The Return Of The Rants!
Yep, I'm back.
It's been a while, but I'm back, ranting and raving to the moon. Working to type up my suggestions on Why Things Are (tm) and what I'm going to do about them. Be warned, this is what I think, so you will have to accept that.
On why I've been away for so long, I have been trying to do one of three things-
Work
Find work
Train to do better work
So, that's what I've been up to. Not much except keeping busy and working my rear end off. Oh, and a birthday-on October 1, 2000 at about 12:00 pm PST, I managed to live through five presidents, putting me at the age of 25 years. It was a pretty quiet but good birthday and I'm happy that I was able to spend it with friends and family.
Oh, yes, this rant. The subject of this rant is on one of my more favorite subjects-video game systems. And, boy, the war is going on! We've got the Dreamcast being Sega's savior since the Saturn days. But, very soon, the PS2 will be out, and Sony is doing everything short of armed troops hauling people over to stores to buy the PS2 in droves. Microsoft is about to release the X-Box which is supposed to kill just about anything. And Nintendo is making the gaming universe safe for plumbers with their Dolphin system. The hype is is getting to the point that one should find cover, else get scorched.
While PS2 brags about the Emotion Engine, developers claim that the development tools they possess for PS2 make the term "clunky" sound like a compliment. Sony says they'll only be able to ship half as many PS2s as they planned, besides telling stores to more-or-less toss out the preorders for PS2 units. The problems Sony has with launching the PS2 in the United States is similar to the ones that they had in Japan, when they had to recall over half of the memory cards for manufacturing defects, and replace several units for defective DVD players. The X-Box, according to developers, is a joy to produce for. But the first X-Box units won't be launched until sometime late in 2001, assuming that Microsoft isn't scattered to the four winds by the Justice Department. Dreamcast is out now, certainly, and they'll be having an excellent Playstation emulator in the form of Bleem! and it's various disks. But there are rumbles in Japan that Sega is already developing the Dreamcast's successor using the same technology as the new arcade machines showing up now in the US. And Nintendo, with it's emphasis on kid-friendly games such as Pokemon and Mario might turn the Dolphin into a fancy kid game machine-despite the fact that the highest selling games on the N64 were Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, and Nintendo hasn't released a pure RPG since Final Fantasy 2 for the Super Nintendo.
For the fans of home game systems, I have one suggestion-WAIT! If you already own a Dreamcast, keep it for now and wait for Bleem! to be released. With the PS2 coming into the market, a lot of people will be turning in their Playstation games for PS2 games and machines. You can get a lot of the best Sony has produced at pretty reasonable prices with better graphics than the original Playstation games. For people that just want the best, I'd say again-wait. While the PS2 looks to be the new king of the hill, X-Box is coming and it might be the contender to toss the PS2 off the hill. And on the subject of Dolphin-I'd have to emphasize wait even more. Depending upon where Nintendo goes with the Dolphin-if they try and make the Dolphin into the home of Mario and Pokemon to the detriment of other games, I'd have to toss Dolphin out of the running.
So, wait for the systems to come out, give them a few months to shake out all the bugs, and buy carefully. The Rants will help you to purchase the best.
PS-If anyone has a copy of the Playstation Ghost In The Shell game, I'd be very glad to negotiate out a reasonable price for a copy. Thank you.
You want to come here and hear my opinion, you're welcome to come by. If not, you can Go Away, and let other people in.
Check out the Previous Rant.
This page was created on 10/09/00.
Created by Jonathan Souza on Front Page 2000.
