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In the N64 days, having no bots or other cars in multiplayer had a decent excuse -- on many games it was technically very hard to do and they'd never have the time to do it well enough to be able to do that. But the Cube? They have no excuse. Absolutely none.

I disagree with you completely on that. The GameCube is more powerful, yes, but CPU time wouldn't have been a big bottleneck for AI unless they were going for something extremely good. There isn't an improvement from the N64 to GameCube that would suddenly make programming the AI for 10 bots in a multiplayer deathmatch easy. The racing is pretty easy as far as this sort of thing goes, because they just script the cars to a track. There are of course other factors, but it's nothing compared to the difficulty of making a smart enemy for battle.

And to make myself clear, I'm not talking about the difficulty in processing the AI, I'm saying it's hard to design the AI. You even admit that you know it's a technically difficult thing to do, and nothing has changed. If anything, now they have to spend even more time on teh graphics because there is so much more detail.

If some of you still don't think AI is hard, just try to write an algorithm for something as stupid as finding a way through a maze without using the "Keep a hand on the wall" trick. You'll give up pretty soon.