Gwyn

Vaguely on topic:

Two years ago, for the European Cup in Portugal, there was a massive surge in promotion of widescreen televisions by the main electrical retailers here in the UK. The push was all about how fantastic it would be to watch the football on a nice big widescreen TV, instead of the ordinary square boxes most people had.

Of course, what the advertisers neglected to mention, was the fact that the broadcasts were coming from Portugal in 4:3 ratio. There would be no widescreen broadcasts from the European Cup, only 4:3.

Let's see, with this big HD push accompanying the World Cup, just how many people with HD sets are actually able to watch footie games in HD.

Check out the first video on that page for a great comedy moment. Right at the end, when the bot is walking well, they just stick a cardboard box in front of it.

Classic.

I know this is just more whining, but the one that is really getting on my tits is metroid prime hunters. This game was just released in the US last week, but according to my local Game, it won't be released in the UK until sometime in May.

OK, fine, I understand that they need to translate it. That takes time, right? But if you were to check around, you'd find that some people have figured out how to crack it to access five other languages stored on the cart: French, German, Italian, Spanish & Japanese.

So if the game is already translated, why delay the release in europe? The reason must be either logistical (releasing a big game in multiple territories simultaneously = tricky) or related to optimum release windows (eg. film industry - best weekend for blockbuster in USA is different than for UK).

Still, the americans are quick to call us whiners, but how much would you be whining if you had to put up with these delays? And how much do you whine already about the big japanese games that you want released quicker?

I like it when he turns to the little kid next to him and asks if he's jealous. That's just plain and simply child cruelty. Exactly what I would have done as well.

#12 - Yes, Nintendo NaNa would be pretty lame, but isn't 'rokku' another way of saying six in Japanese?
Nintendo Rokku is a little better than nana.

Why not create a hybrid, ala Toyota Prius?

eg- A medium sized flash disk for the OS and program files, with an ordinary hard disk for data storage. Then you would only need to use the HDD to load files into RAM, the most frequently used files could be kept on the flash disk.

Unless, of course, I've got my wires completely crossed about how computers work (especially re HDDs and OSs/applications). Which, to be honest, is very likely.

I'd hope that such a system would be more intelligent than just 'chumping' you as soon as you disconnect. The points should be weighted some how based on the severity of the chumpiness.

For example, were you losing at the time of the disconnection? that would suggest an intentional disconnect, thus a heavier chumping.

Conversely, a disconnection following a period of lag or synch loss, as others mentioned, would suggest that it was a wifi problem. Since nintendo are actively pushing the use of on the go wifi hotspots (eg McDonalds, etc.), it wouldn't make sense to punish users for problems that are out of their control. In these cases, a relatively light chumping should be administered.

Of course, this is just conjecture. The DS and WFC may not even be capable of this approach.

Wow! 500:1 aspect ratio? that really is widescreen.
(sorry for mocking)

The first thing I would do is scrap those stupid 'triangle, circle, cross, square' buttons. I know they are one of the playstation's trademark features, but Sony should bite the bullet and ditch them, for the sake of usability.

My console chronology is as follows: SMD >> N64 >> NGC >> NDS >> PS2. You can make fun of nintendo's big green "win" button as much as you like, but when I moved from NGC to PS2 I immediately discovered how meaningless and illogical those four symbol buttons are. The positive and negative meanings of those bottuns vary from game to game, something that I had never experienced before I got the PS2.

Actually, keep the symbols, just change the buttons to have more ingrained meaning and ensure that all developers stick to those meanings.

Actually, they don't even have to appease the licence payers, since we pay whether we like the programming or not. Still, I think the BBC does a great job, it's one of the things that I love most about being a Brit.