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.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built