Discuss The Quotes Thread For The Blog

[Prometheus]

I do not get why people are so into Atari 2600. I can only suspect it has nostalgic value to those who played on one back when it was new. Or I haven't seen any of the good games.

There's no nostalgia here* - Cosmic Ark was made before I was even born, and I never had an Atari 2600 as a kid, either. It is, to me, a new experience.

With me, I have an appreciation of good arcade-style game design, and the Atari 2600 has quite a few good games in that vein.

*(Often, in my experience, the assumption that something is "just due to nostalgia" is often incorrect. Good game design is timeless. )

 

[crade]

Intellivision > Atari

 

[Prometheus]

The Intellivision is all new to me, too. I've picked up a few games/compilations so I've got stuff ready to go when my Pandora gets here. I rather like Thin Ice and Nightstalker, in particular, along with Lock 'n' Chase.

 

[LeChuck87]

Intellivision > Atari

fairchild channel f > Intellivision

 

[WizardStan]

Intellivision > Atari

HIGH FIVE!

fairchild channel f > Intellivision

grrrrrr

 

[mali]

As a side note, the 1000 Wifi-less folks will get an autographed Pandora, according to ED on the German boards. Maybe Mithrildor wants to add this to his latest post, or I'll do it tomorrow http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=118362#p118362

 

[Awakening]

There's no nostalgia here* - Cosmic Ark was made before I was even born, and I never had an Atari 2600 as a kid, either. It is, to me, a new experience.

With me, I have an appreciation of good arcade-style game design, and the Atari 2600 has quite a few good games in that vein.

*(Often, in my experience, the assumption that something is "just due to nostalgia" is often incorrect. Good game design is timeless. )

The graphical limitations of the system makes the games quite painful to watch and requires quite a lot of imagination and most of the games I've seen really lacks in the gameplay department as well. To me the 2600 is halfway between Pong and games worth playing. I grew up on C64 and I'll probably play some of those games but most of my time will probably be spent on A500 and SNES. Especially on SNES you can find some really good gameplay and storytelling.

@ prometheus
that's it... you nailed it...
atari was my first console, we used to have contests back in the 80s, river raid, megamania, pac-man, and the best of all, H.E.R.O...
it does not have the same impact on me anymore, i'm aging, but it's fun to play it once in a while...

I also loved H.E.R.O. ... on C64! It looks at least 10 times better: http://www.mobygames.com/game/hero/screenshots

 

[crade]

The Intellivision is all new to me, too. I've picked up a few games/compilations so I've got stuff ready to go when my Pandora gets here. I rather like Thin Ice and Nightstalker, in particular, along with Lock 'n' Chase.

(I'm sure someone is going to assasinate me for being so off topic but...)
The thing with the intellivision is that all the "compilations" and stuff are limited because the intellivision has a keypad on it's controllers and the compilations always end up with a regular control pad.

I highly recommand Tron Deadly Discs, this is my favorite intellivision game!

 

[Prometheus]

Heh, you grew up with the same systems as me, Awakening. I had a C64 as a kid, and the SNES is my favourite system of all-time.

I don't care about graphical limitations, though - the games are fun. I won't miss out on a great experience just because something looks different.

Imagination is an important thing when it comes to the medium of video games (good article about that here), too.

EDIT: Got ninja'd by crade! :lol:

(I'm sure someone is going to assasinate me for being so off topic but...)
The thing with the intellivision is that all the "compilations" and stuff are limited because the intellivision has a keypad on it's controllers and the compilations always end up with a regular control pad.

I've bought the compilations (and a cartridge or two) solely so that I have legitimate copies of the games. I don't own the systems to play them on - they're reserved for my Pandora, which I think will lend itself to Intellivision playing better, given the keyboard. (Perhaps WizardStan can tell us more? )

 

[Tempel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsc9rJabk

 

[crade]

I've bought the compilations (and a cartridge or two) solely so that I have legitimate copies of the games. I don't own the systems to play them on - they're reserved for my Pandora, which I think will lend itself to Intellivision playing better, given the keyboard. (Perhaps WizardStan can tell us more? )

Yes, but unfortunately the compilations only have the games that are playable without the keypad, which isn't a very good sampling imho.

 

[Prometheus]

I've got so much to look forward to, getting stuck into this. :lol:

 

[WizardStan]

I've bought the compilations (and a cartridge or two) solely so that I have legitimate copies of the games. I don't own the systems to play them on - they're reserved for my Pandora, which I think will lend itself to Intellivision playing better, given the keyboard. (Perhaps WizardStan can tell us more? )

The numbers across the top work directly with the number pad. The only ones I'm not certain which are which are the CLEAR and ENTER button. The left and right triggers magically (seriously, I didn't do this intentionally) mapped to the L1 and R1 buttons on the controller, which worked out beautifully.
I'd like to add a feature which can display an overlay on the side of the screen so you know which buttons are which without having to memorize, but that'll probably have to wait until I've got a Pandora and can play with the screen real estate.

 

[Prometheus]

Thanks very much, Stan. That's seriously cool - especially the part about the L and R buttons. Should I go and add that to the quotes thread for the blog, now? Haha. :lol:

 

[Monk]

I don't get it, why can't people write kB like it should be? Lower case k and upper case B? And yeah, it's important to separate b (bits) from B (bytes). But ED confirmed it being bytes. While it is standard to write connection speeds in bits you usually see speeds in bytes when downloading things.

50 kB/s equals 400 kb/s. That's less then a standard 512 kb/s ADSL connection which should be OK for surfing the web but a pain to download anything on. We also don't have Flash support. However, 8 kB/s is equal to 64 kb/s which is barely faster then a dial up (56k) modem and while you can surf on that it's not exactly fast.

If I'd meant a lower case b (for bits) I'd have typed one. I didn't, because I meant Bytes.

I didn't use the potentially more "correct" abbreviations of "KiB", but then neither did you. It's detestable IMHO. I've been using B to denote Byte and b to denote bit for as long as I can recall, barring (probably far too many) typos. Then again, since this is serial transfer KiB might not be more accurate.

Around 60KBps would have been fine in 1995, in part because we wouldn't have been dropping packets to reach that speed from 10Mbps. Dropping from 10Mbps (say) to 60KBps due to dropped packets is going to be "not good" IMHO. And that could still be "at peak" with a full OS image, with "actual throughput" being somewhat lower still.

 

[Awakening]

Heh, you grew up with the same systems as me, Awakening. I had a C64 as a kid, and the SNES is my favourite system of all-time.

I don't care about graphical limitations, though - the games are fun. I won't miss out on a great experience just because something looks different.

Imagination is an important thing when it comes to the medium of video games (good article about that here), too.

Somehow I imagined you being younger

I don't like having to imagine that something is something that it looks nothing like. I also think that the visuals (as well as sound and music) are part of the complete experience of playing a game. The Atari 2600 is limited by more then just graphics however. While simple games can be fun now and then, especially in the company of friends (check out Pax Britannica, the one button RTS), I prefer longer games.

That article isn't exactly supporting your cause Not a very good article anyway. First thing that catches me is the creation date, this debate is age old. I recall a time when the CD was new and companies started making "interactive movies". Whoever wrote that article clearly missed that era. The assumption of The Matrix is a load of crap, a classic case of someone not doing any research. For example I have just seen two anime series (by the same creators) that doesn't have a lead character to follow and they are both great. Baccano! and Durarara! for those who are interested.

I found your blog BTW, looks interesting but I don't have the time. Got friends coming over to play board games soon. The ones I love have nothing but a back story at best but it's all about the mechanics and the interaction between the players.

 

[mali]

Wie das mit der Datenübertragung geht, weiß ich nicht... wie macht man das am PC?
Akkulaufzeit verringert sich mit einer Festplatte sicher - denn der WLAN-Stick frisst gerade mal ein viertel der max. USB-Anschluß-Leistung...
Die würde aber auch fressen, wenn Du intern WiFi nutzen würdest

Gerade mal getestet:
Pandora mit internem WiFi läuft braucht ca. 1950mW. Pandora mit externem WiFi ca. 2100mW.
Macht nicht wirklich viel mehr aus.

http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=118484#p118484

[someone asked if transfer speed would go down if an external hard drive was connected together with the WiFi dongle and if it was possible to prioritize WiFi dongle data transfer]
I don't how this data transfer [prioritization] would work... How do you do that on PC?
Battery run time will go down with an external hard drive for sure - since the WLAN-stick eats barely a quarter of the maximum USB power...
It would eat that, too, if you were to use internal WiFi.

I just tested this: Pandora with internal WiFi takes around 1950 mW. Pandora with external WiFi 2100 mW. It's not really much more.

Not bad at all, just 150mW additional power consumption.

 

[Vlynndar]

As a side note, the 1000 Wifi-less folks will get an autographed Pandora, according to ED on the German boards. Maybe Mithrildor wants to add this to his latest post, or I'll do it tomorrow http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=118362#p118362

This... Is interesting.

 

[Aninhumer]

I have an 8Mb/s connection here, but when it started dropping packets (my brother discovered bittorrent) it became entirely unusable.

With mldonkey_server I've never seen packet dropping. mldonkey supports bittorrent too.

Yeah, the problem was he didn't cap his uploads, not bittorrent itself.

But in any case, getting 1 packet in 20 is NOT the same as getting 5% speed.

 

[Mithrildor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dSj6s_apM&feature=youtube_gdata

I just wanted to say thanks very much for posting this in the quotes thread, Mithrildor. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have seen it - and the Atari 2600 was a system that I was hoping to see a working emulator for.

Portable Cosmic Ark, here I come.

Protip: Use alec's Craig Stalker, I wouldnt have seen the youtube vid without it.

As a side note, the 1000 Wifi-less folks will get an autographed Pandora, according to ED on the German boards. Maybe Mithrildor wants to add this to his latest post, or I'll do it tomorrow http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=118362#p118362

I cant translate that, so could you do it please?