The first day after a haircut, especially on a somewhat cold day, is always weird – it takes me a while to get used to the cold air on the back of my neck.

Anywho, I’m going to devote another post here to Nintendo. Specifically, their current conundrum of being successful yet having problems succeeding conventionally.

Worldwide, Nintendo’s GameCube is selling a little bit better than the Microsoft Xbox (at one point at least it was 10 million versus 8 million). However, in North America and most of Europe, the Xbox is selling better. Most of the reason the GameCube is doing better worldwide is that Japan doesn’t like Xbox at all – and they’re 1/3 of the world’s gamers.

Still, it’s not like the Xbox is obliterating the GameCube (they’re both being obliterated by the PlayStation 2 – with 50 million units worldwide). Plus Nintendo recently instituted a system wherein people who buy a GameCube get one of four free games – one of which is Metroid Prime. That should help sales some more.

Nintendo’s problem, though, is not that the GameCube isn’t selling or hasn’t sold enough. In fact, Nintendo doesn’t really have a problem at all, really. It’s everyone else.

See, what tends to happen is this – people go buy a GameCube, then they get Metroid. And Mario. And they preorder Zelda. And if they’re feeling adventurous they go get Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Starfox Adventures or Eternal Darkness. The problem with this? They’re all Nintendo developed games (first party titles), or made by comapies Nintendo owns part of (or in the case of Starfox, owned) and published by Nintendo themselves (second party). Third party games (by companies with no Nintendo ties) are pretty much ignored by GameCube gamers.

As a result of this, some publishers are pulling support for the GameCube. Sega announced last week that they’re not going to publish any more sports games for the GameCube, and 3DO (who themselves just recently became profitable again) has decided to cut back their GameCube presence, plus EA is thinking about not releasing sports titles on the Cube (which would be a bad thing, as it would pretty much rid the GameCube of sports titles). The reasoning is simple – when they release a game on all three platforms, it’s the GameCube version that doesn’t sell so well, and when the stockholders start to complain about a lack of profit, something has to go.

So what’s caused this problem? Several factors, some of which are obvious and others which are less apparent.

The most obvious is that since fewer people in North America own a GameCube, there’s less sales for fewer consoles. However, if this were the only cause then they would just make fewer copies of those games. If your newspaper only sells 50 copies a day, don’t print 100. However if your newspaper sells zero copies a day then you go out of business.

So what this means is that it’s not just that third party games sell fewer copies, it must be next to no copies. So why then do millions of people buy GameCubes and then buy no third party games?

Probably the biggest part of the problem – and what a part to have – is that Nintendo games are simply too good. I seem to recall several places listing Nintendo as the best developer in the world, and I (of course) think it’s true. These people consistently make games that are so good people buy hardware just to play them. Think of the tons of people who bought a Nintendo 64 just to play Goldeneye (a second party game). People buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games.

Since Nintendo does so well with their first party games, they don’t really do all that much to try and ensure exclusive third party games – something that Xbox and PS2 thrive on. PS2 is the only place to get GTA3 and GT3, and Xbox is the only place to get Splinter Cell and Halo. But almost every exclusive GameCube game is by Nintendo themselves. The only third party exclusives I can think of are the recent Resident Evil titles, but Resident Evil was a remake, Resident Evil Zero was a prequel, and the game that people really want, Resident Evil 4, won’t be out until next year.

In some ways the developer reluctance is a holdover from the Nintendo 64 days. Developers didn’t want to do anything for that system, both due to market reasons (the PSX always sold better) and format reasons – cartridges were not only small in storage size but they were expensive as well – as much as $30 per cart. Now Nintendo has a nice disc-based system to develop for but the third party developers still aren’t going for it, and the ones who do are greeted with poor sales.

The Nintendo 64 legacy isn’t just being felt by the developers, it’s being felt by the consumers as well. Many people bought a Nintendo 64 and decided they didn’t like the fact that the games were few and far between, and at comparitively higher prices when they did come around (like the $60 and $70 games). Some let their system fall into neglect, in favor of the PlayStation, some sold their Nintendo 64’s or threw them away. Many came to regard the Nintendo 64 as a system that was good for the occasional Nintendo game and that was it.

So now many of these same people see the GameCube as a system for playing the occasional groundbreaking Nintendo game and that’s it. If they want a game that’s available on all three platforms then they’ll buy it on PS2 or Xbox.

Another part of this thinking is the perception that the GameCube is a toy system and that Nintendo is a kiddie games company. It doesn’t help that the GameCube is tiny and has its own handle – not unlike small 45 record players many of us had as children – and that Nintendo releases Animal Crossing with low-key childish graphics and the Zelda game will look like a cartoon. Of course people also lambast the Xbox for being too large and heavy. Why it occurs to no one that all game systems are in fact toys and that portability concerns mean nothing when you rarely if ever move the systems I don’t know. So what winds up happening is that people don’t want to buy a “serious” game for the GameCube (and many take the sports games very seriously) since it’s a “toy” system.

Plus some people just don’t like the GameCube controller. The game Soul Calibur II is coming out on all three platforms with the twist that each version gets its own bonus character – PS2 gets a fighter from Tekken, Xbox gets Spawn, and GameCube gets Link, probably the most popular of the three (mainly because people are ambivalent about Tekken and Spawn hasn’t been too popular since the movie came out, plus its coming out in close proximity to Wind Waker). But despite this many have stated they won’t buy the GameCube version of SC2 since they can’t stand the GameCube controller – they don’t like the stick/button layout for fighter games.

And another thing which I believe sticks in people’s minds is the small size of the GameCube discs. They’re 3″ DVD’s that hold 1.5GB per layer, so for a 2 layer disc it’s 3GB, which is still less size than the 4.7GB a single layered 5″ DVD can carry (the outer portion has more space than the inner portion). Many people believe that their games must be cut down or scaled back to fit on these smaller discs – another holdover from the Nintendo 64 days, and one I’m not sure is entirely incorrect. Others think the discs are too puny and when you’re talking about sports and fighting games, an inferiority complex is a bad thing. This goes back to the “toy” perception problem. Finally, some games – like Resident Evil Zero – have already spread to two discs. Many gamers figure the reason they moved to DVD in the dirst place was to avoid disc switching (though in RE0‘s defense the multiple disc thing is also a function of how the game works).

Finally, few people have a GameCube as their lone system. Again, this comes back to the “toy” problem. Since most people have multiple game systems, when a game comes out for multiple systems they have to decide which system to get it for. In previous generations, when there were huge and obvious gaps in console power, theseb decisions were easier. Actually, when the gaps in power were bigger, the developers made the calls. If you wanted realt fast action, go Genesis (Sonic), if you want lots of colors, go SNES (256 vs. 32), if you want storage space, go PSX, etc. However these days the three dominant consoles are pretty much the same. Sure, they have different architectures and different programming techniques and such, but when a game comes out for all three consoles, it’s pretty much identical. The publisher doesn’t want to spend the additional cash to come up with minute differences. Plus in the case of movie tie-ins, they want the games to be simultaneous (i.e., the three Spider-Man games available at the movie launch). Finally of course they don’t really want the games to be competing with themselves.

In the N64/PSX generation this easier – there were only two consoles. You made tons of copies for the PSX, and then came out with enough N64 copies to sell, making more as needed. Publishers don’t want to go back to the monopolistic NES days – Nintendo was simply draconian back then with licensing policies as they were the only game in town. So what the publishers would really like is a duopoly again. Of course PS2 is set with the number of consoles out there, so that leaves Nintendo or Xbox. Many would like Microsoft to win – but Microsoft is untested in this area, and they keep dropping hints about the next Xbox (so does Nintendo, but less frequently), as well as having really crappy policies on online usage (imagine how pissed many gamers were when they found out that, despite having broadband built-in, they had to pay more to play Xbox online. Nintendo actually could capitalize on this, and I kinda hope they do).

But Nintendo isn’t going anywhere, and they’ve even confirmed that a GameCube successor is in the works. Plus Nintendo has billions in the bank. They could take tons of losses on GameCube and more than make up for it with whatever Pokemon GBA title they’ll unveil. I can really see why the publishers are pissed that millions and millions of people own this inexpensive video game system and yet don’t buy anything other than Nintendo games for it. It’s not because people are tied to Nintendo per se, it’s just that Nintendo makes really good games.

So we have three companies, each entrenched with money, none of which are going anywhere (if Microsoft leaves, it’ll be because they’re bored – not because they’re going broke). So this leaves the question – if third party development for the GameCube goes away but Nintendo sells millions of units of hardware and tons and tons of their own games, does this mean that the GameCube is a success or a failure? Hardcore gamers won’t limit themselves to this console and they’ll speak highly of the Nintendo-authored games, but they’ll generally dislike the lack of games on the console. But if Nintendo sells a ton, makes a ton, and people who do play the games and buy the system love it, will it matter? Sure, you won’t be able to swing by Wal-Mart on the way home and pick up a Dukes of Hazzard game, but when the next Pikmin comes out then you’ll get more out of it than a roll in the hay. Is this a bad thing? I can see why people got mad when Nintendo 64 games slowed to a trickle, and then the new game was something like A Tigger Adventure, but will the GameCube situatiuon ever become that dire?

SNK’s Neo Geo system lasted for a long time based almost entirely on their own games. They carved out quite a niche for themselves for a long time, before it all caught up with them in 2001. Could Nintendo do the same thing – last a long time selling their own hardware and their own games for that hardware? It would be one hell of a huge niche. Oddly enough this is the same thing that PC gamers like myself make fun of the Macintosh for – the Mac only has a handful of games, and they tend to be the ones that worked well on the PC – but as a result the Mac games have a better chance of being good, since the sorting has been done already.

If nothing else, this pretty much cements the fact that the console market is one with a huge barrier to entry which is going nowhere fast. We’ll never see a 3DO or Atari again, much less an Indrema. This is kinda sad, since it’s hard to really pull for Microsoft or Sony – meaning Nintendo’s the last “true” game company out there. Perhaps this is why I root for them so much – they’re the last of a breed. If they go away it’ll be two major non-game corporations competing, until the next major corporation tries to get in. So if you’re like me, you’ll be buying all your third party games for the GameCube from now on. It’s just a thought.

A really good article explaining Web Services, and specifically why it is that despite the fact that all the different companies have their own plans for them (Microsoft has .NET, Sun has J2EE), they’re taking great pains to get along with each other.

Favorite quote: “Trying to do the job of a mainframe with PCs has been likened to harnessing scores of chickens to pull a carriage”

The next (tenth) game in the long-running Legend of Zelda series is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which will be released on March 23rd in the United States. The game is controversial, mostly because unlike other games which evolved from the days of the NES (like the recent Metroid Prime), the creators decided to go with a cartoon look and feel, and the result is decidedly anime.

The vast majority of early legitimate critics who have sampled the results are unanimous – the game is the best Zelda yet, and the look serves the game well. There is still a vocal Internet section which still has skepticism, even disdain for the look of the game. Some even go so far as to admit it will probably be an excellent game but they still refuse to accept the new look. Part of this is due to the fact that some Zelda footage was shown in 2000 when Nintendo unveiled the GameCube for the first time and in this footage Link & Ganon look realistic, not cartoonish. Perhaps part of the disdain is the shock of the change.

Personally, my take is this – the creators of the original The Legend of Zelda for the NES in 1986 (many of which, including Miyamoto, are still with the game’s development team), always wanted Zelda to be a cartoon. They even tried to make the Nintendo 64 games a cartoon, but it didn’t work out too well with the capabilities of the hardware. They might lose some customers with this move but I for one think it’s great that they have the resources and backing to even try anything new.

And they’re using cell shading, which has been used to some degree in games recently. But personally, games like Jet Set Radio and Dragon’s Lair 3D never looked all that much like cartoons to me – they looked like Daria or Clerks, a very exaggerated thick-lined style. I’ve played a short demo of Wind Waker and it looks like a real cartoon – and we’re talking top notch Disney Animated Feature stuff, too.

This got me thinking – when a movie like Treasure Planet tanks and Ice Age does well the pundits start thinking that traditional 2-D animation is dead and 3-D computer-generated animation is the way of the future. I say why can’t we do both? Just do the traditional 2-D animated Lilo & Stitch stuff with the engines like Wind Waker runs on. And who needs Pixar’s render farms? Wind Waker runs on a stock $149 GameCube. Hell, wouldn’t that be cool – an animated cartoon you can watch in different ways in your living room since it’s being rendered on the fly.

The other way this release is noteworthy is due to its preorder bonus. I’ve preordered mine and if you haven’t yet you might want to get on that. The preorder bonus, which ships on February 17th, is a GameCube disc which has two games on it – The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest. There’s some confusion on this, so I’ll clear it up.

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is of course the 1998 Nintendo 64 game which won pretty much every award in the world which Half-Life didn’t win.

In 1996 when development began on the game the largest cartridge ROM size was 8MB (8 Megabytes, 64 Megabits). Nintendo was in the unfortunate spot of unveiling a cartridge based system in a CD-ROM based world, so they quickly announced that a CD-ROM drive add-on for the Nintendo 64 would be forthcoming. Shortly thereafter they changed their tune and announced the 64DD, a removable disk-based storage device which used large magnetic disks (think Zip drive) that were 64MB (256 Megabits) in size. Nintendo decided they needed a killer app for the system, and they decided that the Nintendo 64 Zelda game would be a good match, so development of the title started with the 64DD in mind.

The 64DD, in addition to having more storage capability, also allowed for the writing of data on parts of the disk, had an internal clock, and came with a 4MB memory upgrade. However, as time went on it kept being delayed, to the point where games which were formerly for the drive were being repositioned for cartridges. When Nintendo lost out in 1997’s Christmas buying season, the heat was on for Zelda to be delivered on time for the 1998 season, so it was squeezed onto a cartridge.

At the time the biggest cart was 32MB, so this meant that a certian amount of the game had to be cut out. In addition, changes to the existing game were made for various reasons of clarity. The plan was then to program the cartridge game with 64DD “hooks”, so that a 64DD add-on disk could be released later on and the removed portions restored, and both the Japanese and American cartridges were released with these hooks programmed in. When the cartridge was teamed with the 64DD add-on disk, which was to be called Ura Zelda, the original game was playable.

But the 64DD was repeatedly delayed. In Japan the device didn’t make sense since the Nintendo 64 never sold all that well and in America it didn’t make sense since it would segment the user base. In addition it had the same problem which plagued the Famicom Disk System in the days of the Famicom/NES – eventually its main draw (that magnetic disk space was cheaper than solid state media) was rendered obsolete by technology advances. It was released in Japan in 2000 with eight titles, didn’t sell, and was declared a dud. I’ve read conflicting reports on wheteher or not the Ura Zelda disk was actually released, but I don’t think it was. The 64DD was never released in America.

So what then is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest then? Simple, it’s Ura Zelda. Consequently, anyone who preorders The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in the United States will finally get to play the original uncut Ocarina of Time.

This move isn’t unprecedented. The game which was released in America as Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES was a modification of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic (which was why it was so radically different than Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3). The Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was basically the Super Mario Bros. engine with different levels, released for the aforementioned Famicom Disk System. I’ve heard various reasons over the years as to why Nintendo did this (everything from the levels being too hard for American kids to the idea that Americans might not want to pay for another game made on dated technology), but it saw the light of Eastern shores when the SNES title Super Mario All-Stars featured upgraded versions of the SMB trilogy, along with the Japanese SMB2 under the title The Lost Levels.

Switching gears back to Zelda, the series is an odd one for continuity. Essentially, there isn’t any. The general crux is that the player controls a character called Link who lives in the Kingdom of Hyrule and he either needs to rescue the Princess Zelda from the clutches of Ganon, or he gets transported to a mysterious faraway land (usually shipwrecked or somesuch) and must right some wrong before he can go home. Half of the games are Link saving Zelda from Ganon, the other games involve Link mysteriously transported. Some believe (as I do) that the games are essentially retellings of each other, eschewing things like upgrades in favor of simply keeping the basic elements in place and redoing the rest. Others believe that the series is in fact a long series of continuous events, meaning that either Link and Zelda continuously pretend as if they didn’t just get finished with this “save the princess” routine, or they’re descendants of the other Link & Zelda (and of course Ganon’s a descendant, too). One theory I read was that there are in fact three Links and three Zeldas.

My take is the former, that these games are simply “timeless” characters and the story is simply being retold. Why not? It still works. No one questions why the characters in Soul Calibur need to get back together and fight (though in the GameCube version of Soul Calibur II, Link is a playable character). Some say that every Zelda game is essentially the same thing – but it still works. And so what if the basic gameplay mechanic is unchanged from the Nintendo 64 Zelda games – those worked, too.

Anywho, I’m going to go home and play The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the second (released) Nintendo 64 Zelda game which I never did finish…

In case you find yourself bored or just needing to read some interesting pseudo-blogs, I have a couple to recommend this afternoon. And it just so happens they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum, so to speak.

The first one is one whose writing I’ve linked to before – Jim Hill Media. While it initially appears to be either a personal blog or perhaps even a promotion site for some personal business, it’s really an actual content site (albeit a cosmetically modest one) with articles, book reviews, and weekly reader mail answered. The part that makes it interesting is that, while it’s not obvious at first, everything on the site is about Disney. And everything Disney – the theme parks, the way the company does business, and especially the animated features. Articles on things like Disney’s tense relationship with Robin Williams, why Treasure Planet tanked, how Disney actually passed on Ice Age, and why the theme parks are understaffed nowadays. And it’s all really well written. I don’t know how exactly this guy gets all his information and sources, but this is fascinating stuff for hardcore Disney people, and it’s even good for people who are just befuddled by things like why Disney would release Lilo & Stitch as a 1-disc DVD.

The second one is simply titled True Porn Clerk Stories. A woman named Ali Davis in her early thirties took a job at an independent video rental store in Chicago until her acting/improv/freelance jobs took off, and wound up working there much longer than she ever intended. In order to be able to compete with the chains like Blockbuster this store has a basement level that has pornography for rent. On an Improv web site’s forum she frequented she started a running journal of her experiences, which went unnoticed by the Internet masses until it was featured on National Public Radio as part of their This American Life program. I’ll cut to the chase – in November this woman was able to quit the job to take a job at Jellyvision (they did You Don’t Know Jack, and I think she actually had a part in one of those games as she had worked for them before), so this journal is no longer updated, but it’s still a fascinating read.

Of course, as is implied by both the title and the subject matter, this is not for the kids. There’s no actual pornography at the above mentioned link (or any images whatsoever) but her descriptions of what she sees is pretty explicit, and some of the people she runs into during the course of working there are pretty unbelievable (like the ones there waiting before the store opens). But the most fascinating part of this journal is the conclusions she comes to about what porn is, why it exists, and the misconceptions people have about it (as well as the ways in which people are pretty much correct about it). She could probably have worked this into a pretty good academic study or paper (which is ironic given that one of her pseudo-regulars was a prof who hated renting porn but he had to do a project on it).

Not for the faint of heart and of course if you want nothing to do with pornography or its “peddlers” then by all means stay away from this second one and stick with the Disney journal, but if nothing else TPCS will make you feel a lot better about yourself – unless you’re one of her regulars.

What I want to know is this – how come no one ever says we should ban sports? I mean, after last night’s Super Bowl the citizens of Oakland, the losing team, rioted and looted their own town. What surprises most people – amazingly – is that Oakland instead of Tampa Bay rioted. See, usually the winning teams’ city riots. Not this time, this time the losing team’ town riots. I’m too tired and lazy to Google it but it seems every time there’s a major sporting event, there’s a riot shortly afterward. It’s like clockwork. I think every time the Chicago Bulls won the championship (and in the Jordan years this was pretty common) the town burned that night.

So why don’t we ban sports? When I was a kid and me and my sister would get into a fight over a toy my parents would take it away. Why not outlaw sports for a while every time something like this happens? Every time there’s a riot just ban the sport for a year. That should teach people, right?

Every time some kid goes and gets his grandfathers’ arsenal and unloads on his school, there’s calls to ban violent movies, violent video games, violent music, and you’re often seen as someone stupid if you tend to think perhaps there were other forces at work – like maybe the kids were just plain dicks. Some kid blows his head off because he got robbed in EverQuest and suddenly we need stickers on game boxes because – shock – video games are addictive! Never mind the fact that the kid was mentally depressed, refused medication and doctors’ orders to quit playing the game, and that he was alone at college. Some 400-pound teenager eats at McDonald’s every day for years, and then sues McDonald’s for his obesity, claiming that their deceptive advertising forced him (and others in a class-action suit – surprise, surprise) to eat there. This is like playing russian roulette every day for years and then your parents suing the ammunition company on the day you blow your brains out. Fortunately this case was recently thrown out.

And yet despite the fact that every time there’s a big sporting event and the winning and/or losing team riots, no one ever says we should get rid of sports. Perhaps because there’s not enough dead children involved – no one seems to get motivated to change anything unless there’s a crying mother on Dateline. And while we’re on the topic, tons of priests cornhole little boys in the back of their chuches, but no one ever says we should abolish the Catholic Church. Cigarettes kill tons of people a year – the only thing that gets sold to the public where if you follow the instructions you die anyway – but the only thing anyone seems to want to do about it is to put bigger warnings on boxes and pay off anyone with a voice box – at least we can blame that one on lobbyists.

Until we ban all riot-enducing sports don’t even try and blame the media for life’s problems.

It’s been a while since I posted here. Since I last posted I became perilously close to being employed in the DFW area, so I was kinda hoping I could post and say that I was now no longer searching for work (almost before I started). Alas, it was not to be, so that ad banner up there will remain in effect until further notice. Oh well.

I’ve mentioned before about how my Wife and both like to read – her very much more so. A week and a half ago saw the release of Crossroads of Twilight, the 10th book in the Wheel of Time series, so she’s been literally reading every available minute. I marvel at her ability to be able to read and watch television at the same time. She even put away the first thirty pages in her car when she first got the book (though she wasn’t driving at the same time). I, however, can’t put away books for crap. I mean, I can when I really want to but even then I pale in my ability to take in the printed word. There’s simply too many games to play, shows to watch, and programs to write for me to have enough time. Plus recently I’ve been stressing out a little over the aforementioned near-miss job and plus I’m still getting over an illness.

One of the things I think my Wife could do very well if she wanted to would be to write these kinds of books she likes to read (mostly Fantasy/Sci-Fi). I mean she puts away tons of them (literally) and someone has to write them. Plus it’s not like you have to write Huck Finn every time – few Sci-Fi novels have any sort of deep meaning, they’re just fun to read. But the few times I’ve suggested the idea to her she’s told me she’s not really interested in it. It would take away from her reading time (and any other free time she has), and she says while she reads a tons, she doesn’t really know how to write. I see her point, sometimes a hobby is just a hobby – if you tried to do it for a living you’d hate it. Give someone a car and tell them they can drive it every day and they’ll love it – tell them they have to drive it every day and it turns into a job they may learn to hate.

Plus, she says, it’s really me who needs to try writing. My natural response was that I prefer to write “nonimportant” things, like on this Blog. Of course, sometimes what I write on here is in fact a small novel anyway so perhaps I’m halfway there. Who knows I may try someday, but from what I hear I shouldn’t expect to get rich off of it. Case in point – Stephen King, easily one of the most successful authors of all time, has made between $120 and $140 million in the course of the last thirty years (when he started writing). By way of comparison, Mariah Carey got signed to a $100 million contract for five albums alone a few years back. Then they threw about $30 million at her to be let out of the other $70 million. The only way the J.K. Rowlings of the world (Harry Potter) is if they branch out into other venues (and preferrably into things that can be sold en masse to children).

Of course if you became an author and made, say, $100K a year off of your work, you’re hardly a pauper. Most people who work 9-5 jobs can’t pull off that kind of dough. That’s one of the things that’s bugged me about Stephen King’s work – many times one of the characters in his novels is a writer like him. It makes sense – write what you know. But its harder to relate to someone who doesn’t have to wake up at 6 AM to get to their job at 8 AM. Of course its easier to find the fucked up demon living in your house when you don’t spend nine hours a day at work.

So one of the things I discovered on the web was a book called Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. It’s a “shareware book”. He wrote it about five or six years ago and tried to get it published. And failed to do so. Now I haven’t read it yet but it looks like Sci-Fi Humor, something along the lines of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was itself along the lines of Dr. Who meets Monty Python. His claim is that if you read it and decide you like it, send him a dollar. Seems simple enough. Given that he still hasn’t gotten it published and is in fact working in a different sector (consulting) it makes for a nice idea but one that didn’t work out for him as his line of work.

In his blurb about his experiences trying to get published in Sci-Fi (and I think he’s referring to Sci-Fi as “involving aliens or space or the future” – no dragons or medieval elements and nothing that could “really” happen) he came to the conclusion that to get published these days you have to either have already been published (so the longtime authors are safe), write military science fiction (think Starship Troopers) or have a tie-in (like all the Star Trek or Star Wars novels). It’s not exactly an encouraging situation, and if Douglas Adams were to try and sell Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy today, he’d be laughed off of town. And worse yet, people probably wouldn’t buy it if he did publish it.

And then along came a recent new author, Cory Doctrow. The first thing I read by this guy was 0wnz0red, a short story he published on Salon.com and I really liked it. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m programming-oriented (just like the story and its characters), so I don’t know if everyone else will like or follow it, but there it is. He recently published a second short story, Liberation spectrum, which I haven’t read yet but is getting high marks as well. Also it appears that he has won a Hugo award (prestigious Sci-Fi award) for best new science fiction writer.

So now he’s finished his first “dead tree” book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. I’d tell you the plot summary but it’s too weird. I also haven’t read it yet, save for the first few pages, but it’s not the most accessible thing I’ve come across. Still, it looks quite interesting. But not nearly as interesting as the publishing schema he’s employing.

If you go to the aforementioned link, you dan download his new book. The entire thing. It’s starting to show up in stores now and you can buy it on Amazon.com and everything but he’s making it available for download for free. Why? Mainly because it’s the cheapest, easiest way to get noticed (witness how even I’m writing about it). The basic theory being that the number of people who will download it, read it (or part of it) and then decide it would make a nice addition to their bookshelf might outnumber the number of people who would go buy it blindly out of a bookstore. Sure there might be some people who would ordinarily have bought it but instead decide to download and read it for free, but the theory maintains that number would not only be small, but it would be outweighed the number of people who would buy it because of this method.

To this end, Doctrow instructs his readers that if they like the book and would like to send across some financial support, they would do him much better to buy the book in stores than to send him some money. This I find interesting. Basically, his publisher is TOR and TOR is, from what I can tell, one of the big wigs in Sci-Fi/Fantasy publishing (these guys are the ones making a killing off of the Wheel of Time franchise). However, TOR also allowed for this experiment. Doctrow says that if you want to support him but don’t care about owning the book then buy it and donate it to a library or something.

This would be like a major record label allowing a new band to put out their album in MP3 format to see if it will sell more CD’s. I have always heard that every time you buy a CD for $17-19, the artist gets maybe $2-3 off of the sale. Artists don’t get rich off of album sales. Jennifer Lopez reportedly made $37 million in 2002, but that was more a function of selling perfume, calendars, concert tickets and movie tickets than CD’s. Of course an artist like Jennifer Lopez can also negotiate better recording contracts. But the main reason The Rolling Stones have made $1.5 Billion since 1989 has been through $75 concert tickets.

This is not unprecedented, but it is unique in some ways. Bruce Eckel is the author of a popular series of programming books called the Thinking In… series. The most popular of which are the two Thinking in C++ books and Thinking in Java. He has the complete books and source code available for download in PDF form on his website, and the FAQ as to why is a fascinating read. Most of the reasons he cites are more prone to technical writing, for example he tends to target College Professors who will instruct their students to go to the local print shop and print the book out (usually costing just a few bucks) and then when the dead-tree edition comes out the professors are not likely to change (though this really wasn’t the case when I was in College). Also, he tends to get a lot better feedback when the book is out in the wild as opposed to when he only runs it past a proofreader and then the errors are committed to paper. However, since his books tend to be hundreds and hundreds of pages, it makes a lot more sense to buy a copy than to print all that out somewhere, punch holes in it and find a gigantic binder.

Then there was Stephen King’s take on this. He started a story back in the eary 1980’s called The Plant and on a lark decided he’d finish it and publish it online. He gave parts one and two away and charged for part three. He made it downloadable on his website with the caveat that if you liked it you had to pay him a dollar. If 75% of the people who downloaded it paid up then he’d continue. He would do this for eight parts and then everything after that would be free. Lots of pundits were wathing this experiment closely. If it worked it may have spelt the doom for publishing. Then again success may have meant nothing – Stephen King is pretty much the superstar of publishing, so for him to be successful is less significant. But if it failed then these same pundits would prophesize doom for the e-book industry.

The result was decidedly a punt. Indeed 75% or more of the people who downloaded parts three and four paid for it – some went so far as to pay extra to cover the moochers. However, King changed his mind several times about the strategy of his plan, and sales started to drift off a bit. About 54% paid for part five, something King attributed to the possibility that a lot of people figured the story was never going to be finished (since he was hinting that he owed his publisher a “real novel”) and they might as well freeload while they can. Finally, King decided to finish off the sixth part and call that “part one”. The story was never finished but it was a good stopping point. Apparently King is known to get to a point in a work where he doesn’t like it, so he “shelves it”. Later (sometimes years later) he comes back to it, decides at what point it went bad, pitches from that point to the end, and tries again. Some of his best novels happened this way, and some things he wrote never left the shelf. King decided The Plant went that way and so he decided to shelve it. Of course in this case everyone got to see and read his progress so far. Later he stated that The Plant is something he’ll probably never get back to and with his imminent retirement, will in all likelihood never be finished.

But where Doctrow differes from Scalzi is that Down and Out is not a book trying to be published, it’s a book that is being published. I’m sure that they’d never publish a book that they know will sell this way – too many people would download it and not buy it. But Doctrow’s a virtual unknown. Yet news about his works gets posted to Slashdot, where all the happy geeks go, so they’ll all download his book (and convert it into every form known to man) and he might even sell more this way. I’ve read that only 10% of fiction books go on to be profitable, and only 10% of those go on to sell a million copies or more. In this climate I guess I can understand why publishers tend to only go with known names – and what better way to get known than to wiggle your way in through previously unused channels.

So while we’re on the topic of books, how come is it that no one complains about the price of books? The tenth Wheel of Time book, Crossroads of Twilight carries a retail price of $29.99. That’s more than a DVD or a CD. Granted, we got it day one from Hasting’s where new hardcover books are 50% off, but if you go somewhere that does no discounts it’s 30 bones. Of course, the book is some 700 pages long, and not 700 children’s pages – every leaf in there has tons of lines on it. My Wife puts books away like popcorn and this one had her going for two weeks. Plus its not like these books come out all that often – it’s been at least two and a half years since book nine, which was two years since book eight. If your favorite rap group came out with a new CD every three months of marginally new material (like Insane Clown Posse does) you’d start to loathe them for trying to hose you.

Another reason I guess we don’t complain about the price of books is the lack of alternatives. CD’s lend themselves to piracy since their technology allows for things like MP3 – DVD has the same problem. Sure, someone could scan every page of a new book and maybe even OCR it, but why bother? Plus books, like the Movie-to-DVD process, have a second chance venue – wait for the paperback version. The paperback is usually no more than $7. If you think $19 is too much for an album you can’t really wait for it to go down in price – on the contrary, Appetite for Destruction is more expensive now than ever before. But books have a second chance to come down in price. For that matter, some chains – if they order too many copies of a hardcover book, will eventually sell off copies of that hardcover dirt cheap. The local Hasting’s here is literally swamped with titles like this.

There are two record stores in the mall here, and they sell DVD’s full price. Period. When a $29.99 DVD comes out, Wal-Mart will have it for $19.99, Target and Best Buy will have it for $21.99, Hastings for $24.99 (which is fine since they don’t care about selling DVD’s – mostly renting them), but the places in the mall here will have it for $29.99. The one practical upshot of this is that it’s possible to find DVD’s that are either gone everywhere else or long out of print – the Snow White DVD has been out of print for over a year now but there’s still copies at the mall. The record stores must not care (or their corporate parent doesn’t care, whatever) since music is their business.

But music is doubly screwed since music never goes down in price – it’s only gone up so far. But when a DVD is really old at any normal store iit gets marked down. For entertainment software (video games) there’s even a designated path to the “cheap bin”. The only cheap bins I’ve ever seen in music are for the albums that are out of print and unpopular – they’ll still charge whatever the full price for the fourth Led Zeppelin album twenty years from now on whatever people listen to music on. Of course, this is if the notion of physical music persists, which it may not. Supposedly record company executives were bracing for the death of the traditional music industry twenty years ago, but then the Compact Disc came out and suddenly everyone not only was willing to fork over more money for something that, in the long run, would be cheaper to produce, but they were willing to re-buy all their old albums on CD as well. Of course today people don’t want to buy CD’s and now we have the unveiling of Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio which while they’re bound to keep enthusaists happy, they probably won’t win over the consumers who don’t want to be treated like scumbags just because they’re liking MP3’s more.

But then again I could be wrong. We are after all a very possession-oriented society. Tons of people downloaded Attack of the Clones over the Internet – but I don’t think many of them watched a camcorder captured version of the movie in lieu of the real thing. Most people still went to see it in the theater. And then when it came out on DVD most people bought it as well, despite having it on pirated camcorer VCD. In fact, I don’t know anyone who downloads movies instead of going to go see them in a theater or getting them on DVD. Even though people can download DivX versions of movies and an increasing number of people can make DVD copies of movies they rent, why are DVD sales still rising? For one thing, DVD has so much value added content that it’s worth it to get them. A DivX rip doesn’t have 5.1 surround sound and few people can watch them on their TV’s anyway. Plus people are still enamoured with the physical qualities of DVD – it looks good to have a shelf full of them, and the packaging is neat. A CD, however, doesn’t add that much. You can download the MP3’s of an album and make a CD and still have basically the same experience. All you’re paying for with a store bought CD is the liner notes and cover art. Perhaps people will think this way of DVD but not now.

But let’s say that they make CD’s where you can’t rip them. So there’s no more MP3. What will the music industry become? Will it go back to its former glory? I say no – it will go to where the book publishing industry is right now. One of these days the RIAA may have its way – no more P2P, no more MP3, but then they’ll sit back and wonder what happened. If you like a book you pay $30 for it. If you can wait you go $7 for the paperback. If you don’t want to do that you borrow a friend’s copy or you go to the library. But no one really puts that much thought into whether they’re doing their part to keep the publishing industry alive – they just do what they want. The music industry has the same thing – but people’s wants have changed, both as a result of MP3 and because they think differently of how they spend their money. No amount of legislation or lawsuits will ever change that.

But anyway, I really had no idea that this rant would go on this long, or that it would turn into another bit on MP3 and piracy. In any event, I’m definitely going to try out Doctrow’s book and buy it if I like it (and probably only then after I get moved and settled – could be a while). And I may try writing (fiction), preferrably before this “put it out for free on the web” thing becomes a cliche. But one thing’s for sure – DVD is it for me. If in twenty years they come out with a better format that’s not reverse compatible I’ll pass. DVD’s the last video format I’m fooling with, and I think with rare exception, CD is the last format I’m fooling with, too.

So I’m at my parents’ house, and at their PC. We came down to visit them after Christmas. It’s kinda interesting since this PC was so much faster than mine when they got it – now it seems to chug away.

My Dad was always the driving force behind my parents not getting a PC. There was always supposedly a long list of things to be bought first – a new lawn mower, debt, etc. – but once Mom sufficently worked in on him to get one he discovered a Texas Aggie Football site – TexAgs.com – and is on the forums every night for a few hours. Hilarious.

Once they got the PC they set up three user accounts on XP Home, one for each of them and one for my sister, who was home visiting at the time. Each of the profiles has its own backgrounds, themes, etc. Each has its own email settings and AIM account. But I’m not sure if my folks pay close attention to which account they use. I often see one, both, or all three accounts online through AIM, and though I send an IM I never get a response. I think at least one or two are set to go to the login screen when the screen saver kicks in.

And something annoying about XP and the way it handles multiple accounts – the screen resolution can’t be set for each user. My folks have it at 800×600 – the lowest. I set it to 1280×1024. It’s a 17″ monitor so I guess running 1600×1200 on my 21″ has turned me into a sadist. In any event if my parents get on the PC before I take off Sunday I’m sure they’ll go blind or crazy.

But it’s funny – the web page history has the same entries from when I was down here last. The files are mostly what I put on the hard drive. It’s kinda like if you had a roomate that was less PC adept so you used their system. Anything I downloaded to my parents hard drive is still on here from Xmas last year, and I’m sure if Travis Arlitt (college roomate)’s old PC is still in existence it still has web pages on it I designed in 1996. Along with my 14.4K modem of course.

And yet my parents (and sister) surprise me with how adept they are. My mom got this USB printer working by herself. I see lots of programs she’s bought and installed and (presumably) got working. And I see a few CD’s my Dad’s burned around here. Now if I could just train them not to send me chain emails, I’d be set.

With latent Xmas money I bought a Game Boy Advance, Platinum colored to match my GameCube, and Metroid Fusion. I guess the biggest signal I’m sending is that I’m perfectly content to fill the coffers of Nintendo so long as they keep bringing the goodness. But the critics are not bullshitting – the screen is really dark and contortionist proportions are required in order to get light onto the thing. Afterburner here I come. Anyone know how to solder?

What I find incredibly amusing about it is that my Wife was baffled at how quickly I could spend $100 of Xmas money, since the GBA cost $70 and Metroid Fusion cost $30. However, she can’t put the thing down – she’s farther than I am in the game and she keeps taunting me to catch up with her. I’m just happy I have a Wife who likes gaming.

Anyone who knows me in person knows about my two cats, Liza and Sandy. But here at home we have my original cat, Jenny. I named her after my girlfriend I had named Jenny. I had that girlfriend in Kindergarten – twenty years ago – and so we have had this cat in our family for twenty years. In case that didn’t sink in this means that Jenny is ancient as far as cats go.

So now she goes a little bit slower. And her voice is incredibly raspy. And she usually doesn’t look like she can open her eyes all the way. But she still recognizes me and purrs. And she still cleans herself. And she still begs for food. We have to be gentle with her because she has the feline equivalent of arthritis, but all things considered she’s still on top of things.

It’s funny how she’s treated around here. She’s kinda like the eccentric Howard Hughes millionaire living forever type. That my parents have an empty nest now save for her helps in this area as well. They feed her shaved turkey, more or less exclusively. They have a heating pad on the couch for her – helps with her arthritis. And we’ve had a fire in the fire place a lot since I’ve been back because she insists on it. It’s like a pointer dog. Jenny has health problems sometimes but trips to the vet, the occasional shot, and antibiotics my parents trick her into swallowing help. It’s comforting and lucky that every time I come visit she’s as close to her old self as possible.

I make fun of my two cats because they hang their head out when they use the litter box. But apparently Jenny got to where she would hang the other end out – defeating the purpose. So they replaced her covered litter box with a big huge pan. But then she couldn’t get into that, so they have a little step into it.

We got two cats twenty years ago, the second of which my sister named Sissy. However Sissy died when we accidentally backed over her, so it’s just been Jenny since middle school or so. It’s really interesting to see here these days – it’s like a miniature model of old age. I go visit my grandmother and see an old human and then come home to an old cat. But they’re still with it (my grandmother had a stroke a decade ago and she still speaks better than Ozzy Osbourne) and still mostly on top of things.

I figure Jenny still has a few more years left in her, especially with her lifestyle. But I’m still going to be pretty sad when she goes. In the meantime it’s still nice to come home and see some things haven’t changed. Dad still takes a nap with her on his lap, and Mom still feeds her her shaved turkey.

Aaaaah…much better.

I’ve owned a PlayStation 2 for about two years now and a Dreamcast for three, which means I only lacked a Nintendo GameCube and a Microsoft Xbox to have my sixth generation collection complete (or is it seventh? I can never remember).

A few times over the last year, since the release of the GameCube and Xbox, my Wife has asked me which one I would want first. I always told her the GameCube. She pointed to Xbox commercials every once in a while and asked “That’s the one, right?” to which I would politely correct.

The reasons I wanted a GameCube include the cheaper price, the games, the franchises (Metroid, Zelda, et al) and the fact that I never miss a Nintendo console. The PS2 has sold 47 million consoles worldwide, the GameCube has sold 10 million, and the Xbox 8.2 million ¹, so the battle is not so much for first place, it’s for second.

At some point my Wife mentioned to me that she had purchased my Christmas gift. This made me nervous, mostly for the aforementioned Xbox confusion, but also because of her ability to drop vague hints. At some point all I had gotten out of her was that it was expensive enough to merit multiple layway payments, that it was available at Wal-Mart, and that I had “dropped enough hints”. When I asked her point blank if it was a GameCube, she responded “No.” in such a way to seem confused that I might think that. That really threw me for a loop.

Finally though it dawned on me she might just be a good bullshitter and she really had gotten me a GameCube. But then I started thinking about how, if I convinced myself (again) that it was a GameCube and it wasn’t, then my reaction would be pretty shitty. So I tried to put it out of my mind. Still, I couldn’t think of anything else that fit the description. I started wondering what in the heck else at Wal-Mart I might have accidentally dropped hints about.

Then last Monday she told me that the gift was wrapped and in the house, and if I could find it. When I did find it I didn’t think it was big enough to be a GameCube. After I found it, I started opening it and the first thing I felt was a DVD-sized case next to the big cardboard box, so that’s when I knew. Wendy had a good laugh since she had successfully fooled me into thinking she hadn’t gotten me one. It was the limited edition Platinum colored one, which surely makes it more interesting than the purple one. The DVD case was Metroid Prime.

The only thing I needed was a memory card, but I still fired up Metroid Prime and got my ass kicked.

Several things I noticed. For starters, although I knew the GameCube was small, I had no idea it was this small. It’s tiny. No wonder I thought the box was too small. It even seems bigger in store displays. It has three serial ports on the bottom, covered by plastic covers and designed in such a way that whatever they wind up connecting can still plug in from the side. I know one of these is used for the Broadband Adapter (or Modem Adapter) but I wonder which one is the forthcoming Game Boy Advance player going to use.

Also the tiny disc thing is odd. I can’t seem to figure out why they did it. The discs are 3″ DVD discs, not the standard sized 4.7″ DVD discs that Xbox and PS2 use. I know one of the problems the Xbox and especially PS2 have is people making “games” that simply use DVD Video authoring techniques (like Dragon’s Lair). This really only becomes a problem with pornographic games. But Nintendo could just have made the GameCube not play DVD Video and solved that problem. But then again perhaps they were concerned that people would naturally expect that anything that takes standard sized DVD Video discs would be required to play movies. Perhaps they wanted to control the manufacturing process – but it’s not like cartridges – anyone can press DVD’s. Perhaps they wanted to thwart piracy. True, few people own DVD burners, and while 3″ DVD-R’s are rare they’re still available. At best Nintendo is buying time, but then again in 1994 when the PSX dropped in Japan, CD burners were hideously expensive, and CD-R’s were $10 a pop.

I popped the Metroid Prime disc into my PC’s DVD drive and it didn’t recognize it (unrecognized format) so there’s that hurdle, too. I think I remember hearing that one of these discs can hold 1.5GB of space, as opposed to the 4.7GB of space a DVD can afford (most of the storage space is in the outside of the disc). However the Metroid Prime disc looks to be a dual-layered disc (it has that telltale 2-layer mirror effect on the front of the disc) so it’s probably 3GB of space. Still, given that Nintendo developers used to have to limit themselves to 64MB tops, this is a huge improvement.

Although my revelations are a year late (since the GameCube dropped in November 2001) it’s still odd to me to see certian things – most importantly this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Nintendo name on a game disc. That’s just wild. The little Nintendo seal of quality, unchanged since they changed in in 1989 or so. Of course the real wild part was the oval-shaped Nintendo logo in red at the opening screen of Metroid Prime – I’ve been seeing that logo on stuff since 1985. I still see the Atari logo on stuff – but it’s not the same company anymore. Nintendo pretty much is.

It still has the hallmarks of a Nintendo game – the warning about seizures, the Nintendo Power brochure, the additional manual about how to use Nintnendo games, everything. I think I’ll start putting my DVD console game cases on the same shelf as my DVD movies – they’ve got the logo of the target system on them, so why not? Of course, whereas Xbox and PS2 games have the logo at the top 1.5″ of the spine, GameCube puts them at the bottom 1.5″. Not sure why that is, but at least the cases aren’t neon green. Blech. Plus the cases (like some PS2 games) have a spot for the memory card, something the giant Xbox memory card can’t do (I presume).

The following weekend I got a memory card. The 251 block card is $19.99 and the 59 block card is $14.99, so coupled with the $5 coupon for Best Buy I finagled (which requires the item be $19.99) it was a no brainer. Makes me wonder why they still have the 59 block cards for sale anymore (leftovers I presume). I have no idea how much tangible space 251 blocks is or how long its supposed to last me, but it still beats the $34.99 that Sony charges for an 8MB PS2 memory card.

Then there’s the actual game Metroid Prime. Retro only had to do three things on this one:

1. Make it a good game
2. Put in all the stuff Metroid fans want
3. Don’t screw it up

And suffice it to say they pulled it off.

Metroid was the product of Gunpei Yokoi (whose name is spelled differently depending on where you read it, since it’s always a rough translation fron non-English characters), who was one of the big guns at Nintendo – in the rank right below Miyamoto (Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong). His most tangible contributions to Nintendo during his tenure were the original Game Boy and the Game-And-Watch series (which predated the NES). He also made the game Kid Icarus, another perennial favorite of Old Army NES gamers.

Metroid told the story of one Samus Aran, who was dispatched to the planet Zebes (also sometimes spelled Zebeth due to the lack of a “th” sound in Japanese) to destoy the Mother Brain in an attempt to keep Space Pirates from using the Metroid for space warfare. Metroids are little jellyfish-like domed creatures that latch onto the user and suck the life out of them. Not exactly high drama, but then again back when this game came out, having a plot for your game was unusual (i.e., no one knew why Pac-Man had to eat the dots and avoid the ghosts – he just did).

It is a testament to the strength of the title that it was one of the first NES games out and still people love to play it. And not for retro’s sake, either – most people don’t think Super Mario Bros. is still a good game, it just reminds them of youth. People still play Metroid for fun, though. Plus it was a long game. I still don’t think I ever completely finished it.

And the other big contribution Metroid made was the fact that (spoilers ahead) when you beat the game Samus Aran took off his helmet to reveal… that he was a woman. While today this is less of a big deal (what with Lara Croft and the proliferation of girl gamers), in 1986 video games were almost entirely “boy’s stuff”. That the majority of male gamers didn’t worry about this ending says something.

In Japan, Metroid was on the Famicom Disk System (FDS) a disk drive for the Famicom (NES in Japan) that allowed saving without need for batteries. It was released to make for cheaper manufacuring costs (since the silicon in ROM chips is expensive) but dropping silicon prices rendered its main feature moot and it died away (more or less the identical fate the 64DD suffered over a decade later). In Japan, Metroid allowed you to save your game like The Legend Of Zelda did on the NES, but in the U.S. they went with a password system to save time and money (versus using a battery since the FDS equivalent never made it over here). The password was pretty much a snapshot of what was in memory, and was annoyingly long.

The only problem with Metroid was that it was only popular in the U.S. In Japan it didn’t sell. This didn’t ring well with the Nintendo brass and they wouldn’t have allowed the creation of Metroid II, but Yokoi pushed it through anyway. Metroid II: The Return of Samus came out for the Game Boy, the system Yokoi pioneered. While seen by many as the weakest in the series, it still holds up much better than most other games. It also had a built-in save system and when the Game Boy Color came out years later, Metroid II was one of the games with a special pallette built into the system to match the NES colors as best as possible. It says something about the sales of Metroid in Japan though that Metroid II came out in the U.S. a year before it came out in Japan.

Super Metroid (also referred to as Metroid 3 in the opening credits) is usually everyone’s favorite in the series. While keeping most if not all of the original gameplay elements of the first two games, it added cutscenes and used the best of the SNES’ abilities to produce a truly immersive experience. The sound design was superb and the graphics are 16-bit at their best. This time, the game came out in Japan first where it enjoyed brisk sales, but in the U.S. it was not only a huge success, but it was a merchandising boom.

At some point, Yokoi started working on his next system. The Game Boy had pretty much peaked (or so everyone thought) with the multicolored units, the Game Boy Pocket, and the multicolored Game Boy Pocket units. At this point in time the buzz word (or term) was Virtual Reality. Everyone wanted to come out with a VR system. Virtuality made expensive helmet/glove/game systems for use in arcades, but every games company started working on their own system – all aiming for what someone decided was the golden price: $299. This is where Yokoi decided to go.

But every company bailed out. Hasbro decided it couldn’t be done. Atari had contracted Virtuality to make a version of their helmet to connect to the Atari Jaguar but bailed on the idea. No one went through with the idea – except Nintendo. Nintendo, fueled on by Yokoi who hadn’t been wrong yet, went forth with their project, the VR-32. However when it was finished it was dubbed the Virtual Boy and had scaled the idea back a bit. Instead of a large helmet to strap on, it was a visor that stayed on a pedestal. Instead of moving it stayed put. Instead of full color, it had four shades of red. Essentially it was a cross between a Game Boy and a View Master.

Yokoi believed it could replace the Game Boy – it was after all basically a better Game Boy (a 32-bit processor to the GB’s 8) with a better gimmick (3-D effects). Plus it had a pricetag of $179 – well below the golden $299. But there were problems. For one thing, it traded off the main selling point of the Game Boy – portability. You weren’t going to play this in a car, nor could you really take it with you anywhere. The gimmick of 3-D games was neat but it wasn’t too impressive or useful. And the system wasn’t powerful enough to do DOOM-style games it seemed – the one 3-D game it had was vector based.

Critical reaction to the Virtual Boy was bad, as well as sales. Word is 500,000 systems were sold in the U.S. in the first weekend, only to have over half returned in the first two weeks. It didn’t help that it was going up against new systems from Sony and Sega while Nintendo’s “real” system – the Nintendo 64 – kept getting delayed. After trying to sell it for a year and a half, Nintendo gave up. Yokoi, facing termination, resigned to form his own company in 1996.

In 1997, Yokoi was hit and killed by a car while changing his tire on the side of a road in Japan.

Yokoi’s death took with it the one person who kept making Metroid games happen. Nintendo of Japan simply wasn’t interested in doing one, and Nintendo of America didn’t bother to try. Gamers in the U.S. tried endlessly in vain to try and get a Metroid game for the Nintendo 64 made, but nothing happened.

A dim glimmer of hope in the form of the fighting game Super Smash Bros. was released in 1999. In this game, several of Nintendo’s franchise characters fought each other, and one of them was Samus Aran. This meant that at least someone at Nintendo thought the Metroid franchise was signigficant. Ultimately, though, it would prove to be the only time Samus was on the Nintendo 64.

Several rumors were floating around that a new Metroid game was under development “for a Nintendo system”, but no one was saying for what system. Miyamoto finally confirmed these rumors, but allowed nothing more. The fear was that the new system was going to be the eventual follow-up to the Game Boy, not quite the N64 or Dolphin (GameCube code name) game everyone was expecting.

Pretty much nothing happened after that, and most people gave up hope. But then at SpaceWorld 1999 (Nintendo’s personal E3) the Nintendo GameCube was unveiled, and the footage they showed off had some footage of… Samus Aran. Finally, Nintendo was working on a home console version of a new Metroid game. However, even then Nintendo wouldn’t let on – claiming that they still hadn’t announced anything.

Eventually though word did leak out – Nintendo formed a studio in Austin, Retro Studios, and one of the games rumored to be there was the next Metroid game. Retro had even wooed away David “Zoid” Kirsch (author of the original CTF for Quake) from his id Software contract.

What this meant was several things – that development of the Metroid sequel was not going to be done in Japan by Nintendo, which was a first. This alone gave many fans pause. Also the hiring of employees with 3D FPS experience meant that in all likelihood the game was going to be 3-D, which was another first. While the trend of consoles was 3-D this wasn’t neccessarily surprising, but still some figured the game should at least be from a side scrolling perspective.

Then word leaked out that the game was going to be from a first person perspective. This is when most people started losing faith. The game Halo was originally a third person game but changed to first person at the last minute – and many think the game suffered because of it. Many people didn’t want Metroid to be a FPS, mostly because FPS games were difficult to pull off on consoles (with notable exceptions).

When the game Metroid Prime was finally formally announced, the term they gave to the gameplay was “First Person Adventure”. Jaded gamers called it “marketing jargon”. For all its interactivity, Half-Life was a FPS. All the gameplay “elements” Quake II added to the mix were really just variations on “get the key, get out of the level”. Texas game developers are good at FPS games, but this isn’t really what Metroid fans wanted.

Another disappointing aspect was that Metroid Prime was to be set between Metroid and Metroid II – not Metroid IV in other words. At this point gamers wanted to know further plotlines (plus The Phantom Menace made everyone leery of prequels for a few years).

And then the shakeups at Retro went down. At one point in time Retro was working on three different games for GameCube’s launch, including what would have essentially been a Nintendo Football franchise. But every time Nintendo came by to pay a visit, the comments were bad, the complaints were plentiful, the layoffs were handed out, and projects got cut. Before it was all over, Metroid Prime was the only game Retro was working on anymore. This did not instill confidence in Metroid fans.

But when gameplay footage finally started to be shown, the results were attractive. And the early word was positive.

Then the reviews started trickling down – and they were across the board good. Finally when the game dropped on November 18, 2002 most people were indeed satisfied – Retro had done the impossible: make a good Metroid game that didn’t ruin the legacy. They delivered a good game but more imporantly – they delivered a system seller to Nintendo. I won’t be the only person to get a GameCube for Metroid Prime.

But if Retro Studios was an American game developer what was that Japanese developer working on? In all likelihood, Miyamoto’s comments were about Metroid Fusion – a Game Boy Advance game which also came out on November 18. Metroid Fusion starts out by declaring itself Metroid 4 so it is the sequel to the SNES game Super Metroid, both in timeline and graphics.

Metroid Fusion even links up with Metroid Prime via the GBA->NGC link cable to unlock… Metroid (1) for the NES on the GC game when you beat Prime first (and the password is optional – now you can save to your memory card). Also when you beat Fusion first you get to use the different suit Samus Aran has in Prime.

So a gaming legacy isn’t squandered, two great games are produced, and if you made it to the end of this long fan rant, go catch up on your history: Download Metroid and a NES emulator and check it out.

Schnapple’s Free Music Tip of the Day: I was at an ICP site and they pointed to a website wherein you could download the new album from a group called Rehab. For some reason, despite knowing absolutely nothing about this group, I went to the site, downloaded and listened to it. Holy crap! This stuff kicks ass! It’s a very effective mix of metal/rap/southern rock/mellow. Hard to describe really.

Apparently Rehab was a group that released an album, Southern Discomfort back in 2000. The songs I downloaded constitute what would have been their second album (under the working title of Here Come The Demons) but fighting in the group (which is more of a duo), coupled with some other drama, got them dropped from their record label, Epic. On their way out they put out the songs for free in MP3 format, along with some tunes from a ditched solo effort by one of the members. The 26 songs the album consists of run over an hour and a half, so I think they just released everything finished – the final CD would have been shorter.

The same rules apply – if you don’t like metal and/or rap and the occasional swear words (though nowhere near the typical rap album) then don’t bother, but for the price it’s worth the download. Heck, if these guys pull it out and get back together I’d definitely buy this album.

Perhaps this is what the legacy of MP3 is – it lets people discover new artists, reimburse the ones that deserve it, and spells the doom of the prefab artists.

Anywho, give it a listen.