Tendo City

Now I want to find that outfit and put it on a manequin and display it in my room. A manequin with a mullet.

Now let's see how fast this thread can turn into a debate on the mechanics of hyperspace in Star Wars.

A Black Falcon's true face is finally revealed!

You KNOW he drives a Camero. You KNOW it.

I'd do him.

I'm having flashbacks of 1991... why are there ninja turtles in my cereals

I hear MC Hammer somewhere in the background!!

All that's missing is a copy of Nintendo Power...

\

!

Telero Boxer! Yeah!

It's a time warp!!

That stuff wasn't old enough! You need a pic of Nintendo Power with SMB3 on it! Though, I actually HAVE that issue of Nintendo Power... I believe Nester threatened that owl...

How's this?

PERFECT!

Now let's all pop in a copy of The Wizard while playing Tetris on our Gameboys!

YOU KNOW IT!!

Turn on the TV!!! OJ Simpson is being chased for killing his wife! and/or huge riots in LA! and/or I just saw Back to the Future 3! and/or have you seen Tiny Toons!? Funny!

Hey, the Berlin wall is coming down!!

But we're talking the 80's aren't we?

The Berlin Wall came down during November of '89.

Not you, lazy.

Thanks for not using quotes.

Your post wasn't up while I was responding...

WELL.

Seeing that SMB3 issue of NP makes me long for the bygone days of pixels. Videogames really were better. I don't think it's just nostalgia talking, most everything's so derivative now and the MTVication of videogames makes me sick. Hell, the MTVication of MTV makes me sick.

I'm not sure I agree. I've played plenty of games that are just as fun as I remember games being from the past, but then again I've made sure my naustalgia isn't TOO great an influence when reforming old memories...

But anyway yeah, of course new games are derivative. It's called evolution, so long as it does evolve. Nintendo is all about "brand new cutting edge design" these days, but what did we get? Things that already exist but I guess Japan doesn't know it yet so Nintendo feels okay with pretending it's original. By that I mean Nintendogs, dog.

Movies, books, music it's all derivative of previous works. In the end, it's only about making it unique enough that the viewer/reader/listener/player doesn't realize at first glance that this is just an evolution of this or a combination of those or a focus on a single aspect of that.

I'm okay with that though.

Games are as good as ever... and the average quality of the average game as risen over time. But still, I understand Smoke's point, and there's definitely some truth to it... games are much more produced now. There is a lot less risk involved, and so there's less truly new ideas... yes, there were masses of derivitive games. There always have been and always will be. And I don't think gaming is much worse off than it was ten years ago, or more. But I would agree that there are some things the industry used to have that it has lost its way on...

Like certain genres. Most games that come out now fall into a handful of genres. Way, way back it used to be a single guy could make a game all by himself. Now that games take millions of dollars to produce companies aren't willing to take a chance on something unproven unless it's from someone like Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima. I think that when money enters into things the art suffers for it.

http://media.gameboy.ign.com/media/725/7...ids_1.html

Classic homage ahoy? Looks alright...

Quote:Like certain genres. Most games that come out now fall into a handful of genres. Way, way back it used to be a single guy could make a game all by himself. Now that games take millions of dollars to produce companies aren't willing to take a chance on something unproven unless it's from someone like Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima. I think that when money enters into things the art suffers for it.

All definitely true. But a lot of modern games are good too... they just aren't as innovative, overall. And yes, the larger the team gets the more the vision is probably going to be compromised... not always true, but with a small group there certainly is more potential for focus.

I think this post put it best.

Tellaerin Wrote:And there lies the crux of the matter. The real problem (at least for people like you and I) is that as gaming moves further and further into the mainstream, those of us who are interested in more imaginative titles are increasingly relegated to the status of a niche audience. The sad fact of the matter is, the average person just isn't terribly imaginative as a rule. That's why we're seeing an increasing number of games with 'realistic' themes that the mainstream can 'relate to' (military FPS's, urban-themed titles, etc.)

I'll confess that I liked things better when gaming was less mainstream, too. Not because there was any special cachet to being a gamer in a non-gaming world--the opposite, in fact--but because when gaming was mainly a 'geek thing', games were designed to appeal to geek sensibilities, which are by and large more open to imagination than the average person's. Unfortunately, there's no way to turn back the clock. The day when imaginative and offbeat titles dominated the market is at an end. We're living in the age of VelocityGirl, where gaming is all about spending $5 to trick out your character in a virtual Marc Ecko shirt. :p About all I can hope for is that developers will remain willing to cater to our particular niche with specialty titles as time goes on.

You cannot, however, say that there are no innovative, or small/indie, games being made. Every so often a truly unique title comes out, and on PC there's a lot of interesting stuff out there in freeware... and if you look back, you'd remember how many truly awful games, and how many derivitive games, there truly were back then. I think some of this is 'rose-colored glasses'... but I'm not saying there's no truth to it, the gaming industry has definitely changed into a more mass-market-focused industry. And some genres or ideas have been mostly lost. But overall game quality continues to increase, and technology does offer some new options... so it's not a one-sided picture.

Why do you have to be so damn optimistic? ;)

Now: five million boring military FPSes

Then: five million boring platform game clones

:)

... yeah, things are different now, but... games are still great... maybe in the PC side things have gone downhill a bit on the retail front (freeware now is stronger than ever), though, in the past five years or so. The PC industry definitely has crystalized around FPSes and strategy games, for sure... (I'd say "since 2000", but Baldur's Gate II came out in 2000... :) But other than that, the only PC game made since 2000 (can't say "this century" because 2000 was the last year of the 20th centry, remember... :)) on my 'top 10 PC games' list is Warcraft III. Which, though stellar, I rate slightly below Starcraft...

Console gaming, though? Other than the additional commercial element in games, I just don't see a massive difference. Most of the genres that have faded in popularity were PC genres, after all (giant-robot sims (that are actually sims, not action games like most console ones are), space-flight-combat sims, graphic adventures, wargames, etc). Yes, originality in console gaming is a bit more of a problem now than it has been in the past, but... I can't help but remember old EGMs with page after page of mediocre platformers and action games...

The 'commercial elements' part, though, is completely right, as I said. There's more money in gaming now, so it attracts more advertising. This is more appropriate in some games than others, though... racing and sports games are a natural for this kind of thing, for instance, but in other genres it wouldn't work nearly as well.

They seem to ignore one very obvious fact. It is literally harder to be innovative now than it was back in the Atari and NES days.

That is to say, Zelda back then was innovative. If someone made Zelda today, it would not be. All those innovative unique titles then have already been MADE now. There is a lot less options someone can pick from if they want to make a new kind of game experience. That plays a lot into it.

There were tons of bad, knock-off, clones back in "the day" as well. What do you think caused the videogame collapse of the 80's? People stopped innovating and the gamers stopped buying. The difference now is that there's a ton of people who keep buying even though innovation isn't around as much.

And now we've got this, the new design for NP... I still like the classic look best. With the manilla-folder design for Classified Information, etc. :)

http://www.nintendopower.com/power.html

You can get a 3-issue free subscription and after that an offer for a year of the mag for $12, though, if you've got three products registered at Nintendo.com...

Unfortunately, the one best feature they could add, a demodisk, is still stupidly absent. What are they thinking? I don't get it...

i thought that vidogames have been on the decline since the beginning days of the PSX/N64 until i played Beyond Good & Evil which reminded me just how good games can be. but until i picked up WoW i hadn't played a game that truely drew me in the same way that a lot of SNES and N64/PSX games did.

and WoW doesn't even have that same feeling...it's just so damn addicting.

That new design for NP isn't that bad, but it's like the twentieth time they have an iteration of Mario Kart on the cover.

I was subscribed from vol. 47 (some time in 1992, had the SNES Star Fox on the cover) until possibly 150-something. As far as I'm concerned it started going downhill around vol. 80 - about the time they took out the Manila-folder design for Classified Information :p Considering the amount of noise people made about it I'm surprised they didn't change it back, but IMO that wasn't their biggest error. The redesigns just made the mag way more confusing and less coherent. Originally you had columns that told you: 1) what the best games are, overall; 2) all the games that are coming out this month, in a list from the best to the worst; 3) all the games that are coming out in the future, in a list from most to least anticipated. After they lost all that and got into "objective" reviewing and gossiping, I just couldn't be bothered. I don't know that they're up to these days, but when I stopped getting the mag they were trying (and failing) to be like a game website or something.

Nintendo Power had a purpose back when I got it, because internet game web sites didn't even exist at the time. (The internet was a huge BBS system wherein you first had to find out the phone number for the BBS you wanted access to, then in a DOS style you would view a large text file with COLORS, and then type in the download command if in fact there are one of those... things you can download... like the latest Commander Keen demo... at 8 baud....)

But anyway, I realize now that even then it was painfully biased. Occasionally they would take time out of their busy review schedule to tell the readers why the Genesis SUUUUCKED, and with little comic asides drawn in the style of a political comic...

Painful really to remember what I actually put up with in those...

But anyway, it had upcoming game data and in game information I got every month and couldn't get anywhere else except from other magazines that were already starting to get a little ad heavy, so it was fine. The classified info center was cool. I even sent in my own code to them once (forgot the issue, but I uncovered the "secret" that if you beat the game, you unlock hard mode... wow, no one would have EVER figured that one out...).

Anyway, I didn't care about them changing the look, but I did love the Epic center when that finally arrived, right about the time I was really getting obsessed with the SNES's great strength, a billion RPGs. It was nice to have this huge list of hidden one time only items for this RPG or that.

But anyway, in the end I still have those issues namely because if I end up going for a perfect file in some old game and I already pretty much know where everything is (but just in case...) I'll just lay out all these maps and data charts all across my bed and flip on the switch. There's just something a little... classic, about doing stuff like that.

Two particular game coverages are my favorites though, two things long gone from what I can tell...

The first was a 3 issue long total coverage of Secret of Mana. The special thing was that it was actually a first person narrative of the boy from the story explaining all this stuff in a very believable way with illustrations and stuff specially made for it. It also had all sorts of extra storyline bits for stuff like legends behind all the stages of all the weapons in the game (except 9th level).

The second was a similar thing done for Earthbound, but in the vein of a news reporter on the scene.

In conclusion, there was a time when this stuff actually was nice to have around. Today though, I can get all the upcoming game data I could want, in fact too much, for FREE. I have no reason to get the slow drip from a game magazine that's almost always behind the times. Magazines today aren't giving up the ghost either. They hang on for dear life by offering things like demo disks. I don't care about demo disks though. Now, one in paticular offers something that actually would be motivation for me, exclusive extra game content for certain XBox games. I do think that's a little rude though. All that content is probably downloadable on XBox Live by now though, or at least eventually. They'd be stupid not to do that...

Anyway, if I want game guides and secrets, I go to GameFAQs. That CjayC guy was a frickin' genius to actually organize a site where all the guide writers would want to go to organize and post their guides in one easy to navigate place. I wonder if Japan has anything like that site, or if they have to live like savages in the olden days when you had to actually use a search engine if you wanted to find a game guide on some random geocities site somewheres...

But there is one thing that the net doesn't yet offer. Even Gamefaqs almost never has full color maps, and I don't have a laptop so when they do I can't spread it out in front of me.

For that, player's guides, and EVERY SINGLE GAME has them now (used to be only the very best selling games had the privilage of getting a player's guide), are the thing to have. Not only that, there's not just the one by the makers of the game, there are 3 others by companies like Prima and so on you have to pick from.

Problem is, they all suck compaired to the old days of player's guides... Remember when a guide was a GUIDE? When they showed you stuff that wasn't even IN the game, but in the BETA? When they told you EVERYTHING, and not just the stuff they got to before the deadline was up and they had to go to print?

GameFAQs walkthroughs still tend to reveal more secrets than today's guides, which isn't good because those are secrets the guide makers should have found out right away.

I mean, they leave out things like "where every single item in the entire game is located" maps these days! That ain't right!

Back in "the day", not only did they give you info, they gave it to you PROPA! Today, they give you this bare bones walkthrough, which if you actually were the sort to follow it, you'd easily miss a LOT of one time only items, and then at the END they give you a list of all the secret stuff (which isn't all of it anyway). Back then, they told your arse where everything was with a FULL walkthrough. They had those lists at the end sure, but they were redudant for easy access because they also told you were all that stuff was during the main quest. They told you random stuff too like "hey if you spread magic powder on that sweeping woman she'll turn into a fairy".

And, they had time to give you all sorts of exclusive illustrations with all sorts of random storyline data, or in the case of Mario World, a history of Mario so detailed they actually raced the previous Marios to gather a "blocks per second" speed for all the games up to that one, and interviews with The King (Miyamoto). In LTTP's case, it was loaded with all sorts of random data about the world like the history of the jewelry hylians wear or the makeup of that pot the witches stir their witch's brew in. Come and get it! Fresh hot cold witch's brew!

That all said, as you may have gathered I'm the sort to go through a game the first time or 3 without help unless I manage to get into some situation where I really am hopelessly stuck, though even then I'll tough it out for a few days if possible. However, when I do want to find everything I simply could NOT discover by my own power, I would like a guide that really can promise me that when I'm done with it, I WILL attain perfection.

Today's guides don't do that. It may be no surprise I don't have many of them compaired to my stack of old player's guides. The cool ones.

But, with MMORPGs, a whole new thing comes up.

Those games change over time, sometimes very drastically. Any guide on paper WILL be obsolete within a year's time. While a static guide format is fine for a static unchanging game, it is terrible for a dynamic one.

The guide for that kind of game must also be dynamic. Hence, it must be a digital one. Not PDF! (Why is PDF even still in use? What possible advantage does that have over what I'm about to suggest?) I'm suggesting HTML as a possible format, or maybe even the Windows help file system (it does allow images in it, I think animated ones too, but mainly it has an index and a table of contents system that would be very helpful). This sort of guide is the sort that you can update online whenever the game itself updates so it's not behind the times. The problem of course is that you may find yourself paying a monthly fee for THAT. I'm only barely willing to pay money for a guide to begin with, but I don't ever see myself paying for a spoiler on a monthly basis.

But that's okay. Anyway, during this whole thing I actually did find a pretty interesting site with info on the more popular MMORPGs out there that is always updating (WoW, FFXI, Various Everquests, SWGalaxies, and some I've never heard of too...). The data is free but if you want to actually ask them something and expect a response you have to pay a fee. I'm not even playing any MMORPGs so you can understand I'm not exactly wanting to do that :D.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/

Quote:I was subscribed from vol. 47 (some time in 1992, had the SNES Star Fox on the cover) until possibly 150-something. As far as I'm concerned it started going downhill around vol. 80 - about the time they took out the Manila-folder design for Classified Information Considering the amount of noise people made about it I'm surprised they didn't change it back, but IMO that wasn't their biggest error. The redesigns just made the mag way more confusing and less coherent. Originally you had columns that told you: 1) what the best games are, overall; 2) all the games that are coming out this month, in a list from the best to the worst; 3) all the games that are coming out in the future, in a list from most to least anticipated. After they lost all that and got into "objective" reviewing and gossiping, I just couldn't be bothered. I don't know that they're up to these days, but when I stopped getting the mag they were trying (and failing) to be like a game website or something.

Yeah, one of NP's perennial problems is that they historically haven't structured it like the other "normal" gaming magazines -- they haven't had the giant, in-depth review section that is the core of most gaming magazines, for instance... instead they've always had the "mini-strategy-guide-slash-advertisement" section instead. With level maps for early game levels, in the 2d days. :) (I remember that they tried maps of 3d games in the first issue with N64 games, for Mario 64 and Pilotwings... it didn't work well, and they mostly went away. :)) It was different, and it worked... but yes, with time they've been trying to make it more 'conventional' but not going all the way so it just hurt the magazine. Giving some kind of real score to the games was an improvement, but their latest review system (before this redesign) wasn't so good... let's hope it's improved. I'm just hoping for a better gaming magazine, at this point. It'll never go back to the way it was in the early '90s and I don't know if it could, with todays different gaming climate...

Oh, and too bad you missed issue 44 (Jan. '92), it had a paper-model Arwing in the Subscriber's Bonus section... among other cool stuff. :)

Quote:Nintendo Power had a purpose back when I got it, because internet game web sites didn't even exist at the time. (The internet was a huge BBS system wherein you first had to find out the phone number for the BBS you wanted access to, then in a DOS style you would view a large text file with COLORS, and then type in the download command if in fact there are one of those... things you can download... like the latest Commander Keen demo... at 8 baud....)

That was BBSes, DJ. The Internet is different, in that it uses a browser... the internet didn't really become usable until the invention of Mosaic in 1994, and it took a couple years for most people to discover it. By 1997 for sure, however (and starting in '95 really), the internet was fairly popular...

Cooincidentally, the two years I subscribed to NP were early '95 to early '97. :) Oh, I also have the Dec. '92 and Jan. '93 issues... the mag was so great back then, I wish I had more of them. Oh, it was still good in '95, but was it quite as good as it was in '92? I'm not so sure...

Quote:But anyway, I realize now that even then it was painfully biased. Occasionally they would take time out of their busy review schedule to tell the readers why the Genesis SUUUUCKED, and with little comic asides drawn in the style of a political comic...

But Nester was great! Removing him was another bad thing they did as the years progressed. Along with ditching the regular monthly serial comics...

Quote:Anyway, I didn't care about them changing the look, but I did love the Epic center when that finally arrived, right about the time I was really getting obsessed with the SNES's great strength, a billion RPGs. It was nice to have this huge list of hidden one time only items for this RPG or that.

Agreed, Epic Center was a great addition. Though remember how, in the N64 days, for a while it got ... suspended... for months at a time because of how few games that it would qualify to cover were being released? :D

Quote:In conclusion, there was a time when this stuff actually was nice to have around. Today though, I can get all the upcoming game data I could want, in fact too much, for FREE. I have no reason to get the slow drip from a game magazine that's almost always behind the times. Magazines today aren't giving up the ghost either. They hang on for dear life by offering things like demo disks. I don't care about demo disks though. Now, one in paticular offers something that actually would be motivation for me, exclusive extra game content for certain XBox games. I do think that's a little rude though. All that content is probably downloadable on XBox Live by now though, or at least eventually. They'd be stupid not to do that...

They're nice to have because there's nothing quite like having that information on actual paper... I've been getting a free subscription to CGW for the last six months or so, and it made me remember how much I liked PC Gamer for those five years I got it... (CGW's not as good as PCG, though, so it made me wish for PCG more than anything... but the PCG of five years back. The PCG of the last five years ... well, there's a reason I stopped subscribing, and it's not just "faster internet connection"... it's not awful now, but it's a pale imitation of its old self.)

And about a third as long on average as it was in '97 or '98 too...

Quote:For that, player's guides, and EVERY SINGLE GAME has them now (used to be only the very best selling games had the privilage of getting a player's guide), are the thing to have. Not only that, there's not just the one by the makers of the game, there are 3 others by companies like Prima and so on you have to pick from.

But why would anyone ever buy one when Gamefaqs is 98% as good (just missing the maps, usually, as you say), and doesn't cost anything? Magazines I understand wanting to own, but player's guides... only for a game I really, really think I need the help in. (the few player's guides I own meet that criteria -- Caesar II, SimCity 2000, and a couple of others... the player's guides were fantastic help for those games. And besides, Gamefaqs wasn't around yet back then... :))

Now you see I don't get that. I don't get how "there's nothing quite like having that information on paper".

Maps and stuff that you can have sitting next to you as you play? Sure I get that. But, why would you prefer your news to be in paper format? So you can... um... show people who honestly don't care and just humor you?

So you can hold onto that outdated preview for all eternity? "You see, it WAS going to look like this!"

Nah, news is temporary for me. I get it in my mind once and that's enough. I don't need to hold on to it in physical form. I also don't record televised news broadcasts for posterity either. I'm sure some of it is important, but unless you are specifically archiving it for the purpose of it being a public record that's easily accesible, I don't see the point.

Oh well...

Quote:But Nester was great! Removing him was another bad thing they did as the years progressed. Along with ditching the regular monthly serial comics...

You misunderstand. I'm not really talking about Nester (which I did actually like at the time, but like a lot of those lame Nintendo cartoons they had, this too was just... um... lame...). I'm actually specifically talking about specially made one panel comics where there's a kid wearing a cap that says "Sega" and an artist wearing a cap that says "Nintendo" and the kid "used blue for the water already" and the artist is like "ahahah, you idiot, I have a different shade of blue! I'm the SNES!" which is odd, because I thought he was Nintendo, but the point is it was done in the same style as a political cartoon and looking back I realize not just how stupid it was but how manipulative it was.

Anyway, you collect some odd things, but that's true of all of us here when you think about it so I can't judge.

Quote:Now you see I don't get that. I don't get how "there's nothing quite like having that information on paper".

You've said that before, and it's just something I cannot understand... I mean, I love computers, etc, but... as great as it is, on the pure 'reading' front, screens just don't compare. This also applies for news (websites vs. newspapers and news magazines -- I read both, but newspapers are more pleasant to read...), game info (which works great on the web, but I really like magazines too...), etc. I guess you just don't like to read that much. Sad... :(

The other aspect, of course, is record. Online is awesome, but for record-keeping... not so good. Paper can last centuries (if you don't tear it up, and if it's acid-free). If you want to go back and look at old info, which is a lot of fun to do sometimes, you'll be a lot more successful at actually finding what you want with printed material, almost certainly. And that definitely also counts for something, even if it isn't the primary motivation.

As for television news, that doesn't apply for gaming. There are no gaming shows on the networks. TV news is just for normal news, and for that you don't keep any of it... old newspapers go into the recycling, along with newsmagazines (like Time and Newsweek, we used to get Time and get Newsweek now)... but you know that they're kept on record at libraries everywhere, so you not keeping your copy isn't important if you really want to access that information. On that Internet, that isn't necessarially true. Far too many sites to mention are gone forever.

Getting back to gaming, anyway, where this does apply to gaming of course is the magazines... I don't read the old issues that often, but unlike current events news like you get in the papers (or editorials, other articles, etc), gaming info doesn't all get out of date. Those games are still around, after all... so keeping gaming magazines makes a lot of sense. But this gets away from the key point... it's a point, but not the central one. As I said at the beginning, the central point is that you just don't get it (remembering from our last discussion about this). Saying "I'd just as rather read a book on a screen than on a paper book"... there are just so many things about real books that can't be matched on computers... the feel/smell/etc of the pages, how it's easier on your eyes (reading screens gets tiring after a while, but read a book and I can relax more, perhaps take off my glasses, etc...), easily being able to page though the book or hold it open, bookmarks... so many factors, tangible and not, that make books ... books ... just aren't the same on computers.

Now, I probably spend more time reading things on computers (mostly online) than I do in books or newspapers (though I read the paper every day, which probably takes a good hour), and I have read and enjoyed book-style reading on the computer. And I like being able to read NY Times articles online at midnight, the day before I see them in the paper (we get the NY Times and the local paper) the next day. But when it gets down to it, it's just not the same...

Quote:You misunderstand. I'm not really talking about Nester (which I did actually like at the time, but like a lot of those lame Nintendo cartoons they had, this too was just... um... lame...). I'm actually specifically talking about specially made one panel comics where there's a kid wearing a cap that says "Sega" and an artist wearing a cap that says "Nintendo" and the kid "used blue for the water already" and the artist is like "ahahah, you idiot, I have a different shade of blue! I'm the SNES!" which is odd, because I thought he was Nintendo, but the point is it was done in the same style as a political cartoon and looking back I realize not just how stupid it was but how manipulative it was.

That's not a political ad, it's a statement of fact... :)

You know, how the SNES has a far larger color pallete than the Genesis. Isn't it like 256 colors vs. 64 or something?

So yes, it's a "Sega is stupid" ad, but their facts aren't made up.

Quote:Anyway, you collect some odd things, but that's true of all of us here when you think about it so I can't judge.

What do you mean? Sure, I like to keep things, but that's not so weird...

Not that you like to keep things, but you like to keep CERTAIN things.

The comic was dead on (and I think the Genesis actually had only 16 colors), but that's hardly the point.

At any rate, they did list off some pretty false stuff there though. They basically said that the SNES has a weaker processor making it BETTER for it.

Quote:Not that you like to keep things, but you like to keep CERTAIN things.

Things relating to things I'm interested in, mainly, I think...

Oh, but what about the first half of my post? :)

I find it way simpler and easier to just thumb through a mag for stuff, instead of having to run back and forth between the comp and the console, squinting through links that may or may not be vaguely related to what I'm looking for, trying to differentiate between reviews written by experienced gamers and those written by weirdos (I recently stumbled upon a particularly schizophrenic review for SMB2, on GameFaqs, in which a reviewer stated he removed points for having more than one playable character "because it's a Mario game"), encountering ads for hentai and otherwise cluttered pages, etc. If I'm traveling I can bring my NP to flip through the pages, my desktop not quite - and let's face it, laptops are just a whole other breed of trouble. The internet may have depth and speed of information on its side, but simplicity it does not.

About that cartoon with the two kids - the actual dialogue has a teenager painting alongside a younger kid, going "Purple sky?!" to which the kid responds "I already used my blue crayon for the water." which represents, I guess, the lack of complexity of Genesis graphics. Neither of the kids has a cap, btw, and their allegiance isn't expressly shown. The other cartoon makes fun of "blast processing" which was a big PR point for the Genesis, showing a display case with a bunch of "processed" items including "Speedo cap with splash processing", "Abacus with manual blast processing", "Original Pong with bounce processing", and "Shotgun blasted and processed! real imitation fur".

In all the time I got NP though that's the only time they dedicated actual pages to demeaning an opponent console - usually it was snarky one-liners sneaked into reviews or previews. They have five "Q&As" in all, including one that plays down Blast Processing, one that says "the Super FX isn't as powerful as the Sega CD but look, Sewer Shark STILL sucks real bad", one promoting state-of-the-art sports games (which was the area where Sega had the upper hand back then), and the last two promoting the SNES's superior graphics and speed. They even have a little chart comparing SNES and Genesis specs - NP, the fanboys of yesteryear.

ABF - I ordered vol. 44 soon after subscribing as it seemed like such an awesome issue. :P didn't get the extras though, which kinda sucked as there was a Mega Man VI insert I had been looking forward to. I also have the cartoon compilations for Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda, which I've been thinking about scanning and putting up on TC lately. I'll do it if I can get my scanner working and it's not too much of a bandwidth robber.