Saturday, November 18, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 18th 2000 ]



We brought you the first unofficial word that Capcom's survival-horror Dreamcast masterpiece Resident Evil: Code Veronica was looking very, very likely for PS2. And, sure enough, Capcom made it official today, launching a web page for the game, and sharing some screens and video.

As mentioned in yesterday's article, this version of the game is being called Resident Evil: Code Veronica Complete, and will be released for Dreamcast and PS2. Producer Shinji Mikami, when announcing the game in a conference today, commented that Capcom expects to add story elements to this version that could not be completed in time for the original Dreamcast release. Will there be a new scenario involving Weskar, as our previous information suggested? We'll have to wait and see. Both Dreamcast and PS2 versions of the game will arrive to Japan on March 22nd of next year, the 5 year anniversary of the Biohazard series.

Unfortunately, there's no indication at Capcom's website that these shots and videos are from the PS2 version of the game. The only thing that suggests it to us is that the page makes no reference to the Dreamcast version until the very bottom. Do you see any differences from the Dreamcast original?

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 18th 2000 ]

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/18/2000 06:24:00 PM | 0 comments |

Thursday, November 16, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 16th 2000 ]



The movie version of the popular RPG, Final Fantasy, will be in theaters on June 2001.

The next chapter in the Final Fantasy series is not set to be seen on any other video game console. But on the big screen. Yep, Square is teaming up with Columbia Pictures to release a movie based on the Final Fantasy series. But don't expect to see Squall or any other characters from previous FF games.

This is the story so far:

Set on Earth in the year 2065, destruction and confusion surround us. Cities are deserted, the population is decimated, and the precious few humans who remain must find a way to survive. In this world, we face death as we part with our loved ones. We begin to question what "life" and "love" is, and what is the philosophical definition of the "heart." After all in this world, science has analyzed life and death, expressing life as a form of energy. Beyond the riveting battle scenes, Final Fantasy will take you on a journey of personal discovery into both the real and fantasy worlds, drawing you deep into its characterizations and themes: love, friendship, dreams, adventure, life and death.

Alec Baldwin, Ming Na Wen (Chun-Li of Street Fighter), and others have been tapped in to do the movie but don't expect to see them, you'll just hear them. The movie is all computer generated! The characters are all rendered in full 3D glory. You can barely distinguish them from real people.

For Final Fantasy, the digital backlot is not where you would expect it to be, in Hollywood - but rather it is located in tropical Hawaii. Next to the beautiful Pacific Ocean, Square has selected Harbor Court in downtown Honolulu as the home to more than 150 computer graphic artist from all over the world, including Hollywood, Tokyo and Europe. There, surrounded by state-of-the-art computers and software programs, artists are able to transform their vision into reality set on a computer screen. It is in this environment where Square is producing Final Fantasy as a successful and entertaining film with the leading computer graphic technology.

This movie will surely be one of the blockbusters on 2001. With more games being made into movies (eg., Tomb Raider, Wing Commander, etc.).

I surely can't wait for the often delayed Resident Evil movie. (Rumor: The story revolves around mutated scientists being battled by an army unit...STARS??).

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 16th 2000 ]

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/16/2000 01:26:00 PM | 0 comments |

Friday, November 10, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 10th 2000 ]



Let's face it, Philippine main stream media are utterly clueless when it comes to video games. But still, GMA-7 insisted on producing an I-Witness episode about the violence in video games.

I wasn't able to watch the episode, but given GMA-7's track record for being clueless on video games, I doubt that they really understand what they've shown. Just look at the screenies I took from their website few months back:



Here you can see the Sony PSone. GMA-7 called it a GAME CONSULE.



How about my favorite Pokemon Pikachu? They called the poor fella Picachu.

GMA-7 is not alone. A few years ago, ABS-CBN's TV Patrol featured a raid of video karera machine operators. The reporter covering the raid mentioned something like this, "Inaalam pa ng pulisya kung saan nanggaling ang mga video karera machines na ito ngunit maaring gawing lead ng mga pulis ang mga nakatatak na dragon sa mga video karera machines...".

The reporter then points to the dragon sticker... a Mortal Kombat logo.



Dumba$$.

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 10th 2000 ]

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/10/2000 10:52:00 PM | 1 comments |

Thursday, November 09, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 9th 2000 ]

Check out what we know so far about the system.


This is a working prototype version of the X-Box and not the final unit.

So how good is the XBOX, anyway? Check out the specs that Microsoft has released about the system:

CPU: 733 MHz Intel
Graphics Processor: 300MHz custom Xchip, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA
Total Memory: 64 MB
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/sec
Polygon Performance: 300 M/sec
Sustained Polygon Performance: 150+ M/sec (transformed and lit polygons per second)
Micropolygons/particles per second: 300 M/sec
Particle Performance: 300 M/sec
Simultaneous Textures: 4
Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.8 G/Sec (anti-aliased)
Pixel Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.8 G/Sec (anti-aliased)
Compressed Textures: Yes (8:1)
Full Scene Anti-Alias: Yes
Micro Polygon Support: Yes
Storage Medium: 4x DVD, 8GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
I/0: 4x DVD, 8GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
Audio Channels:64 (up to 256 stereo voices)
3D Audio Support: Yes
MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes
AC3 Encoded Game Audio: Yes
Broadband Enabled: Yes
Modem Enabled: Future upgrade
DVD Movie Playback: Built in
Game Pad Included: No
Maximum Resolution: 1920x1080
Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920x1080
HDTV Support: Yes

The polygon performance of the system still remains a mystery. Both Microsoft and Sony releases specs of an unbelievable degree while Sega and Nintendo base their specs on actual game results.

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 9th 2000 ]

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/09/2000 06:27:00 PM | 0 comments |

Tuesday, November 07, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 7th 2000 ]

The legendary father of Mario and Link shares his thoughts on the PS2's polygonal abilities.

If you've been following the recent PlayStation 2 holiday hype, then you've no doubt heard the claims made regarding its unprecedented polygon crunching power. And indeed, the PS2 is quite a polygon beast, but perhaps some perspective is called for. And who better to clear things up than Nintendo legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto?

Recently Mr. Miyamoto commented to the Japanese media about the recent claims made by Sony regarding the ability for the PS2 to render polygons. Below is what he had to say on the matter:

Shigeru Miyamoto: "Polygon movement is essential in the creation of 3D games. Therefore, we are taking various steps to simplify polygon movement. Namely, this includes calculation of polygon display, properly shading and lighting the polygons, and applying the textures.

"Whenever new hardware comes out, the manufacturer always talks about how many million polygons it puts out, but never mentions that when textures are applied only half that can be handled. Then when you do the lighting calculations, that number halves again. So the actual number of polygons is half of half, or about 1/10th of what they say. So if the specs say the machine can do 80-100 million polygons, that really translates to roughly 5-8 million.

"Polygon-pushing power isn't enough; game machines have to be able to handle things like terrain and collision detection too. When the CPU handles these tasks, it can't do much else. With the Gamecube, we've divided the tasks up as much as possible to eliminate bottlenecks. If you simply look at the documented specs for existing systems, they may seem to be the latest and greatest things at the moment, but in a year or so they'll already be outdated. On the other hand, looking at the Gamecube, I think it will have a shelf life of many years. We wanted to make a piece of hardware that would free developers from worrying about technical stuff like polygons or bottlenecks."

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NOVEMBER 7th 2000 ]

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/07/2000 06:19:00 PM | 0 comments |

Monday, November 06, 2000

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 6th 2000 ]



Nintendo finally reveals the specs of their next-generation console. Let's see how it stacks up.

Manufacturing Process: 0.18 microns Copper Wire Technology
Clock Frequency: 405 MHz
CPU Capacity: 925 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Internal Data Precision: 32-Bit Integer & 64-Bit Floating-point
External Bus Bandwidth: 1.6GB/second(Peak)
(32-Bit address, 64-Bit data bus202.5MHz)
Internal Cache: L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way), L2: 256KB (2 way)

System LSI "Flipper"
Manufacturing Process: 0.18 microns, NEC Embedded DRAM Process
Clock Frequency: 202.5MHz
Embedded Frame Buffer: Approx. 2MB
Sustainable Latency: 5ns (1T-SRAM)
Embedded Texture Cache: Approx. 1MB
Sustainable Latency: 5ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Read Bandwidth: 12.8GB/second (Peak)
Main Memory Bandwidth: 3.2GB/second (Peak)
Color, Z Buffer: Each is 24 Bits
Image Processing Function: Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, HW Light x8, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texture Mapping/Bump/Environment Mapping, MIPMAP, Bilinear Filtering, Real-time Texture Decompression (S3TC), etc.

Other
Sound Processor: Special 16-Bit DSP
Instruction Memory: 8KB RAM + 8KB ROM
Data Memory: 8KB RAM + 4KB ROM
Clock Frequency: 101.25 MHz
Maximum Number of Simultaneously Produced Sounds ADPCM: 64ch
Sampling Frequency: 48KHz
System Floating-point Arithmetic Capability: 13.0GFLOPS (Peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Actual Display Capability: 6 million to 12 million polygons/second (Display capability assuming actual game with complexity model, texture, etc.)
System Main Memory: 24MB
Sustainable Latency: 10ns or lower (1T-SRAM)
A-Memory: 16MB (100MHz DRAM)
Disc Drive Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) System Average Access Time: 128ms
Data Transfer Speed: 16Mbps to 25Mbps

Nintendo also released images and information on the different peripherals that will be available for the Nintendo GameCube



Game Boy Advance Adapter
You can use the Game Boy Advance as a private color screen for the Gamecube. Just plug it into a controller slot and you're ready to go. One of the uses specifically mentioned in Nintendo's presentation was the ability to use the GBA as a separate screen for selecting plays privately in sports games such as football.




Digicard
There are two slots at the front of the machine for Digicards—Nintendo's Gamecube memory card. It stores 4 Megabits of information into a card that's smaller in size than a PlayStation memory card. While there are only two Digicard slots on the machine, Nintendo says there will be a way to swap them so four people can load data.




SD-Digicard Adapter
With this adapter, you can use Panasonic/Matsushita's postage stamp-sized SD (Secure Digital) Memory Card, compatible with digital cameras and music players, to store Gamecube data. To give you an idea of the increased storage capacity, one 64 Megabyte SD card holds about 128 times the data of one standard Digicard.




Modem Adapter
Gamecube has a slot on the bottom for a 56k modem, although it will not include one out of the box. Nintendo has not announced specific plans for Gamecube's online connectivity, but said they will do so when it makes sense to use as a tool in games. It's truly plug 'n' play—just snap it into the bottom and you're ready to go.




Broadband Adapter
Not to be left in the 20th century, Nintendo has also announced a Broadband Adapter to connect to future "fat pipe" networks such as cable modems and DSL. This allows for high-speed data transmission. The bottom of the system has two other ports—a high-speed parallel and a second serial. Uses for these haven't been specified.




Wireless Receiver
You no longer have to deal with a cumbersome cord, allowing you a more creative style of play. An RF system is being used. The transmission distance is about 10 m.




Digital Video Cable
In addition to the same A/V out connection that Nintendo's been using since the Super NES days, the back of the GC sports a Digital Video Out. This will support the D Terminal standard, compatible with the advanced digital broadcasting environment for DTV and HDTV. You can also see the handle on the back of the machine for easy carrying.

[ THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JOHN PHILLIPS BENGERO ON NOVEMBER 6th 2000 ]

Labels: archive, features, gamecube, nintendo-news

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Posted by Jepoy on 11/06/2000 08:33:00 PM | 0 comments |