Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with videogame

How to auto select loop in audio track?

lmm — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:36:02 -0800

Any way of automatically selecting an audio loop in Audacity or some other app? I have a bunch of video game tracks (NES/SNES) that loop (obviously) but the tracks I have don't end at the loop's end (and they also fade out at the end). I would like to loop these tracks. But this is hard. These tracks are really good but I fear that once I'm done with the tracks I won't want to listen to them anymore.

So, I'm thinking it would save a lot of time if there was an quick way to get a rough cut of where the loop in the track is and just go from there.

I've used Audacity a little to cut and join. Commercial software suggestions could be good as a future reference but I'd prefer free.

Too niche for the hive mind?

Baldons — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:52:11 -0800

Recommendations for "let's play videogame X" videos? I'm enjoying some of the "let's play" videos on youtube - it's like movie commentaries on dvd, but for videogame playthroughs. It can be fun! This is good, for example - first timers doing Gunstar Heroes, not knowing one thing about it, discovering things. Do you have recommendations about interesting, funny, outrageous, surprising "let's play videogame X" videos?

What was the name of this video game?

Babblesort — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:58:25 -0800

Help me remember the name of this PC video game... I played this game in late 90s I think. It was sort of a FPS. You played as a weird little creature that had kind of flying squirrel arm-wings you could snap out and use to glide for long distances. You couldn't actually fly. I recall a lot of the scenery being very shiny-surreal-inside an alien world-ish.

I think it had a one word name. One word with three letters maybe. I've been trying to dig this name out of my head or google for a few weeks and I can't come up with it. Any ideas?

But will it game?

askmehow — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:17:23 -0800

Will my developer laptop be able to handle the current crop of RPG games? Specs after the jump I'm interested in getting back into computer gaming. I'm thinking about Fallout 3 and Dragon Age Origins. I've got a beefy laptop, with a poor gfx card, and I'm wondering if it will be able handle the games I'm interested in:

Windows 7 64
8gb RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 370M (256MB)

If that's not going to be able to handle these games, any recommendations on immersive RPGs that aren't twitchy that I can play on this?

thanks,
jt

I'm not a hippy, but I game like one.

soelo — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:37:24 -0800

Is there a browser based Civilization clone that's any good? shmegegge asked it first on the blue, but I'm asking it here =)
I loved Civ2 the most, and I currently play KOL, AdventureQuest and Cities (RPGs, but mentioned to give you an idea of what I like). What I don't like is being forced to duel other players or protect my land from them. I only wanna fight the game!

And it doesn't have the be a civ clone as much as have building and research be a big part of the game play. Facebook games are good, too.

PS3 franchises with story but little backstory?

Riki tiki — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:01:21 -0800

What video game franchises in the current generation would be good to pick up for the first time? I like games with a decent focus on story or lore. I just bought a PS3 and am looking to build up my library a bit. Problem is, I look around and see a lot of those types of games with large numbers at the end of their titles... Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4. Not having played the earlier titles in these series, I'm hesitant to buy them for fear that the plot will make little to no sense to me or that I'll end up with a cruddy cash-in sequel that only appeals to people who had their minds blown by the early entries.

Which franchises justify that fear and which don't? Of the ones that have a rolling storyline, do the earlier games hold up well enough to be worth playing now (and would I be able to play them on a new PS3)?

The above were just examples, I'm open to any other franchises you can think of. Also feel free to assume a fairly loose definition of "story", I just mean it to exclude franchises where the plot is just a flimsy framework to justify the gameplay, like Street Fighter.

(also no need to talk about the following: Fallout 3, Oblivion, GTAIV, or the Final Fantasy series)

Find me a sandbox to dig in

rikschell — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:51:36 -0800

I love Sid Meier's Pirates! I loved the original back in the '80s, and I love the remake even more. What other games might I love? I like sandbox games in general, but this one has a lot of action and adventure, and the historical setting is very atmospheric. The violence is minimized/stylized (I'm not interested in GTA-type gangbanging), but there are plenty of choices on how to play and what to do.

I find myself wishing there was a game where I could be an explorer (a remake of Seven Cities of Gold!) or a knight or something. No RTS or God games.

I haven't been up on gaming in about 20 years, though I've played various Dooms and Quakes and stuff. I spent a long time having only Macs, which didn't help. Now I have a netbook, which means I can run older PC games pretty well. New, not so much. I don't care about vintage. Story is not what I'm looking for (I started Deus Ex once, but didn't feel like I could give it its due). Free play, like the classic games I've already mentioned, plus maybe Elite (but faster paced) and Wasteland (though that gets a little too RPG-y). I've tried just playing the old games emulated, but they don't always work too well, and after seeing how great the Pirates! remake came out, I want more like this...

Best (association) football game for the xbox 360?

pompomtom — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:00:26 -0800

Best (association) football game for the xbox 360? I used to enjoy the FIFA games on the original xbox, but the last one I got (08, probably...) sucked. I could never get a cross working, and the whole thing came down to a tiny amount of passing and a lot of trying to outrun people.

I've heard good things about Pro Evo Soccer, but years back, and there are new versions of everything.

So what's the best football game for the Xbox 360? Something which allows me to use recognisable players (Australian teams a huge plus), but also allows me to get the little guys to play football far better than if I just went outside and did it in the real world.

I'd love to see this game again!

jordanlewis — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:22:38 -0800

Old-mac-game-filter: please help me rediscover an odd shareware game that I once played on the classic mac platform! This was probably between 7 and 10 years ago. Here's what I remember about the game:

It involved long, lore-filled conversations with some sort of mystic or prophet. It was possibly the protagonist's father.

The character you played was somehow in a digital, abstracted-inside-of-a-computer world. He wasn't a human. There were many references to pixels and bits, and at one point your character is forced to jump into a blue, pixelly "bitstream".

It was primarily a puzzle game. I don't remember the nature of the puzzles too well, but I believe that one of them involved transforming a word into another by changing only 1 letter at once. There was also a maze involved, somehow.

There was an overview map that you used to travel from one area/puzzle to the next, a la Super Mario Bros.

It was shareware, I didn't buy it, and the locked version didn't let you complete the story. I played the free part many times.

It had beautiful, pixelly art.

Can you help me? I know I haven't provided many details, but perhaps one of you has also played this game and knows what I'm talking about.

THE Game, you just lost it.

cobain_angel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:53:07 -0800

Help me find the perfect videogame for my boyfriend. My boyfriend's birthday is coming up. Recently, we were talking about his neverending quest for the perfect videogame, and I realized that would be a great present to give him. However, I cannot find a game tailored to his specifications. Below, his closest matches, in his words, and why they are not quite what he's looking for:

"The Sims 2 is pretty close, but it gets pointless pretty fast, and I get bogged down in making pretty things. 4x4 Evolution is another good one, very open-ended with good development, but I've played all it has to offer many times over. Also I get bogged down making stuff for that, but it's usually not supposed to be pretty. XD
EV Override is also a close one, but it's gotten tedious and it doesn't run natively in OS X. Starcraft is kind of good, but the pace isn't quite right for me. It's not open-ended, you're not really reaching for any kind of a goal. The missions are too long to be just little pieces of the progression, but too short to be a long-term commitment. It's very scripted and unforgiving.
Runescape is too simple and kind of pointless. Everything is too organized, like the system of weapons and armor. There aren't any real goals once you've finished all the quests, but the quests are too tedious and difficult when you're doing them. After that, all you can really do is try to level up and get rich.
So I want a game that's open-ended, with an ability to set goals. I'm really big on gradually gaining items and abilities, but in a way of my choosing rather than a strict ordered progression. Driving games are cool, but don't allow for too much creativity. Multiplayer can be cool, but I don't really prefer one way over the other. So I want a game that's semi-sandbox, but still has a steady gain of items/powers/money to buy said items or powers."

The things that come to mind with these descriptions are Spore and WoW. He's nearly done with Spore, and WoW doesn't really interest him. I'm not a gamer, so I'm not very well-versed in games like this. What does the hivemind suggest?

PS. The boyfriend has a Mac, a Wii, a PSP, and I think he might have an Xbox tucked in there somewhere.

Nintendo Sound Effects

DMan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:50:26 -0800

Nintendo sound effects: How did Nintendo get the sounds for some of the characters in Mario Kart Wii? Is there a person out there who sounds like Yoshi? As I was playing Mario Kart Wii tonight, I realized that some of the characters are relatively normal...Mario and Luigi could easily just be regular people with a few vocal effects, and I'm sure we all know someone who sounds like Donkey Kong. But some of them are really weird--like King Boo...obviously that isn't a human, but is it just some kind of digital effect or an object in the real world? I'm especially interested in Yoshi because that one is right on the edge of it being plausible that it's a person.

I'm aware of Foley Artists and the idea that most sound effects are really just mundane objects being manipulated and recorded on tape. Is something similar at play here, or do real people voice cartoonish video game characters?

What is the name of this old playstation game?

FireStyle — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:23:03 -0800

I'm trying to find this old playstation 1 game... it was an action shooter game which used a third person overhead camera (well slightly angled, i forget the name of this angle). There were two guys, one in a red suit and another in a blue suit. The distinctive feature of this game was the cutscenes used live action video which for its time was very cool. only thing is i can't remember for the life of me the title. if anyone here knows the game, i'd forever be in your debt!

One Man's Account of playing Solitaire blindfolded

subbes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:41:38 -0800

Looking for good blogs, sites, or articles about video game playthroughs. The post about Homeless Sims led me into the world of video game playthrough blogs, and I would like to see more. However I can't seem to find any good ones, or maybe I have the wrong search terms for my google.

I would prefer playthroughs that are well-written, humorous, and accessible to those who don't own the game. Text is very much preferred to video. I especially like ones where an external limit or objective is placed on the gameplay.

Examples from the post:
Living in Oblivion: making it through Oblivion like an NPC
Galactic Civilization Playthrough and Second Galactic Civilization Playthrough

Where to start with Dynasty Warriors?

nadawi — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:17:13 -0800

Which Dynasty Warrior titles are thought to be standouts in the series? In a line of games that are largely thought to suffer from sameness - it's hard to figure out where i should start. i've read the wikipedia and metacritic pages, but they seem to be written for people in the know already.

i'm personally more interested in the real time strategy parts, but i'm also looking forward to the hacking and slashing. it seems from what i've been able to gleam that 4 is a high point and 6 changes some things. There's also all the spinoffs which i can't make head nor tails of. it would seem that a game of this scale would be helped by the current generation, but i don't mind going back a generation in graphics if the gameplay is better.

fwiw - i have a ps2 and a 360 (and a shitton of other consoles that don't pertain to this discussion - but feel free to suggest other games in the same vein)

Please help me remember a videogame from my childhood

SpacemanStix — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:23:54 -0800

I'm trying to remember the name of a video game I played in the late 80's or early 90's. I can't seem to find it with all of my searching in game archives around the net. I spent many hours and an inordinate numbers of quarters on it, and I'd love to find it again.

It was an arcade space shooter, and although technically more advanced and came out later, it's like Time Pilot in terms of being able to fly in any direction while watching from an overhead position. The game was divided up into a number of stages, about six or seven, in which the underground terrain changed distinctly for each one.

A few things that I remember about the game:

1. The game had a radar of sorts in the lower right corner that was broken up into square quadrants (I think a 5x5 grid), and each quadrant had a number in it that designated how many "tank" type ships were in that area. These enemies didn't move, and you had to go into that area to kill them. In addition to these tank enemies, there were also free-roaming ships that usually traveled in groups that were trying to take you out pretty much wherever you went.

2. You would get weapon upgrade tokens when you killed the tank-like ships mentioned above, and also groups of the free-roaming baddies. You could incrementally increase the power of your weapon. One weapon in particular that I remember: when you shot it, it was a horizontal pulse made up of a number of rings side by side.

3. Each stage ended with a boss that was very large, and generally took up the entire screen. You'd fight it after clearing the stage of all bad guys.

4. The second stage was very distinct, in that even though it was a space shooter, it was over a planet terrain that looked like canyons (all the rest were space-age cities and such). The end boss was a squarish ship that was the size of the entire screen and enclosed your ship by surrounding it with the four borders of the ship. The way to beat this boss was by shooting out the four diagonal corners, while avoiding bullets that were coming at you within the enclosure.

I know this sounds like a pretty generic description of most every space shooter ever made, but I'm hoping that if you played it, you might recognize the details. Thanks!

Game engine software design resources

demiurge — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:49:06 -0800

I consider myself a competent programmer, but I need to do some software design and so I am looking for some resources. Do you have any advice for what to do when designing a game engine? I am designing a revision of a surgical simulation system that functions very much like a game. My first version gets the job done, but it is getting more and more difficult to debug and add features to. I'm in a position to rewrite the system, but I want to try to avoid the problems I'm having now with a solid design but add features like scripting to make the system more easily extensible.

Since my system is very much like a game engine (real-time I/O, graphics), I'm looking for any advice on articles or books that may have been helpful to someone in my position.

Help needed beating a mission in SimCity Creator

ND¢ — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:59:20 -0800

I am playing SimCity Creator on the Wii and I am stuck on a certain mission and I have been for days and I can't figure out what to do and I know that there are people in the world with actual problems, but here we are. The mission is called "Much Loved Mayor" and I have googled it and found a couple of people asking questions about it, but no actual answers, and the game does not appear to have a walkthrough (I don't think it is very popular).

A previous mission had a stupid random trick that you had to do in order to win and I am worried that this one does too because I have been playing it for days and can't beat it. I have done everything I am supposed to: every part of the city has electricity and water, I have rezoned almost all of it to high density residential, taxes are low, I have built the statue of the mayor. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong and the answer just does not appear to be online and so I turn to AskMetafilter as my last hope. If you have played this game and this mission and can tell me how to beat it I would really appreciate it.

Sticky Fingers

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:20:18 -0800

How can I fix sticky keys on a Guitar Hero controller? One of the "fret" keys on the guitar's neck is sticky, which makes playing anything more than quarter notes a bit challenging. Sometimes pressing the key on one side is easier than the other side (except that the "other side" is the side I am more comfortable hitting when I'm rockin' my solos).

Please avoid "search Google" or linking to Google results, as the advice there is not very helpful ("don't play songs with that key", "buy more RAM", etc.). I'd obviously appreciate advice from people who have firsthand advice for maintaining one. Thanks!

help me get security tags off this video game

sammich — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:22:12 -0800

short of a dremel, whats the best way to open the security case of an xbox game i just got from circuit city? so i bought an xbox game during the circuit city weekend liquidation. last night when i decided to open it, i found out that they forgot to take the plastic security box case off the game. i can't go back to circuit city since they're closed for good.

i found a product description of the box here:
http://www.halometric.com/web/home/index.php?pid=24&id=37

this is similar to another askmefi post. the product description says that there is a magnetic latch and i see it but this case is completely translucent except for a small, thin silver strip flap on the bottom (it's not like what's pictured). I guess could be the magnet but none of the magnets i have around do anything to it. I dont even know which way it should shift to open.

i'm going to borrow a dremel if i can't figure it out.

Name the video game with One-Two-ThreeEE!

Wild_Eep — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:06:27 -0800

Name-that-ancient-video-game-filter: Which game had a somewhat synthesized voice saying "One...Two...threeeEEEE!" It may or may not have been wrestling related, but I'm pretty sure it was a referee. The sound was heavily compressed (but not quite as bad as "Double Dribble's" splash screen.) Could have been any era from NES to present. It's not 'Pro Wrestling' for NES.

The voice pitched-up at the end of "ThreeeEE"... not like a question, but more like someone saying "Whee!" while excited.

Don't make me lie to a kid fer cryin out loud

shothotbot — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:04:14 -0800

Are there any arcades in NYC? My daughter loves the video games in the lobbies of movie theaters and I promised to take her to an arcade. Um, are there any in NYC? I heard about Barcade but she is only five. One that had Pacman and one of those awful use-the-claw-to-grab-the-doll games would be perfect.

Mac Gaming Suggestions?

jammy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:29:05 -0800

MacGameFilter: Please help me find a new action/adventure game to play on my iMac. I don't care if it's recent or older - just that it has good gameplay.

Games I have liked: Deus Ex, Halo, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament, Quake 1-3, Doom 1-3. Also, a long time ago I played Myst briefly while housesitting & remember it as interesting.

So, some kinda FPS/RPG, maybe flavored with either scifi or fantasy motifs (though that's not really necessary), maybe some puzzle-solving... something like that? I do like a good story...

I'd prefer something that has a good single-player mode. I'm not much for multiplayer.

iMac G5, OS 10.3.9 - 11gb currently available

Old Play-By-Email space-strategy-war-game: what was its name?

Balna Watya — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:01:50 -0800

Old Play-By-Email space-strategy-war-game: what was its name? Back in the late 80's or early 90's, I played a space strategy PBEM game. There was a 100+ page manual that you would use to write orders for your units, with the orders themselves being long strings of numeric codes (like the unit number, then the order number, then the star system to go to, etc.). Games were large (dozens of players), and cost a few bucks per turn. The tech tree was very indepth, and had technology trees for spying, trading, building weapons, compressing gas giants, and dozens of other fields. I think there were also player corporations and a galactic UN, as well as Elder worlds left over from those who had gone before. In general, the game was very dense, with various complex formulas for production, planet morale, etc. In particular, I remember that when you received your turn back, there were funny quotes at the top of the turn files.

Does anyone know the name of this game? Sorry for bothering the hivemind about this, but I'm googled out and it's driving me crazy.

Should have stuck to eating paste.

Ambrosia Voyeur — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:30:09 -0800

Help name the first computer game I ever played. In preschool. Circa 1985. A few sketchy memories inside. I think it was in color.

I think it was played on a computer whose form factor featured the disk drive situated beneath the monitor.

I know it featured canals, as in those of Venice. Waterways surrounding buildings.

I think the objective was to either situate your crocodile in the canal below a window from which a hippopotamus would jump, or maybe to avoid this happening. Maybe it was a gondola and I thought gondolas were crocodiles.

It's entirely possible that there were other stages and I just never got to them. I don't recall being too adept at the gameplay.

That's it.

The things we Ask MeFi for our kids...

Andrhia — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:32:42 -0800

How do you get garnets in the TinkerBell DS game? My daughter is stuck on the game before her first winter. Bring garnets, says the Minister of Autumn. But... we can't find garnets. I've looked around for a walkthrough and found a helpful guide at GameFAQs, but it doesn't actually seem to help in our situation.

We can't jewel hunt with Iridessa -- she won't do anything but chat with us (even after several days since playing last). We haven't yet brought in our first winter so we don't have Vidia to race; and we don't have Fairy Mary to hand out darts, either.

Are we missing something really obvious? I mean, this is supposed to be a game a 6-year-old could manage on her own, right?

This is so embarrassing.