Month: August 2007

Dreamcast Mania!: What did we miss? – Capcom VS SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001

by

What happened – I don’t actually remember if there were even rumors of Capcom VS SNK 2 coming to American Dreamcasts, but considering we got the first game, it seems likely that there were. CVS2 would hit the Dreamcast, but only in Japan. In my experience it was one of the most widely imported titles in the West, to the point where some DC groups talk about it like it was a regular release.

The Game – If there is one thing Capcom’s massive library of fighters has taught us, it is that they never did get it right the first time. The first iteration always comes with its share of problems, while the final revision is often tweaked and polished to perfection. It happened with Street Fighter 2 and 3, it happened with Darkstalkers, and it happened with Capcom VS SNK. →  Silent Post 2

We can’t really be this stupid

by

ReggieHatesYou

When my fiancee tells her friends that she’s engaged to a fairly devoted gamer she is almost universally met with reticence; those ‘I feel sorry for you’ little smiles, vacant head bobs and the ubiquitous ‘oh… that’s, um, cool’.

This is because, even though G4 Tech TV, Spike and the Sci-Fi channel would have you believe otherwise, we are not mainstream. Realize that even though you know more gamers today than you ever have in your life, the majority of our country still asks if we use Nintendo Tapes(???) for our xBoxen. We are gaining momentum, yes. Our industry is becoming a huge cash generator and more people than ever are joining the cause, but we’re not at the point just yet where more than 10% of the populace doesn’t think of us as basement dwelling dweebs. →  Post of Tsushima

Review – Halo 2 Vista

by

Is Halo 2 for Windows Vista Worth Your Hard Earned Cash?

If you’re reading this (which you clearly are) I assume that you fall into one of two categories:

1. You are thinking of re-buying your favorite XBOX game for the PC and are wondering if $50 for a three year old game that you already have might be worth it.

2. You want to get a well detailed laugh at the people in category #1.

So, sure, I’ll save you some precious expending of your literacy skill and humor you with the summary of this review: Of course not.

But you already knew that. Unless you suffer from chronic short term memory, and frequent Books-A-Million every ten minutes to pick up your copy of Teen People, you don’t need me to tell you not to buy things that you already bought. →  Apply directly to the forehead.

Dreamcast Mania! – EA

by

In my development of articles for Dreamcast Mania!, one theme has come up quite a lot – the lack of support from major companies like EA, Square and Konami greatly injured the Dreamcast’s chances of success. I agree that it certainly wasn’t a good thing, and I certainly agree that missing support from companies like Square and Enix in Japan was very close to receiving a death note. But when it comes to good ol’ Electronic Arts, I’m not so certain.

Hear me out with this one – the Dreamcast was released here in 1999. It died in 2001. 2001 is also the first year of Madden on the Playstation 2. Maybe my memory is foggy, but I remember that during the years of the original Playstation, it was NFL Gameday that was the big football game in town, while Madden was fairly shoddy. →  Now bear my arctic post.

Metroid == Aliens

by

Many people may not know this, but the Metroid franchise is basically the video game version of the Alien movies. There are many subtle similarities between the two that only the trained eye would notice. I’ve seen a few tidbits of info on the Internets, but most are incomplete, or haven’t been updated since Super Metroid. So, in order to right this wrong, I’ve compiled a short list of all the major ties between the two franchises. This is some real investigative journalism here people. This kind of stuff doesn’t come around too often, so pay attention.

1. The names of the alien creatures’ homes. In Metroid, the home world is SR-388. In Aliens, it’s LV-426. Two letters followed by 3 numbers.

2. Main character is a female lead. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character is one of the first strong female characters in action movie history. →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Kotaku suggests you buy a shirt

by

From their sponsor. I assumed this shameless plug would be met with boos and hisses from commentors, but instead readers were content with discussing the merits of the t-shirt. At least they realized it was stupid and unfunny.

Blogs are a powerful tool for marketers because unlike “objective” journalists, bloggers want readers to want to be their friends. Just between the two of us, let me tell you a secret – Huggies makes the best diapers. This reminds me of the days of Cousin Brucie on the oldies station. As a child, I was always confused when he would take a break from announcing the next song in order to tell us about a sale at Rockaway Bedding, or explain that Dr. Zizmore was THE dermatologist in NYC. Just as I trusted the Cous, Kotaku readers trust Mark Wilson. →  [link only works on even seconds]

A death in the family – Sega leaves the hardware business and I rediscover video games

by

Towards the end of highschool I stopped gaming. For the first time, I had a girlfriend, was preparing to go to college, and had a wicked meth habit. Beyond these time wasting activities, something about video games seemed to have changed. Though I had been a Sega faithful since the Master System, my highschool days marked the first console generation I spent in bed with a Sega competitor. I loved the PS1, but it didn’t carry me through to the PS2 by any means.
More fun than games?

I don’t even remember the launch of the Dreamcast. Murmurs of Sega’s new system made their way through school but I knew it was destined to failure and didn’t have the time to care. Freshman and sophomore years of college were spent playing Diablo 2 with roommates, hanging out, surfing the web and strung out on heroin. →  Welcome to the Fantasy Zone.

Requiem for a Dreamcast

by

I used to think I was pretty clever when I told folks that “Nintendo made me a gamer. Ocarina of Time made me hardcore”. I kept thinking this for quite some time, but eventually realized that pre-OOT, I wasn’t really a “gamer”, just a kid whose game experience consisted of little more than a string of Nintendo consoles, a few hours on the Genesis, and a dusty old 486 PC. This was a time when fresh games came to my house twice a year if I was lucky.

After Zelda I truly became a “gamer”, though now I think it had less to with that game in particular and more to do with the fact that around that time I was introduced to a modern day computer, Next Generation Magazine, and a Sony Playstation. →  Read Danger!

Why does the Wii have so many terrible games?

by

I’m not particularly upset about Nintendo’s shift towards casual gamers. Wario Ware, Animal Crossing, and Mario Kart are all awesome series and if I need a second console to play long jRPGs then so be it. Even if expanding the market somehow eliminates niches that are occupied by Japanese RPG developers, which seems counterintuitive, there will still be more good games than I have time to play.

What upsets me about Nintendo is how they allow publishers to use the Wii as a toilet. Boogie could have easily been a good game but it seems EA just gave up halfway through development. Sega had an unknown (to me at least) developer work on their Alien Syndrome game. The best way to pay homage to an arcade classic and to revitalize a franchise is not by making a mediocre game. →  Article Hominid

Pieces of a Perfect Game: Koei’s arduous slip into mediocrity

by

Good strategy games can be hard to come by on consoles. The only company that reliably produces games in the genre is Koei, and, as I’ve noted before, their recent track record is not so good.

Koei is now widely known for their willingness to recycle old work in the form of Dynasty Warriors – to put it more nicely, they haven’t fixed anything that isn’t broken in a while. Their lesser-known, but longer-running, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is now on its eleventh iteration. I haven’t gotten the latest one yet, because by now I’ve figured it out (took me long enough): Koei has a secret recipe for the ultimate officer-based strategy game, but they insist on releasing it a piece at a time.

You don’t even have to look within the series itself. →  Secread of Evermore