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Super Communist Mario

November 3rd 2007 10:07
Super Communist Mario
Back during the days when Nintendo was just settling into America and the world was not *quite* over the communist scare there came a happy little Italian Plumber. He wore red and flew a flag with a red star on it. He was Mario. He was commie.


Reading this article on Mario's alleged ties with communism I can't help but wonder if the writer is joking, sadly that probably isn't the case.

To understand just how crazy and delusional the writer must be I present a passage from the article,

Why then, as their flagship hero, does Nintendo choose an overweight, big nosed plumber with an ungainly mustache and ridiculous suspenders? Why was this, the most unlikely heroic figure, chosen? Unusual yes…but deliberate? Looking at the evidence in light of this new Communist hidden agenda, the answer for this mystery is obvious. Mario, and his short-lived brother, are none other than cartoon representations of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was Russia's amicus humani, amor patriae or communist super man. So could this "super" Mario represent another "super" man? Well, that is for you to decide.

It's interesting how creativity works. Mario and his brother, Luigi are Italian American plumbers. Originally Mario was known as 'Jumpman' as he featured in his first game 'Donkey Kong'. What of his name? Well funny story actually, Mario was named after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America’s office, who barged in on a company meeting demanding an overdue rent.


Why does he have a mustache and oversized nose and is overweight? Probably a combination of creativity and technical limitations, the mustache I know was used to cover up his mouth since the Nintendo couldn't show the mouth with any sort of clarity. If you look carefully he doesn't have a mouth. Take what you want from it.

It's a pity Fox News never really got a chance to spin the hell out of the story, it would have been facinating to see the flag wavers of our time trying to pin Mario on terrorism or something.

The following animation aptly sums up Mario in my eyes and the eyes of millions and millions of people around the world,



What communist influences?
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'Maxing Out That Blu-Ray'

October 20th 2007 09:56
There has been a lot of questions about higher storage being necessary for next generation games. Above all else Metal Gear Solid has turned into the poster boy of why higher capacity disc storage is an absoloute must in next generation media. Unfortunately it would seem the hype is somewhat unfounded and the claims a little hypocritical.

In an interview with Gametrailers Ryan Peyton says that there is no audi compression going on, no MP3 compression, just raw, hardly compressed audio.

27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="gtembed" width="480" height="392">

The question here is quite obvious, 'is it really necessary?' with an obvious answre of 'no'. Media, both video and audio, have always been compressed and over the years various loss-less and near loss-less compression algorithms have been implemented with games. Uncompressed media, particularly video and audio is very large. An uncompressed five minute song could be as large as thirty megabytes but in MP3 format with equivalent quality it could be as low as four or five megabytes.

If Metal Gear Solid needs all this extra storage space because of its uncompressed media then games from 2002 would also need Blu-Ray. Uncompressed media is huge, it always has been, and always will be, compressing it results in little to no difference in quality at a fraction of the size. It's difficult enough to hear the difference between compressed and uncompressed when listening carefully, there is no cause to brag that the audio is uncompressed.
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Gabe Newell On Apple, Sony

October 15th 2007 12:12
Game developers tend to be the grumpiest bastards you'll ever see. They work hard, get paid shit and after all that they are insluted by the bigget douchebags anywhere for small shortcomings.

So what does the fatman say thats getting on the nerves of them Apple and Sony fanboys? Well lets start with Apple,

Kikizo: People keep asking you about a potential Macintosh version, and your stance is that this is a strictly Windows project...?

Gabe: Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.

It was later 'revealed' (most likely false story) that Gabe 'demanded' $1 million from Apple to port over his critically acclaimed game(s) Half-Life 2 and others from Steam to the OS X platform. Apple apparently stopped there.

Fanboys everywhere (yes, Apple dipshits) were 'outraged' that Gabe would demand '$1 million' from Apple to port over one of the biggest videogame franchises ever. Whether or not this is true gauging the reaction is interesting.

Total bullshit.

Lots of complaints about how Gabe has no right to make such demands and that he can keep his games (clearly Mac owners have no idea just who this man is). Of course when you take a step back and look at the whole deal, whats $1 million? NOthing. Apple sneazes fifty million, whats the big deal with this million that makes Apple such a tight arse?

Put it into perspective, Microsoft has provided tonnes of developer support since the Windows 95 era for PC gaming, in fact one of the main reasons gaming on the PC is more common and standard today is because Microsoft helped developers. There would no more be a market for PC games than there is a market for Mac games if Microsoft had not provided the developer support it has.

From creating a graphics API to creating the best programming tools, Microsoft has without a doubt poured hundreds of millions (if not billions, consisder the Xbox) into helping its developers make the best quality games possible.

Now one of the biggest developers out there asks for $1 million from Apple and there is a right to be outrage? Does anyone realize how little $1 million is. Apple should have taken that deal and pissed on Microsoft and I should be writing about how bloody lucky and unfair Apples behaviour is, not writing how stupid they are.


On the topic of Sony and the Playstation 3, Valve says what everyone knows:

Edge: A while ago you said that you thought Sony should do a 'do-over' with PS3. Do you still think that?

GN: Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.

Source

Which has got the Sony fanboys fuming.

Theres a good point made by the inverviewer after that question, specifically on Gabe's hypocricy, as he also 'hated' the Xbox 360 not too long ago.

The answer he gives is pretty much to be expected, at the time of the 360s development it became apparent Microsoft was going for multiple cores on the same CPU, at that time the market was all single core and Intel had no plans to start creating multiple cored chips. This was of course annoying in the sense it seemed that consoles where going way too far the wrong way, though that wasn't true.

It became apparent to get more power out of CPUs the performance had to be given over to the programmer. Fact of the matter is double 10ghz does not mean double the performance of 5ghz, though a dual core chip at 5ghz could do double its capacity (if used properly).

Though on Sony's front they went the bitchy route making an overly complex system for multiple cores (the much hyped, little appreciated Cell processor). Developers have a bit of a right to be annoyed at the radically different and needlessly complex architecture of the Cell CPU, especailly since it is made in such a way that whats applied there is useless anywhere else.

That is, code written for the 360 can be ported to the PC with modifications but would have to be more or less re-worked to move from Cell to the PC.

In the end the hate thrown Gabe's way isn't that big of a deal, what he says is mostly true even if opinionated.
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Counting Pixels - How Low Can I Go?

September 29th 2007 06:06
I'm all for good image quality in video games, I'm all for good graphics and realistic animations. But honestly, when someone stoops down to counting pixels to prove something is of lesser quality than it potentially could have been... well thats just sad.

Halo 3
Counting Pixels... Saaaad

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UE3 Loves 2900XT

May 15th 2007 07:35
Correct me if I'm wrong but if you're going to be purchasing a highend Videocard you'll want to play games besides Battlefield 2.

While most online benchmarks are busily away proclaiming nVidia's 8800GTX the clear winner with two year old games the few that are utilizing Unreal Engine 3 (such as Splinter Cell Double Agent or Rainbow Six Vegas) are being left completely out of the picture


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GT: HD Real VS Fake

May 5th 2007 05:28
Remember way back when we had these real vs fake comparisons with GT: HD but the GT: HD screenshots were taken off screen hence the comparison was low quality?

Well we now have shots taken right out of the Playstation 3 compared to real life shots, if you don't look carefully enough you won't know which is real and which is fake


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Three Years Ago?

March 16th 2007 08:53
Michael Ephraim
Michael Ephraim: What a dreamer
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia's Managing Director Michael Ephraim when asked about the Wii-mote and criticisms against SIXAXIS due to the distinct similarities responded by claiming that Sony had done it first, three years ago.

Here is the excerpt from the interview


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GTA IV V logo
Will the Sequel *be* the exclusive?
What makes an exclusive? Lots of money. If a title releases on a single console it will have a smaller install base, the idea is that the console manufacturer will subsidize the developer for lost sales if it were multiplatform.

With the small install base of the Playstation 3 it is apparent that Sony will have to make huge payouts for exclusive titles, such as the case in Resistance Fall of Man where 30 million dollars was invested in Insomniac to develop the game for the Playstation 3


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Best Picture, or Best Game?

March 1st 2007 13:12
As technology keeps progressing in games more and more it seems like they are not only reaching the level of depth and interaction of movies but are basically surpassing it. Now with the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 developers are focusing on more than simple graphical effects to immerse the player in a game but are actually pushing the production level up high to immerse the player in the game emotionally. To develop a bond with characters (be it comical, emotional or the much loved personal).

Take ‘Brothers in Arms’, it started last generation where it tried to make things all emotional. It tried, passed and failed in different aspects. Now with this new generation it seems not only the new Brothers in Arms will be including that all important holy grail known as psychological depth but many more games shall be as well


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Games Of Past For DS Present

February 14th 2007 16:11
There are some games from the past that should be ported to the Nintendo DS. Games that we want to just play again but cannot due to discontinued production.

Already there have been games from the past put on the Nintendo DS including a remake of the original ‘Resident Evil’ and a rebirth of ‘Final Fantasy 3


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Nerds Have Girlfriends and Are Emo’s

January 26th 2007 13:16
Typical Nerd or Stereotype The Simpsons
Typical Nerd or Stereotype?
That is when they get dumped, but instead of running to their rooms and throwing on a CD of emo musicy goodness or making out with the nearest emo male (just an emo thing I guess) they create computer viruses and cause global chaos.

Research conducted by Sarah Gordman indicates that Virus writers have girlfriends


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The Fanboy Mentality

January 15th 2007 06:23
Typical Pokemon Fanboy doing what he does best
Fanboy
I have discovered about fanboys, well not fanboys, but the mentality fanboys carry.

It’s called justification, they justify failings in the items they are infatuated with and think that is enough reason to ignore its failings. Take the Playstation 3, they rationalize its failures and think it is a justification, they state that it has a built in Blu-Ray player hence the price is justified, they rationalize that it was only recently released justifying its lacklustre titles compared to the Xbox 360


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Sony is Like Saddam Hussein

December 31st 2006 15:37
Saddam Demonstrating his WMD to the world
'My WMD is both big and expensive
It’s all over the place, Sony stuffed up with the Playstation 3 here Sony stuffed up with the Playstation 3 there, naturally everything is filled with hate. But why? Nintendo stuffed up, so did Microsoft, Nintendo released a console with very old graphical horsepower for an inflated price to make profits per console sold, Microsoft rushed their console out and now are planning on releasing improved Xbox 360 units among other things.

Truth is Nintendo and Microsoft have stuffed up a bit too, but why don’t we try to eat at their throats? Because Sony deserves it. Sony is arrogant, obnoxious self righteous, Sony is Saddam Hussein, completely oblivious to the world around him thinking he’s still the dictator of an oppressed people despite failing, continually failing and falling into obscure history


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GT:HD Photorealism?

December 27th 2006 11:17
Well not really but close, my best guess is the Playstation 5 will showcase photorealistic graphics.

Some guy decided to take photographs of the Gran Turismo: HD demo in action and compared them to real life shots


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