(formerly)tangentmind.org

Many who know me will know that I like the game Sam and Max, as well as the characters themselves and the other medias they have appeared in. I was upset when the sequel was cancelled and rejoiced when I heard that telltale games would be developing a new game. The new game is out, but it's episodic, meaning that a shorter game with a shorter story, possibly containing another larger story, will be released at a reduced price once a month or every other month. It is not released yet except on Gametap.

Gametap is a games service where someone pays a fee monthly or anually to play a large library of games. Currently there is a special where you can get two months for $10 or the whole year for $5 a month. Which sounds pretty good except when you realise that if you quit paying, you will never be able to play those games again unless you go out and buy them or start paying again. Also, you can't exactly share your games with others the way you could with a hard copy. I think that two people can be logged in at the same time, so you and a family member or friend could play together, and there are also child accounts which I think the main purpose is to allow children to play with limited privileges but I'm not sure how many can log on at once. You always have to be logged in to play.

I decided I really wanted to play Sam and Max before its global release in November, and it would be nice if I could play it for free. Gametap has a trial period when you sign up where you can play for free for a few weeks and then cancel and not pay anything if you want to quit. This sounded like a hassel but I considered doing it. At worst I would forget to pay and then would have to pay $10 for 2 months of playing time which wouldn't be too bad.

However, I found out there is a limited trial where you can play a limited number of games for 7 days. All you have to do is create a name when signing up and then cancel and a popup shows you the limited trial download. In the limited trial it says that it gives you 5 games to try and you get to choose 4 more. I thought I wasn't going to be able to pick Sam and Max because it says "member exclusive", and at first I don't think I was able to, but later on I was able to download it and play it. I'm not sure if my limited trial is broken or something, but I was able to add 34 games in total, with no restrictions to the "my samples" list.

In the full version the "my samples" list is replaced with "my favorites" and you can select and deselect which ones you want in the list. In my limited trial all of the games I double clicked on to get a closer look at ended up in the my samples list whether I wanted them in there or not. There are many that I do want in there, but I cannot add any more or take any out, so it would have been nice to know that from the beginning. I'm not about to tell gametap because I don't want them to take the games away, even if I've already played and beaten the one I started all this for.

Sam and Max is a pretty good game and would probably be worth the $5-10 a month on it's own(though not being able to replay it if you quit paying is a real bummer), but gametap doesn't just have the games they have an exclusive mini documentary on the life of Sam and Max, they have the original tv shows, and the have other original works too. Also, they have a number of other games that would be worth at least or more than one month of payment too.

Specifically I was excited to see they have Colin Mcrae rally 2005 which I think is probably the most fun rally game out. They have many good adventure games like Beyond Good and Evil and all the Myst games as well as The Last Express(which is awesome and will probably live in infamy as one of the largest commercial failures in video games) and many of the old Sierra games classics. Soon they will also have Myst Uru Online exclusively(but they're price may also raise..we'll see). They also have good games of other genres like pretty much all of the prince of persia games ever except the last one or two. They have marble blast, farcry, serious sam, and vietcong to name a few. There are over 700 games currently and many of them are very good. Some of them are hard to find too. There are tons of kids games.

Possibly, most important about gametap is support for older games. Many games to not age well and it can be difficul if not impossible to get them to play, if you can find them. Gametap should be able to get them to play and offer them up so that others can play them. They are offering support for games that are no longer supported.

There are also lots of videos to watch. There are lots of game tv type videos, some animated tv show type videos, the sam and max videos, and mini documentary type videos. Many of them are pretty good if you like that sort of thing. It's really the only legitimate source for the Sam and Max TV show currently.

There are many good games from the Genesis. There are games from the commodore, dos, game gear, itellivision, master system, neo geo, 32x, arcade, atari, and of course windows. Noticeably lacking are the games from the SNES and NES. I'm not sure if this is some licensing problem with Nintendo or what. Probably. Nintendo can be bastards. They do have tetris, which I think was from nintendo but gametap classifies it as 8-bit instead of nintendo. There are also no games from the Sega CD, which is reasonable since mostly they were just sega games with better sound and would make the downloads much, much larger. But they were sega games with MUCH better sound. They should be on there. Ecco on sega cd was a masterpiece. There are no jaguar games or turbo grafx games either which might not be too bad. Also noticeably lacking are Lucas Arts Adventure games. No Humongous games either. Boo! Many of the series of games are incomplete also. For example Ultima, Might and Magic, Space Quest, and King's Quest only go up to about 5 when there were up to 8 or 9 in each series.

What I think is interesting is that they have dreamcast games. There are only 5, but as far as I know they must have either ported them to windows or emulated them. I don't know if they made their own emulator or what but dreamcast emulation isn't as far along as arcade emulation or the 16 bit or 8 bit system emulation. Also, there are not Sega Saturn games which is interesting, since gametap has many sega games and I know that Sega has their own Saturn Emulator because they bought out some homebrew guys a while back. There are also no playstation games, and playstation 1 games have been pretty well emulated on pc.

Though gametap has a lot of promise and could keep some very happy and busy, there are some things I see as problems. Gametap itself is a bit resource heavy. In order to play games or view videos or do anything gametap must be open. It can take up a lot of memory and page file and hard drive space. A number of processes take a while. There are sometimes long pauses before a game starts, but that could mainly just be the first time it starts. I have also had problems with one of the games not starting and when it did start there were weird sound issues where the sound would cut out then the video and audio would be out of synch(Shadow of Destiny which seems like a pretty good adventure game).

Also, another problem could be bandwidth and download times. Many of the games are very small downloads but some of them are huge. Huge downloads would probably include, all the Myst games, Colin Mcrae, The Last Express, a number of the Adventure games. Pretty much any games with a DVD or more than one cd. The dreamcast games and single cd games are not always too small either. Anyone with dial up should look elsewhere unless they just want to play some really small arcade games, and I wouldn't suggest anyone with a 386 kb broadband connection to download any of the large games unless they want a long wait. I have a 386 kb connection and Colin Mcrae would take something like 14 hours to download. 512kb might do. The videos should play at full quality with that. Anyone with Mb connections might not have anything to worry about but the downloads could still be long and possibly frustrating. Especially if the download doesn't work the first time and you have to redownload it or it dies while downloading.

There are also a lot of games that won't be any fun without good hardware like a 2ghz+ cpu 512mb-1gb of memory and a memory card with at least 64mb and hardware transform and lighting(maybe even shaders).

In short.

The good:
Lots of games, check the list at gametap
They're adding games all the time!
Lots of Kids games, and also child accounts if you have kids
not too expensive, lots of special deals
Sam and Max exclusives!
Uru online exclusives in the future?
The Videos(many exclusive)
support for older games.
multiplayer
Two people can be logged in with the same user name at once(I think)

The bad:
No Lucas Arts Adventures(or other Lucas Arts Games or humongous games)
No SNES, NES, or Sega Saturn games, few dreamcast games. no playstation, n64, ps2 xbox, gamecube , gameboy games etc.
Possible problems with some games
Possible problems downloading or loading games(Game Aquisition failed is a pain)
Long downloads and high bandwidth requirement(and no indication as to which games those are)
High hardware and hard drive space requirements for some games
Always have to be logged in to play
Only two people can be logged in at the same time on the same user name(I think)
can't play games after you quit paying.
Sam and Max teaser videos have many spoilers.
Can't use any patches or hacks, e.g. widescreen hacks(see explanation below)

I think that just about covers everything. I'm just happy I got to play Sam and Max

edit: changed some info

edit2: I did a little checking and I think 3 out of 5 of the dreamcast games may have pc ports(which are worse than their DC c\counterparts), so those games could very well be the (crappy) PC version, but I can't account for the other 2.

edit3: I'm having technical issues with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time now. The game takes forever to start, which I think is normal. In game the music will cut out, and I'm not sure if that's normal or not but I don't think it is. Also, one of the prerendered cut scenes kept freezing up, and eventually I was able to kill it but I didn't get to see the cut scene. Afterwards real time cut scene had no music and it would slow down like every thing was in slow motion so it took forever to get through that cut scene too. After I beat the short game sequence the game died. That is technical issues with 2 out of 2 of the windows games I have tried so far. The games seem to be incredibly compressed as well, because I think the sands of time only takes up 291MB. This could account for the long startup time and I wonder if any of the game has been compromised in any way. I tried playing the game again and it got to the same cutscene I had problems with, and instead of doing anything weird it just died and gave me the same error to "see the readme.txt" which I can't do because gametap has it.

Edit 4: Gametap just added some Castlevania games, Contra, and Serious Sam II. Serious Sam II is a very new game. Also added that they were adding new games to gametap in the pros. The problems I've been having with the windows games could have been caused by problems I had when downloading. They could also have something to do with my version of gametap being limited. It's hard to want a gametap subscription, or the suggest it for others, when the games don't work though. edit edit: Silent Hill 2 was also added as well as some other games. 9 total, I think. Edit edit edit: Which interestingly moved my total of "my samples" games up to 42 from 34. Not the ones that were added, and not any good ones. I think they were just weird games I was looking at earlier. Neo Geo games mostly. Gametap has a lot of fighting games blegh.

Edit 5: I forgot to mention that gametap has the first 4 heroes of might and might games, which is nice. Added a con about sam and max teaser videos.

Edit 6: Seems as though Sam and Max: Culture Shock has been taken out of my "My Samples" list and if I look at it's info the games' "get the game" button is highlighted instead of "play now" even though I already have the game downloaded. If I click on "get the game" I get the usual pop up telling me to become a member. I guess that free ride is over.

I e-mailed gametap tech support about the problems I've been having with some of their windows games and the problems with the downloading of larger games and they told me to updated my video card drivers. After responding and basically telling them that was ridiculous, since my drivers are relatively current, they told me to call tech support on the phone. I haven't done it but I have a feeling a would just get the same lines about things like updating drivers and reducing resolutions and reducing sound acceleration, restarting the computer, and things like that. They might tell me to redownload the games that take 4-8 hours to download and they might just tell me they can't help me because I'm a limited trial user. I don't really feel like going through all that when it's their buggy software that's causing the problem. I could very well get competent technical support that solves all my problems, but I'm not sure I want to deal with it.

Also, another con as far as playing games on gametap goes is that you can't use patches or hacks and things like that. For example, you usually don't have access to the ini scripts to do things like change a game that didn't initially support widescreen to the support widescreen, and that's pretty much the only way to get widescreen in most games.

For those interested in Wal-Mart's $4 generic prescription drug plan, there is info here.
That is is basically a propoganda website for wal-mart, as far as I can tell but they have a pdf file of all the $4 prescription drugs available. The pdf is probably duplicated elsewhere, and I'm sure it has a hard form in the stores.

None of the drugs I know to be expensive are on there. The only alergy medicine on there is loratadine, which can be found over the counter for cheaper but usually it's more. Claritin, Alavert, and even the Equate kind is usually more expensive than $4 for 30. If you are careful and read labels instead of brands, you might be able to find one cheaper though. The one I found that was cheaper simply said Loratadine on the package. I don't remember how much cheaper it was but not having to go to the doctor to get a prescription makes it considerably cheaper, either way you look at it. For those taking claritin D or Alavert D, you can probably just get some nasal decongestant(drugs psuedoephedrine, behind the counter, or phenylephrine HCL) and save considerably. After the loratadine blocks the histamines you shouldn't really need a decongestant any more anyway.

I'm unfamiliar with many of the drugs but the ones I do know are all drugs that have been around for a while and are not particularly expensive. Many doctors today tend to push the latest and most expensive drugs too. Noticeably lacking from the list are Birth Control Pills(sorry ladies) and Attention Deficit medicine. There are still a lot of drugs on the list though, and I'm sure it will save a number of people some money. Make sure that you get the actual name of the drug to compare and not the brand name.

Edit: I googled some of the names on the list and so far the only one I've really recognized is Fluoxetine, which is Prozac. Also, the best way to found out about a drug, might be to find the wikipedia page for the kind of drug or the wikipedia for the drug itself. For example, here you can find everything you ever wanted to know about antidepressants.

Also, after research antidressants this makes me wonder. Could mood disorder drugs being robbing the next generation of good artists and musicians and other artistic people? Would artists of the past have made the same great works if they had the same drugs back then? On the flip side, would they have made even more or greater works? I think that's something interesting to ponder.