After selling almost 200 million games over more than two decades and generating untold billions of US dollars in revenue for Nintendo of Japan, Mario is back with two new games. Super Mario Galaxy, released this month for Nintendo's Wii console, is the first major new Mario game in five years. Also, Mario shares top billing with his longtime rival Sonic the Hedgehog in a separate new game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
Mario has always starred in games for everyone. So to test whether it could still appeal to an overeducated, media-saturated audience, I assembled a panel of non-gaming yuppies in their 30s at my house last weekend, put the Wii controls in their hands and sat back to check the reaction.
Judging by the hours of giggles, chortles and guffaws, Mario still has the goods and that incessant tug to play just five more minutes.
The reaction in my living room and elsewhere around the world indicates that Super Mario Galaxy is more than a worthy successor to the franchise's considerable legacy of smiles. It is being widely hailed as the best game yet for the Wii and is drawing plaudits from gamers and magazines alike.
Super Mario is generally a single-player game, but in a nice innovation, a second player can jump in and use a Wii remote to control a separate cursor on the screen that can stun enemies, pick up treasure and otherwise assist the main user controlling Mario. The game's whole feel is so finely tuned, so infectiously enjoyable, that it's understandable why Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator, has been one of the most famous game designers in the world for decades.
My panel of non-experts had a lot of fun with the game's Olympic "events" (up to four can play at one time), especially the trampoline, but that game still is not receiving the praise being lavished on Super Mario Galaxy.
Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa is another new game in an old series. How does it stack up?
The thing to understand is that playing a "massively multiplayer" online game, or MMO, is a commitment of money and time. MMO players routinely spend hundreds or even thousands of hours on their favorite games over many years. All of that time is an investment in building up the powers and abilities of one's virtual identity, not to mention the fun of adventuring with friends. For all that, players generally spend around US$15 a month.
Tabula Rasa is certainly a lot of fun, and it looks great. In an online gaming market deluged with dragons and elves, its fast-paced science-fiction combat is a refreshing change of pace. There are aliens descending all over the place and firefights stretching over gorgeously rendered landscapes.
Graphically, the game seems to take a page from Starship Troopers, with its bright colors and varied foes.
The big question is whether the game has enough depth to keep players coming back for months or years without devolving into a mindless repetition of "see alien, shoot gun, repeat."
Garriott and the rest of his team at NCsoft have been candid in saying that they are trying to appeal mostly to a broad base of casual gamers rather than to the smaller cadre of hard-core players who might spend 30 hours a week or more on a game.
More than four years after its debut, Eve Online is only now hitting its stride as one of the most interesting games in the world.
Eve takes place in a fictional galaxy in a far future, where humanity has splintered into four competing factions, the theocratic Amarr, the militaristic Caldari, the liberal Gallente and the rebel Minmatar. Players choose a side and find their own path.
At a stage when most games have long since stagnated, Eve continues to grow, recently passing 200,000 subscribers. CCP is planning a major graphics overhaul scheduled for Wednesday.
In many ways, Eve is like the real world. All 200,000 of Eve's players exist in one huge virtual galaxy spanning thousands of solar systems. About 40 percent of Eve's players are European, another 40 percent are North American and about 20 percent are from other continents. They all share one polyglot community around the clock, and at any moment tens of thousands of users are logged on.
More important, the economy and politics of Eve are almost entirely driven by the players themselves.
The most compelling aspect of Eve is that once players control a region of virtual space, they bear the responsibility of policing it, setting taxes, establishing diplomatic relations with neighboring groups and waging battles to protect their territory or take more. In most online games, the advanced content involves getting together with a few dozen friends to battle computer-controlled dragons and demons. In Eve, major battles involve hundreds of players fighting in starships in vast Star Wars-like firefights.
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
RSS