AndrewTS

Yeah, online play is not close to a great substitute for high-level play, but should be tolerable for most casual players if things are set up well. On Gamespite (1up's Jeremy Parish's personal site), a contributer put together an interesting look back at 3rd Strike, particularly Makoto's animations.

Overpriced, yeah, but compared to Vista it's nothing. With Time Machine, I guess now Apple is going to have to rely on tricking gullible people into signing up for .Mac rather than selling it to people who genuinely need a backup program.

I seem to recall ToS in Nitro too, but ugh, you just reminded me of how damn repetitive that "POWERBOMB!" *bam* and "Piledriver!" *metallic smash* crap was in Nitro. Maybe you're right, though, because I think an ad plugged the ToS for Thunder. In both games, IIRC, there were exactly 3 move sets except for the "unique" moves (everyone had 3 character-specific moves, and one of them was a finisher). There was the cruiser set, the heavyweight set, and the hoss set. Sometimes it made no sense who had a set, because Booker T was treated as a cruiser. Speaking of the unique moves, they had the weirdest execution method I'd ever seen in a wrestling game. You didn't charge up a meter, waggle a stick, strong grapple, or even execute an MK-ish command. No, you had to quickly press 3 buttons. Most of the time you had to slide your thumb over 3 buttons quick, or mash a button a few times then switch to another. Finishing moves were DEATH in that game. Totally death. Sometimes they didn't make any sense either. Beware Stevie Ray's devastating BIG BACK HITS! Hidden characters--even ones that were actual competing WCW wrestlers--just used the main characters' moves, resulting in crap like Konnan using the Liontamer. Nitro was one of the few games I bought new and took back to EB games demanding a full refund (back when they had that policy). There were exactly 3 entertaining things about the game. 1. Those stupid "rant" videos where the wrestlers begged you to pick them. 2. The stupid hidden characters (Santa Claws! Reanimator! Frankensteiner!). 3. The stupid arena where you could make everyone do the Y-M-C-A.

I always felt that the first EX--or at least the home version--was better than most people give it credit for. However, totally agreed that the sequels were terrible. However, the arguments Venk make were still solid in their time, just not anymore. 1. The competitive arcade scene dying off began to kill the 2D fighter. There's some renewed demand now that we have systems with solid online play available on them, even though it's never going to reach mid-90s levels. There also wasn't really a digital distribution or a feasible budget/low-tech title distribution channel available. Now companies can bypass arcade releases, creating discs or cartridges, etc. for titles that are hardly even a drop in the bucket for a cd-rom's available space. 2. The first EX game did get a smattering of advertising and push from Capcom, but after that it was nil. Plus, Street Fighter Alpha 3 on PS1 outsold each and every EX title. Hell, if you combine all the various console/portable releases of Alpha 3, I think it outsold the entire EX series combined. It also did quite well in an age where Tekken and 3D fighters in general were beginning to come into their own. I assume Guilty Gear's solidly a niche title, but it's certainly had a solid place in that niche, to get so many releases, virtually every one international, plus a few oddball spinoffs. If a series like that came from an old PS1 release that made and sold about 5 copies, a new release with the tradition and prestige of Street Fighter should be able to do pretty damn well if they don't skimp on the production values, and provide us similar hi-res, detailed, beautiful sprite animations. Come on, a new Street Fighter, not a new SF upgrade, not a new 3D spinoff that clearly distinguishes itself from the "real" series, not a new vs. game, not a new jumbled mess of old characters, but Street Fighter. If it's 2D maybe some ignorant people might give it flack, but it's not Melty Blood.

It's not that he doesn't have an HDTV, that's not the issue. He just doesn't have connectors, period. It may look good on SD, but with an RF cable, I just have my doubts. I know, I just suggested at least to go with composite if he can use a VCR with it. It's still better than plain ol' RF.

Yeah, RF cables are available, but the included cables are designed for multiple connections, so if you have VCR or something that at least accepts composite cables, you could use that too. Even on SDTV, 360 games look damn good.

Nope, that's why it's called a teaser.

Since the main programmers who worked on the SF games are gone from Capcom, it's unlikely to have the same pedigree working on it. However, one of the main SF guy's last games were Super Dragon Ball Z, so I don't know if a real quality 3D SF effort could have come out of the old team anyway. Anyone play that recent cel-shaded 3D Capcom fighter based on some manga? It had schoolgirl characters with ginormous chests and all the character designs looked pretty bad. I don't recall hearing anything positive about it. EDIT: The game is Shijou Saikyou no Teishi Kenichi / History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi for PS2.

Actually, Attitude was fairly well regarded at the time, as was Warzone. However, Nitro and WCW vs. NWO came out at about the same time. I remember vs. the World being rather chunky and problematic, but when Nitro came out, I groaned at how awful it was. Then I got vs. NWO, which blew me away not only on how good it was, but what an improvement it was over Vs. the World. Most magazines grumbled about the Acclaim games, but there weren't any other AKI games for it but Vs. the World, and a lot of the Acclaim games' faults were forgiven because of the CAW. However, the ECW games simplified the controls for the Attitude engine, leaving all of the other problems of the engine intact, at a time when AKI was making the WWF games, making it look even more long in the tooth than it would have.

I thought it played much, much faster than any 3D fighter around at the time, featured super-cancels and a lot of bizarre new characters, and had more polish than basically any 2D-in-3D-fighter experiment then and since. I'm guessing it's just because it was only SF with 3D graphics. However, most other titles at the time just tried, "ok, let's put in a sidestep and...ok, that and the graphics is 3D enough". Making this game totally 2D would basically doom it as a low-budget, niche product, though.

Why is it that Thunder gets slagged to no end when people forget it was the SEQUEL to WCW Nitro, which plays basically *exactly* the same and has fewer play modes? Is it just the overall lack of any improvement? I'd actually love to see that. I actually dug out Warzone a few weeks ago and played a lot of it. The game's overall feel is clunky as hell, but the poly models have held up surprisingly well and I still remembered a lot of moves, so I ended up stomping a lot of guys in short order.

3D SF confirmed? Hm, I wonder if they can make the game look anywhere near close to that. I know it's just a cutscene intro/teaser, but the art design looks a-ok.

I'd also like clarification on that. I know when FFVII came out, they reviewed it with a mega-high score, as sweet electronic ambrosia we should have been honored just to play, then they called it mediocre later on. They had a tendency to do that with a lot of games. HCG is a pretty decent mag. It also is a lot more reliable for reviews than former-Gamefan-staff-member-Dave-Halverson's Play. Curious how often those scores show up on game boxes...of course, they are usually the highest game scores to be found *anywhere*.

Trailer for Bru(umlaut)tal Legend, a hack-n'-slash title by Tim Schaffer and Double Fine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjW4vWrLizQ

Come on, you gotta love Tom's happy memories where Sarah clearly looks bored out of her skull every time.

New Bionic Commando game in the works: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6181070.html?...estnews;title;2 Check out the video. Looks like the classic gameplay, with a story borrowed heavily from Escape from NY.

Plus Robert, of course. "Watch yo' mouth, boy. Tom, shut the hell up!" "Tom, when I said you could stay, I thought it would be temporary. Now, though...it doesn't look like there's any end in sight." Tom: It's been two days. "Nigga, hush!" I thought it was a good ep overall, with the ass-kickings as the best part. Jazmin, though...shut up, bitch! Her annoying level was cranked up to the max this ep. I actually caught the episode on Youtube, probably ripped from the adultswim site (I forgot they often show eps of shows early). Watched it again actually, but with MUTE at the ready then.

Not even close to close enough. I fully endorse this plan, however. I still enjoy No Mercy even if it's slow as hell and BUTT-ugly. What the hell is taking this game so long? FFS, 2 Zeldas have been released since it was announced. I know building a game for the first time takes a lot longer than what Yukes/THQ is doing--just crapping out the same rehashed title over and over again with a few tweaks, but I think they probably had to have gone through scrapping and rebooting already. Would it kill whoever did that writeup preview to actually explain how the gameplay works? I don't give a crap what the crowd looks like.

Firefox 98% of the time. IE only when I have problems with flash vids in it.

Tonight's ep: Featuring the return of a pimp named Slickback!

I agree. Half-Life's reputation is good enough that it doesn't need it, plus I'm sure they can come up with something else if they really feel the need to shake up the series creatively. The gun itself it enough to sustain a game, and it would dilute the concept to have it be dumped in a "normal" shooter. However, it's probably inevitable that it will be copied, in which case all bets are off. I read up a bit on it. While the engine has changed, no much else has. It hasn't been truly optimized for the engine like HL2 was. There's a mod called Black Mesa: Source coming that reportedly is going to fix that, and it may be bundled with Episode 3.

It's out. I picked it up this morning just as they were yanking them out of the shipping boxes. Game begins with a nicely-done recap of The Wind Waker, pictograph-style. Textures are a tad grainy in the real-time cutscenes, but everything looks terrific during gameplay. Currently just getting the swing of the controls, but it's not much of an issue as I'd played other games that used the stylus for movement. Moving, picking up, tossing pots is a cinch, and you can use the stylus to determine just where/how far you throw them. Nice touch.

Playstation, yes, but it's only available as an import. N64, no.

Not sure of it's source, but I've heard from other folks you can download an "optimized" version that seems to run smoother than the original retail one. I'm actually playing HL1 on PS2, which seems to run quite well except for loading points. Portal is one of the coolest, most original games I've seen in a long, long time. I honestly don't care if it gun makes it into Half-Life, they could expand on this game in about a million ways.

I'm playing both, trying to step up my completion of HL1. A lot of what's going on in HL2 is confusing the heck out of me. Eurogamer has a great review of Portal, worth reading even if you bought the game, because it has a lot of interesting info: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?artic...5005&page=1