Comments on: EZi Entertainment Zone

By: epredator

epredator — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:04:37 +0000

I have gone even more retro with Winkles Wedding

By: Si Lumb

Si Lumb — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:09:59 +0000

Awesome! Can you bring it in to work one day? I’d love to play you at something!

By: David Thair

David Thair — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:48:32 +0000

Careful with the steps you take into cheap console gaming reviews, Roo. Stuart Ashen has got in way over his head and now reviews all kinds of tat.

By: Andy Piper

Andy Piper — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:02:13 +0000

The console itself reminds me far more of the SNES than a Wii? That bowling game is pretty funny – definitely Wii-inspired… looks like there’s a lot of variation in the style and quality / graphical effort put into the games. Hope you can inspire some more contributors to the wiki… I have to say, I won’t be one of them :-)

By: Roo

Roo — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:58:51 +0000

is the motion control really that bad (i.e. a binary “upright or not upright” level of motion detection)?

Well, it could be a very crude accelerometer of some sort. Brief experimentation suggests that it’s triggered, sometimes, by being shaken quite hard. :-) Of course, it’s not helped by ponderous delays in the gameplay. I’ll try to do a game-play video of baseball soon, to show how painful it is. I’ll also take one of the controllers apart to show the innards to help work out whether it’s actually an accelerometer or some sort of mercury switch.

By: bob_d

bob_d — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:04:07 +0000

I’m fascinated by this system; mostly I’m amazed that something like this would even exist these days.
I was previously joking when I mentioned mercury switches – is the motion control really that bad (i.e. a binary “upright or not upright” level of motion detection)? I know the silicon-chip based accelerometers used by the Wii are only six dollars apiece – I could imagine a lower quality chip being used with some really crap handling of the input by the system would result in a control system significantly inferior to the Wii.

By: Michael Rowe

Michael Rowe — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:07:19 +0000

Roo, too funny. A few years back I received an Atari console as a gift. The idea was there were about 80 games on it (all your Atari favorites) and you could relieve the joy of the old games. Well I must say, I never had an Atari as a kid, I had various computers, ending with a C64 before I went to PCs, and I didn’t miss any of these old games. Yes I used to play them at friends’ houses, but kinda glad I didn’t shell out the big bucks back then.

Today I downloaded a Commodore 64 Game emulator for my iPhone, only $4.99, and even though the games on it are not good, I can see a much better buy in the long run when Load Runner and Battle Chess come to my iPhone (I Hope).

Michael