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click below for screen shots:  Game Boy Advance SP (5) |

By Chris Buckley

Hello all, I've been away for a while now but I return with plenty to talk about!

Looking again at all the hype surrounding the next generation of consoles - what they will look like, their astronomical specifications etc. there does now seem to be a little more out there than just aficionados' drawings. The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net) reports that a source close to Sony has revealed that it had apparently filed a patent in the US late last year concerning the architecture of its future console. So it seems that the next generation of consoles may bring us more than a mere doubling or tripling of processing power.

Specifications are one element, but in themselves do not mean much at all. I remember the initial figures that were distributed for the PS2 prior to its release. These could be twisted and contorted and used for maximum effect by those seeking to herald the PS2 as being the best thing since sliced bread. Journalists, especially those outside of the gaming industry, rarely take into account whatsoever how the machine itself plays or how easy or difficult it may be for developers to work with. It's important to look to the future, but as Ferris Bueller once said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. This advice goes equally well for videogames too. Don't always wait for the next best thing. Enjoy games now!

Onto games news and, as you may have heard already, Bungie and Microsoft have recently announced that Halo 2 will not ship until next year at the earliest. This has generally been welcomed as good news, and seems to be a sign of recent times. Halo, of course, enjoyed such massive success worldwide and nobody would want Bungie to do a rush job on their sequel. It already has a difficult enough task in repeating the success of the first game, and would do itself no favors by setting rigid deadlines. Another game, Championship Manager 4, has also been delayed considerably, but again, fans of this series are content to wait for this eagerly anticipated game. Nobody wants to discover a game full of niggling bugs shortly after release, especially if it promised to be something great. These two titles, their predecessors having already made their mark, can easily justify a late release to waiting consumers, but other publishers don't usually have it so easy. Perhaps they should be dealt a bit more latitude by all concerned.

Some have surmised that Resident Evil 5 will be in the offering in the future, due to the domain residentevil5.com having been registered by Capcom. Resident Evil 4 hasn't even appeared yet, and whilst RE5 may yet appear, registration of a domain name is hardly confirmation of this. After all, it costs next to nothing for Capcom to register a domain and you would expect them to cover all bases. Mind you, it looks like residentevil6.com has been taken by someone else, whilst residentevil7.com is still up for grabs!

Looking at movie franchises, SCi Games is to release a game based on the critically acclaimed Tarantino film, Reservoir Dogs, in which one can play as your favorite gangster from the six that starred in the original film. As yet there is no release date, however. It seems that Sci Games are busy indeed as they will also be releasing a game based on the popular hit TV series, Futurama. Expected earlier, in Spring this year, the game will be authentic to the show and feature voice-overs from the real actors. A great many of us will be able to play it too as Futurama will be available for the X-Box, PC and Gamecube.

By now, the Game Boy Advance SP will have been out for a short while in Japan but the rest of the world must wait for the official release on March 28th. I'm really looking forward to the release and I noticed that stores are already putting leaflets on their shelves to mark the countdown. These are in the shape of a Game Boy Advance SP and to scale. I was really taken aback at how small the unit is. Having seen screenshots of it on the web, I had a fair idea of what it looked like, but in the absence of a reference object I had presumed it to be bigger than it actually is. This thing really is tiny, and would even be able to fit in my front pocket! Portable gaming has certainly come a long way since the original Game Boy. Now I am definitely going to buy a GBA SP, no doubt about it!

By the way, if you want some sort of an idea of the GBA SP's success to date, then look no further than the weekly sales charts in Japan (released by Media Create). As of the week ending March 2nd, the Game Boy Advance SP pipped the PS2 to the top of the charts with a massive 57,800 units sold that week!

Do you ever buy games and never play them? I do this myself sometimes and there are a number of reasons for this. I bought an X-Box a few months back and now boast a collection of around ten carefully selected games. All gems, as I made sure of doing my research prior to forking out my well earned pounds sterling. But I don't play them all that often. First of all, I just don't have that much time to play games nowadays. I work around ten hours per day, and whilst playing games is a blast, it is not usually the first thing I might want to do in my spare time when I get home (mind you, I've just bought X-Box Live so that is set to change!).

I also seem to lack many games that provide what I would call “instant action”. I own more of the “progressive games” that require saving such as Morrowind, Halo, Championship Manager and Hitman 2. It's almost as if I want to play the “perfect game” each time I play, and feel the need to dedicate a good two/three uninterrupted hours to play. Such aspirations would have me playing only at weekends if I were to commit to them.

Also, I think that I have just bought too many games. Whilst all these games are great, I find myself thinking, why should I play this game for an extended period of say 4/5 hours? In doing so I would be neglecting my other games. Then I would just end up not playing any games at all! Is it just me or do you also find yourself playing your favorite game at the expense of the other ones? In an ideal world, I would take two weeks off work and do nothing but play games, but I can only dream!

Video gaming can seem almost neurotic at times and the psychology is fascinating in this little researched area. Let me hear your stories revolving around this theme.

The other day I was playing one of the games I mentioned earlier, Morrowind, and kept failing at a particular point and having to reload my save game. Each time I reloaded, it took over 30 seconds for the game to reload. As you might imagine, I grew increasingly frustrated, particular as I had a difficult task to complete and had to reload many, many times. It's not just the reloading of save games that can be annoying though - nearly every game employs long loading times of between, say, 5 and 15 seconds, prior to each stage/level. We seem to have grown long accustomed to this and for those whose first console was a Playstation, they have never experienced gaming without long loading times! I am dismayed at some of the poor development that occurs these days. Ten years ago, it was PC games developers who would constantly waste development resources by increasing, in crazy amounts, the amount of hard disk space required or the speed of processor required. At the same time, console developers could eke out incredible potential from the limited storage media and chips available to them. With the advent of CD-ROM and now DVD-ROM, we have long grown used to the long loading times. I accept that some might argue that with the incredible increases in processing power available and ever increasing complexity in games, that advances in the technology of read only memory storage media has not kept pace. However, I would say that there are many developers who could, for instance, pre-load game elements at earlier times, when the CPU resources are not at 100% load. They could also make much more effective use of the cache available to them to retain specific operations or recently loaded routines for faster loading at a later time. I don't notice these being used to a great extent. Unless someone invents some new type of solid state mass market and inexpensive media in the near future, then developers are going to have to get on the case, and fast. With DVD only just starting to replace CDs now, it may be some time until this new medium, whatever it might be, is a viable prospect.

That's all for now folks. Unfortunately due to other commitments, you'll only be hearing from me about once per month going forward, but rest assured I will still be discussing the controversial and all that is interesting in the industry today.

Movie Licenses, Game Boy Advance SP, Loading Times and Gaming psychology