The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

Personally I don't mind getting either version of the game, whether it's a physical copy or in digital. With physical I get them feelies and have a sense of having a collection of sorts unlike in a purely digital form made up of zeroes and ones. But given how I got used to, um, appropriated copies of the games I have, I've been mostly sticking to digital until I got my hands on a seven-disc copy of GTA V as a birthday gift from Dad some two years ago.

And wishing you luck on striking out on your own mate, I do wish I could do the same, but I'd be stuck here at my folks for at least a couple or so years.

[cpd2009]

Well, I think I'll just go ahead and get the digital version of the game. I need to fill up my Wii U hard drive anyway. I still might get the physical release later on if I really like the games.

[huckleberrypie]

For a while I thought the Side-by-Side error I've been getting on Event Viewer was serious enough to require a reinstall; turns out it had something to do with how Windows handles DLL definitions and would flag them as having problems if it sees something off:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic....57#p330557

[cpd2009]

Recently, I have been a bit obsessed with searching for pictures of the Nintendo DS family of systems on photo sharing websites (Flickr, etc), namely to see how people in the real world use them, and to see what kinds of games they play. I hardly ever see people in my area with DS systems. The most recent was while I was on my day job helping fill candy machines. We have one machine at an auto repair shop, and I spotted a boy playing a game on a red DSi XL. I didn't bother him, but I caught a glimpse of the screen and it was some kind of hunting game controlled with the stylus.

While searching Flickr for Nintendo DS pictures, I discovered the following traits...
-Kids usually end up playing licensed shovelware or familiar Nintendo staples like Mario or Kirby. Or Pokémon, which is self explanatory. Of course, kids won't know that their Littlest Pet Shop or SpongeBob games are the classic definitions of shovelware, but this is pretty much the target audience of said shovelware. Some of it can be pretty decent, such as an imported "Angel Cat Sugar" game I'm currently playing. Others though will only resonate with the target audience with a very basic ExcusePlot, simple objectives, and a very basic ending. "Katsuma Unleashed" for the 3DS is a good example of this.

-Older folks tend to gravitate towards the more "hardcore" Nintendo franchises, like Pokémon, Zelda, or JRPGs. If it's not those, then it's things like Brain Age, or the other Touch Generations titles that aren't really games but rather Nintendo-produced edutainment/casual titles such as Sudoku or the Nintendogs. Hell, there is even a DS cartridge that has 100 public domain classic books, turning your DS into a rudimentary Kindle or Nook.

-There was even some pictures of American kids playing games off some kind of flash cart. With these, you have to zoom in to the picture, but the cartridge in the DS has a visible MicroSD card slot. It's kind of unusual to know that some parents just buy flash cards for their kids NDS systems rather than buy full retail games, perhaps to save money? I wouldn't mind an R4 if I had an original DS just so I could fiddle around with playing videos or fan-made games, but it's harder to use such a card on a 3DS thanks to Nintendo forcing a whitelist check on DS games.

-The color of the system is obviously based on gender. Females tend to go for Coral Pink. If not Coral Pink, it's either Metallic Pink, Ice Blue or White. Some girls did use traditional red or dark blue. Males go for traditional red, blue, or black. I seen some photos of males using white DSes, and even fewer using a pink system.

I guess this signals that the Nintendo DS family served two different markets in different ways. Kids got them for fun games like Mario, Pokémon, or licensed shovelware, while adults go for franchises appealing to older gamers or the various "brain training" games. And Pokémon, which does have a fanbase spanning kids and adults.

With adults, they can typically stay hooked on the DS for years and through multiple generations, while kids tend to grow out of them. I'm sure there are a few kids who continue to play DS games well into adulthood, but most end up being forgotten after a certain time and end up being stored away or given away.

At one rummage sale a few years ago, I ended up buying a pair on Game Boy Advance SP consoles, one pink and one blue and came with a single charger and several game carts, mostly licensed shovelware games. The seller stated they belonged to their kids. Both were heavily scratched up on the outside and had loads of gaudy stickers on them, and the pink console had crayon gunk in the cartridge slot. After cleaning and sticker removal, both GBA SPs worked just fine despite their rough look. The batteries still hold a good charge too.

In the end, I do find it good when people still play games on traditional handheld consoles rather than the latest F2P games offered on a smartphone. Good games on handhelds tend to have a lot more substance to them and can even bring on a lot of emotional reactions if the story is good enough. Smartphone games? They can be fun in short spurts, but most have a very very basic ExcusePlot and are tools to feed money to corporate game companies like EA or Gameloft. I used to love Angry Birds until they started bringing on the F2P nonsense along with other bloat.

Its a shame that true handheld gaming systems may be coming to their end. Sure, there is the Switch, but it's marketed as a hybrid home/portable, and I have yet to see anyone with a Switch. If the Switch fails or falls out of relevance, there is no real handheld system to replace it. The 3DS is it's twilight years and it's bound to be discontinued soon.

[huckleberrypie]

Yeah, 'tis a shame that there's not much to offer on Google Play apart from F2Ps, AllegedlyFreeGames, unauthorised clones of popular gaming franchises, and GPL violations. The likes of NFS No Limits and Asphalt are good for cheap lulz, but apart from the 3D car models to which my friends and I would occasionally rip and convert to some other game, the business model used in those ruin the spirit of gaming from a way to have fun to just some insidious money-grubbing scheme. In all honesty I could not find any game on the Play Store that's worth shit, as most of them are nothing more than asset flips taken off the Unity store since the developer is too lazy or didn't have the budget to buy a 3DS Max/Maya licence or skills to produce a model or two. It seems as though it's the Atari boom all over again with crappy games and titles from non-gaming companies who suddenly decided to cash in flooding the market like in the early 80s.

Maybe I could get my hands on at least a Vita or 3DS some day, but seeing as how redundant it is when tablets offer more functionality, some felt it's not worth getting one or developing for it considering the $$$ one can make off ripping people's wallets out on major app stores. Which pretty much accounts for why the shovelware you mentioned earlier are now smart device exclusives, when back in the day games like Kit Mystery Challenge saw a DS release.

[cpd2009]

Yeah, 'tis a shame that there's not much to offer on Google Play apart from F2Ps, AllegedlyFreeGames, unauthorised clones of popular gaming franchises, and GPL violations. The likes of NFS No Limits and Asphalt are good for cheap lulz, but apart from the 3D car models to which my friends and I would occasionally rip and convert to some other game, the business model used in those ruin the spirit of gaming from a way to have fun to just some insidious money-grubbing scheme. In all honesty I could not find any game on the Play Store that's worth shit, as most of them are nothing more than asset flips taken off the Unity store since the developer is too lazy or didn't have the budget to buy a 3DS Max/Maya licence or skills to produce a model or two. It seems as though it's the Atari boom all over again with crappy games and titles from non-gaming companies who suddenly decided to cash in flooding the market like in the early 80s.

Maybe I could get my hands on at least a Vita or 3DS some day, but seeing as how redundant it is when tablets offer more functionality, some felt it's not worth getting one or developing for it considering the $$$ one can make off ripping people's wallets out on major app stores. Which pretty much accounts for why the shovelware you mentioned earlier are now smart device exclusives, when back in the day games like Kit Mystery Challenge saw a DS release.

Indeed. Even shovelware games on older handheld consoles can be at least playable, with a clear goal and objectives. It mostly boiled down to how good the software coding was and whether or not kids would care. I have another shovelware DS game, MLP: Pinkie Pie's Party. I haven't played much of it, but it controls well and it has lots of dialog to read along with an actual story. The MLP G4 Gameloft game has all the hallmarks of a F2P game and is purely tied into the events of the TV show for the most part.

There is this channel on YouTube called SidAlpha, who is more or less a LighterAndSofter Jim Sterling. He reviews games for the PC from Steam and exposes asset flips made to make gullible gamers part with their cash. I don't think he does anything with mobile games, but after experiencing what mobile gaming has become, I can understand why console gamers hate mobile games so much. The F2P nonsense is also one reason why I got rid of my tablet. I used to enjoy mobile games before the F2P model took hold, and with most of them just wanting your money, it's hard to justify keeping a tablet for gaming.

[huckleberrypie]

Piracy may have driven publishers to adopt the F2P model, but it seems counterproductive when that only spurred the practise of hacking F2P titles for players to unlock content without paying for it.

The AG games were more or less typical shovelware, but even those can be viewed as more tolerable than let's say a game which asks you to pay every five minutes for a certain element to be used. That's a dodgy load of rubbish, ain't it? While I'm incensed at AG's insistence on iOS and iOS only (with some speculating that this is partly due to iPhones being the in-thing amongst the youth over Androids), at least they didn't go full bonkers and would sell their games under a traditional retail model.

[cpd2009]

I have seen kids play games on cheapo Android tablets before, plenty of times. iOS devices are expensive and parents probably shudder at the fact of giving their kid an iPad or iPod touch only for them to break it months later. With the cheap Androids, they have just enough performance for most games they may want to play. So for AG to limit their apps to iOS is mind boggling since cash-strapped parents are more likely to get their kids cheap Androids or Amazon Fires rather than an expensive iPad. If not an Android, then it's likely a Nintendo 3DS or cheaper 2DS. Some mobile games have been ported to the 3DS like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope.

It wouldn't take much to port over the AG games to Android. 3DS may take a bit longer since you have to work with two screens.

[huckleberrypie]

I have seen kids play games on cheapo Android tablets before, plenty of times. iOS devices are expensive and parents probably shudder at the fact of giving their kid an iPad or iPod touch only for them to break it months later. With the cheap Androids, they have just enough performance for most games they may want to play. So for AG to limit their apps to iOS is mind boggling since cash-strapped parents are more likely to get their kids cheap Androids or Amazon Fires rather than an expensive iPad. If not an Android, then it's likely a Nintendo 3DS or cheaper 2DS. Some mobile games have been ported to the 3DS like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope.

It wouldn't take much to port over the AG games to Android. 3DS may take a bit longer since you have to work with two screens.

Exactly. Even if iOS does seem to have a somewhat larger mind share amongst youths as the smart device platform of choice, it makes little sense for any developer to snub the more popular platform. Not to mention that porting them games shouldn't take much effort considering their simplicity.

As for the 3DS, I pretty much doubt it considering how relatively fewer kids own a 3DS or any other dedicated portable console.

[cpd2009]

Speaking of 3DS, I am going to sell off my original red 3DS and swap it out for a DS or DSi in the future. I don't see a need in keeping it for now since I have my New 3DS XL.

I was also considering getting rid of my Xbox 360, but I decided to hang on to it, despite not using it very much, if at all. I have decided to get rid of my old CRT TV simply because it would be too much of a hinderance in getting moved to my new place, wherever it may be. I'm exploring either getting a RetroFreak console, trying the Retron5 again, or going completely portable with the retro games. I have been wanting a RetroDuo portable console for quite a few years, and I hear they are among the best portable retro consoles.