I know I'm behind, but I finally beat Yakuza 3.

(So I started in November and it's now March, but I finished it! Isn't that what matters?)

Isn't this a great pic? It's great to see them together again after nearly 40 years off the big screen, and we get to experience it in our own lifetime!

Drugs may be a political issue, but we're not talking about politics or celebs here, we're talking real drug addicts or homeless people in desperate circumstances. And no, they don't generally get given much attention. They get ignored, and are generally invisible to the average person who doesn't give a shit about them and is too self concerned to see.

I don't know what discovery your banging on about as I haven't read your post yet, but nothing much gets ignored more than these most marginalised people.

Most of the people in the pictures bambi linked weren't high class celebrities you hear about in the news with unlimited resources and support on their latest rehab trip, but actual impoverished people living on the streets and abandoned warehouses, anywhere they can find while their lives are destroyed. In most cases their children were taken away. About all they have left at that point is an existence barely sustained by supporting themselves with prostitution and worse just to survive. It's a tragic downward spiral. And they have my sympathy.

Cause human beings tend to be concerned for the welfare about other human beings from time to time. Whether it be to help or learn from their mistakes.

Look everyone! A magical hotdog!

WayForward are develping a remake of the original DuckTales game from the days of yore (NES).

Originally released in 1989 on the Nintendo Entertainment System, DuckTales was widely acknowledged as one of that generation's seminal platform titles. Taking its cue from the Disney cartoon series of the same name, DuckTales Remastered follows the adventures of Scrooge McDuck as he explores differently themed worlds to collect their treasures and become the world's richest duck.

DuckTales Remastered has seen the development team take the levels and layout from the original 1989 release as a foundation before expanding upon them to significantly enhance the gameplay experience but where this update truly impresses is its graphics and sound. All of the visuals from the 8-bit game have been beautifully re-created as hand-drawn and animated sprites, across a backdrop of luscious, re-envisioned level backgrounds. Furthermore, original Disney Character Voices talent, including some from the cartoon TV series, bring in-game characters to life with charm and wit, while the classic melodies of the original soundtrack are given a modern twist.

Further additions to the original include an all new tutorial level where players can get familiar with the iconic pogo jump and cane swing; while Scrooge McDuck's Museum allows players to track all their stats and compare their progress with others via global leaderboards.

A Disney Interactive licensed property, DuckTales Remastered is being developed for Capcom by WayForward and is scheduled for release digitally on Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft® and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Wii U™ this summer.

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

Just had a wave of nostalgia wash over me and it tastes real good.

Watched The Year of Living Dangerously starring a young Mel Gibson, the other day. It was actually pretty decent, better than I was expecting. It also reminds one of Mel's 80's heyday, he really was the quintessential ruggedly handsome American hero. Genuinely a shame he started to lose the plot a bit (Not that it was your fault, Mel, you were driven to madness by the women and the jews, I know). I'm pleased to hear he's making another comeback though.

^Pirates will find a way no matter what, there are already 5 exploits to be able to run pirated PSP games on the vita. fucking over the honest buyers to stop pirates is a practice that needs to stop, it doesn't boost profits and it only hurts the consumers.

To that end...

http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/45684087997/apathy-and-refunds-are-more-dangerous-than-piracy

Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy.

I think I can safely say that Super Meat Boy has been pirated at least 200,000 times. We are closing in on 2 million sales and assuming a 10% piracy to sales ratio does not seem unreasonable. As a forward thinking developer who exists in the present, I realize and accept that a pirated copy of a digital game does not equate to money being taken out of my pocket. Team Meat shows no loss in our year end totals due to piracy and neither should any other developer.

For the sake of argument, some of those people that did pirate Super Meat Boy could have bought the game if piracy didn’t exist but there is no actual way to calculate that lost revenue. It is impossible to know with certainty the intentions of people. With the SimCity fiasco and several companies trying to find new ways to combat piracy and stating piracy has negatively affected their bottom line I wonder if they’ve taken the time to accurately try to determine what their losses are due to piracy.

My first job outside my parents cabinet shop was at KMart. KMart, like countless other retailers, calculates loss by counting purchased inventory and matching it to sales. Loss is always built into the budget because it is inevitable. Loss could come from items breaking, being stolen, or being defective. If someone broke a light bulb, that was a calculable loss. If someone returned a blender for being defective, it wasn’t a loss to KMart, but a calculable loss to the manufacturer. If someone steals a copy of BattleToads, it’s a loss to KMart. All loss in a retail setting is calculable because items to be sold are physical objects that come from manufacturers that have to be placed on shelves by employees. You have a chain of inventory numbers, money spent and labor spent that goes from the consumer all the way to the manufacturer. A stolen, broken, or lost item is an item that you cannot sell. In the retail world your stock is worth money.

In the digital world, you don’t have a set inventory. Your game is infinitely replicable at a negligible or zero cost (the cost bandwidth off your own site or nothing if you’re on a portal like Steam, eShop, etc). Digital inventory has no value. Your company isn’t worth an infinite amount because you have infinite copies of your game. As such, calculating worth and loss based on infinite inventory is impossible. If you have infinite stock, and someone steals one unit from that stock, you still have infinite stock. If you have infinite stock and someone steals 1 trillion units from that stock , you still have infinite stock. There is no loss of stock when you have an infinite amount.

Because of this, in the digital world, there is no loss when someone steals a game because it isn’t one less copy you can sell, it is potentially one less sale but that is irrelevant. Everyone in the world with an internet connection and a form of online payment is a potential buyer for your game but that doesn’t mean everyone in the world will buy your game.

Loss due to piracy is an implied loss because it is not a calculable loss. You cannot, with any accuracy, state that because your game was pirated 300 times you lost 300 sales. You cannot prove even one lost sale because there is no evidence to state that any one person who pirated your game would have bought your game if piracy did not exist. From an accounting perspective it’s speculative and a company cannot accurately determine loss or gain based on speculative accounting. You can’t rely on revenue due to speculation, you can’t build a company off of what will “probably” happen. Watch “The Smartest Guys in the Room” and see how that worked out for Enron.

Companies try to combat piracy of their software with DRM but if loss due to pirated software is not calculable to an accurate amount does the implementation of DRM provide a return on investment? It is impossible to say yes to this statement. Look at it as numbers spent in a set budget. You spend $X on research for your new DRM method that will prevent people from stealing your game. That $X is a line item in accounting that can be quantified. Can you then say “This $X we put into research for our DRM gained us back $Y in sales”? There is no way to calculate this because it is not possible to quantify the intentions of a person. Also, there’s no way of accurately determining which customers would have stolen the game had there not been DRM.

To add to that, the reality of our current software age is the internet is more efficient at breaking things than companies are at creating them. A company will spend massive amounts of money on DRM and the internet will break it in a matter of days in most cases. When the DRM is broken is it worth the money spent to implement it? Did the week of unbroken DRM for your game gain you any sales from potential pirates due to the inability to pirate at launch? Again, there is no way of telling and as such cannot be used as an accurate justification for spending money.

So what should developers do to make sure people don’t steal games? Unfortunately there is nothing anyone can do to actively stop their game from being pirated. I do believe people are less likely to pirate your software if the software is easy to buy, easy to run, and does what is advertised. You can’t force a person to buy your software no more than you can prevent a person from stealing it. People have to WANT to buy your software, people have to WANT to support you. People need to care about your employees and your company’s well being. There is no better way to achieve that than making sure what you put out there is the best you can do and you treat your customers with respect.

Lets loop back to what’s going on with SimCity. I bought SimCity day one, I played it and experienced the same frustrations that countless others are experiencing. For total fairness, I know the always on DRM isn’t the main issue, but I can’t help but think that the server side calculations are a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” version of DRM. I won’t claim to know the inner workings of SimCity and this isn’t a Captain Hindsight article because that is irrelevant. EA and Maxis are currently facing a bigger problem than piracy: A growing number of their customers no longer trust them and this has and will cost them money.

After the frustrations with SimCity I asked Origin for a refund and received one. This was money they had and then lost a few days later. Applying our earlier conversation about calculable loss, there is a loss that is quantifiable, that will show up in accounting spreadsheets and does take away from profit. That loss is the return, and it is much more dangerous than someone stealing your game.

In the retail world, you could potentially put a return back on the shelf, you could find another customer that wants it, sell it to them and there would be virtually no loss. In the digital world, because there is no set amount of goods, you gain nothing back (one plus infinity is still infinity). It’s only a negative experience. A negative frustrating experience for a customer should be considered more damaging than a torrent of your game.

Speaking from my experience with SMB, I know for a fact we have lost a lot of trust from Mac users due to the Mac port of SMB being poor quality. I could go into the circumstances of why it is the way it is but that is irrelevant…it’s a broken product that is out in the public. We disappointed a good portion of our Mac customers with SMB and as a result several former customers have requested and received refunds. I’d take any amount of pirates over one return due to disappointment any day.

Disappointment leads to apathy which is the swan song for any developer. If people don’t care about your game, why would people ever buy it? When MewGenics comes out, I doubt many Mac users are going to be excited about our launch. When EA/Maxis create their next new game how many people are going to be excited about it and talking positively about it? I imagine that the poison of their current SimCity launch is going to seep into potential customers thoughts and be a point of speculation as to “Is it going to be another SimCity launch?”.

This is not a quantifiable loss of course, but people are more likely to buy from distributors they trust rather than ones they’ve felt slighted by before. Consumer confidence plays a very important role in how customers spend money. I think its safe to say that EA and Maxis do not have a lot of consumer confidence at this point. I think its also safe to say that the next EA/Maxis game is going to be a tough sell to people who experienced or were turned away by talk of frustration regarding SimCity.

As a result of piracy developers feel their hand is forced to implement measures to stop piracy. Often, these efforts to combat piracy only result in frustration for paying customers. I challenge a developer to show evidence that accurately shows implementation of DRM is a return on investment and that losses due to piracy can be calculated. I do not believe this is possible.

The reality is the fight against piracy equates to spending time and money combating a loss that cannot be quantified. Everyone needs to accept that piracy cannot be stopped and loss prevention is not a concept that can be applied to the digital world. Developers should focus on their paying customers and stop wasting time and money on non-paying customers. Respect your customers and they may in turn respect your efforts enough to purchase your game instead of pirating it.

Use this thread to post random thoughts through out your day!

Simple tidbits are what this thread is for, not general conversation. Taken straight from the TOS:

New topics deserve new threads. For example, if you have something excruciatingly short to say, it could and should be posted in the random thoughts thread. If it is anything of value, no matter how small, create a topic. Many conversations have went overlooked because they are crammed inside pages of other conversation. This also helps boost forum activity and order.

With that, post away!

made this

PSN download. Six-player multiplayer madness..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFSG-gakX4[/youtube]

This is the most depressing but at the same time most ingenious things ever made. Now they HAVE to put a dog in the next game. It'd be the best thing ever.

Still sick when I recorded narration (so the delivery is a little off), but it turned out okay.
Dedicated to my dog Brak. I miss that little snapperhead.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f046xe-RneM[/youtube]

Shame. Film is damn good.

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-tal ... 57663.html

Its a shame. Aside from his stance on video games, I always liked the guy. He called it like it was and was seriously funny when ripping a movie or a person to shreds in a review.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso[/youtube]

http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/5/7/0/6/2/7/136551849649.jpg

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-09-batman-arkham-origins-announced-for-pc-ps3-wii-u-and-xbox-360



By Wesley Yin-Poole Published Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Warner Bros. has announced Batman Arkham Origins for the PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360. Next-generation consoles were not mentioned.

Origins is the next game in the Arkham series, and follows the release of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, according to a report by GameFocus.

Those games were developed by Rocksteady. Arkham Origins is made by WB Games Montreal. Origins is set several years before the previous Arkham games, and sees the player assume the role of a younger Batman who meets many of the series' iconic characters for the first time.

Also in development is a Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita spin-off called Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate. Both Arkham Origins and Blackgate will launch on 25th October 2013.

That's all we've got for now.

It looks like Warner is employing a two-studio strategy for the main Batman series, alternating development duties between WB Montreal and Rocksteady. With that in mind, perhaps we'll see Rockseady's new game towards the end of 2014.

i have just been re-impressed by this. I love light coming through the dojo and the added grunginess of the graphics really adds to the sense of poverty in Kowloon..

I don't want the first men and women on Mars to be part of a reality TV show.

http://oi47.tinypic.com/1553rbr.jpg

Finally re-bought Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Would have been nice if the PSP remake would have been localized, but oh well. This'll have to do.
The Us and Japanese versions of Gungriffon were the first games I got for my new Saturn. Then I bought Virtual-On.
And I just had to snatch up a copy of Legend of Oasis as quickly as I could. Even though I haven't beaten it, I absolutely love Beyond Oasis for the Genesis, so the sequel/prequel to that was one of the top priorities on my list of Saturn games I need to get. Probably play both of those back-to-back as soon as I'm done with my current RPG exploit.

Actually, I've just now come around to the idea of keeping the Gaming Thoughts topic. We should just clarify that it's all about " random " gaming thoughts that don't fit anywhere else, and that it isn't meant for news about various games (which can always have their own dedicated topics).

I was watching intros to X68000 games on youtube, and found a cross-platform game featuring a snazzy intro that wasn't in the Genesis version. I got the urge to post it and just say "I wish the Genesis version would have retained an intro like this" and that "it would have improved the atmosphere of the game tenfold."
This clearly isn't something that needs its own topic. And it isn't dealing with a "favorite" intro, so it doesn't fit in that topic either.
It's a random gaming thought. Something that wouldn't be out of place in an aptly-titled "Random Gaming Thoughts" thread.
But without one, I really don't have anywhere else to post something like that.

Just something to consider.

Pretty cool article:

http://www.denofgeek.com/games/25158/to ... ox-designs

Impressive;



Took some bravery from the driver of the Volvo estate in front!

EDIT. Fixed. Damned httpS causing trouble!

My offer has been accepted. I'm soon going to own a condo.

I'm really tempted to drive down to San Antonio just to visit this shop...

Planning on watch the first today, since I've been hankering for some BTTF.

But i'm one of those who didn't like the third one. It was slower paced comparatively plus I didn't find the Western setting as compelling as the Futuristic or 1950s setting.

People need to stop blaming others before knowing what happened, and it was not the Saudi student. Someone attacked that guy because he was doing something "suspicious" like you know, running from a god damn explosion. The New York Post is not reliable news, they're just a tabloid that is full of dimwit racist morons, as the guy was not ever a suspect at all. NYP just makes up shit and they're run by News Corp. So, Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, reliable? No.

But if you'd bother to research you'd know that already, in fact you could have known it right after you read it if you were paying attention because not even an hour after the report the Boston Police said it wasn't true and they didn't know where NYP were getting their info. Again, the guy was tackled for being foreign and running from an explosion at an international marathon, and was then questioned. He could have had his life ruined because of some racist idiot.

Here's a story about that http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/15/perfect-day-turns-evil/W7KQHq1NWFqukte3VQ14DJ/story.html

Not only that, here is a lot of updates that were posted as new information came that quickly shot down the NYP idicoy.

Update #1
Update #2
Update #3
Update #4

And fuck that guy that blamed Muslims. It's just despicable and disheartening. Speculation and placing blame on others before knowing the details is dumb and it gets innocent people hurt.

North Korea? Al-Qaeda? At this point, it is as every good a chance of it being some fat, lonely nutjob, still smarting at a black president, legal homosexuals and stricter gun control, signalling the start of his one man "New American Revolution" on Patriots Day in Boston.

Awful news, to hurt innocent people on such a scale, with the intent to kill, is just beyond comprehension. It's also equally awful to think that the same thing happens in Iraq/Afghanistan on an almost weekly basis.

Phwoar, look at those baps.