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January 29th, 1999
As it turns out, this emulator is supposed to be quite good. Too good, in fact. People are such worthless shit that the moment word got out that this emulator actually played commercial games, lamers hit the net in search of Romz.
The Emulator's Site has been taken down, the project has been discontinued, darkness has engulfed the earth, and AOL shall soon buy all of your ISPs (or maybe something worse). A brief summary blaming those Rom seeking bastards is now up in the site's place.
You might still could download the Emulator if you knew where to look, though. Too bad the damn thing requires a 3Dfx card. If the suck-cocking rom beggers hadn't been so damn lame, the project may have eventually been ported to other APIs other than Glide. So we all know who to blame.
RioPort.com
Machines of... Uh...
Big Brother Inside
Seems to me these suck-cocking crybabies can't stand the fact that AMD or Cyrix isn't just kicking Intel's ass in sales at the moment, so they're doing everything their tiny little mind's can think of to try and further create stumbling blocks for Intel.
These are the same morons who probably haven't noticed that their cars have VIN numbers on them.
Intel has reacted by agreeing to disable the ID feature, allowing End-Users the ability to activate or de-activate the somewhat useful feature.
Sony threatens to waste money...
Sony claims this promotes Playstation piracy, but Connectix has supposedly added new anti-piracy measures in version 1.1.
You'd think by now Sony would realise this is just added software sales, and it's not like Playstation owners haven't all reverse engineered their consoles to play pirated games anyway. Shesh.
Besides that, piracy is rampant everywhere. Even Nintendo isn't safe from alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo-64.
January 27th, 1999
News! News?
January 20th, 1999
Not Enough South Park?
Back From The Dead...
January 19th, 1999
But last night I got an interesting e-mail, and it's one that touches on a topic I've yet to explore.
Apparently, NFS3 means Netplay Fucking Sucks.
Brian Tankersley writes...
"Good review. Got NFS3 for Christmas and couldn't agree more. I also own
a Z28 convertible 6 speed. Got to be red, of course.
BUT......net play sucks like a Hoover Vacuum. Awful, useless,
unplayable. On a cable modem.....NFS3 sucks. On an analog modem....NFS3
sucks. They gotta fix it.
Playing NFS3 via TCP/IP is actually a little more fun than having a
prostate exam. But barely."
For some reason of all the games I have, netplay over NFS3 has somehow been avoided. Guess I'm going to have to put this thing to a little test here soon.
While we're on the topic of onling racing games, Carmageddon II doesn't even support TCP/IP multiplayer, so perhaps there is something about racing games that makes adequate internet playability difficult to acheive?
Oh, I'm also not aware of any available online prostate exams. Yet.
January 12th, 1999
What this effectively means is that not only will Intel still be selling the increasingly obsolete chip, but once again you'll be attempting to overclock it the moment you take it out of the box. (Apparently, on some motherboards a Celeron 366 will go up to 550...) Both socket 370 and Slot 1 versions are planned.
Also, Intel has decided that the "III" in Pentium III will be represented as a set of three exclaimation marks. That effectively makes it the Pentium !!!.
Oh well, to be honest with you, I'm really not THAT excited about the Pentium III.
January 11th, 1999
Well, it really doesn't matter anymore anyways, since you can get an iMac in just about any colour now. I think I'm going to buy a purple one. Maybe now that the iMac supports OpenGL there might be a better selection of games.
If you want to see what flavors you can get an iMac in, see Apple's site
If you give a damn about Apple's OpenGL, I'll bet this site has something about it somewhere.
If you didn't know that you can run DirectX software on an iMac, then you might want to check out this crap.
Has anybody but me noticed that the iMac looks like a Jolly Rancher? I wonder if iMac owners drink Zima?
WinAmp 2.08
Also if you read on their site, they mention Justin has stopped smoking crack.
Maybe if we all get together and try we can get him hooked onsomething stronger next time.
3Dfx's Irritation 2
To quote Khalid:
You can read more from the source...
Game Station Virtually Not?
After I got that message I went in search of information and sent out a few e-mails. There is no mention of this on either the Connectix Site or Sony's Playstation site. But then again, they aren't likely to advertise that sort of thing, are they?
I did find a few sites who were reporting this rumor. But for right now I'm assuming it's just speculation started by an Anti-Mac Sony Fan.
I will keep you posted on what I find.
Thanks to Janx for the message.
January 10th, 1999
I certainly have to say that I have not been this impressed with an RPG since the Eye of the Beholder games!
Baldur's Late Screenshots
Even the Character Equipment Screen is highly detailed. It works very similarly to Diablo and many other games of this type. The point and click interface is rather intuitive. For example, Dragging and Dropping a bundle of Arrows on top of another automatically combines them for a maxium of 20 per bundle. The same is true for keeping all your Gems and Gold together.
Unlike other games of this type a lot of attention has been paid to things such as item weight and how many arrows a character can carry. Apparently the AD&D rules were followed very closely because your caracters actually visibly become slower as they begin to reach the limits of what they can hold. Key to remember, travel light.
Other things, such as character alignments also have some play in the game. It is possible to play any alignment, and though I havn't played a Chaotic Evil character, I'll assume that having an Evil character wouldn't make you very popular with Town Folk. So far they've been pretty rude to my mostly Neutral characters, mostly just refusing to talk to me unless they have something they want me to do for them.
Doing things against your alignment can seriously effect the Moral of your characters since how they act is often based directly on what their Reputation is.
Character photos can be selected from either a nice selection or imported into the game from your own source. With each photo, there is also a default voice, though you can even change that as well. Many of the things your character says in the game range from amusing to annoying. Thankfully, even verbal feedback can be turned off. It would be cool if we could import our own WAVs for character voices... heheheh "Boo is a fuzzy little hamster. While Minsc believes that Boo is a miniature giant space hamster, you are rather certain that the tiny rodent is just a normal hamster."
Everything just feels like AD&D (except maybe the Hamster.) Seeing how much work was put into this it's easy to understand why it was delayed for so long.
Everything has been covered here, and though nobody will ever fully agree on how an AD&D game should be run, this game gives enough configurability to satisfy most players.
Single Player games can be set up to contain a main character and then up to 5 NPCs can be added later, or if played as a Multiplayer game with only one player, up to 6 characters can be generated or imported and brought right into the game.
There is simply no room for complaints here. Even the biggest issue, which is Time Based vs. Real Time.
The Solution? Make a Real Time game that is so configurable that every aspect of battle can be configured to alternate the game between Turn Based and Real Time. Events such as a character hit, hurt, or killed can pause the game, and the game can be set to be paused at the end of each round. The space bar also pauses the game, and commands can be issued to the characters while the game is paused. So either totally Turn Based, partially Turn Based, or Real Time, it's all up to the player (or the Leader/Host in multiplayer games).
Exactly the way a game should be!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some major playing to do. This write up took away from my precious game playing time!
3Dfx's Irritation 1
This is a very early release designed for Unreal, so don't expect a miracle, but this is an interesting start.
You know what to do and where to do it.
Here's to many subsequent 3Dfx irritations! Good luck Khalid!
January 9th, 1999
Found a few interesting shots that I definately would like to post though. So maybe sometime later today. (Yeah, right, heheheh.)
As for the game it's self, I spent most of last night up late playing it, and all I can say is that even though there are some things about it that get on my nevers, I think on the whole this is a solid RPG, and it looks like it's going to be one bitch of a game to finish. We'll have to see.
Is it worth it? repost
While it is true I do own a 3Dfx card, and it is also true that I'm an indeed an asshole, I must say that the last time I checked I was not a wannabe nor am I hypocritical.
One of the more intelligent letters I received asked a question which somewhat took me off guard. The letter asked "Is
it really worth all the work?"
I began to ponder that thought because as many of you know the site has been dead in the past few months.
In the end, I concluded, yes, it is. And here's why.
I have on a couple of occassions had direct conversations with software developers on many of the issues discussed on this site. As a jaded gamer who rememebers the old days when saying you finally defeated a game meant you'd actually accomplished something, I feel that today's gamers who do not go that far back have missed out on what it means to play a really good game.
Faster Graphics, More Colours(tm), Better Sound(tm), and More Responsive Game Play(tm), these gimmicks are all welcome of course, but if the game does not get your heart pumping, does not make your sweaty hands grip the controller tighter, if it does not actually put you in the action, or in some cases, actually close out the entire real world around you, then the game may be failing miserably.
We do also realise that different gamers desire different things. Some people do not get their rocks off on shooting aliens and other players can't seem to understand what is/was fun about Tetris. But if you sift through the people long enough, you'll find at the center of the crowd, a specific type of gamer. A gamer who buys 10-15 games every month and only ends up playing the best of the best. A gamer who has a stack of Software Boxes that can fill a room, spanning platforms that go as far back as 1980 and as late as Tommorow. Though tastes will vary, one thing is consistant. Something about that title stood out from the reast, something about it was original, and in some way it meant something special to that game player.
This gamer is the Alternative Gamer. The type of gamer who doesn't want to hear "This game Rules!" because he's said it about 30 times in a single year the first time he saw game "X" and now it's collecting "X" amount of dust. In reality, what this gamer wants to hear is "This game, this game, and this game that I bought this month suck... but I've really been playing fill in your outstanding title here because it actually does stand out." The Alternative Gamer likes to see bullshit developers insulted, bullshit games knocked down, and bullshit companies mocked for what they really are.
This gamer is SICK of companies pawning their SHIT off on us.
To this date, this site has not fully accomplished the goal of knocking on all the trash we could throw our fists at. But we will continue to try, and hopefully we will reach that .01% of the gamer out there who fully undersatnds how we feel, and perhaps, prevent him from buying another shit title for his collection.
This site is for the Alternative Gamer.
If we're really lucky, we'll reach a few more developers as well, and perhaps we'll make a few of them realise that they really are fucking up what was once a very elite artform. Then maybe we'll have a larger selection of high quality games, and a whole lot less unplayed rubbish.
So if you like what you see here, then thanks, and we promise to try harder on the updates.
If you don't, then go back to running those Banchmarks on your 3Dfx. Go back to playing with the two or three games you actually bought (if you even bought them). Go back to the sites you like, with the opinions you agree with. If you continue to read this site, it's just going to piss you off much more in the next few months. That much can I promise.
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