 2D and 3D are strikingly similar to Sega's 2011 sleeper Sonic Generations.

What really worries me though is that children will be playing this and the only message they will be getting is consent doesn't matter when you're victims are helpless.

It looks an awful lot like Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine engine with the objective being to collect regular coins, red coins and moons.  Although the concept of possessing the soul of you're pray is new for a Mario game, it isn't all that innovative to select different characters to complete a common objective.  

Sega always had problems with the camera in their Sonic games so they decided on a design choice in which Sonic could jump and then hit jump again and it would dash to an enemy.  This was so Sonic wouldn't fall off cliffs because the player can't see.  Nintendo in my opinion seemed to use this concept as seen in this video where Mario travels across a power line.  It also seems like they borrowed ideas from Sonic Generations.

New characters and sprites seem like a major update for the franchise in this game and fans will love it although I do not feel moved.

Mario is back in another remake.  This time in 720P on the Nintendo Switch.  The basic cannon to a traditional Mario story remains the same with Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach while hiring a cavalry of malefactors to harass and provoke our betrothed pal Mario.

It is suggested from the official Nintendo E3 gameplay footage that there may be a potential marriage proposal awaiting the virtuous Peach.  If you played Sonic Generation from back in 2011 you know how Sonic Team combined 2 dimensional Sonic from Mega Drive with 3 dimensional gameplay from Dreamcast era.  Odyssey to me seems to borrow these elements of gameplay but improves on the camera flaw that Sega's version was plauged with.  The biggest talking point of Odyssey though is Mario's hat.  It is clearly going to be a major part of solving puzzles and completing sidequests.

My concern with Super Mario Odyssey is how this so-called "possesion" gameplay mechanic teaches players that they can control other beings without their consent. As Jessica Jones has shown us, this is tantamount to rape. Nintendo needs to include a consent quick time event or some other sort of minigame where the player has to gain enthusiastic consent every time before Mario can gain possession of an enemy or object.

You know me bro, I always measure console sales worldwide and give prices in American even though I root for Microsoft and live 70 cents on the dollar.

You got to look at the price.  A switch costs as much as a Playstation 4 Pro right now which is over $400 with no game.

The SNES Classic is only $80 and comes with both controllers and lots of great games.  It will be an impulse buy for alot of people.

I don't believe the SNES is going to have the same appeal the NES classic had because normal people in 2016 simply wanting to enjoy the NES Flashback never got one and by the time it was out people either lost interest or simply protested against it. 

I would wager 4 Million of these SNES Classics could be sold by the end of the year because of the novelty mixed with the November - December Holiday season and the ability to add other games to it by way of PC.

Nintendo likely wants to generate hype for their Switch and online subscription to play "classic" games such as Balloon Fight and Super Mario Bros 3 across the network with friends so a re-release the NES Classic is out of the question and 4 Million SNES classics will likely be the limit.  They don't want to compete against themselves.

From the moment I watched the first episode of Black Mirror, I did not want to stop watching.  The episodes take a dark exaggerated and satirical look at ourselves in an alternate but not far-fetched present day reality and focus on our impulsive nature to use our technologies with unforeseen consequences.  The show has been cited as a modern day Twilight Zone where rules are bent all of the time and you are never quite sure if what you expect to happen will indeed be so.

This began as a British series in 2011 with 3 episodes for season 1. 3 episodes for a second season in 2013 and then Directv paid to have 12 more episodes made.   6 release in 2016 and 6 more for late 2017.

In the most recent season there is an episode called San Junipero.  In my opinion it is the only story so far that turns out to have a  happy ending, sort of.

The story builds on the romance between 2 young women, one an awkward nerdy type and the other a socially outward type.  As the romance builds we quickly realize that something does not seem quite right in San Junipero, which by season 3 of Black Mirror isn't all that strange.  The week begins all over again with the first women not being able to find her friend.  We soon realize that these women are in some type of virtual reality and so they decide to meet in real life.  The circumstance which unfold in the second half of this story are gut wrenching as we learn the real life state of these women and how their future relationship is in peril. 

I used to play my DS in bed before I fall asleep.  I never take games out of my house because I feel games should be played at home.  I would rather go for a walk or join a conversation than play with my phone or especially an extra device such as DS or Switch.

It would be possible for me to hall my big laptop on occasion to play a multiplayer game like Diablo: Reaper of Souls. 

As some people know already, the SNES Classic Edition was announced Monday June 26.  They say it will be available September 29 for 80 bucks American and will only be available until the end of the year.

Just like the NES Classic the hardware runs Linux for the Operating System and likely an emulator such as retroarch but unlike the NES, it will contain only 21 games instead of 30 that the NES had with a promise of "significantly more" SNES units than the meager 2.3 Million NES units.

The SNES Classic will contain the following games;

Another thing the SNES shares with it's sibling is the usb port which can be plugged into a PC, giving access to the software.  Besides voiding you're warranty, having access to the operating system will make it easy to add some of you're old dusty games if you know how to dump them.  I have to say this is a gray area even if you own the originals but the fact is, this option will be available.

When Nintendo released only 200,000 NES Classic units in Nov 2016 they sold out immediately.  Scalpers bought them all and flipped them on Ebay for around 6 times the retail price.  After Christmas the final shipments totaling 2.3 Million units trickled out but scalpers and collectors bought them all.  Nintendo claimed they underestimated the demand for this toy but that is complete rubbish.  It is well known that Nintendo purposefully limits stock to increase demand and hype.  The Switch has sold 2.7M units as of May 17 and many stores can't keep them stocked and Amazon currently lists them for around 80 dollars above retail including the shipping.

Nintendo says they will create "significantly more units" of the SNES Classic compared to NES Classic.

NES Classic totaled 2.3M so significantly could mean anything between 2 and 10 times as many I would guess right?

So between 5 and 20 Million units.

Tell me what you're guess is.

The controllers are re-created by Nintendo and will be high quality feel in you're hands like all 1st party controllers made by Nintendo, not the counterfeit ones that everybody has today.

The NES Classic controller was 2 foot 6 inch and everyone hated this because the original was 7 foot 8 inch so Nintendo increased this to 4 foot 6 inch.

1 minute ago, vice350z said:

if i had to pick my least favorite character it would be George....watching him eat on the show absolutely disgusts me and triggers my Misophonia...i have to fast forward through parts of him eating.

To save everyone the trouble Misophonia is a phobia of the sound of food in someones mouth.

LOL.  You must have a severe case or I just never noticed.

On 5/4/2017 at 3:51 AM, MGS said:

I wanna Watch Battlestar Galactica 2004, again...

Oh, and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.

I was meaning to watch Battlestar Galactica.  Almost finished the 2nd season and really enjoying the story to it. 

On 6/28/2017 at 5:37 PM, vice350z said:

I'm weird...I watch Seinfeld or King of Queens every single day lol. Either I watch it or its on as background as I'm cooking or computing. Have each show ripped to my hard drive in HD

Breaking Bad was my first binge show experience. LOVED it. I think I finished the 5 seasons in about 2 weeks.

I never like Seinfeld too much.  Everyone in school would be talking about it and some were rather obsessed but I never connected with it.

Jerry Seinfeld - I get his style of humor and understand why people enjoy it but it seemed as if I was watching a stand up comedy act.  Jerry seemed pretentious compared to any normal people I know.

Elaine - Promiscuous friend of the group.  Her role was to get phone numbers off other women.

Kramer - This parasite got through life by mooching off of people and especially Jerry. 

George - The only tolerable character in this show.  I and most people liked him because his failures seemed to out measure our own.

King of Queens could be challenged by Everybody Loves Raymond as the superior of the two and I wouldn't argue it although King of Queens is definitely the type of show you can relax and enjoy.

1999 was the era of DVD's, digital media and the reformation of the weekly television series.  Nobody blazed the trail like the fictional Italian mafia family Sopranos did.  The interactions between Tony's mafia family, his real family and all the relatives and associates made each 45 minute episode suspensful.  Sopranos was like watching a 45 minute movie every Sunday on HBO that all creators have tried to mimick.

2 hours ago, MGS said:

The originally planned ending for I am Legend?

The movie made no sense with the ending it shipped with.

I enjoyed Double Dragon Reloaded by game developer gamejolt in 2015 but they recently added new content and re-named it Double Dragon Reloaded Alternate.  Besides the new attack moves borrowed from the Gameboy Advance version of Double Dragon and the expanded levels, they re-recorded the music with real drums, synthesizer and other instruments.   It reminds me of a high end Roland sound card from 1996.

The soundtrack is available for download on their website along with the game.

http://gamejolt.com/games/double_dragon_reloaded_alternate/255630

Maybe I'm wrong but I read the mention of Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV but I did not see the reference to Asuka and Maria from Grand Theft Auto III.

After the hero leaves Portland Maine, he meets Maria who sends him on a quest to assassinate Salvatore Leone and prove his loyalty.  Meanwhile we hear suggestive language about "massagers" from another woman.

I remember this well from all the failed attempts at this mission.  I would respawn, hop in a Yakuza Stinger and just go barreling off the overpass onto Maria's parking lot letting the car explode.

2006 was the year of HD.  If you went to go buy a monitor or television you would be faced with choices of maximum resolution, screen size, and quality of picture which now includes the necessity of the digital HDMI input.

Most people at the time  had 720 x 480 projection televisions in there living rooms and 1360 x 768 lcd monitors for their computer. 

Take a vivid DVD of the time such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  The DVD was 720 x 480 so you would have to play it on you're PC and sit up close to get the maximum visual effect.

2006 began a war between HD DVD and Bluray disks, both of which could display 1920 x 1080.  This introduced some new problems.  The first was which HDMI version you had.  It needed to be version 1.3 to display 1080P.  Version 1 only supplied data for 720P and 1080i.  The next problem was deciding on a television.  1080P monitors and televisions were all great when they were supplied with 1080 content which was only available through bluray but if you plug you're cable box in which barely supplied 720 x 480, it looked like garbage when it was stretched onto a 1080.

Satellite provider DirecTV had "HD" boxes which had digital HDMI outputs and up to 1080i resolution.  At the time National Geographic was one of the few channels which transmitted in either 720P or 1080i.

People in 2006 had to choose between CRT, flat panel LCD or Plasma.  Although 1080P televisions were available by mid 2006 many consumers would argue that 1080i is all they need and that 1080p is something for the distant future.  They would also be found bragging about their 195 pound 1080i Sony crt and then poo poo those that spend extra for a space saving flat panel.

Here is an example of three "True HD" televisions which were released in 2006

Sharp Aquos LC-42D62U - This had 2 HDMI inputs and a digital analogue tuner.  It was a 42 inch LCD 1080P and cost $2300
Pioneer PRO-HD1 This was the 1st plasma to support 1080P.  This 50 inch had 2 HDMI but no speakers and no tuner although the best quality picture for $8000
Samsung HL-S6187W  I heard some of these 1080P Rear Projection televisions are still going strong today.  Great picture and great sound.  They don't make them like this anymore. The 61 inch will set you back $2600

In 2007 I got a 27 inch Panasonic that supported 1080i and had 2 HDMI inputs which was a premium at the time and was still going for $1100 but it had a far superior image when compared to my old 1360 x 768 computer monitor. 

It wasn't until 2011 that I got a much larger monitor that was 1080P and Plasma.  I played the same DVD trilogy of Lord of the Rings on my new 50 inch and compared that to the 1080P digital copy of the bluray and was once again impressed with the visual gain.

First allow me to explain the technical problem with my pictures.  I used transparency in the picture and saved as png which keeps information such as layers and transparency.  This looked fine under the old theme but not under this new theme called "carbon".  I re-saved the pictures as jpeg and now it pops.

You make some good points such as disposable income and the fact that if everyone has a smartphone, it would make the most sense to appeal to these people.

I watch people like Angry Video Game Nerd or Pat Contri and those guys aren't even interested in new consoles.  The are interested in Atari and Sega Flashback consoles coming out as well as anything before PS3.  I'll also note that Pat likes his Steam account to play Indy games and get his fix on games like Friday the 13th but otherwise they only play old stuff.

A place like Gamespot argue about the latest and greatest games and consoles.  They probably do more talking than playing and this is the generation that will watch other people stream on twitch.

It's just hard to believe these numbers. 

I've noticed a generational decline in system sales since the peak in 2010.  This first graph I have taken the total handheld sales and grouped them into only 5 generations.  The origin of modern handheld gaming starts with Gameboy OG and the rest come along for the ride until the popular but short generational Gameboy Advance was replaced with the Nintendo Dual Screen only 3 years later.  Playstation Portable set the bar for technical advancements starting the 3rd generation for the next 6 years when Playstation Vita  shared generation 4 with 3DS.  Generation 5 began with the Nintendo Switch until the Switch Pro which will likely follow.

No word from Sony whether they will make another portable and Microsoft has already stated that they would sit out for awhile.  Nintendo seems to control the handheld market for now.

The next graph shows the number of hardware units sold per console generation.  There is a perfect bell curve starting from NES all the way to the peak during the Xbox 360 era and recent sales numbers suggest a decline comparatively.

This 3rd graph counts the total units of every console brand for each generation.  It also counts the total units for all handheld brands, tallies it for the appropriate portable generations and then applies the numbers and years they peaked to the console generation graph.  The trend is the same.  There was a videogame peak during generation 7 era and it is in decline.

A few years ago I got interested in Underground Hip Hop.  I put together a list of some of my favorites which never get played in mainstream.

Akil the MC - One 4 the Money

Akil is a member of Jurassic 5 but he made this solo single.  Only thing I don't like is the camera sound censoring the dirty language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGKs7lBhCxE

Too Short - I'm a Player

One of the founders of west coast rap, this is another of his good songs about pimping, drug use and promiscuity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVfNmtovxrI

The Game - Bang Along

This is a wonderful throwback of everything which made the 80's great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1fenZrAFrs

K-os - Flypaper

Canadian performer releasing fantastic music but mostly gets ignored outside Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jqNakmpAYM

DJ Jazzy Jeff - Know Ur Hood

Jeff had the musical abilities and Will Smith had the on camera charisma.  This one shows off Jeff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GREXL0e_Wa0

Group Home - Livin' Proof

Listen to this if your OG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI264qcI2lo

Dizzy Wright - Killem Wit Kindness

More of a 21st century evolution of new age hip hop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMVfAAynx-M

Snak the Ripper - Forgotten

5 star rap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwRtm8tzwwY

Action Bronson - Imported Goods

5 star rap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKpd2Bua3Ug

Nutso - Str8 Talk

Gangsta beat with tight raps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKh0TMaa0sc

Crazeology - Microphone Masters

Monster base line bought from an unknown talent in Italy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcrwiPiH8jU

Crazeology - 365

5 star rap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4RiV98uabY

The Four Owls - Life in the Balance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPCCc1vPFFo

Dillon Cooper - State of Elevation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFqz4_sSaAk

Brothers of the Stone - Meditation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad9vhBTWeE8

Champ MC - Keep Shit on the Real

Old school girl owning this video.  No one can explain the Calgary Flames Jersey she prominently wears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge9xwGPlDsI

Mic Geronimo - It's Real

Sad that these guys couldn't afford better recording equipment for this single although the emotion and honesty makes up for a little loss in fidelity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsji8QJDXho

1 hour ago, te72 said:

That sounds like a pretty awesome wireless setup. You're talking AC, as in running it through the power lines in your walls, right? I always wondered how fast that might be. Apart from a wireless keyboard, mouse, one computer, and PS3 controller, everything is wired in our house.

It is the successor to 802.11 n Wifi on 2.4 GHz radio signal.  It is called 802.11 ac and it runs on the 5 GHz radio spectrum.

When I lived on the farm years ago I hooked my 56k kbps dial up modem to the barbed wire fence and it ran miles past my neighbors house all the way into town for internet access.  I'm glad I'm not a settler anymore.  Always settling for things like dial up for internet and instead of records we had to stomp the floor while Jebediah would play the jug.

38 minutes ago, DPsx7 said:

Gah! Ya'll need to be quiet. Every time there's a reply I get mailbombed... My poor AOL box. *looks for unsubscribe button*

31 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

The paranoia is so strong that reading about it was giving me heart palpitations.  So I went to WebMD to figure out what was wrong with me and it turns out I have a brain tumor.

Are you serious or are we about to get a pie in the face?

11 minutes ago, Raijin Z said:

It's never your privacy that you should be concerned about. It's the surreptitious planting of evidence. A judge is not going to have the idea that someone with an axe to grind remotely loaded a bunch of horrible pictures and videos onto your computer and phone while you were asleep. I mean, it's not as if people spin up an absurd tapestry of lies and sic the ever-increasingly-militarized police on people for laughs or anything.

 

This got me thinking about Apple's Icloud which has over 250 Million user's being held for ransom.  You're phone is like a multipurpose device to be used to retrieve all other passwords, banking credentials and other purchases.

I never store things in the cloud for a variety of nuisances but Apple and it's user's arrogance towards Apple being inherently safe is ignorant.

11 hours ago, te72 said:

I agree with you absolutely here. I don't even like having a wifi setup, if I'm honest. Prefer all things to be wired and manual. Hence the Abe Simpson comment.

I spent good money a couple years ago upgrading my wireless network to AC and it improved speeds from about 22 Megabytes / second to 100 MB/s compared to wireless N.  The theoretical maximum for AC is around 750 MB/s but it is designed to split that between 3 or 4 devices, not just one.

I have grown tired of wireless, especially bluetooth.  There is too much noise in my area with 2.4 and 5 GHz devices that it interferes.  I have limited my wireless to only my G602 gaming mouse.

11 hours ago, te72 said:

Did they already repeal the net neutrality rules? I'm gonna have to tear my senators a new asshole over this one...

Have to wait and see although we need to complain now and not later.  They are going the wrong direction on this course.  This is exactly one of the governments jobs which is to protect our privacy not take away from it.

It's also not as if our data isn't already being tracked and sold.  Estimate of $50 Billion a year in US alone is what is harvested from wholesale data.

Some of the larger sellers who are allowed to sell data without permission or at best case on a pinky swear are;

Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft with Windows 10

The buyers can be anyone in marketing, product development and advertising and wherever data is stored is open for hackers.

20 hours ago, te72 said:

The Shield seems to have paved the way for Sons of Anarchy, which is basically Macbeth on two wheels, but it was a lot of fun too.

Macbeth lol, that triggered a memory from Blackadder III.  Skip to 1 minute.

It's was only the top echelon, I mean, you and I may have had a 386 between 1994 and 1997 but that computer wouldn't play Doom.  The 486! and Pentium I came out in this time.  The clock cycles increased 33 Mhz every 6 months with AMD chips right behind them.

Remember that in the late 80's and 90's the displays were very crude.  If you did not buy a new display almost every year, you would be wasting money on the rest  of the machine.  Monochrome displays were replaced by VGA in 1992 and SVGA replaced in 1995.  The RAM was always sold at the lowest  but to play the top games you needed  more ram.  Remember high level memory access in MS DOS before Windows 95?  An extra 64 MB of memory in 1994 was $500 US.  The monitors were between $500 and thousands and the operating system and audio card were another $450 US.

After tax, for a computer minus the printer and other upgrades was in the $6000 range.

This is May 1994 from PC Accelerator

November 1995

Dec 1996

December 1997

December 1999

Or

If you go back and read computer game reviews from anyone honest will tell you what you need.  It aint cheap but I did embellish somewhat.  I assume a buyer would also buy a new printer and modem and either speaker or a CD Player or some software.

On 1/20/2017 at 9:43 PM, Raijin Z said:

ZX Spectrum and company. Low-spec systems with massive libraries of low-cost titles that used tape decks instead of much more costly floppy drives. The only computers I saw in the eighties in the US were multi-thousand dollar home office boxes, and this was when minimum wage was around $3.35 per hour. Let's say you wanted a $1000 computer, ignoring tax or any other add-ons. You would make $16 per day working full time, but pay about 20% of that back in taxes, so let's say $13 a day. It would take you about three months with no other expenses. Meanwhile an NES was $200. Definitely an achievable purchase for someone without a decade of tenure at the GM plant.

Yes that's right.  Also add that before 1994 and the age of Pentium, the Compaq PC which was about $30,000 US in 1986 dropped to $4500 by 1994 when Pentium came out and the above average personal computer remained about $6000 US.  Many computer game reviewers like PC Accelerator went bankrupt in the 90 because the cost to play the top echelon of games each year required the most ram and the fastest CPU.  It cost $6000 a year to play any game at acceptable framerates between 1989 and 1996.  Between 1996 and now the price has slowly reached the lowest common denominator