AndrewTS

I thought that was just a throwaway comment at his past (on Raw). So either WWE, Christian, or both are really lacking in class. That's just childish. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But making fun of Nash's injury is a-ok? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nash has piles of money, is/was fucking a Nitro Girl, came back to be put in a long horrible feud before leaving, and got a cameo movie appearance. So, yes. Boo-fucking-ho for Nash for not being in any condition to wrestle and forcing himself back in anyway. You can't even feel sorry for him not even being able to "do what he loves" anymore, because he doesn't.

"Send this one to the camps!" Anya is just playing DA to screw with you guys.

I thought that was just a throwaway comment at his past (on Raw). So either WWE, Christian, or both are really lacking in class. That's just childish.

JoeDirt wins the thread. Oh, and the Triple H fact and the sidebar changes did not go unnoticed. Great stuff.

I think it's that fewer and fewer games allow quick pick-up-and-play gameplay, and more and more require vast amounts of time to see/enjoy any signficant amount of the game. It's often part of the nature of 3D games, although there are games like Katamari which aren't that way. It's really obvious just how much the games have changed when I pop in Sonic Adventure 2, and have no friggin' idea what I'm doing, while I can pull out Sonic 2 and it's like hopping onto a bicycle again.

Nope. "If all of the dogs in your neighborhood refuse to turn their backs on you, you might be a sex offender!" "If you are neither a pothead or a pornstar, and everyone calls you 'Woody,' you might be a sex offender!" "If you go to Chuck E. Cheese's to meet women, you might be a sex offender!" "If you think a 'roofer' is a guy who is going to help you get laid, you might be a sex offender!" "If you're older than 12, male, and regular visit Hillary Duff fansites and chatrooms, you might be a sex offender!"

"the first half of Xenogears is magnificent" No, not at all. "You can blame that on Square taking away the resources from Xenogears and tossing them towards FF8." Yet nobody has any proof of that at all. Maybe the development team had no friggin' clue how to budget it correctly? "Furthermore, there are hints that Xenogears was rushed in production; but there is no credited source. The major basis of such being the particular gameplay (or lack of it) found in the game's second disk where players watch the characters recap the story rather than play through it; though a good possibility also exists proposing that this was intentional (Evidence: The second disc of Xenosaga Episode II, Xenogears: Perfect Works). Rumors say that it was going overbudget, or beyond production schedule. Others say that Square lost interest and confidence in the financial value of Xenogears; as portrayed by the founding of Monolith Soft - a company which is mainly composed of ex-Square employees, most of whom worked on Xenogears. Monolith Soft has been developing a series of prequels to Xenogears, branded Xenosaga, which are published by Namco. These games take place many centuries before the events in Xenogears, but use the diagrams and mechanics outlined by Perfect Works." -- wikipedia The budget rumor seems common sense, but common sense is not always compatible with game directors expressing their "vision" for a game/series. RPGs were, are, and will remain the more grave offenders of "too much movie! *snarl*", but there are also plenty of big-budget games that place more emphasis on production values and storyline than proper game pacing and gameplay. However, that doesn't mean it's going to leak into genres designed and loved for their pick-up-and-play feel. Remember that it could have been far, far worse--Sega and their utterly ****tarded vision of "full motion interactive electronic entertainment experiences," naturally.

"visioned not having to go to the hospital after being hurt by a 'future' WWE superstar who may look good but have the wrestling ability of a dead walrus. " Who injured Spike?

Maven and Kidman are shockers, because we'd have expected them cut a long time ago. With TE apparently over for good, they didn't want to bother keeping Maven around. I guess Kidman's bomb of a heel run was the final straw. David Heath? Isn't that Gangrel? I thought he was only for those couple of appearances, and neither he or Visc were contracted. Moore cut = Matt's definitely not coming back. These cuts aren't surprising consisting Heat/Velocity is going to be gone soon. But without Akio, Kidman, or Moore--who are going to make the hosses look good? Considering she's one of the few Divas that has a name to most of the fans, and still pulls in $ for her shoots and mag spreads, no. The appearances of Divas such as Dark-Haired One with Huge Tits who Spins, Brunette One who Makes Snotty Facial Expressions and Walking Racial Stereotype with 'Tude gives one a new tolerance for Torrieberg (of course, not having a major program or extended match in a hell of a long time helps too).

"On wrestling games, I owned Royal Rumble for the Genesis" It's amusing that Ric Flair was exclusive to the SNES version, and Hogan was exclusive to the Genesis version. I guess their egos were so huge no game could contain them both until WCW vs. the World. The Arena/LJN and Acclaim wrestling games ranged from totally horrible (Super Wrestlemania) to the awesome WWF Raw. I actually rented Raw for SNES back when I hadn't watched wrestling since I was a little kid. The game was just so damn fun I started watching the shows--and even though it was during 1995 (one of the worst WWE years ever), I'd wait through the crappy shows to catch the occasional HBK or Bret Hart match. Raw was pretty much the same game as Royal Rumble, but each character had a unique moveset (though wildly inaccurate--Diesel with a DDT? 123 Kid with a big boot off the ropes, which Diesel doesn't have?). It had Mega Moves (super moves, which were ultra-powerful; to this day I can not do Diesel's, where he's supposed to stand behind you, toss you waaaaaaaaay up in the air and then you come crashing down), which I'd often have memorized--like Doink's--left left left A, and HBK's--down, right right, tap A...which I'd just pretend is the superkick since they still had him listed as using the Back Suplex for a finisher. You could toss guys into the corner, and do the ten shots. However, against the computer, I'd mercilessly pound them to the count of 8 or 9, do a running shoulder ram into the corner twice, then repeat. Muhahaha! Plus, you could smash people over the head with a chair or a bucket. The chair could be smashed overhead--after which is was useless, or be used to jab somebody in the stomach. If you laid it down on the ground or smashed it over somebody's head, you couldn't use it anymore, but it was respawn when you left the screen. The ref couldn't do anything if you did it out of the ring--you could eye gouge and choke your opponent. You couldn't take weapons into the ring, but you could punch the crap out of the ref to knock him out (or just run over him). Abuse the ref enough, and he motions "screw this" and leaves the ring--then whoever gets their energy meter drained first loses. It was one of the first 4-player wrestling games to come out in the US. You could do tags, Royal Rumbles, Survivor Series matches, a standard season where you'd beat all of the other wrestlers/teams, and it had the "Bedlam" mode. Stupid name, but it was a TORNADO TAG match. There was also Gauntlet matches (Raw Endurance Match). The game took into account "attributes" (not everyone had the same stats), but you could change them. The total number of points was fixed, but you could redistribute them to make 123 Kid a lumbering mini-hoss with massive strength, or make Yoko a nimble guy who could attack quickly, etc. Obviously, I've played waaaaaaaaay too much of that game for my own good, but I still enjoy it here and there. It's a button-masher, so anyone can play it. Too bad that the 32X version didn't really add much, except for the Raw sign (as a weapon), and KWANG! KWANG didn't really even have a special, unique moveset either. However, before Raw, the Sega CD got Rage in the Cage--a version of Royal Rumble souped up to the nth degree. More play modes than the regular 16 bit games, I think it had 30-40 wrestlers (even if only their finishers were different), you could watch (grainy) video of a wrestler doing his finisher, ring introductions by Howard Finkel using actual voice samples (height, weight, hometown), and SUPERSTAR VOICE OVERS ("Everybody has a price for the Million Dollar Man, and I bet I could buy you really cheap." *DiBiase evil laugh*; Kamala: *usual grunting noises and belly slap*). It had a pretty cool intro. Naturally, the star attraction was the STEEL CAGE match, though. Too bad they didn't put it any of the Raw games.

Well, in Mercury and Halford's cases, it wasn't very shocking at all.

HCTP sucked hard. But it had a good story mode. SvR sucked moderately hard, had a weak story mode, and had online play. I got Day of Reckoning for 10 bucks--and I still feel ripped off.

Actually Jingus, the X-Box Ninja Gaiden isn't made by the "same people" as the original Ninja Gaidens. It was more of a tribute. Tecmo published both, but the teams were totally different. I don't think the X-Box version was really any easier than the older games (and the original was the most infamously hard one, the others and certainly Shadow on Game Boy weren't quite so hard). And none of the recent Draculas have been hard. SotN one with Shield rod? My ass. Galamoth is the hardest boss in that game. Circle? Harder by not really that hard. Harmony? He's not quite fully resurrected--cake. Aria's...um...Dracula-like boss is pretty easy to beat without getting hit even once. Pitiful. He's not the final baddie, though. Heck, the N64 versions of Drac are the most challenging ones in a while. Bloodlines wasn't a terribly hard game, especially with Lacarde (sp?), who kicked ass. The warping room in IV was annoying as hell, but the rest of the game wasn't quite so bad. I'd love to contribute more 8-bit suggestions, but they'd be limited by stuff I emulated, since I was a child of the 16-bit era. So I wasn't really weaned on insanely-difficult 8-bit fare like Battletoads. Then again, I've known a couple of people who swear to me that they've manhandled that game as youths, and now they've lost most of their skillz. So go fig. Kid Chameleon didn't really seem very hard, despite its rep. I think I got through level 5 or so without any prior experience, any walkthroughs/hints, and despite playing it on a lousy 1/4 of my computer monitor. If it weren't for the fact I got bored of it quickly, I might have gone further in later playthroughs.

Oh my God that is too much. Finally a gimmick that is so fucking stupid, I love it. They had Chavo turn into a white guy, just great. They forgot to change the "Chavo Fact" though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Plus they changed all the mentions of Chavo to "White" in his profile. Just like WWE/F. Next week: "I was born a poor white child." He'll come to the arena in an SUV with an easy-listening station blaring.

I wonder if this character will have a huge, muscle-bound enforcer and bombard us with plant puns.

"Isn't this along with Robotech the most altered/edited show in the history of mankind?" Didn't Robotech get different seasons randomly spliced together without regard to continuity? So I don't think it would be anywhere near that bad. http://images.google.com/images?q=Gatchaman+Alex+Ross&hl=en Ross made some posters for the series that probably will end up as DVD covers.

Season 3 of TTZ is coming out on DVD. Although I hope Night Gallery gets the DVD treatment soon.

*flips over to Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi*

And we have our heel.

Apparently the Diva in the Hungry Puppy costume didn't make it.

"Cory Ledesma: Well, in the adrenaline meter from last year the negative boosts didn't work the way we wanted them to when playing through a match (as in, you never got any). It was just way too limited. Also, if you went on a streak of building your adrenaline meter and got close to using your finisher, no matter how much your opponent beat up on you, your status was unaffected. Now all that has changed and the momentum meter is reflective of how you're doing at all times. This means that just because you were successful in the beginning of the match, it doesn't mean that you'll continue that later on." " It's cool because we reward you for pulling off the finisher at the right time." IOW = "We've made a few baby steps towards being like the AKI games."

You don't think HD TV is going to catch on very quickly? I think sooner or later it's going to be commonplace. Nintendo's decision to not bother with any special HD support worries me.

Mars Matrix Ninja Gaiden (X-Box) It's annoying when a sequel comes out, and it's structured in a way to assume that you've played and mastered the previous game, with no attempt made for a normal learning curve. On the other hand, there's also those countless, annoying hand-holding tutorials that make up plenty of others.

The HHH quote "I'm 'bi' lots of things, but 'lingual' isn't one of them" comes to mind.

Oh, and I've played or owned every version of WM: TAG in existence. Yes, even the 32X version.