New game from Parappa masterminds
Well this sounds promising. A new Wii game from the creator and lead artist of Parappa the Rapper. What’s this, Majesco is publishing it? That’ll be ok, a good idea doesn’t need 10 million dollars to work. Err, it’s a marching band simulator? That… sounds cool. I mean, I’ve always despised parades and anyone who likes them and walking around while playing music makes as much sense as reading while performing ballet, but… Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind?
90% of American DS owners pirate games
This comes from the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association and is wrong. It is so wrong it makes normally unbelievable things believable. If you told me the butter on my bagel was not actually butter right after telling me that 90% of DS owners pirate games, I wouldn’t think twice. I can believe it’s not butter when my mind is reeling from the stupidity of a statement that asserts 18 million people in the US own R4 pirate kits. If the Chinese company has sold that many units in America alone they should start thinking about jumping into the handheld business since they’re doing better than Sony.
“Oh Jenny! I can’t believe we got an R4 this year!”
Over 10% of DS owners own Brain Training. The thought that the casual gamer market and software pirate market overlap is hilarious. “Grandma, what are you doing on the computer?” “I’m downloading Nintendogs, season three of Matlock and Blacks on Blondes 17.”
Cnet blogger declares Saturn the worst major console of all time
Clearly this blogger has to submit a number of articles every week and isn’t always creative enough to come up with interesting topics. Combine a quota with the common bloggers propensity for hyperbole in hopes that saying absurd and insane shit will drive huge amounts of traffic to their site and you get brilliantly written pieces like this one on why the Saturn sucks. The first half of this masterpiece is dedicated to how the system had a terrible launch. This is true. The next bit of logic goes – Saturn hurt Sega badly, I liked Sega, so I hate Saturn. Fair enough, but this ignores that the Sega CD was really the companies first huge misstep, followed by the 32X. These debacles alienated much of the potential Saturn audience. And then the Dreamcast, mighty as it was, was far from flawless.
Debating specifics is mostly petty. You can think it was the worst console of all time, including the Jaguar and 3DO and I’m fine with that. What really gets me is the mindset that, “LOL, there has to be some super shitty console that totally sucks so we can all make fun of it!” This is a fine outlook for some people, but anyone who spends a significant amount of time writing about games should have moved far past that mentality. I just bought a PC Engine even though it flopped in the states. It turns out that if you like video games, it is worth while to do some homework and find hidden gems across all consoles.
The Saturn – its legacy, its launch, its name and the actual planet – may all suck but there is no way the Panzer Dragoons, Dragon Force, NiGHTS, Guardian Heroes, Shining Force 3 and so on are anything less than good games. Some of them are actually fantastic and if you consider yourself a rabid gamer you really should play them.
“lol sux”
Master System games coming to VC
The Master System had a ton of shitty games and was devastated by the NES in most relevant markets (Eurowhat? South Who?). But what an excellent opportunity to return to the theme of finding good games on underwhelming systems. It’s almost as if this article were intelligently created.
If you still like the original Zelda, you’ll like Golvellius. If you still like the original Dragon Quest, you’ll like Miracle Warriors. If you can stomach brutal difficulty and amazing graphics you’ll enjoy Phantasy Star. Ys, Zillion, Fantasy Zone 1 and 2, Wonder Boy 2 and 3, Gangster Town, Rescue Mission, a two player version of Double Dragon, Psycho Fox, and Shinobi are also worth a try if you’ve got a few bucks. Just make sure to avoid any game with the word “Great” in the title.
March Rockband tracks to be super brutal
At the Gates and The Haunted in video game form? Rockband is now my favorite game. I can’t wait to get it. Though I’m a little let down by the choice of the ATG song, it’ll have to do. Seems likely Harmonix is made up of all sellout posers who will never be true brothers of metal.
Pop psychologist author apologizes for Mass Effect interview
By now you probably heard about the Fox News Mass Effect piece, cleverly titled Se(XBox). Get it? Me neither. Pop psychologist Cooper Lawrence, who should be disliked solely for her first name, has apologized for the position she took on the game. Not only had she never played it, the only information she had was given to her five minutes before she went on air by a Fox employee, likely Karl Rove.
The problem is that gamers have little recourse. When homeless veterans swing by Fox to see O’Reilly they are turned away, so our hope of getting through to Fox seems minuscule. Efforts to sabotage Cooper’s book reviews on Amazon are justified (she bashed the game without playing it, we bash the book without reading it) but only serve to make us look as immature and socially retarded as the Fox anchors portray us as. It’s also just a bad precedent. People shouldn’t fear speaking openly about negatives of games because they think we are willing and anxious to retaliate through technology.
“Does this look natural enough?”
The solution is to know that Cooper could not be more of a shrew if she tried. Anyone watching the video of her on Fox will immediately detect how bitchy and condescending she is. Her books will continue to sell and recently dumped women will continue to listen to her radio show, but every morning when she wakes up she must face the harsh truth that she is Cooper.
As for Fox News, I say we blow up their building.
at least they chose the right album for the At the Gates song. i was happy to see In Flames in Guitar Hero III, but a song from the album released in 2006? really?
The Saturn thing is dissapointing because it shows that the author really was just going for shock value, doing a bit of research on Wikipedia and using that to base his judgements. You don’t even have to be an uber nerdy game expert to find a handful a saturn games that justify it over the 3d0 and the Jaguar. Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona. You’re done.
On the other hand, you do have to be a bit hardcore to find anything on the other two consoles. The Jag has nothing (maybe Alien VS Predator comes close), and the 3d0 had a sweet port of Star Control 2.
Then again, cnet also had an article of the ten best evil computers, and neither Shodan (from the gaming world) or Tron’s MCP (from film) were on the list, so you can guess as to the quality of their nerds.