Dumpster

[A Black Falcon]

Whew... we need to shorten this, desperately. Writing these things is like writing an essay, except while more confused...

Here you go again, thinking only from your very narrow-minded point of view. Wars gave birth to the whole Japanese war/tactics genre, which is actually very big in Japan. We're just getting bits and pieces here and there. Tactics Ogre draws much from Famicom Wars. Famicom Wars definitely added much more to it genre than F-Zero or Mario Kart did. No doubt about it.

Tactics games are like Famicom Wars? Huh? Uh... I don't see anything significant in common there... that would be quite a stretch.

You yourself said that Wars and Tactics are completely different!

double standard
n.
A set of principles permitting greater opportunity or liberty to one than to another

You compare Mario Kart to Gran Turismo and come up with less differences that I came up with for Empire and Wars, yet you say that MK and GT are nothing alike and Empire and Wars are almost the same game. That is a double standard.

And the fact that the strategy genre gap is so large definitely hurts your "case" because comparing two games from two different sub genres is like comparing a racing game and a flying game, not a kart racing game and a realistic racing game. You fail to see this, and I have no idea why.

Where did I compare Mario Kart and Gran Turismo? I don't remember making a list for that, just for F-Zero and Gran Turismo... but yes, I found 8 differences and you found 9 differences between Empire and Wars. I'm sure I could find one more if I tried, though... if that's what you mean. I'm not sure, exactly... you are confusing me...

And as for double standards, I really don't think so... I think its more looking at each genre in the context of that genre.

Oh, so you can remove the experience points, communication aspect, and item/weapons upgrade part of the game?
.... NO, you cannot.

(Deus Ex) Well no, of course not... but that wasn't my point! You keep misunderstanding me... I don't mean that stuff. I mean that if you want to you can just run around and shoot everyone just like in a FPS. That is what I mean.

Mario Kart added weapons and polished up everything! Wars added so much more in addition to polishing everything.

But you haven't shown that AW added ONE SINGLE THING to the strategy genre! Not one thing! Now as I said a new mix of existing themes is well up to question, since I don't have proof of an identical PC game (just ones that are very similar), but added anything new? Not from anything I can see.

What's inexplicable is how completely void of any sense of reason or intelligence you are! You have no idea what you're even talking about!
You said that I said that Wars was the "first game to have turn-based strategy, unit building, resources to collect (in the form of money from cities), and rock-paper-sissors strategic ("chess-like") combat" , when I never said anything of the sort, and then responded to that very thing that you made up! That's putting words into my mouth and then attacking those words!



What is wrong with you?? First you fail to understand what I wrote, then you make up something and claim that I said it, and then you say that you never did it!!

Hey, how many times will I have to rephrase the exact same thing before you get it into your head that I meant what I have explained myself to mean? Seriously, its getting really old... you clearly have not bothered to try and understand what I explained that I meant since you have repeated the same falacious statements over and over.

I SAID THAT BECAUSE THAT WAS MY (SHORT) DEFINITION OF THE SUB-GENRE ADVANCE WARS IS IN! And why I said that you think those are its aspects? BECAUSE I HAD MENTIONED ALL OF THOSE FACTORS BEFORE AND ASKED YOU IF YOU HAD ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT THEM AND YOU SAID NOTHING!

Though mainly what I was doing there was being frusterated that you were attacking me more than responding to the topic... I had kept posting things and you'd ignore them and just attack me, so I just kept going on my line... what I really meant there was that I wanted you to say your side of that definition! But no... you won't, you just keep attacking me...

"I think not!"

Do you have any idea how super-annoying you are?

These are B-R-O-A-D classifications! B-R-O-A-D

Like CAR and BOAT.

Diablo and Baldur's Gate are as different as two games in the same genre can be... denying that would be silly and obviously wrong. Putting them in the same subgenre is about as insane as saying that Civilization is in the same subgenre of strategy games as Command & Conquer. Completely absurd...

Here we go again...

Did you forget about THIS??

"Please explain in depth what this basic statement of yours means and how Wars isn't like any of the games I mentioned.

Now, as I said, I conceed that the anime-style graphics are probably unique to Wars in the genre. But controls? Interface? And especially game mechanics? See no logic there..."

You asked how Wars differs from other games that are similar to it (all one of them) in terms of controls!

Nope. You misunderstood me. What I meant there wasn't an "I don't know" 'please tell me', it was a 'please explain your viewpoint' "please tell me". Big difference there. And hmm... I'm still waiting for an explanation of that first basic statement of yours. Could you do that, please? As I've said many times, I want to understand why you think Wars is so innovative and different... I can't see it at all. I want to know your reasoning for that first statement!

It was this.

AW and FE are uniquely Japanese in their interface, controls, game mechanics, art, etc. Name one single PC game that's "just like it".

AW aren't "uniquely Japanese" in interface or controls or game mechanics. Art, yes. Those others? No.

Oh, putting things from existing games in the same genre that your game is in isn't innovation, and that's what Famicom Wars did if I give it the most credit I possibly could (and I very much doubt that that's the case).

Example #5,657,143 of ABF making up crap.

I said that the interface is completely different from EMPIRE.

I was referring the (directly) above very early quote there. That was WAY before Empire was mentioned. So no, I wasn't making it up and given your later comments I think you might want to take the interface part of that one back. :)

You choose how to start in mutli.

True. So? Does that dilute my point somehow?

Most of the time there is no fog at all in AW. There is always fog in Empire, and only one kind of fog.

Famicom Wars is a much better comparison to the ancient Empire... if we're talking about Advance Wars, wouldn't more recent games be a more appropriate comparison than the 1983 Empire? And I have no idea about Famicom Wars' options in these categories, just that by default there is no fog or mask.

Actually it's not always AI.

And again, you've proven that you've barely played any of Empire. Take a look at this quote from the instruction manual. One of the functions that you issue is:

RANDOM
The piece will move at random subject to the following conditions:
1. The piece will not do anything to cause it to be destroyed.
2. If it is an army, it will board an unloaded troop transport and wake up if it is next to one.

Looks like an early attempt at easy exploration, like you can find in Conquest of the New World, Civilization, etc... or if you want RTSes, behavior controls that make units react depending on their environs without your control. None of those change the (sub-)genre...

These are differences which have a large impact on gameplay, and you would actually invent some time into both games then you would see that. And when did I say that they don't belong in the same sub genre? Pitfall belongs in the same sub genre as Super Mario Bros. yet SMB is very different from Pitfall, and is considered one of the most innovative games ever made.

I haven't played huge amounts of Empire, but I've played enough of similar games to get the idea quite well. And yes, those factors do make the gameplay in Empire versus Wars quite different, you are correct about that. But they are also clearly in the same sub-genre... not sure if you're denying that, you seem to be trying to have that both ways with your various statements.

Honestly, the main reason for this problem is that the strategy genre just has such an insane amount of variety that tying games into specific sub-genres is very, very hard... some are easy, like RTSes, fantasy-strategy games, god games, and 4X (Civ, MOO) games, but then you get into a huge grey area with strategy and several other genres... Empire and Wars both fall into that area, certainly. Both have a lot in common with wargames and strategy games... its hard for me to say which genre influenced either of them more, really.

So the problem is that the strategy genre is really broad and Wars doesn't fit in one of the easy-to-define clear 'Strategy' or 'Wargame' subgenres. So what do we do now... I say 1) try to find games similar and 2) try to find games that it takes influence from in its gameplay ideas. That's the case I've been trying to present here... I've done a good job on 2), but 1) I need work on.

It's actually one of the smaller differences, but you can think whatever you want to. And I NEVER SAID THAT THEY DON'T BELONG IN THE SAME SUB GENRE!!!

You say that, but also say things that are nearly the opposite! I don't know which to believe... and if that isn't your arguement, what is? That they are in the same subgenre but are too different for one to be seen as a major influence on the other game? That wouldn't make any sense!

Your comparisons are so flawed that I'm wondering if you have ever actually played Gran Turismo before. Let me tear apart your argument one step at a time.

For like five minuites once in Best Buy. Please think of that as more of a generic 'more realistic racing game' like the myriad demos of moderately simmish racing games I've played on PC. :)

Hey, without a PSX or PS2 can you seriously expect me to have played it much?

So you don't use the thumb stick to steer left and right? You said that they were total opposites, right?
Vehicle handling between the two games is very different, but every racing game handles differently from the next. Is 1080 not a snowboarding game because it handles nothing like SSX?

Yeah, of course they are both driving games... I meant total opposites as in much more realistic handling vs. much more arcadish.

So a big difference between the two games is that you can slide into the tiny bit of grass or dirt in each track which slows you down in GT, even though F-Zero has a similar concept with you falling off the track??
Oh boy.

Hmm... depends on the size of the shoulders and if you constantly flip over/get stuck in the dirt going 5 mph when you go around them wrong like in most sims...

And as for falling off the track in F-Zero, on most all tracks it's extremely rare. And you respawn immediately...

But if turning is easy then its not very simmish, because I'd say hard turning is one of the things that is most common in simmish racers. :)

F-Zero has "heal strips" and Gran Turismo has pit stops. Same thing.

F-Zero GX has the easiest healing of the series... in the first game it was really hard to heal up and you had to stop. In X you could heal, but sometimes not all the way... GX feels like Wipeout or Extreme-G 2, while X and Extreme-G 3 are more like the original F-Zero. No idea about GT of course, but I'd expect that it'd take a fair amount of time in the pitstop to get fixed up...

You call those weapons?? Wow, you really are stretching! You can also ram into other cars in GT!

Well yes, given how they let you attack people for the purpose of destroying them much more quickly than ramming...

A purely cosmetic touch.

Now of course I can see that F-Zero belongs in a different sub genre than Gran Turismo and that the two play very different from each other, but as you can plainly see, when you actually write down the differences you can make them seem like the same game!

"Oversimplifying", I think its called... (and yes I think both of us are using that in this debate) :)

And if we wrote out in detail the similarities and differences between GT and F-Zero and then Famicom Wars and Empire... I don't know, actually. F-Zero and GT are very different for their genre, but racing games don't have a tenth the variety of strategy games so it might come close... still, I think Empire and Famicom Wars would be shown to be more similar.

What SMB did was take everything from Pitfall and then polish everything to death! It didn't actually add nearly as much "stuff" to the genre as you think it did. It changed everything that was already established in Pitall, but it didn't create too many completely new things.

That well might be true, as I said I have almost no experience with Pitfall, or games like Pitfall (that age), so I can't comment much.