Any other Master System fans?

[TheSonicRetard]

EA spent something like 50 million dollars to get that original exclusive contract, it was EA that made the deal originally.

no, the NFL shopped it out, and offered it to several companies, including 2K. EA got the high bid.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/big-dea...eement-6114977

A source close to the negotiations said it was at a spring 2004 off-site meeting attended by top NFL officials that the league determined it would take the league license exclusive. GameSpot was told the league put the license up for bid and that EA was among as many as five software publishers competing for it. An EA spokesperson said today, "Obviously, exclusives are more expensive. We are most certainly paying a premium."

[sheath]

no, the NFL shopped it out, and offered it to several companies, including 2K. EA got the high bid.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/big-dea...eement-6114977

Yeah, the NFL opened the bidding up after EA approached them and sold them on the idea. Even if the NFL came up with the idea first, why is it that EA has been the preferred developer and even got a discount on the contract renewal? EA is THE premiere third party anti-competitive megacorp.

http://www.easportslitigation.com/

[j_factor]

But then EA went out of their way to get exclusive deals on NCAA football and Arena Football, just to make sure they had the football market totally cornered.

[A Black Falcon]

I remember Trip Hawkins saying EA had no interest in cartridge games for a long time because they were more expensive and risky to produce than floppies. When the NES became such an enormous success, they wished they entered the console market sooner.

Yeah, Sega didn't come to EA to get them on the Genesis, EA came to Sega.

[Black_Tiger]

that is an entirely different scenario. That's not EA saying "if we make NFL games, we require a clause which says the NFL can't license their brand to anyone else." Rather, that's the NFL coming out and saying "we want to license our brand to only one game maker, it's open bidding season." There is no law that says the NFL has to license their brand to anybody else.

There are laws against that kind of thing and EA was tiptoeing around them until they tried putting brand name military vehicles into their games without paying licensing fees.

[KnightWarrior]

So it's both EA and the NFL, The NFL wanted 1 company to make there football games

[sheath]

Yes, the NFL are just as big bastards as EA. I said it at the time and I'll say it again, if I was an NFL fan I wouldn't be anymore.

[TheSonicRetard]

Yes, the NFL are just as big bastards as EA. I said it at the time and I'll say it again, if I was an NFL fan I wouldn't be anymore.

The NFL sucks anyways. A bunch of identical teams with absolutely no loyalty to the city or fans. I think rooting for a team simply because they're in the same city as you is stupid when the players move from team to team all the time. The players mean nothing to that particular city. The NFL is also light on tradition and atmosphere - all the games are the same. Generic rock music playing throughout the stadium while people cheer without chants. Rivalries are often manufactured, and like most pro rivalries, no one but those particular teams involved give a damn. The parity in the league lends to a boring, watered down version of the game. The NFL is basically the bud light of football.

College football is the greatest sport in the world. All the tradition and atmosphere of the best soccer matches in the world, with the superior football product. The hugeness of college football leads for wild differences between the teams, which result in completely different offenses and much wilder upsets. No NFL upset will ever match App St. over #5 Michigan, for example. The product is also higher scoring, faster paced, more exciting, and much more inventive. Stuff like the option or a true zone-read offense won't work in the NFL. Hell, Texas is currently completely loaded at running back, with the best 3 running backs in the league in that backfield, along with 3 others who would start at any other program. What are they doing? They're installing a diamond formation with all 3 RBs on the field at once, in addition to our wildcat QB, giving every play a quadruple pass-option. Something like that would never fly in the NFL.

The tradition is what puts college football well above all other sports, though. When the NFL was in it's infancy, College football was celebrating it's 100th birthday. Rivalries between schools are perminent and storied, and very real. And they actually matter - I'm a Texas alumnus, I obviously care about Oklahoma because we participate in one of the premiere rivalries in the sport (easily top 3 rivalries in all college sports). Yet I still pay attention to Ohio St.-Michigan, Auburn-Alabama, USC-Notre Dame, etc. Those games have so much history and drama among them that can never be matched by the NFL. Every school with a song their own, their own soundtrack that travels with the team. Fans have complex traditional chants that are centuries old at this point. Even better are when two schools have chants aimed directly at one another, or response chants against a single school. Take last year's A&M game - the last game in the rivalry. A&M's entire product - their chants, their fight song, even their decision to leave the Big XII, revolved directly around UT. No NFL match can ever match the intensity and tradition, and importance, of that one final game which wound up being a goddamn classic. Half of the stadium chanting "Goodbye to A&M" and the other half chanting "Saw varsity's horns off." And the players have permanent allegiances to these schools, and their fans. Outside of a few isolated incidents, those players who play for a school remain at that school. They forever are Longhorns, or Sooners, or Aggies. Just like the fans. It's a very real link.

Not to mention that the unique offenses and difference in talents lead to some wild, incredible games, the likes of which you'll never see in the NFL. I was at the greatest football game ever played, the epic BCS Title game between Texas and USC. The late game heroics of Vince Young with so much on the line made for the most exciting game I have ever seen. Much of that wouldn't have happened in the NFL.

With college football moving towards super conferences, and the BCS Playoffs coming in 2014, college football is easily the best sport, or, at bare minimum, the best football you can get in America.

/end Rant

[sheath]

Hahah, I live in a college town where the school thought it could take on the biggest and most respected university in texas. You probably already know what town that is, but they recently lost all ability to even play against their "rival". I found the college football loyalties as irrelevant and meaningless as NFL loyalties before, now it is even more obvious and people around here are still clinging to their "hatred" of the other texas university. How they find the energy for such inane enmity I will never understand, but I do find people's loyalties to sports teams very similar to people's loyalties to game consoles and franchises.

[TheSonicRetard]

Hahah, I live in a college town where the school thought it could take on the biggest and most respected university in texas. You probably already know what town that is, but they recently lost all ability to even play against their "rival". I found the college football loyalties as irrelevant and meaningless as NFL loyalties before, now it is even more obvious and people around here are still clinging to their "hatred" of the other texas university. How they find the energy for such inane enmity I will never understand, but I do find people's loyalties to sports teams very similar to people's loyalties to game consoles and franchises.

Given the way aggy left the big XII, I don't see how you can say the loyalty of college football is irrelevant. Schools may not be faithful to their conferences or even one another, but the school, team, and fans of each individual school are fiercy loyal. That aggy is still seething with hatred, and that Texas is giving them such a cruel cold shoulder, is proof that the aminosity between universities are not manufactured. When rivals split in the NFL, you never see each organization taking pot shots at each other in public the way Texas and aggy have been.

And for the record, fuck aggy and their dumbass cult. Those dipshits cut their nose off to spite their face. They thought they'd kill the conference and ride off into the sunset, giving Texas the finger in the process. Except Texas swept them in virtually every sport the last year - including the one that counts the most - and the Big XII basically received an upgrade in TCU and WVU. There is a TON of talk going on about FSU and Clemson coming in as well. Should the Big XII get those schools, it'll be an upgrade across the board over A&M, Mizzou, Colorado, and Nebraska.

Meanwhile, aggy is slinking to the SEC without their rival, without recruiting power (our top incoming freshman, the #1 running back in the nation, was originally considering going to A&M), without money (they're $200 million in debt), without a coach, and without most of their "stellar" returning team. And they have a brutal schedule from now on. Let them wallow in their misery. I'm going to love the shit out of this upcoming season of football - Texas is poised to have a breakout year. This is the year we come back.

[oldskool]

Touché.



Tonka did a pretty poor job, and in fact, the entire company was in decline, culminating in their 1991 buyout by Hasbro. They'd probably call it the Atari Dreamcast.

Really? I had no idea. I would even go as far to say that I honestly thought they were still around. Shows what I know. All I know is that when I was a kid they were pretty huge. . but so was Hasbro. Maybe that's who Sega should have went to.

[j_factor]

Really? I had no idea. I would even go as far to say that I honestly thought they were still around.

The Tonka brand still exists... as part of Hasbro.

Shows what I know. All I know is that when I was a kid they were pretty huge. . but so was Hasbro. Maybe that's who Sega should have went to.

I really think Sega should've just ponied up the cash to create a proper US division and handled the system themselves.

[Thenewguy]

In the 80s Electronic Arts thought that consoles were dead, and that computer gaming was the future, they decided initially that the NES was a fad that was going to burn itself out, and by the time they realised their mistake they felt like they had missed their opportunity, so they decided to concentrate on the emerging 16-bit market instead.

This doesn't really matter anyway, any US company who wanted to make console games was going to want to put them on the system with 80% marketshare, and Nintendo's exclusivity deal meant that they couldn't support multiple consoles.

[tomaitheous]

As far as GG and SMS, and which is better; GG does have a nice advantage over the SMS in the graphics department. I don't mean the master palette (which it is, even if the LCD could realistically show only 1/4 the color that the master palette was capable of). I mean the size of the window. Relative to that window size, it has a much better sprite pixel to screen width ratio than the SMS. It might be hard to think of it that way because most people think of it as a clipped SMS screen, but in reality the GG only ever had the LCD as valid graphic output (custom RGB out hacks need not apply here). So it has 64 sprite pixels to 160 width res VS 64 @ 256. At least, that's how I think of it as a programming perspective. Plus, only 104 (or such) scanlines means much more CPU resource per frame. I.e. more cpu resource = faster system. Food for thought. The GBC in relation to NES is the same way.

Edit:

Also, I'd like to add that I actually own an SMS now. Got it earlier this year. Unfortunately I only have Altered Beast for it (and the two build in games), but I got a gun and two pads. I like the quirky-ness of the SMS and the quirky feel of its games. In no way do I think the SMS the NES' equal in library and incredible titles, but who cares. I own it and now it's just a matter of getting some games for it. I like it for what it does different than my childhood NES system did. I've played almost everything for the NES. So that's what makes the SMS great to me, is that its library is new and fresh.

[TmEE]

You still got 60 frames per second, of 262 lines and you use up most of the lines on your game code, and the little left for VRAM updates. GG has less VRAM bandwidth that SMS in 50Hz when you blank out the non visible lines (they are not blanked !). GG is a shit