Mailbag!
April
23th,
2002
"Letters…I get letters…I get sent, sent, sent, sent
letters…LETTERS!!!"
Hello boys and girls, and welcome to another turgid installment
of the Mailbag! From now on I’ll be here to answer all your
thought-provoking, side-spitting, or stomach-turning questions, so
send them my way at jmichaelneal@comcast.net,
k? Go ahead, ask me anything. I know a lot about a lot. Go on,
test me…
________________________________________
Q: Do you have any idea if there is a special disc for cleaning
the lens on the PS2?
A:
You know this is a very good question. My first
reaction was "well, I guess you’d just use any old lens
cleaner on the thing". That was until I remembered that the
PS2’s ability to stand erect calls for an extra-special disc
tray. This said disc tray is designed to keep discs from falling
out, but also prevents lens cleaners from doing their job! After
some hours of searching for "official" lens cleaners to
no avail I decided to go ask an expert, so I write to SCEA
Consumer Representative "Arturo" who precedes to tell me
that not only are no lens cleaners endorsed by Sony for use with
the PS2, but that using a lens cleaner on your system can actually
damage it! Turns out that most people whose systems are afflicted
with the, now infamous, inability to play DVD-ROMs are that way
thanks to lens cleaners! Arturo goes on to recommend that you keep
your system clean by removing dust from the air vents in the back
with a vacuum attachment and wipe your game discs down with those
handy little disc cleaners, but never in circles mind you or you
might scratch your disc. When asked if Sony plans to release a
line of officially licensed PS2 cleaning vacuum attachments I was
greeted with a "no comment".
________________________________________
Q:
If you were a video game medium format, which you be
and why?
a) Cartridge
b) Floppy
c) CD Rom
d) DVD Rom
e) Midget Gamecube CD
f) Other
A:
Well, before the creation of Viagra I would have gone
with "floppy", but for now I’ll play it safe and stick
to the PS2 standard DVD-ROM…
________________________________________
Q: What PS2 games should I keep an eye out on for the next few
months?
A:
Well of course the answer will differ from person to
person base on individual tastes for genres and styles, but the
next ‘big’ (read: hyped) titles for the PS2 include Tekken
4, Spiderman:
The Movie, Onimusha
2, Medal
of Honor: Frontline,
Final
Fantasy XI,
Xenosaga, Kingdom
Hearts, Run
Like Hell, The
Lost, The Thing, The
Stuntman, The
Getaway, Tomb
Raider: Angel of Darkness,
and of course Soul Calibur 2. This doesn’t include unconfirmed
titles like Devil May Cry 2 and whatever follow-up Take-Two has in
store for the Grand
Theft Auto 3 franchise and whatever else might reveal itself
within the next couple of months. Two titles I’m personally
waiting for are UFC:
Throw Down, the
sequel to a true PSOne classic, Ape Escape, and most of all, the
follow-up to the Konami masterpiece Castlevania:
Symphony of the Night. To educate yourself further on what
games to keep an eye on check out our upcoming feature on games to
watch…
________________________________________
Q: My friend asked me a question the other day about how much
further computers had to go i told him all the obvious graphics,
A.I, more polygons (I explained it to him as more things on screen
at once!) less/no loading time etc... however when I went home I
thought about it and was amazed to think of how far they have come
in the past ten years. even when I watched the making of mgs2 and
they show clips of mgs1 I just dropped my jaw. the figures were so
jagged and blocky. What do u think may happen between now and ten
years? I really can’t wait to see how A.I and polygon numbers
will change. imagine it computers that could (relatively speaking)
think for themselves and make mistakes (on purpose not a bug or
glitch!!) or do absolutely amazing things like swat teams or the
sas!!!! Just wondering what you think really can be achieved in
the years to come…
A:
10 years from now I see every genre going massively
multiplayer, but without monthly fees. This will be made possible
through in game advertising, through the selling of "virtual
advertising space". For example, ever watch a Fox Sports
broadcasted game? Ever notice all the advertisements on the
screen, in the stadium, on the players and field, the stadium
names, on "crawls" along the bottom of the screen, as
logos and symbols during all those fancy menus. You see a few
dozen ads before you even reach a commercial break, not to mention
when the announcers verbally plug something in between plays.
Now imagine a football game that does the same exact thing.
Sports games are having more of a "broadcast" look to
them anyway, imagine what they can look like with 10 years of
visual advances. With an online game the world has the ability to
change as the developer wills, meaning that a company could sell
space in terms of time, X amount of dollars can buy you space in X
part of the game for X amount of time. You could create a
"real world" style game like Shenmue with nothing but
actual products populating. The main characters wearing designer
clothing, actual billboards in the city, Pepsi machines sitting
outside of McDonalds. You could have an infinite amount of
advertisers.
Right now most developers and publishers pay companies to put
their products in games, once they realize that they have it all
backwards things will change. To realize this they will have to
think of video games with the same business model as network
television: the consumer pays nothing, yet they make billions from
selling advertising time. Just think, some day games may be at no
cost to the consumer, but the trade off is having them be as
Madison Avenue as TRL…
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