Sony Hawk's Under-the-covers-with-Playstation Ground

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I'm sticking by my theory that to properly tell the story of just the 8-bit years and earlier, from Spacewar! to Odyssey to Atari to NES with all of that era's consoles in between, would take anywhere from 8 to 13 hour-long episodes, leaning strongly toward 13.

As long as everyone keeps sticking to 90 minute one-off specials, there'll never be room for the whole story.

[AB Positive]

I'm sticking by my theory that to properly tell the story of just the 8-bit years and earlier, from Spacewar! to Odyssey to Atari to NES with all of that era's consoles in between, would take anywhere from 8 to 13 hour-long episodes, leaning strongly toward 13.

As long as everyone keeps sticking to 90 minute one-off specials, there'll never be room for the whole story.

We need to do this. With our knowledge, and perhaps a funding grant from PBS or a government agency, we could do it real, couldn't we? I mean, we have people that are as close to be 'experts' in the field as we're going to get without having worked in the VG companies themselves (and in some cases they have worked in the companies)... I mean, crap. If the government can give 100,000 samoleans to a group documenting the sex life of the american earthworm and making a 24-episode epic from it, we could get something going, right?


C'mon, who's with me?

-AG

[esquire]

well if the show or station? is owned by sony, i guess they can say whatever they want on it ... would u make urself look bad on ur own show?... NO u would make the other company look bad... also u cant blame Tony Hawk for anything.. its not like he wrote up the show.

No, actually they can't say whatever they want. There is a thing called "slander" which prevents you from stating known (or with a reckless disregard to the truth) falsehoods about an individual (or business) to third parties. Now granted, Sega doesn't make the Saturn anymore, however, they could argue that such falsehoods hurt their business relationships with console makers as they still design software. That my friend is business slander and/or tortiuous interference with a business relationship. Sony cannot do that unless they want to pay Sega money damages.

[esquire]

I saw some of the show but it lost credibility when it started glossing over details, getting info incorrect and such...you know what i did?


I changed the channel.

Good point. If you don't like it change the channel. Just like if you are tired of hearing all the rants against Sony, go to another topic and don't respond. There is a small problem with that logic. As educated gamers, we know crap when we see it, so we can change the channel. What about Joe Blow that doesn't know whether the program is nothing more than an infomercial for Sony? I think if you are going to present a program as a documentary on the history of certain consoles, you should be unbiased and at the very least truthful so that those who don't know better will things as they truly are.

[ManekiNeko]

well if the show or station? is owned by sony, i guess they can say whatever they want on it ... would u make urself look bad on ur own show?... NO u would make the other company look bad... also u cant blame Tony Hawk for anything.. its not like he wrote up the show.

No, actually they can't say whatever they want. There is a thing called "slander" which prevents you from stating known (or with a reckless disregard to the truth) falsehoods about an individual (or business) to third parties. Now granted, Sega doesn't make the Saturn anymore, however, they could argue that such falsehoods hurt their business relationships with console makers as they still design software. That my friend is business slander and/or tortiuous interference with a business relationship. Sony cannot do that unless they want to pay Sega money damages.

That would be so awesome if Sega sued for slander. Of course, I doubt that would actually happen, as it would endanger their licensing agreement. Maybe they could just sue Liberty Media instead... they own the other half of the network.

JR

[Garry Silljo]

I think people are focusing too much on the anti-Sony part of this thread. To me this wans't just another "Sony sucks" thread. This was a "hey look a company blatantly misrepresented facts" thread. People are too quick to defend the act because of the degree of bashing Sony has been subjected to recently. The difference here is that this isn't an opinion matter like in other threads. In this case people witnessed Sony trying to make there system look better than the competitions, by compating one of the games on their system, to one that ISN'T on the competitions?!?!?! Like sony, Hate Sony, we're not talking about that now. Let's talk about whether or not we like being lied to. That's what happened here. Let's not bring the other anti-sony threads into this.

[Captain Wrong]

While I understand what you're saying, some of us have been addressing that as well. I believe Lady Jaye summed it up pretty nicely. And as I said earlier I really don't think anyone who is seriously interested in games is going to take this one show as gospel.

And you're going to have a really hard time convincing me that if a different company was the one in the position to bend things like it seems Sony has done in this case, there would be even a fraction of the "outrage". Right now, Sony is the guy everyone loves to hate and if you so much as suggest another company a made a mistake once, half the board dogpiles on who ever said it.

Like esquire said, as an educated gamer, I know crap when I see it and the Sony bashing, which is at the base of this conversation, is based on some pretty historically shortsighted views and a failry blind eye to the way that the market works here in the US. It's not the Sony bashing that gets me as it is the fact that people who should know better seem to think Sony is the first and only company to do stuff like this. For some reason it's ok that others have done it (and probably would again if they were in a position to do so) but Sony does it and they're "the worst thing to happen to games."

And the other thing, for me, is that it seems like negative Sony topics are the new negative Gamestop/EB topics. I swear, it feels like there's a new one every other day and what do they accomplish? Not a damn thing.

Sigh. What's the point? Logic never has a place in discussions like these. OK, this time I really am done.

[tynstar]

I dont like Sony but I do not spend a lot of time bashing them on message boards. We all know you hate Sony ManekiNeko but is bashing them here hurting them at all?

If you want to get at them then when people ask "What system should I buy?" Tell them X-Box of GameCube. I have done that a lot. Plus when I worked part time at Gamestop I never recommended the PS2 unless they where a RPG fan. I have had complete strangers ask me about game systems in different retail store and I always tell them to get an X-Box or GameCube.

[Kid Ice]

Sounds like an honest mistake to me.

[GamecubeFreek]

I have seen the documentary twice now (i taped it), and I loved the first half. However, the fact that they basically skipped over everything from 8 to 32 bit except for PCs really got me mad. And the one line about Dreamcast -"and it bombed" also got me upset. And the only acknowledgement of Gamecube was that it was launched alongside XBOX AND PLAYSTATION! also got me upset. But whatever, the first fourty five minutes are probably the best documentation of early game history we will ever see made for tv.

[brykasch]

I don't think people would have been so anti nintendo back then as people are against Sony now. There are alot of things Sony does that jsut puzzle me to know end. Plus the blind fanboyism of some owners is incredible. I can see Liking the one system you have, but to not be able to admit that any game is good on another system or looks better, thats just stupid. not to mention Sony's bit of using units shipped instead of units sold to inflate their numbers.

NOA was restrictive on titles, and a little asinine sometimes on censoring things, but the also made great games. You never had a problem with a NES or SNES system breaking. Hell they never really bothered to go against competitor's in ads till Sega started whoopin up on em.

[RJ]

I liked it- I thought it was interesting, entertaining, & informative. Most gamers know just about everything they presented, although they glossed over some stuff, & blatantly omitted others, but generally that's how the average person sees it- they know the bigger names (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc) & most likely don't know Astrovision, Channel F, Vectrex, etc.
I liked that they actually interviewed the industry names & authors, rather than paraphrasing them over still pics. I appreciate nearly any show about gaming- this was one of the better ones.

And why not Tony Hawk? Who SHOULD have hosted? Howard Stern? Laura Bush?? Santa Claus???

[sisko]

And the one line about Dreamcast -"and it bombed" also got me upset.

I forgot about that line, and it pretty well cheesed me off too. The NGage bombed. The R-Zone bombed. The Virtual Boy bombed. The Dreamcast did not bomb.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sony Hawk? Goodness, after reading that I think you're onto something o_O