BUTT

A match that ends clean with no semblance of a run-in, ref bump or swerve with one guy actually winning decisively? "I'm gonna be honest with ya, bro. That would neva work. The fans don't like to be insulted."

I admit my all-time favorite VH song is a Hagar song ("Dreams"), but the guy did turn a totally bad-ass rock band into a bunch of Journey-esque pussies so I can see why the prevailing sentiment is that Roth is better.

Plus I got a thing for Rachel Ray. Pic gave me a chuby. Rachel Ray's cute until she starts talking. I would have liked to be in the presence of Ms. Ray when she started calling Angelina Jolie a "skanky backdoor cunt" and said Oprah has "problems being black". I can't stand when girls my age talk shit like that but if it's a woman in her late 30's I can get down with that.

HEY GUYS LOOK AT THIS PURPLE SHIRT I LIKE THIS PURPLE SHIRT I'M GONNA MAKE A THOUSAND POSTS ON PURPLE SHIRTS

I don't understand how someone can be so fixated on HDTV. It's just a high-quality video signal. That's like being obsessed with ice cream or some other generic shit.

I could swear an ad during Raw advertised "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, only for Wii". This of course would totally be false advertising.

Guys are you actually looking at her face.

41) Ignoring their most popular franchises on Saturn. Obviously we known of the lack of a real Sonic game or any non-port Phantasy Star games, but where was Streets of Rage? Ecco the Dolphin? ETERNAL CHAMPIONS? (Yes I know why the Eternal Champions game for Saturn was canceled.) 42) The Virtua Fighter 2 port for Genesis. No this is not Virtua Fighter. No this was not a good idea. 43) Here is one you a lot of you will probably disagree with. Pricing Dreamcast at $199 at launch. I actually think it was priced too low. The system had such tremendous buzz that I think people would have been willing to pay $249 for it. The lower price surely endeared them to consumers more, but also cost them millions of dollars. And we know Sega wasn't averse to high prices, as illustrated by..... 44) $100 each. 100 fucking dollars. I know RPGs were expensive at the time, so PS4 wasn't exactly the only one, but I'm pretty sure the more expensive ones for SNES (such as Final Fantasy III (or VI, whatever)) topped out at $80. That said, Virtua Racing? The game had three tracks! Are you willing to pay $33 per track?

Recently, I've been playing a lot of SMS games. It's very interesting to see Sega's initial entry into the home console market (well, except in Japan) during a time when they really seemed to not quite know what they were doing. (To be fair, they never really seemed to know what they were doing except when Tom Kalinske was in charge, but looking back at this time it seems more like naivete due to inexperience than the total cluelessness which they would become known for during the Saturn era.) The lack of experience really shows itself in the software, which by and large was simply not that good. One of the main problems is that Sega's main strength at the time was its arcade software, much of which was popular due to its tremendous 16-bit graphics. On an 8-bit system, the scaled-down versions of games like Hang-On and Space Harrier weren't very impressive. Almost all of the Master System games had a very "rushed" feel to them, with almost none of them showing the kind of care that Nintendo's first-party releases were exhibiting. The system's sound chip is worth mentioning too - I can't describe it, but there is something strange about the sound of all the system's games. They all sound very similar, although that may be due to the fact that most of the system's games were created by Sega, unlike with the NES where a lot of game companies (Konami, Capcom, and Rare to name a few) all had a very distinctive sound where you could tell that the music was created by a certain company just by listening to it. I had never played much of Alex Kidd in Miracle World before, but after playing through it recently I've found that it was a pretty good game. If I had been running Sega at the time I would have put it in as the pack-in (which it eventually would be - more on that later) but those in charge at the time obviously felt otherwise. Tom Kalinske, when he was put in charge in '91, understood that to compete with Nintendo and Super Mario World, Sega would need their own mascot-based game packed in, which is why Sonic was put in the box with Genesis. But those in charge of such decisions at Sega in '86 thought that Hang-On would be a better choice for a pack-in. I understand their rationale - after all, it was a popular game in arcades - but the home version captured very little of why people like the arcade version, which was largely popular because of its sit-down motorcycle-shaped cabinet, and that couldn't be accurately replicated on the SMS. I'm sure the card slot on the system was born out of good intentions, but since only a handful of games used it I'm sure the Sega people eventually wished they had left it out. (And eventually they did leave it out, in the system's 1990 rerelease). The card slot was used for the Master System's 3D glasses, which I'm sure were cool, but didn't exactly make any difference in sales). The physical design of the system really left something to be desired. Compared to the NES it just looks tremendously cheesy. And what's with that diagram on the right side? Ugh. The controllers weren't that great either. You'll notice two things looking at this: 1) The D-pad is circular-shaped which I've always hated in game controllers, and 2) Button "1" doubles as "start". The pause button is on the console itself. That's convenient. I've already discussed the choice of Hang-On as a pack-in, and why it didn't quite work. The other pack-in, Safari Hunt, wasn't a great game but they obviously felt they needed a showcase for their Zapper ripoff, the "Light Phaser", and this game served that purpose well enough. I will admit that in playing the system for the first time (when I was 9, and I honestly had no idea at the time that Sega had released a system before the Genesis), the fact that those two games were built in was pretty cool from a novelty standpoint. Later they would release a totally ugly second version of the system with Alex Kidd built in, but by this time it was too late. Obviously Sega's largely sub-par software and Nintendo's lock on third parties were the main reason for the failure of the SMS, but the horrible packaging and marketing of the games didn't help at all. Take a look at some of this box art: and these ads: Not exactly something to set the world on fire. Hey look, I commented on that last ad! I like how they advertise "The incredible Phantasy Star" and then don't tell you anything about it or even show any game footage. But Thunder Blade, man, that's a system seller. Of course, the SMS wasn't unsuccessful everywhere. It caught on pretty big in Europe. I have no idea why, and Europeans would be better served to explain this than me, so I will leave it alone. Overall, the Master System wasn't a bad system, but I can certainly see why it was unable to compete with Nintendo in America and Japan. Luckily for Sega, they would learn from their mistakes and succeed with their next system (and then promptly forget what they learned and fail with all subsequent systems). I'm sure many of you who are more well-versed in the Master System can expand on this. At the very least, I better see AndrewTS in here. Come on now!

Someone needs a sense of humor!

I am really intrigued about Choken's claiming that he lived in a mansion and had a hot wife. Someone needs to expand on this and link to some posts in which he made this claim.

Where did you hear this? I checked the TV listings on Zap2It and it only had a 3 hour slot.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rHBkHoQrOQg Have any of you gents heard of the Crimescene? I must say that the way in which they blend hardcore with their hip-hop influences has created quite possibly the most brilliant song released in modern years: "Outcasts". The video for the song (linked above) is quite visually striking, with a strong message that the Crimescene is not to be tussled with. Sadly I feel that the very mature subject matter of the video will hinder its chances of receiving MTV airplay. It's a little too real. A little too hardcore, I should say.

32) Ruining the Sonic series. The first Sonic came out in June '91. Sonic 2 followed in November '92. Sonic CD was released in November '93. Sonic 3 came out in February '94, and Sonic & Knuckles followed in October of that year. That's five main series games in under 3 & 1/2 years. Plus they had side games like Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, countless Game Gear games (and Master System ports of those only released in Europe and Brazil and wherever else people actually played that system), the arcade game...........They killed it. People bitch about Nintendo and their countless Mario games but at least those are mostly just spinoffs. How can a Genesis owner get excited about the next side-scrolling Sonic game when there's a new one an average of every ten months. The problems with the newer Sonic games have been discussed to death and there's nothing I can really add to that.

They only show one episode a week, Saturday mornings at 5AM. P.S. This picture always makes me laugh.

8) The Eternal Champions ad that made fun of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. http://www.sega-16.com/Media/Print%20Ad%20...Ad%2050_jpg.jpg You can't see it, but below the picture on the bottom left, the caption says "Hey Johnny Cage, afraid you'll get whipped by a girl?" Now if Sega was just another third-party publisher, or if SF2 and MK were Nintendo exclusives, then this would make sense. But Sega was a first-party publisher, and those games were available for their system. Conceivably they would want people to buy those games so that they could make money off of them, but Sega felt it was best to mock them in order to get their own game over. I'm sure Capcom, Acclaim and Midway were real happy. P.S. Fuck what anyone says, I love Eternal Champions and nothing can change that. 9) Feeling that the best way to get people to buy Gunstar Heroes was packaging it with a Fruit Roll-Up.

This is one of those cases in which a thread's subject matter really dictates its quality.

P.S. I wish I had been able to watch Degrassi in 7th grade health. In 8th grade health class we got to watch an episode of 7th Heaven. It was an episode in which Lucy decides that she wants to start having sex in order to make herself more appealing to boys. I believe Christine "Al from Step by Step" Lakin made a guest appearance. Man do I miss those days!

They used to show it on The-N, due to the popularity of the new Degrassi. Or maybe they still show it, I don't know. I had never seen it before a little more than a year ago.

Any acts on that list that I like are those whose gayosity does not surprise me.

I'm gonna dispute that. But better graphics, yeah.

I'm pretty sure they got back together. I don't think Edge and Lita have been together since the whole scandal broke almost two years ago.

Beyond Oasis is awesome. If Sega had played its cards right they could have made that series its answer to Zelda but I suppose it wasn't meant to be. Not that that's even on the top 300 stupidest things they've done. I'm sorry, I'm on a real Sega kick lately. I don't know why. I've always been a lifelong Nintendo fan. But man, if any company could be considered the WCW of gaming it's Sega. They had everything and ruined it through monumental stupidity. And the worst part about them now is that they're not even a really good game publisher anymore. Look at their releases during the Dreamcast era: Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Samba de Amigo, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, the 2K sports games, etc. (Granted I haven't played all those games I've listed but I'll trust in the consensus opinion of reviewers that they were all real good.) Now look at Sega. They suck! They are a totally lackluster publisher and they can't even get their established franchises (such as Sonic and Phantasy Star) right anymore. What a waste. P.S. I am still holding out for the TurboGrafx's Neutopia on the VC. That would be my first online purchase for the system.

Rocky isn't horrible, but that "when you have the upper hand you move forward" shit is real dumb. Plus the game is far too hard and also too short. They could have at least thrown in some scrubs to beat before each of the "big three" opponents.