GameCube (Games)

Nintendo Wins Lik Sang Piracy Case 55

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Adrenaline Vault article indicating Nintendo has won substantial damages against GameBoy 'backup' device vendor Lik Sang. According to the original Reuters story, "Nintendo Co Ltd said on Thursday it has won one of its 'most significant anti-piracy judgments ever' against a Hong Kong firm that sold devices capable of copying its games and putting them on the Internet for limitless downloading." Nintendo has been awarded an interim amount of HK$5 million (US$641,000) in damages, and they say Nintendo software publishers as a whole lost US$650 million in sales last year due to piracy.
Games

Game Originality: Any Left? 778

Kamalot writes "In a world where 85% of games are solved with a gun, where are the original and innovative ideas? Adrenaline Vault has a telling editorial about the state of creativity in the game industry, the constant re-hashing of sequels, and a look into the future when technical achievements are no longer the driving force. What happens when every game follows a tried and true formula? Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like Viewtiful Joe, Shenmue, and Jet Grind Radio? Did innovative, rather than mainstream, games send the Dreamcast to an early grave rather than the PS2's more bland, yet conforming, lineup of titles?"
Books

Positively Fifth Street 162

peterwayner writes "If you're looking for more proof that good stories happen to those who can tell them, pick up a copy of James McManus's Positively Fifth Street, an adrenaline-charged, first person account of a reporter sent to cover the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. But why sit on the sidelines? He decides the only way to capture the true flavor is to risk his advance and enter. Along the way, he uses his journalistic license to justify trips to strip clubs, interviews with all of the female players, examinations of the ex-stripper wife of the tournament host, investigations of a murder, and winning bigger and bigger bets at the poker table." Sounds like fun. Read on for the rest of the review.
Space

Meet The Leonids 271

Kathy Miles writes "The Leonid meteor shower is promising to be a 'once in a lifetime event.' It's not hard to photograph meteors, a simple 35mm camera that you can lock open the shutter on works fine. Here's complete instructions for 35mm, video and digital cameras.And, on the same site is information such as lore and myth, best way to watch meteors and times and skymaps for all US timezones. Happy Meteor watching!" And Geert Barentsen writes "As the adrenaline for the final Leonid meteor storm (November 19th) rises, one site seems to do a call to everybody to count the meteor activity and help science. With a few thousand meteors predicted per hour, it's going to be a busy night for true geeks :-)" Kevin Smolkowski writes "For the second year in a row, NASA will have Live Coverage of the 2002 Leonid meteor storm on Monday. Perfect for those of you surrounded by city lights. The all night show is hosted by NASA astronomers. They'll offer observing tips, answer phone calls from sky watchers, and tour the skies with a video camera located at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama." Update: 11/18 22:40 GMT by T : McGravin writes "Everyone should also keep an ear on the extraplanetary visitors, too. I'm going to go add some ear-flaps to the tin foil helmet that protects my brain from them, so I can hear the meteors."
Games

Nintendo Embedding Classic Games on Trading Cards 336

bacontaco writes "Here's a quick article over at Adrenaline Vault about Nintendo's plan to put out old-school Nintendo games with the use of a e-Reader that plugs into the Game Boy Advance and trading cards that can be swiped with the device. The article flips back and forth on which console's games will be supported, saying either NES or SNES games will be used with the cards. It's kind of eye-opening when you think about how games that seemed so great so long ago can now be fit on something so small as a card."
Technology

Helping Computers Help Themselves 141

Jim Posner writes "The IT world's heavy hitters--IBM, Sun, Microsoft, and HP--want computers to solve their own problems.....If you're being chased by a big snarling dog, you don't have to worry about adjusting your heart rate or releasing a precise amount of adrenaline. Your body automatically does it all, thanks to the autonomic nervous system, the master-control for involuntary functions from breathing and blood flow to salivation and digestion." I'd just be happy with a few intelligent daemons to watch my back, like when a program runs amuck and fills up the process list.
Movies

The Wired Top Twenty Sci-Fi Movies 518

blamanj writes "The June issue of Wired includes a list of the top 20 Sci-Fi movies, based on ranking a combination of Adrenaline, Vision, and Precision. Somehow, they came up with (yawn) Gattaca as the #2 SF movie of all time!?! Their rating system was based on one by Josh Calder, who also uses a three-point (Futurism, Entertainment, Plausibility) system, and has the same movie at #2, BTW. Clearly, I think using such a scale gives odd results, but what if it were weighted differently, e.g., Vision is worth 2x Adrenaline, would it be a better list? And, more importantly, what are the real top 20 films? And wouldn't that list have to include Forbidden Planet?"
Graphics

GeForce 3 Review on Adrenaline Vault 96

JWhiton writes: "The lucky folks at the Adrenaline Vault have managed to get their hands on a reference GeForce 3 board and have run it through the standard gamut of tests. Looks like it really performs well at very high res with 32-bit color due to its efficient new rendering techinques. However, it lags behind the GeForce2 in a few areas. You can find the article here." We've already run a few things about the GeForce 3, but the more the merrier.
Slashback

Slashback: Blockage, Stripes, Upswings 84

If you seek updates this evening, you're in luck. Below, we have some additional information for you on: the state of the dot-com-economy; more information (and a link to a very neat site) about your private bar-coding adventures; more about the bad things that can result from farming out your spam prevention; and the threads being plucked ungently from the fabric of the Matrix sequels. Enjoy.
Graphics

3dfx Drops Video Card Division 147

Uglor writes: "3dfx is getting out of the video card market. After two years of shrinking revenue, stock price and market share, they are going back to a chips-only company. Will this let them reclaim the top spot on the 3d market? Or could this just make nVidia work twice as hard to beat them?" So it doesn't mean that you won't be able to buy a card whose guts are made by the 3dfx folks, only that the box will probably have someone else's name a whole lot bigger. And ewhac points to an Adrenaline Vault story, which "suggests that 3Dfx is going to move away from the PC hardware arena and refocus toward licensing their technology for use in visual simulation and training systems. If true, this would basically leave NVidia and ATI as the remaining major 3D graphics players. (Now if NVidia would just crack open their docs so we can support their chips...)"
Censorship

Banning Arcades in Malaysia? 283

Amon CMB was the first of several to submit a story from The Adrenaline Vault where they talk about arcades banned in Malaysia. The story is pretty scary, one of the reasons for the ban is that children were willing to steal from their parents to get cash for the games. Think about that next time you get worked up about the government censoring the amount of blood in a game. Seems kinda insignificant relative to some places.
The Almighty Buck

Will Legalities Choke Off Online Volunteerism? 140

friartux writes: "Adrenaline Vault reports on a clash between volunteers and AOL. The story details how volunteers who receive perks may make the company subject to minimum wage laws. So how might this affect open source projects, where a company offers hardware in exchange for drivers?" It's quite a long article, and the AOL-vs.-volunteers angle is only one aspect of the story, as friartux points out. Perhaps relevant to many Slashdot readers is that scrutiny of payment-in-kind could affect online gaming participants who trade their time and skill for free access to servers and other resources.
Music

Songboy Turns GameBoys into MP3 Players 143

farfisa sent us linkage to Songboy which is a $99 addon for a gameboy which allows it to play MP3s. I just used my to play B mode tetris (Start at level 9 with the blocks all the way up and try to get 25 lines: total adrenaline). Its pretty amazing how general purpose these ancient little devices have turned out to be.
Intel

Intel Snags PC Mhz Crown Back From AMD 209

textral writes "The Adrenaline Vault is running an article about Intel announcing the new jewel in its crown, the 800mhz PC, again foisting the 'fastest processor on the market' belt away from AMD's 750mhz Athlon. " Its fun watching the big boys do battle over silly little things like megahertz. Every time they up the ante, my poor P2 feels slower and slower. Jerks.

More Stories From The Hellmouth 563

More stories from the Hellmouth that is High School for many bright, individualistic American kids continued to pour in yesterday. They are jarring testimonials from kids, adults, men and women. In the past four days, I've gotten well over 2000. These stories, many of them painful and engraged, tell us more about what happened in Littleton, Colorado -- a lot more -- than the dumb, exaggerated, frightening alarms about video games, Goths and geek monsters pouring out of much of the mainstream media. Update: 04/27 07:44 by CT : Sharon Isaak from Dateline NBC wants to get in touch with folks to do a story on this subject for this show. She's specifically seeking Jay of the Southeast, Anika78 of suburban Chicago, ZBird of New Jersey, Dan in Boise, Idaho, but he'd also like anyone who's been targetted as a result of this thing to contact her. Wonder if they make ya wear pancake makeup...

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