All is fine and peachy in Windows XP ladyland, but alas this morning all was not well with the force. I ran Elite Force last night and it ran – but there were some minor graphical glitches. I tried several things to no avail, but since the glitches were minor there’s no big deal. However, Tribes 2 won’t run – gives me an “unhandled exception” error. Well, more specifically the beta demo of Tribes 2 won’t run. I’ve researched this on forums and yup, WinXP (more specifically the video card drivers and their lack of WinXP support) have issues with Tribes 2. This isn’t really a big deal – I don’t own the “real” Tribes 2 and I’m sure WinXP is on their “to do” list somewhere. However, I am planning on purchasing the V12 engine from GarageGames, and it’s based on the Tribes 2 engine. As much as I like WinXP so far, if a compiled V12 app/game won’t run on it, it gets the heave-ho. I wonder if I can dual-boot Win98 and WinXP? I’ve heard it’s possible to do this with WinME, so I hope so. Better question – the WinXP RC1 I have is a 180 day beta copy. That means early in 2002 I either buy XP or to the reformat thang. However, while I perfectly realize that if I uninstall and reinstall WinXP those 180 days in all likelihood don’t start over, I wonder if it’s smart enough to say “well you went back to Win98 for a month, so you only get five months of WinXP overall.”? Intriguing.

Although I haven’t mucked with it too much yet I found this this morning to try and give support to WinXP Voodoo3 users. If you find yourself afflicted by a dead video card manufacturer (as I do) check them out.

Anywho, QuakeCon in two days. Also, M R DUCKS.

I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that while I was doing the “right thing” and hacking it out in College for five (and a half) years the village idiots of the world were quitting their jobs, shacking off the chains of the workaday world and relying on income from web advertisements in a dot com era, the fact that I had to wrestle with the notion that I was possibly wasting my time with College – the majority of the dot com millionaires were doing good to even be High School graduates, the fact that I realized there was a good possibility that the shine would be off the rose by the time I would be able to even do anything in the “web world”, or the fact that just as soon as I see the logic behind the notion of web advertisements and the fact that they can indeed be a good thing to sustain the income and livlehood of those whom I draw entertainment and news from, the whole thing goes to shit and dot coms bomb left and right. Although I had a problem with people drawing their income from running a web page of all things, and I loathe pop up, pop under, pop whatever ads, I don’t really mind television ads – some of them are quite entertaining in fact – and that’s really all web ads are. Except that the barrier to entry for the web is much lower. To get on a television show you have to have acting talent, plus you have to convinvce someone you are worthy of being on their television show. All you have to do to set up the ultimate Dragon Fantasy Chronicles 12 Expansion Pack website is to pick up an HTML/Flash book at the local Barnes & Noble and devote a week or so to it. And who wouldn’t to forego want an 8 to 5 job? I really like this job I’m at most of the time, but I would much rather prefer to sit around the house all day with my kittens and a keyboard.

So part of me wants to laugh at the web economy – we haven’t even really seen the worst of it yet. All those fools who wanted to weasle out of the “real world” are now doubly screwed – they not only are unemployed, but they’re now without marketable skills – marketable to anyone else besides other web companies whose date with the hangman is likely down the road a piece. But then I realize that there are some dot coms I don’t want to bomb. Blue’s News comes to mind. I’m willing to put up with the annoying pop up flash ads so that I can read about the latest Quake beta patch. However, look at Penny Arcade. They come out with an entertaining comic thrice weekly and attempt to make a living off of it. When their ad thingy went bust they resorted to donations. So far they’ve been able to dodge the bullet of traditional labor, but how long this can last remains to be seen. As someone who has plopped down hundreds of dollars on DVD’s and Games I can play and watch infrequently at best, throwing a couple of dollars towards a couple of entertaining chaps so that I can check their humor three times weekly seems like a good tradeoff. Yet I haven’t done it. The main reason is because I’m lazy, but on another level there is the fact that what they are essentially impying is that I and others should give them out money so that they can do what it is I want to do – sit around and play games all day. I’m sorry – it might be different if they were providing deeper content (and since I’m a longtime subscriber of various magazines, I know whereof I speak) but I’m not going to send you the money I work for so that you can not work. It doesn’t work that way. However, I’m not completely without passion – they stated that if half the site’s visitors donated a dollar a month they would be set. Okay, here’s $12 – but I want my money back if you go bust in a year.

The next time you go to your grocery store, go to whatever aisle it is they sell Barbecue Sauce (hint: usually the same place the ketchup is at). The Barbecue Sauce market is, interestingly enough, a fierce one. Count how many sauces there are (as opposed to, say, how many different types of ketchup there are). It’s mind boggling. Now notice how a lot of the bottles look like “a guy in his basement with some bottles, some locally printed labels, and a really big vat” put them together. Seventy percent of the Barbecue Sauce market (sales, in this case, as opposed to “using” an OS) is cornered by the big guys – Kraft, Hunt, Heinz – with over 30% of the overall market going to Kraft’s K.C. Masterpiece. The remaining 30% is carved out of the hundreds of minor players. When I start to think of the romanicized notion of running a website for fun and profit, I think of all the guys in their basements making the next great niche Barbecue Sauce. Now, how many of these sauces do you think provide their creators with untold riches? Probably very few. Go far enough from the location you’re at and most of these sauces won’t follow you. Their distribution is local at best. While the Internet provides the much greater distribution that the niche Barbecue Sauce maker’s can’t even afford or fathom, at least the Barbecue Sauce makers have a tangible product, which is ultimately worth more.

So anywho, the point of this whole rant was that I’m glad I didn’t drop out of college to do a dot-com (having said that, I do have a dot-com on the side). I’m also glad I’m not relying on the web economy – it will be a profitable venture in the long run and it will stabilize at some point, I’m just glad I’m not one of the hundreds who will be fucked until it does.

Last night I stood on the edge of a great precipice, and instead of merely looking down, I jumped in, never to be the same again. Yes, I installed Windows XP RC1. I had heard about it’s already legendary stability. I had heard about its loathsome Product Activation process. I had heard about how it’s going to shove things like .NET and Passport down our throats. But mostly I had heard that Microsoft was allowing people to purchase the release candidate for $10. This minor barrier to entry motivated me to not place it on my hard drive when I was looking to reinstall Windows 98 SE. However, both my wife and myself recieved preview copies in nice little DVD keeper cases yesterday in the mail, a pleasant consequence of my father-in-law signing us up on Microsoft’s “free shit” list. I figured what the hell – Win98SE isn’t really anything to sing about.

So I fire this puppy up. It takes an hour and a half to install it – I expected that. When it starts up finally it takes a long time. I sit there hoping this is a “one time” dealie, despite the lack of inidcations that this is what it is. When I finally get to the desktop, I realize I can no longer see my Trillian icon in the system tray, but I can still hear it logging on. After trying several things I discover that un/reinstalling it fixes this. MemTurbo starts up twice for some reason. The desktop disappears for a second for some reason. And a simple volume adjustment in the system tray results in 80 processes I have to end. I start to wonder if this was such a good idea after all.

Then I noticed that I’m in a 800×600 resolution mode. I figured out in Win98 SE that the largest resolution I can push with my Voodoo3 3500 card is 1152×864, so I go to Display Properties. I can’t pick that – it goes from 800×600 to 1280×1064 – and that latter resolution just doesn’t jive with my monitor. Then I noticed that it has something like “Generic SVGA” as the adapter. Well that simply won’t do, so I figure just reinstall the driver. Small problem – what do I reinstall? 3dfx only ever came out with Win9x and Win2K drivers – and now 3dfx doesn’t exist anymore. I installed the Win2K driver – but it didn’t take. Crap. So I did a Google search for WinXP and Voodoo3 3500 and it sent me to NTCompatible (I wonder if they’ll ever change their name) who tells me that I might as well hit the Windows Update site, so I do.

Well holy crap, “product updates” pulls up some hotfix and a “Voodoo 3/4/5 series compatible adapter”. Cool – Microsoft of all people is going to keep the drivers up to date. I fire it up and it works like a dream. Except that now my system can only push 1024×768 – perhaps some more fiddling is due.

I hate skinning. Some programs, like Winamp, use it to good measure, but others, like Ulead’s VideoStudio, use it to hide their inadequacies. So WindowsXP is like one BIG skin. However, surprisingly, I like it. It “feels” good – not like some idiot-proof Mac or something. I’m not sure what to make of the start menu – perhaps it can be modified. It puts your name in big letters on the top of it, along with a customizable icon – I wonder why it chose the Rock Gutiar for me (unless it does this for everyone). In addition, you can uninstall it and go back to whatever you ran before – how effective this is I don’t know, but it’s neat.

As for the Windows Product Activation? Please – like presenting your driver’s license when writing a check or being polite to the police officer, so long as you’re legit it shouldn’t be a big deal.

So no longer am I relegated to using Windows 98, nor do I have to worry with Windows 2000’s compatibility issues – though the sheer newness and beta quality of Windows XP does tend to make compatibility a whole different animal. I haven’t made my final verdict on Windows XP but I can say this much so far: not bad.

Oh, and yesterday I forgot the Nintendo 64 port of Doom, which looked and played more or less nothing like any previous version of Doom ever – the levels had changed and the engine heavily modified and enhanced to the point where it just wasn’t Doom anymore. I figured they had made a whole new game and just “pasted” some Doom enemies into it, but I learned recently that indeed it was based on the original Doom source code, so they just made a hard left with it. So, despite having the best graphics and sound and also being the last Doom port to a console (save DoomDC), it also wond up being the worst port ever.

I now have this site powered by Blogger. If my work has paid off you won’t even really be able to tell I did anything at all. The idea behind Blogger is that, instead of me editing a web page in FrontPage, I set up a Blogger template and update through the Blogger website. This is a really neat idea – provided Blogger doesn’t go into dot-com hell.

So, on to other things. A port of Doom to the Dreamcast has been released. Coded by some independent hackers, DoomDC does a pretty bangup job. Considering that this is pretty much the first independent effort to port a piece of exisitng source code other than an emulator to the Dreamcast, it’s mighty impressive. It will run the IWAD files for Doom, Doom II, The French version of Doom which lacks the swastica location, Ultimate Doom and both episodes of Final Doom. However, while it does have full speed and sound support, it doesn’t play music just yet, nor does it feature multiplayer. Also, due to how the screen rendering is (so far) handled, the colors look a bit washed out. However, these are minor quibbles – this is the best console port of Doom ever. Doom‘s NeXTSTEP development platform meant that porting was relatively easy for id, so many consoles got Doom, but none of them ever got it right. The Atari Jaguar version was alright, but it had a low resolution (somewhere between the “high” and “low” on the PC) and the levels were abbreviated (some were missing, others had sections missing). Oh well, at least it had multiplayer through two linked Jaguars (finding a second person with a Jaguar, however, was the fun part). The Sega Genesis 32X version was laughable in that the screen size was too small and no sprites existed for any angle other than head on – all enemies were “coming right for you” all the time. The version for the 3DO player was pretty awful – lots of missing frames and the usual smaller levels. The versions for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn did what they could given the lack of technology, but neither really went down in the history books. And the Super Nintendo port (running with the assistance of the FX2 chip) was, like the upcoming port to the Game Boy Advance, more of a technical demo/stunt than an actual port of the game – impressive for the platform in consideration, but the worst ports in so far as the game was concerned.

Still, it felt damn good to play that game again. I think I’m going to have to go fire up the Bobby Prince soundtrack tonight. Let’s just hope id doesn’t blow it with Doom III.

Black & White.

Wow.

…

Wow.

Perhaps I’m too “Wow-happy”, but Wow.

I’ve done a lot of recent postulation (for some reason) about art, and the concept of art. By some definitions, all creative expression is art. This would mean that any song by any artist is art. Okay, so this is generally bunk – few people would label “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child art by mistake, but the same could not necessarily be said for “Stan” by Eminem. To some, movies like The Ends of the Day (or any other period piece starring Anthony Hopkins) are art, whereas others get the same impressions from the original Star Wars series or even Robocop. Art museums have always had the standard fare – a painting by this guy, a sculpture by that guy. Recently art museums around the country have started to run exhibits which have come under fire for less than ideal (read: old, traditional and boring) art exhibits. On a recent trip to Dallas, I went with my wife and in-laws to see the Dallas Museum of Art where one of the exhibits on its way was on dinner plates over the years. The Museum of Modern Art Houston recently was host to a traveling exhibit showing the art of Star Wars. The neigh sayers say that this isn’t art, but rather that it’s a general dumbing down of expectations for the masses. I disagree – while The Phantom Menace is questionable, without a doubt the original Star Wars trilogy has a majestic look and feel to the spacecraft and the design aesthetics of the items in it. You don’t get the impression that these are people off of the street in the 1970’s, this is a whole different universe. As for the dinner plates, I think it’s an interesting concept – to see what people chose to stick under their food for the last several thousand years. If you don’t think there’s something to how your plates look, you’re obviously an unmarried man.

The simple fact is that any form of entertainment grows and evolves over the years, and eventually is taken seriously – the form itself hasn’t truly “arrived” until it evolves to the point wherein it can be considered a work of art. The Printed Book has attained this – in fact has done so for some time. War and Peace (which makes a great gag to have on the back of your toilet, BTW) is art, as is Gone with the Wind (a more contemporary example). Stephen King is arguable, as is anyone who’s ever written Science Fiction (Douglas Adams). The Motion Picture has achieved artform status – nearly half of Speilberg’s repertoire (Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun) falls into this category, as does films by Scorcese and Disney (early Disney). Music has achieved this – the formats change and vary enough to not categorize it in a package. Beethoven has his symphonies, and Lennon has his Sgt. Pepper’s (and no, I still don’t like the Beatles). Television is inching its way to art, but for every episode of The West Wing that nears perfection, there are far too many That’s My Bushes out there.

Which leaves the Video Game. Some say the video game will never achieve status as a form of high art so long as it has the name “game” in its title, which of course gives rise to the terms like “Interactive Entertainment”. There’s not even a unanimous decision on how it will be referred to (“Videogame”? “Video Game”? “video game”?, etc.), though a change of nomenclature hasn’t hurt other forms of entertainment (“picture show” to “talkie” to “movie” to “motion picture”). The main factor, of course is time – each form of entertainment which has achieved artform status has done so with the course of time. This explains why forms like Books and Music are so established, and why Television (with its scant 60 years) is less so. In 2002 we will have the 30th anniversary of Pong, for all intents and purposes the first commercially successful Video Game, which gave birth to the industry. However, being borne of the digital revolution and therefore subject to Moore’s Law (processors/power double every 18 months, thereby growing exponentially) the Video Game is much further along three decades in than other forms of entertainment.

All forms of art go through persecution, and Video Games are no exception. We’re probably in the thick of it right now – I would say that since Columbine is two years old now that we’re on the down slopes of it, but all it takes is another psychotic white teenager with a personal death wish, a small arsenal of dubious origin, and a desire for posthumous fame to make us climb up an even higher hill. But in reality, no art form is ever truly beyond persecution. Michaelangelo’s David is sill taboo for the yougins, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is still a tricky spot for high schools due to its usage of a certain colorful word (and the fact that it’s the choice reading material for your better assassins), and Hitman: Code 47 is just plain asking for it. Persecution is fine – you have just as much right to want me not to do something as I have to do it, within reason (so long as no one else gets hurt), but the fear comes with the authority figures. As soon as congress wants to pass laws related to the movie industry, the ratings system came into place – this is so effective the popular misconception is that it carries the force of law. As soon as music comes into question, the “parental advisory” sticker comes into view, and Video Games have the ESRB – which is now being treated like movie ratings at places like Wal-Mart and K-Mart which, to me, is a good thing.

But alas, would you believe I have been working on this exact post for a month now? Yes, the original date is June 26. Pretty sad. On the one hand, I wanted to hurry up and post something concerning Black & White, and on the other hand I wanted to get some stuff off my chest concerning art. In the last month, however, B&W fell victim to another kind of persecution – criticism over its content and the path by which it took. By content, what I mean to say is that there are a number of people who are turned off by the concept – that it’s not the traditional kind of “God” game, or that they’re used to more violent affairs. I came by my copy because a cousin-in-law didn’t like the game. That’s fine, some people won’t like it – that’s to be expected. However, one of the sad facts concerning B&W is that it needed bug fixes out of the box. This was addressed in a couple of patches – first a “beta” patch, then an official one. This would not have been so bad, were it not for the fact that Lionhead, the game studio, promised the date of the patch multiple times and was unable to deliver. In addition, they have a number of features being added to the game, but the timetable of some of them relied on the patch getting released – as the patch was delayed, so were the updates.

This kind of persecution – relentless criticism for imperfection – is almost completely unique to the PC gaming venue. The possibility of modifying the original code to fix bugs through a patch has become a double edged sword. The patch, in many people’s opinion, has become a crutch – the game can ship on time and sell many copies, then the developer can release the patch and effectively buy more time. Consequently you have the id Software’s of the world whose insistence that a game will be released “when it’s done” becomes more a matter of “just before Christmas” while “when it’s patched” becomes just after the new year. By this same logic, however, Half-Life, which keeps coming out with new patches and gameplay features, hasn’t been completed in the last three years. The simple fact is that being a PC gamer is all about patience – suffer through product delays and the need to patch your existing software and you will be treated to gaming experiences impossible elsewhere. If you want to constantly tinker with your automobile, buy a hot rod and shut up about having to fix or changing it. If you want to get from point A to point B with as little BS as possible, buy a standard car. I think you see where I’m going.

The final point of all of this drivel is that after all the hype and hysteria and after all the persecution and “ironing out”, the Video Game – whatever they call it by then – will eventually achieve the status of a legitimate art form. Much in the same way that many people looked at the better works of Palblo Picasso or listened to Exile on Main Street and asked, “what the hell is this crap?”, this is the self same reaction that Black & White received from a large number of people. Tastes are one thing – if it’s not your thing then it’s not your thing – but I can’t help but wonder how many people merely turned off to it because it was too different. The game System Shock was largely ignored when it was released due to its proximity and being the opposite of the game Doom, the aforementioned Exile had the misfortune of following Sticky Fingers, and I can’t help but wonder how many people were disillusioned when Unbreakable turned out to be nothing like The Sixth Sense. However, Lionhead lucked out in that a number of people have purchased Black & White (though since most places have a Draconian policy concerning taking back software, this may not mean anything – witness the million people who purchased E.T. for the Atari 2600), and there is enough enthusiasm on the developer’s end to not only come out with the obligatory sequels and add-on packs, but to spin off a Black & White Studios from Lionhead, so the future looks bright for our odd little game.

And that’s a good thing because; love it or hate it, Black & White, and the games like it, are the best hope we have to help progress the Video Game to a legitimate art form.

—

On the topic of more frequent updates, I am considering upgrading this site to Blogger.

There are people who are young. There are people who are old. Then there are people who are really old. Then there are people who are really really old. I’m not sure if I’m young or old, but before I get started, let me say that I’m not insinuating that I’m really old.

Even if I’m not old, the item I found out today makes me feel old: the Commodore 64 computer was announced 19 years ago this week. Jeez. That means I was like 5 when it was announced. I don’t remember when I got one, but I do remember my parents getting me one for Christmas. I recall that that year I told them (or Santa, either one) I wanted one, and then a few weeks before Christmas changed my mind – I had heard about these things called “video cameras”. Wow, make your own TV shows? Kickass! So I asked for one, knowing nothing about the truth about Santa Claus or the concept of prior notice in the Christmas shopping season, to say nothing of cost (remember, this was back when the simplest camcorders cost like $2000). I remember thinking that my prior obsession, the Commodore 64, was rather lame in comparison to what I had in mind now, and how bad that would suck if I got that instead. Yeah, I was a spoiled brat.

Then Christmas morning came and I opened my biggest present to reveal a Commodore 64 computer. I instantly forgot about that video camera concept and fell in love with the box of this thing. Then I opened it up, had my dad hook it up to the TV (since I had no idea how) and started messing with it. There was no turning back. I sat there and played some of the games my folks bought for me, including Fort Apocalypse, which my dad and I played endlessly over the years with our crappy joysticks.

It was a different time to be sure. The C64 hooked up to a television set, not a monitor. Granted, Commodore did make a monitor for it, which was basically a small TV. I still have the monitor – and it still puts out a kickass pucture (probably related to the fact that I didn’t use it for many years). Programming languages were built into the system, and programs were printed out as listings in magazines. For a science fair project one year I wrote a program which played Tic-Tac-Toe – and won every time. I got a honorable mention. The conditions at the cafeteria were such that the disk drive refused to work after that.

Now I see projects to run Linux and X-Windows on the Dreamcast, along with efforts to get Linux to run on things like the PSX, PS2 and X-Box. There’s actually a small amount of “hype” surrouding the notion that the PSX could be turned into a “low cost, low powered” computer. How bizarre – it’s like we’ve come full circle. Toy machines like early game consoles gave birth to toy computers like the C64 and Apple ][. These computers gave way to “real” computers like the PC and Macintosh, whose barrier to entry costwise in the games market led to the rise of consoles. But now consoles show signs of convergence, like the DC browsing the web and the use of keyboards and mice to play games. It’s almost like what people really want (or seem to want) is a computer with all the functionality, but that plays games and hooks up to a TV, which is exactly what they had back in the day of the C64. In light of all of this, perhaps Microsoft’s XBox has more of a chance – if it becomes the new PCJr. and that’s what people really want, then they win.

I figured I was a damn genius. “Hey, I know, I’ll just email myself my saved game files from my VMU memory card! Then I can erase them from my VMU! Why didn’t SEGA tell us about this? Why don’t more people do this? Why not? Oh, it’s probably because I’m so much smarter than everyone else!”

Well I did this and I did get it to work. However, I discovered that the real reason people usually don’t do this has nothing to do with people being unintelligent, not does it have anything to do with SEGA being greedy jerks and wanting to keep people buying memory cards. No, the reason people generally don’t do this is because IT’S MIND-NUMBINGLY TEDIOUS!!!

To start, something I discovered just prior to doing this whole bit was the fact that the DC’s browser only knows how to interpret emails it sent. Basically, I used the DC’s browser to attach a file to an email message. I then forwarded that message back to the account I checked with my DC and it worked. However, if I conjured up a new email on my PC with the same file, it wouldn’t work – it would display the attached file as text (gibberish, basically). What this means is that I have to keep these exact emails on my system. There is a rather bizarre method of making the files such that they can be downloaded from a web page, but it’s even more bizarre and tedious.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that it’s kinda spooky that I could lose my saved games if my email file got corrupted in Outlook. For redundancy’s sake, I sent a CC: to a hotmail account. And even all of this wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that the emailing process doesn’t always work. After ramming my head into a wall several times, I basically discovered that the Web Browser’s email system is HTML based off of the disc, and after sending out a few emails, the files become corrupt. When they show up on my end, they’re screwed up. The only way to fix it is to reboot the browser. Lame. It took me 2.5 hours to back up approximately 1MB spread out over 2 cards.

So then I formatted one of my cards with GT2 running under bleemcast!, and I’m wondering – a standard PSX card has 15 “blocks” – does a VMU formatted as a PSX card also have 15 “blocks”, or does it have more? I dunno – but what is cool is that in the Dreamcast BIOS it shows the VMU as having no blocks free and with a giant “b!” over the card.

But alas, not all is good in bleemland – they announced that Metal Gear Solid, in the opinon of many the single best PSX game of all time, will be the next bleempak. However, they’re not 100% sure if they can afford to put it out without further retailer support. bleem has turned their website into a fighting force, with contact links to all of the major retailers out there and links to the DOJ to report Sony for antitrust. Do your part and go to www.bleem.com and send lots of nice emails to the retailers and the feds to let them know you want bleemcast! in their stores.

Oh, and PSXEmu.com uncovered a flash movie on the bleem site which would indicate that Tekken 3 might be bleempak #3. What a cool time to be alive.

Oops. It would appear I never actually finished my post/rant from May 29th, but I was going to summarize (at length) that it looks like what many figured was impossible has happened – that Microsoft, “this year’s Sony”, may have fumbled the ball by doing a by-the-numbers job of console development, and Nintendo, “this year’s Travolta”, may be the comeback kid. I personally think this would rock, since I’m a complete Nintendo whore.

At any rate, I finally got Gran Turismo 2 so I can play with bleemcast!. Just for a sense of perspective, I popped it into my PS2 and turned any enhancements off. I played it and gawked at it’s assified graphics. I’m one of the rare few who never owned a PSX. I opted for a N64 (believing at the time that you had to have one or the other, not both). After playing stuff like Soul Calibur and Shenmue on the Dreamcast (and SSX on the PS2) N64 graphics look rather lowsy, so when I see what the PSX looks like it’s hard to believe that people settled for this. Then I smack myself and remember how great I thought Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3 looked like on the NES, or the fact that The Legend of Zelda looks like hammered ass but is still hella fun to play.

So, back to GT2. After playing it for shock value on the PS2 I fired it up on bleemcast!. You have to go a bit to see something in 3-D, but when I saw the car, I was pretty impressed. When I played the game, I was also pretty impressed, but I saw what pretty much all the reviewers agree upon – it takes GT2 and makes it a great game that looks great as well, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Several glitches are in this game, and not bugs – just things that the PSX can’t handle. The models of the cars have “seams” in them in places at times, and I’m sure with the low PSX resolution, no one cared. Now with 640×480 graphics, it’s pretty glaring. Plus, there’s this thing my friend Jimmy pointed out, which I now know as “frame interpolation” – basically, when you have a smaller resolution (and a smaller framerate) when you do things like scripted camera movements or motion of models, the positions in space which look correct to the eye. When you then have increased resolution or framerate, these movements look “jerky” to the eye. A game engine like Quake 3 Arena uses frame interpolation, basically fillin in the gaps. If you have an extra frame between positions A and B, make that position (A+B)/2, halfway in between. Since this would have to be done with the game’s executable code, it doesn’t exist in GT2 since the designers never intended the game to be on any other platform. It’s also outside the realm of what bleemcast!‘s scope is.

This makes me wonder – we all know Sony hates emulation, but what do the game designers think? Polyphony Digital, the developer behind the Sony-published GT2 must like it on one hand since it sells more games this way (side story: my first attempt to buy GT2 at Babbage’s – which won’t sell bleemcast! BTW – was foiled by the fact that this Babbage’s was out of GT2, “because of all the bleem people”). But on the other hand, they’re basically being told “your game looked like shit – here, we fixed it”. For that matter, anything they wanted to “hide”, like flaws or limitations of the original hardware, are plain for all to see.

The achilles heel of bleemcast! is in how it handles memory cards. According to bleem!, LLC, there’s no choice in the matter – I’m not sure if that’s entirely true, but in any event bleemcast! requires a dedicated memory card, to be formatted by the game itself. Meaning you either have to buy a new memory card or sacrifice one of your exisitng ones. Since I don’t see myself being able to buy a new card anytime soon, I figured I might could consolodate my cards (2) into one. However, there’s too much I want to keep, so I did some research. As it turns out, with the latest web browser, PlanetWeb 2.6, you can email game saves. I emailed one to my PC and tried to make it downloadable from my personal web server to no avail. I had read that merely emailing them back didn’t work – that the files were changed somehow. After messing with this for a few hours I tried to do this anyway, and it worked. So, I’m going to be backing up my VMU saves to my PC – I don’t know why this isn’t better documented, unless Sega just wants to sell more memory cards. The only place this doesn’t wotk is with certian games, like Soul Calibur, Phantasy Star Online or other Sega branded games, as these saves have flags which keep the web browser and BIOS refuse to copy them or email them. With PSO I can understand, but why Typing of the Dead?

Oh, and none of this would be necessary if GT2 didn’t have like 500 locked cars, making a memory card a neccesary evil.

Funny thing is, there’s like a dozen Dreamcast racing games that look ten times better. Most of them amount to “make car go fast now”. Something about GT2 just felt different. Then I looked at the Reference Manual and realized how much crap has gone into this one. That makes it pretty cool that GT3 is coming out soon – it’s like the ultimate car simulator evolving (like how whatever id’s FPS of the moment is is the ultimate FPS evolving). I plan on playing this one a lot, but I can’t even begin to convey the irony of possessing so many Dreamcast titles, but playing a PSX game to its extent on it. Oh well, so I’m weird.

Oh well, I’m off but before I go, be sure to download and play Bejeweled on your PalmOS enabled device

What’s the only thing worse than wasting CD-R’s on an emulator for the Dreamcast which won’t work? When you’re down to your last 4 or 5. So screw it, until I see someone else get it to work I’m done with burning DC emulators.

So picture this. You’re Nintendo. In the late 1980’s you single-handedly revived the dead video game industry. In 1989 your market share was 90% with your first system, the NES. With your second system the SNES, you still captured over half the 16-bit game market. Your handheld console, the Game Boy, is over 11 years old. However, in the 32/64-bit race you placed second. You’re seen as a big bully with bean counters running the show, and since your new rival Sony, is seen as neato and friendly, everyone develops for them and almost no one develops for you.

Now notice how Sony is starting to look and act the same way you did when you started losing developers. Also notice how a software giant with deep pockets is starting to eye your market .In addition, you have this neat new system that can do lots of stuff, but because you feel that bragging about undemonstrated and unrealistic system power is hurting the industry, you announce modest capabilities – which gets you a lambasting in the press. What do you do?

First, you make one hell of a showing at E3. Be sure to help LucasArts whenever and however you can, so that they can make the best Star Wars game ever, Rogue Squadron 2, and make it playable at the show.

Next, you strip the unnecessary DVD playback capabilities from your game console. The PS2 showed us how useless a console is when you can’t even feed it through your VCR. Besides, a dedicated DVD player is better anyway.

Then you announce that your console is coming three days sooner and $100 cheaper than that software giant’s system.

Finally, you remind everyone one more time that you are Nintendo and if everyone wants their Zelda, Mario and Metroid fix then you’re their man.

Alrightythen. Seems NameZero didn’t take too kindly to my forwarding schnapple.com to this tripod page, so they cancelled my account. Well, not really – I can still log in, but schnapple.com no longer goes here, it goes to an “our member screwed up” page. They’re more than happy to sell me the right to have the URL back with no ad frame for $30 a year, which I’ll probably go ahead and fork over as soon as I can find $30 not already promised to someone else. In the meantime, http://go.to/schnapple.com/ will go here. I was almost paranoid that someone was going to buy Schnapple.com before I could, but then I realized that no one ever goes there. In any event, please don’t buy it. Or if you do, forward it to here please.

No URL means no incentive to update, but now that I’ve gotten all settled into my jobby-job, I find I miss updating this page, so one way or another I’m back.

I would just love to tell you how cool bleem! for Dreamcast: Gran Turismo 2 is. I would delight in telling you how awesome my copy is. Problem is, while I have a copy of BC, I don’t have GT2. Please see the aforementioned money woes. I’m getting a copy on Wednesday, come hell or high water. Yeah, I know I could just rent it from Blockbuster and copy it, but I want to disavow myself from game piracy. Well, Non-Dreamcast piracy anyway.

What is cool about bleem!, LLC, however, is that they always respond to my email, almost like they’re not an amazingly bust company fighting like two or three Sony lawsuits. I wanted to buy BC from my local Babbage’s, since I feel a bizarre loyalty to that store (I used to work there), but they kept pushing the date back. I email bleem! and ask them what’s up with Babbage’s Etc. and they tell me that while they have the BC discs in stock, they “weren’t sure if they would make it to shelves”, so I was best off buying from EBGames.com. Then it came out that Sony had “requested” that no one sell BC, so that’s why Babbage’s won’t carry it, and even Electronics Boutique quit carrying it for a few days. Since Babbage’s, Etc. is a big time chain, bleem! is now suing Sony. Good for them.

Anywho, more later (as always).