Yes, a slightly updated version of Starcraft, with its Brood War addon, is now free as of the just-released patch 1.18! It's kind of a promo for the Starcraft Remaster that Blizzard is going to release (for money) this summer, but still it's a pretty nice thing to do. Unfortunately for those of us who have owned the game forever you will need to download the new version and run that in order to play the patched game, as it requires a new install due to the updated menu interface, but once installed it works just fine, and the menus, particularly in Battle.net, definitely look better now; the old, sort of broken on modern OSes BNet interface, with its overlapping text glitches and all, is gone in favor of one that actually looks decent. It's a nice improvement. There are some other minor bug fixes in the new patch as well, and they added one new feature, real Observer support with separate slots, instead of observers having to take up some of the eight player slots.
On the other hand though, there's one problem with this: you now cannot play online multiplayer without this new version, which, since it has those updates, is not going to run on old computers that could previously run the game just fine but now are stuck running it offline-only -- the new version apparently requires more CPU power than the original release, an actual graphics card and not just integrated Intel graphics, and BNet might require an OS newer than XP, instead of running fine on anything from Win95 and up? It's not clear since there aren't system requirements. I should try this on my Vista computer and see what happens. Fixing BNet for modern computers is great, but it's unfortunate that to do that they broke it for old machines, and don't have an option to use either interface depending on system power. Ah well.
I actually played a little SC a few weeks ago, and comparing that to this, the free release sure has gotten a lot more people onto SC BNet, as you'd expect. I wonder how long it'll last... it's still nice, though! But it reminds me, as much as SC is better than WC3, WC3's BNet interface and featureset is better, both in its more powerful map editor, and in added features such as auto-matchmaking, which is much simpler than having to find something in the games-open list as you have to do here. Ah well, it's still the best game ever regardless. :)
You can get the new version either by trying to log on to BNet with an original copy of SC, which will prompt you to install and download the new version, or from the website, where you can also find information about the upcoming Remaster, which will have the same gameplay but all redone in a much higher resolution. The images you can slide between the two versions are interesting, and the new one sure is much higher resolution. Does it look better? I'm not sure about that, I'll need to see more... SC has always looked how it does, so it's kind of weird to suddenly see this highly detailed version of it, you know? We'll see. (I also hope they add auto-matchmaking in the remaster, that'd be nice... so long as SC/WC3-style UMS/Custom support is in, but I am not too hopeful there given how SC2 does things. Who knows at this point.)
It's been a while since I've played much SC, and I never was any good so I'm sure I'm even worse now, but it's still the best game ever made no question.
I finally found out what those stickers that don't use glue are called, those ones I remember playing with as a kid. Static cling stickers, and they still make 'em.
Well, good, now I can know what I'm talking about when I say that those "self destructive" board games never needed to be so self destructive. Replace all stickers with static cling stickers, and make the surface of the board something like dry erase with a dry erase marker for writing on it.
I've heard, and made, the arguments. Nintendo doesn't want it cannibalizing virtual console sales. Nintendo might not have wanted to renegotiate the licenses for third party games. Nintendo never intended it to be a long lasting product. Nintendo didn't want to take attention away from the Switch. Nintendo knew it had been hacked and didn't want to support piracy. Nintendo wanted the factories making it to focus on Switch parts.
I'm just not sure those hold water. This device is basically something Nintendo could have left "on autopilot" and just steadily raked in profit.
As far as virtual console sales and threatening Switch sales, this device was aimed at very different people than the Switch was. I bought one for my niece, not for myself. I'm the sort that already owns every game on this thing anyway. Even gamers who don't have some big retro collection have other ways to get those classic games without Nintendo's blessing. Nintendo has a problem dealing with it's VC library anyway. They trickle those games out and force their loyal customers to buy the same thing over and over again if they actually want to use them on the newest hardware. (For my part, I'm fine playing those games on the oldest hardware and generally only buy VC games that never had a US release or are so ridiculously rare that the prices are beyond what I think is reasonable.) If Nintendo did better with that, the issue of "cannabalized" sales would vanish, and the NES classic would end up being more like a profitable double dip for Nintendo.
I can't speak for the companies Nintendo holds licenses with for those third party games, but they already have a solid license for those games on the virtual console. It seems to me that unless one of those companies raises a stink over renegotiating the terms (if anyone, it'd be Konami), Nintendo could just stamp their approval on renewing those licenses right up until the point the NES Classic stopped being profitable.
I really don't think the NES Classic being hacked would have influenced Nintendo one bit. The NES Classic is not an "active" platform. Nintendo isn't selling games for it. Third party companies aren't selling games for it. This isn't like when the PSP was cracked open and developers worried sales of any games they developed for it would be eaten up by pirates. Nothing is threatened by someone jamming a bunch of NES ROMs on this thing. It hardly "encourages" piracy either. The sorts of people with the know-how to hack the thing are the same sorts of people who have PCs and probably already have a bunch of emulators far beyond the NES and a vast library of ROMs for them. Heck, I've got ROMs of all the games I own for those older consoles, just for the sake of convenience. Many MANY people have pointed out how easy it is to configure a Raspberry Pi into an even more effective "Classic" console. All of those things are still there whether Nintendo makes their Classic or not, so what difference does it make if the thing was hacked?
Regarding factories focusing on other parts, I really don't think the parts used in the NES classic are easily translatable to the Switch. Different assembly lines, different parts, so I really don't think this would speed up Switch production any more than cancelling Amiibos would.
This brings us to the last point, and Nintendo's official line on the matter. They never intended for it to be a long term product, just a short term little side item. To that, I've only got this to say. So what? Who cares what your intentions were? The thing took off like crazy, almost as crazy as shutting off the assembly lines and saying "eh, no thank you" to all that money you should be printing from this thing. This is really the BEST time for them to cash in on it. Nintendo is still well known and 80's nostalgia is at it's peak. 80's nostalgia is only going to go down from here out, as later decades start to fill that niche more and more. You know, both Atari and Sega have no issues just leaving the companies making their retro systems for all eternity. This really seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe I'm missing something.
I've been hearing far too many progressive people praising that statue. Now, don't get me wrong, taken entirely by itself, that statue sends a clear message of defying big business in favor of women's rights, which I would be for. But, you CAN'T take it by itself. That statue was commissioned and paid for by the bank that owns the same space the bull is on. It's impossible in that light to interpret that statue as anything other than either pandering or sarcastic.
Because, and this is important, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR AN OPPRESSOR TO CHEER ON A REBELLION AGAINST THEM! It can't be done! It doesn't make sense! If they really believed the rebellion had a point, they would immediatly stop BEING the oppressor, but the bank didn't change anything about themselves, they just bought that statue.
At worst, rather than just pandering to them and claiming the impossible, that they are on the side of those who are against them, this statue ends up sarcastic. As in, "okay, just TRY to rebel against us little girl, see what happens". Because, well, what WOULD realistically happen if a little kid tried to stand up to a charging bull? The message is one of stubborn futility or foolishness in that light. The imagery doesn't even work very well, unless you put the bull in a cage or something (the cage symbolizes government business regulations).
Ultimately, I just wish people would see this for what it is, a stunt. ANY message of rebellion has to come FROM the rebellion, not the oppressor, or it's hollow.
So apparently including 1 as a prime number was getting too messy when making lists of all non-primes as products of primes (they would always have to exclude 1 or they'd end up with infinite trailing lists of 1x1x1x1x2x2=4 and so on). So, 1 got kicked off the prime list because it made things too inclusive and too messy.
First Pluto isn't a planet any more, and now 1 isn't a prime number any more! Is nothing sacred?! Next you'll tell me that W isn't a letter.
No, not the one about how BotW doesn't have a playable female character because "if Zelda was the protagonist then what would Link do?", or how The Last Guardian or Shadow of the Colossus don't have one because women don't have strong grip strength, etc. There are a lot of Western games with only male protagonists too, but probably because Japan is more sexist than the West, their excuses for why games don't have them often are way worse; here it's usually stuff like "because marketing says male characters sell better".
It's Persona 5... and Persona 4 as well. So why don't Personas 4 and 5 have female protagonist options, after Persona 3 Portable added a female character, and her campaign was pretty good and is considered by some as the better of the two? Well, they give two reasons, one understandable and the other as bad as the worst of my first paragraph:
First, that it'd have cost a lot more to do two protagonists -- this is a writing-heavy series with a relationship component, so yes, that is true, you would need a lot more script, two versions of many scenes, etc. They could have done it though, as they have before and many Western dialog-heavy games do have gender-choice options.
And second...
Quote:With the way that game's world worked, it was okay for the protagonist to be female. With Persona 4, though, we needed the character to come from a big city to a small country town to be the driving force of the story, and it seemed more natural for a male character to fulfill that role. There are story aspects to this decision, as well.
Wait, what? Japan, no, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever anywhere other than super-sexist-land where somehow it doesn't make sense to have a female move from one town to another or something? What?
(Oh, and like most games in the series, Persona 5 doesn't have any same-sex romance options either.)
Now, personally this isn't too big of a deal because based on the two I have, P2EP (which is a quite different game) and P3P I find the Persona games boring after a little while, since the visual-novel half is not a genre I have ever liked much and I don't find the dungeon-crawler side all that much either, but still, this is a pretty popular series now and this kind of thing needs pushback every time or it is not going to change.
So, I wonder, will Japan ever realize how far behind they are on gender relations and actually start to catch up on this? Because this is yet another example of how badly that needs to happen, tossed on the huge mountain of other such absurd comments we have heard before; even if we just look at games, the excuses why games like P4, Zelda BotW, The Last Guardian, and such don't have playable female characters are insanely bad and sexist! And then there's their frequent inability to even get the concept of a female character that is not sexualized... ugh. That problem's bad enough in Western games so I can undertstand why it is even worse in Japan, but it is often disappointing.
Of course, things like games, anime, and such are just a reflection of the culture of the nation that creates them though, which is why I asked the question I do, but regardless of that there need to be pushback every time says something like this or nothing will ever change.
I just got out of Power Rangers: The Legend of Rita's Gold and saw yet another example of completely warped morality in the "heroes".
There's a scene where one of the rangers reveals she did something horrible to some class mate. The specifics aren't mentioned, but basically she humiliated someone just because she could with no real reason to do it. The other ranger says "Just because you did something horrible doesn't mean you are a horrible person." and then further says "What's important is that you do what you think is right." Then they beat up the evil Rita because she's doing what she thinks is right and say she's a horrible person because of the horrible things she did.
I've been seeing this "sentiment" in a lot of US TV and movies lately, and I just have to wonder where this inane and, frankly, EVIL mindset comes from. It seems like the opposite of a moral code, and I'm sick of seeing it sprawled across US media.
I've been hearing people comment on just about all of the actors simply "not aging", and I'm starting to think there's a bit more to it than that.
At this point, I'm simply convinced the more famous actors just have access to makeup that us mere mortals could never even imagine. In other words, I'm pretty sure Patrick Stewart in Logan was simply not wearing any makeup in order to look that old. Heck, look at Jon Stewart now vs just a year ago when he was hosting the Daily Show. Looks like the two are decades apart.
It's just makeup people. You're flattering a bunch of makeup artists. All the old actors are secretly mummies!
So, I buy upgrades every now and then. I've had the same computer since I first got one as a kid. I'll switch out a hard drive, or an optical drive, or a new motherboard, or a new case, or what have you. Point is, my computer always moves along for the ride. At this point, I've replaced everything in my computer multiple times. Still the same computer though, right? I never out and out just plunked down a new PC in place of the old, it's just replacing a few parts.
Well, here's the thing. I often have enough parts left over to built a decent second-hand computer for a relative or someone. That second computer is built from the parts I took out, and basically consists of what used to be my computer.
