Gran Turismo.. WITH MOTORBIKES!

I just got my import of this today.  It's sweet.

-John

Reminds me of the Penny Arcade Remix Project.

-John

Not even Phantasy Star: The Next Generation?

-John

The Dreamcast had a good chunk of units sold - it's just that the marketing sucked.  They did sell half a million units in the first two weeks in NA, which is not bad at all for the shape of the market at the time.  It had 1 million units in NA by the end of November of that year (it launched in September).

They had 30% marketshare in 2000, which is not bad considering the general failure of the Saturn in America.  They were doing well enough, they simply got steamrolled by the PS2, though.

-John

I laughed at the 1up comments.  The '1 year later than the 360 = death' posts.  Do these kids not remember the Dreamcast?

-John

Yup, I've got import games from three other regions (Asia, Japan, and Europe), and they all work fine.  Just no UMD movies from other regions.

Also, consider getting Ys or Winning Eleven 9.  Despite Ys' loading times, it's still the great game it was on the PS2, and I don't have any particular love of soccer, but Winning Eleven is super fun to play.

-John

Dude, you can buy three packs of nintendo styluses for like $5...

-John

PvE is that way ---->

-John

Okay, first, thanks for reading the rules, especially the part about multiple posts!

Oh, wait, you didn't.

Second, let me explain the difference between a publisher and a developer for you.  A publisher generally puts up the cash for development and goes through all of the issues in regards to advertising, etc.  A developer creates a game.  Sometimes developers are publishers, and sometimes publishers are developers.  It doesn't always happen that way.  Some developers create their game, and then hunt for a publisher.  These are generally larger studios (BioWare and Pandemic do this).  Some developers rely on finding a publisher first so that they'll have funding during development.  These developers are often partially owned by the publisher.

Square Enix is both a publisher and a developer.  Many of their games are developed in-house (Final Fantasy XII, Romancing SaGa), while others are created by outside studios (Radiata Stories, Drakengard 2, Dragon Quest VIII).  Many of the publishers in America are simply that - publishers.  While Agetec has programmers on hand for issues that come up during localization, there are no 'Agetec' games.  Some developers do not publish their own work - BioWare is one of these developers.  Their Baldur's Gate titles were published by Interplay, while Knights of the Old Republic was published by LucasArts, and most recently, Jade Empire was published by Microsoft Game Studios.

Some developers are fully or partially owned by publishers.  Enix had a 12% stake in GameArs before it became owned by GungHo.  Microsoft owns Bungie.  Microsoft owns Rare.  Nintendo owns Retro Studios.

That being said, Chris has already stated that Dragon Quest was primarily an Enix franchise, and Enix generally outsourced their games to other developers and primarily functioned as a publisher.

GameArts is another example of this - they were the developer for Grandia III, while Square Enix was the publisher.

Hope that cleared things up a little for you.

-John

Well, I've got a 1gb memory stick and have a full season (13 episodes) of a show on there without issue, though it's not the full resolution quality.  Since I get a discount at work, I'll buy some of the used movies ($5 is a good price), but I simply can't see it working very well at the current prices.  It's cool because I'm stuck on campus all day, but I buy most of my movies on DVD.

-John

I'd like to see what everyone here thinks about the release of movies on UMD format.

I personally think it's a mixed bag.  I'd totally pick up some movies on UMD if they priced at $10 or less, but paying $15 or upwards of $25 for a UMD title is silly.

I did happen to get the first two seasons of Family Guy on UMD today for $25, which is what brought this up.  I'll get something like that, but wouldn't get it for the full retail price ($50).

What about you all?

-John

It's a bit different for my example - we know what nuclear weapons do, but we've never experienced something like that firsthand.  It's like nudity on television in America vs in Canada and Europe.  While such images are acceptable in one place, they're unacceptable in another.  Everyone knows what nudity is, it just had a different effect on different people.

I personally don't feel as if it's a huge issue, we've certainly come much further than I would've expected compared to some of the dialogue in years past.  It's not like other things aren't watered down for general consumption - have you guys ever watched The Matrix on TBS?

-John

There's cultural differences, plain and simple.

You think that the people who were born before 1945 in Japan would really find Fallout to be that kind of kitchy cool we do with the mushroom clouds and the nuclear fallout?  We think it's cute.  It would be offensive to them.

-John

I nearly forgot - my name on the last iteration of the boards was different.  I was "Teh John".  Was considering changing it to "John", but felt it was too simple.  So I reverted to "KeeperX".  I'm still the lovable webmaster of this site.

-John

Persona 2 was reprinted, you should be able to find it at GameStops and EBs.

-John