Videogame Mysteries
- Thread starter London Geezer
- Start date
another mystery........
(not much about consoles but hey it's MY thread
)
How on earth did Bill Gates come up with the opinion that "more than 64K Ram will be overkill for everyone" 20 years ago??
Especially looking at the ridiculous amount of Ram needed to run anything on Windows OS?? :?
(not much about consoles but hey it's MY thread
)How on earth did Bill Gates come up with the opinion that "more than 64K Ram will be overkill for everyone" 20 years ago??
Especially looking at the ridiculous amount of Ram needed to run anything on Windows OS?? :?
Wasn't the quote "640K"? That might be your answer right there. Still laughable but, uh... I guess 10 times LESS laughable? Hehe.
Still laughable but, uh... I guess 10 times LESS laughable? Hehe.not sure about the 64K or 640K... still, yeah pretty funny!!
he said something like "it will be enough to run ANY program FOREVER" or something of that caliber
he said something like "it will be enough to run ANY program FOREVER" or something of that caliber
Why did so many high quality developers get bought up by EA in the past, only to vanish into thin air a short while later (Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood)? And how did EA manage to scare away all the veteran game designers that came with those studios in record time? Sometimes one could almost get the feeling those aqusitions were more about eliminating competition than strengthening their development portfolio...
Gollum said:
i must say, EA is pretty good.... safe from some very few licence based games that were not great, one could say EA has been pretty good and especially consistent this generation... and they seem the only ones that can make a licence-based game and not turn it into shit...
oi said:
(BEST NAME EVER BTW)
Psygnosis was indeed bought by Sony, and are now an internal team (of course no longer called Psygnosis), although i'm pretty sure there was an exhodus of Psy devs just after the buy-out, so i guess Sony got only a few of the original team's devs...
Insiders might have more info on this matter though
Then again I wasn't talking about this console generation, was I?london-boy said:
EA has very strong sports franchises and effectively manages to make people go out and buy the update every year without feeling screwed (there's another mystery for you). I too am positively surprised by e.g. their LOTR license games though. Such licenses usually turn out like crap but EA really managed to make some simple but immensely fun games out of them. Still, there hardly ever is anything innovative or original from EA (especially not from their internal dev studios), so I see them as little more than the giant solid mainstream game producer that they are. They satisfy a demand, but they don't create a new one. If you do not already bring an interest for the specific franchise or license with you before buying one of their games, you will hardly find much there to admire. And for that I cannot love them like I loved those studios they destroyed...
Nick Laslett
Regular
Psygnosis was bought by Sony in 1993 before the PS1 launched in Europe.
The management team was kept intact.
In 1998 things started to go wrong and Psygnosis had flop after flop.
(Sentient, Psybadek, Rascal, City of Lost Children, Blast Radius, ODT, Overboard.)
They wanted to be a multi-format publisher, even though they were owned by Sony. They published Wipeout on the Saturn and N64. ODT on the N64. They released G-Police and Lander on the PC, there were a number of other multi-format titles.
At this point Nick Burcombe and some of the Wipeout team leave to set-up Curley Monsters the developers of Quantum Redshift. SCEE starts to take more direct control. Glen O’Connell leaves and ends up at Rage. In June ’98 Ian Hetherington the co-founder of the company was ousted from Psygnosis and on went on to form Evolution Studios with Martin Kenwright from DID.
Sony ditch the Psygnosis brand and retain the best bits of the development studios.
The management team was kept intact.
In 1998 things started to go wrong and Psygnosis had flop after flop.
(Sentient, Psybadek, Rascal, City of Lost Children, Blast Radius, ODT, Overboard.)
They wanted to be a multi-format publisher, even though they were owned by Sony. They published Wipeout on the Saturn and N64. ODT on the N64. They released G-Police and Lander on the PC, there were a number of other multi-format titles.
At this point Nick Burcombe and some of the Wipeout team leave to set-up Curley Monsters the developers of Quantum Redshift. SCEE starts to take more direct control. Glen O’Connell leaves and ends up at Rage. In June ’98 Ian Hetherington the co-founder of the company was ousted from Psygnosis and on went on to form Evolution Studios with Martin Kenwright from DID.
Sony ditch the Psygnosis brand and retain the best bits of the development studios.
"The best" might be stretching it a bit, but yeah... i guess thats how things went....
oh, i thought Psygnosis was bought AFTER Wipeout came out for other platforms... In fact, i was almost sure it got bought out not long before PS2 was revealed, but i could very well be wrong...
oh, i thought Psygnosis was bought AFTER Wipeout came out for other platforms... In fact, i was almost sure it got bought out not long before PS2 was revealed, but i could very well be wrong...
OLD Psygnosis I loved: Ballistyx, Barbarian, Lemmings... Even Armour-Geddon. But yeah, from a "what have you done for me lately" perspective the answer would be "not much." Heh...
cthellis42 said:
I was probably too harsh on them. Sometimes they were (overly) ambitious, Armour-Geddon being an example of this. But in the end, can you say you really had that much 'fun' playing their games? At least I didn't. Loved some of the music though. Shadow the Beast (I & II) have some great tracks. Mmm...demo music...
Compared to the Bitboys (Gods, etc.) I have to say they (Psygnosis) came out behind.
Was Lemmings actually created by Psygnosis? I think it may have been published by them but I *thought* DMA design (offshoot perhaps) did the actual game.
They did some of the Lemmings (L2, at least). I think DMA Design was indeed at the helm of the first, but I'm not sure what kind of relationship they had with Psygnosis at the time. Not sure how much back and forth there was on the initial game--I think they might have been tighter back then as opposed to Psygnosis simply acting as publisher.
Well, imo, Wipeout was the first real "next-gen" game on the PS1, and Psygnosis deserves credit for the at that time original presentation and design. That it was a fun game didn't hurt either
But anyways, as you said, other than that I don't really remember any other good games that they made. I did however play Shadow of the beast 1 and 2, but didn't really find them all that special.
But anyways, as you said, other than that I don't really remember any other good games that they made. I did however play Shadow of the beast 1 and 2, but didn't really find them all that special.
(not gaming but oh well this thread is already derailed)...
Why, with all the money spent on FFTSW, did they not bother with those little things (script, voice dubs -esp. acting on them) that could make it really stand out? A bit more character would have been enough, and surely would have covered for the cost of actually MAKING the bloody thing..
Why, with all the money spent on FFTSW, did they not bother with those little things (script, voice dubs -esp. acting on them) that could make it really stand out? A bit more character would have been enough, and surely would have covered for the cost of actually MAKING the bloody thing..
Eh? They had GREAT voice acting in FF:tSW. Maybe not the pinnacle the way some Disney flicks are, but they had solid voice talent. Ming-Na Wen, Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Ving Rhames... How can you really complain? Perhaps cheesy dialogue took them down more than they should, but...
And overall, it was a typical, "bubblegum" sci-fi plot. Not really different than any different than a Star Trek film or generic sci-fi-sans-real-aspiration. I think it failed primarily for marketing reasons, as it drove away people who thought it was "a movie of the game" and drove away the FF fans for NOT having anything to do with a game. If they'd just left it sans "FF" they could still have promoted to Square fans just by BEING Square and everyone knowing they did the animation, and appealed to the broader and much larger sci-fi moviegoers who just like random flicks and might be attracted to the impressive, realistic CG-ness.
And overall, it was a typical, "bubblegum" sci-fi plot. Not really different than any different than a Star Trek film or generic sci-fi-sans-real-aspiration. I think it failed primarily for marketing reasons, as it drove away people who thought it was "a movie of the game" and drove away the FF fans for NOT having anything to do with a game. If they'd just left it sans "FF" they could still have promoted to Square fans just by BEING Square and everyone knowing they did the animation, and appealed to the broader and much larger sci-fi moviegoers who just like random flicks and might be attracted to the impressive, realistic CG-ness.
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