HCF

To get the 2nd and 3rd windows on the roboguy, you have to use the level geometry, and Bart's "cape" ability. If you didn't know, Bart's special action is he can glide like batman (bartman).

So make the roboguy follow you to some building, use one of the trashcan lids to hop up on top, open the guy's door by hitting it and glide down to trash his circuits.

Bart's slingshot seems to work best for opening the doors.

I loved Startopia! Really quirky and fun. I strongly suggest anyone who hasn't tried it, and actually likes the sort of "Theme Hospital" sort of game, go pick it up.

What is this? Is joystiq a marketing outlet for Bungie now?

There's new merch at Bungie to buy...this is news?

Yeah right.

First, if that really was a Christmas present, she just ruined the surprise, didn't she?

If she really didn't want to let her roomates know she had a Wii in the house, would she publish the fact on the WSJ?

If you were either a boyfriend or a roomate of a WSJ reporter, wouldn't you read their articles? To lend support and constructive criticism?

What is she going to do, ask her friends not to read this one article so it won't ruin the xmas surprise? Fat chance, that's an invitation to read it!

Why is it her line is 99.9999% male, when the rest of us had at least a 12-25% female line sharing experience? That description of the folks sharing her line doesn't resemble anything I've seen. People didn't stare intently anywhere, we just talked relaxedly about what games we were looking forward to.

I don't buy it. Nothing sounds plausible. Everything relies on statistical improbabilities (how many WSJ reporters are the very last in Wii lines?).

All signs point to: she made it up to make a good article.

Well said crono, if the Wii sell went like the ps3 sell we wouldn't buy.

One thing to remember here is that the estimates for numbers of ps3's in north america was something like 100-200k. The estimates for numbers of Wii were something like 1-2 million.

Our store had 6 ps3's. 60 Wii. Not 12, as McGee would have you believe. The number 6 equivalent to zero for our purposes is one point in itself. The promise for future consoles is 'To Be Determined' for the ps3, 'next week' for the Wii.

These are matters that men encounter, and the insane or deluded mark themselves in their choosing.


In the end, it's all just simple Vegenomics.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=212

We had a 10 hour stretch for ours, and managed #46 out of a lot of 63. There were 48 bodies in front of us, so only two bodies were 'extras'. Or maybe there were some line cutters so the number of profiteers vs cheats cut even. No one can say for certain.

Wii overall: Smashing success, must buy. Bit of a pity component cables won't be available until December...but very happy to be one of 60 people to have a unit from our store. The wiimote gets a bit 'twitchy' (the cursor jumps around) when you get too far back from the sensor bar. Our television gets fainter when you stand up, so some thought has to be put into that too (I think we're going to lift ours up 1' or so) since you'll want to be standing for the party games.

Wii sports: Not a 'real' sports title by any stretch of the imagination, but very engaging, intuitive, and has great appeal for parties (which as early Wii owners we're coming to realize are going to temporarily be quite frequent). Picture it...in the baseball game, when you're batting, if you idly twirl your bat waiting for the pitch, your avatar on screen mirrors you.

Legend of Zelda: The way RPGs should always have been played (I haven't gotten very far in yet, but what I've seen is just astounding and I can't imagine playing this game on the 'cube).

COD3: I'm not sure FPS is where the 'wiimote' is strong. The muscles in my arm are still sore from having to aim with it. The camera control was intuitive but inconsistent...slow when I needed fast, fast when I needed slow. But note that Zelda's Third-Person nature worked much better. Perhaps the games can evolve a bit.

Excite Truck: Intense. Jaw dropping gorgeous (even on the composite cables!). Takes a bit to get used to losing peripheral vision for the split-screen play, but very engaging and fun.

Super Monkey Ball: I only had a chance to play the minigames so far. Not very well executed. The wiimote seems to 'hang low' and drops 'off the screen' easily. Many of the minigames clearly use a 'screen cursor' where you're pointing the Wiimote to sense controls. When the cursor falls off the screen, it's like the control is stuck. The problem is, they don't show you where the cursor is so you have no warning. Still, lots of different kinds of party games, some of them are smashing successes (like the asteroid blasting one), but it's few and far between.

You've got it wrong. Princess Peach DS doesn't paint Peach as 'emotionally unstable'. Quite the opposite.

It paints her as a person who uses emotional outbursts as weapons, switching between them at will to manipulate.

It's worse, really.

That said, people like that exist, so it's not totally unreasonable to portray one in a video game (do murderers exist? is it somehow "anti-sane-person" to portray a psycho in a game (such as it is supposed to be anti-feminist to portray a female with less than feminist ideals)?). If you don't like seeing it...well, I'm sorry.

Try not paying attention.

Lego of Monkey Island!

It was a bit of a letdown that many of the seemingly simple little bugs in the first game were not worked out in the second game. But this is like complaining that the sequel is merely 'just as good' as the last game, which is still mighty good indeed.

"When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles! Scream and shout!"

When you have a controller like the 'Wiimote', terrible as that name be, the act of playing a game is more akin to a kind of performance.

Consider: "Party games" may be of more utility than merely bringing 4 gamers together to sit on a couch. Smaller number of players then, convince larger numbers of folks to watch and comment. This is still participation.

There exists at least one 'party (board) game' for example in which the players divide into teams. The teams take turns, one member acting out a charade or drawing a doodle, the rest trying ot guess what they're trying to say.

Do the players of such games decry that only one team may play at a time?

There is only so much room in front of my TV for Wiimote swingers. I wish there were more room - if I could put 4 people on the floor in front of the TV, I could fit more peeps on the couch to savor the chips and dip and watch the savage pantomime.

I totally agree. As a proof that it can be done better, examine "Theme Hospital" an old Bullfrog (sigh) title, and "Startopia", by another defunct development house which I can't remember. Also, the "Tropico" games are right up there with "teh funneh" while still being in the same genre of plunking down devices through which to build an economy and attracting folks to take part in it.

These are all smaller development houses with little to no marketing power (I doubt many of you even know Startopia exists). It's a mixed bag of success and failure, but it's hard to say why.

I'd tend to argue that failure came not from the games, but from businnes models through which they are distributed.

Now if only we could get some crossbranding 'up ins'. "Tropico 3: Return to Monkey Island!"