AndrewTS

Yeah--when making a video game, you want to mimic everything the real-life WWE does. Also, any good fighting game has something called "character balance." Except for Joe Average characters, for every strength a guy should have a deficiency. Therefore, a character will suit a certain style of play but still have exploitable weaknesses. Thus, skill and not the attribute level itself, determines who wins. HCTP doesn't have that, and it threw out the balanced setup of SYM and other previous SD games for this boneheaded current setup. Players of inferior skill can win based on pure luck in HCTP, because certain wrestlers have to inflict 10x the damage on another wrestler to win. Also, why the hell should a Hurracanrana by A-Train be more effective than a Mysterio one? Damage is determined solely by Strength, not wrestler style like it is in a good, well-balanced game like Fire Pro.

I hate almost all FPS games but love Metroid Prime. It's not the same as classic Metroid, but it's still very good. Metroid Zero Mission is coming, though, and you can play that on the Cube with a Game Boy Player.

Ristar is like Dynamite Headdy and Sonic's inbred child. I'll talk about the sonic games after I take this call. Uh, no. Personally, I enjoyed Ristar more. OMG SACKRILIDGE I INDRECTLY DISSED A TREASURE GAME!! TREASURE Iz g0d! TREASURE Iz g0d!! Don't compare apples to oranges. I'm talking about games at the peak of their genre. You can easily say that, for instance, Mario Kart is a better game than one of Acclaim's mediocre licensed platform games, but when you're talking about two good games in different genres, it's moot and crazy to compare. What about people who don't like the style of game Gunstar is? Even in that case I doubt Gunstar will change their mind. You must mean Ecco 2, because I thought the first was a snoozer. I haven't played Tides of Time though. I liked SOR2 a lot, and although not as good, I liked SOR3 quite a bit as well. SOR1 is last of course, but SOR2 is better than Final Fight, and SOR3 is better than Final Fight 3. I think the Final Fights just got worse from 1 to 2 to three.

It's already out for Gamecube. It's a decent game. Good storyline but a bit repetitive. I said new. I know about the Gamecube one (I have it) but there's a new game in the works for PS2. Oh, and I found a piece of official Slam Masters art--a flyer for the arcade game. Click here. Kinda neat that the dirty Commie Biff is on the left and his American counterpart Gunloc is on the right facing each other like that. Yay for Cold War tensions portrayed in old video games!

He didn't say it would suck, he said those two would be the title matches. He's gay? I think your poor spelling botched your weak joke. Those weren't too bad, I think. Plus, JERICHO WON!!

Definitely. What's so hard about a mode where you face a bunch of CPU opponents one after the other in persuit of a title? I'm sure the programmers can handle that. Instead we got a half-assed beat 'em up where you can drop security guards on their faces onto concrete for 17 minutes straight but they won't juice.

I'd say "then Benoit better go to Mania as challenger" but who the hell cares at this point?

Oh, this is hilarious... From the latest Game Infarcer... BWAHAHAHHA!!! I'd rip that apart bit by bit, but the fact that this magazine still considers Final Fantasy to be some lofty standard of quality speaks for itself.

The "new skateboard's" wheels are all wildly different sizes, so the old skateboard's better.

Except, you know, CHARACTER BALANCE. No Mercy had the weight detection thing but it wasn't horribly slanted in hosses' favor like HCTP is. Midcarders and jobbers stood a good chance against main eventers. Also, fahgetabout making CAWs have the stats you want right off the bat. You have to build them up slooowly one by one. That takes forever. Plus you can't even clone a CAW that's been in Season mode and edit stats--once stats are set, they're set in stone. Sure, it's perfect if you are making a CAW of yourself and only yourself and like building him up, but if you want to make several real-life wrestlers, you have to invest too much time into making their stats even competitive with the in-game wrestlers. In SYM, you'd earn the "extra attribute points" card and that was it. Plus, you could edit attributes after making a CAW--none of this "you can only ADD points and only after earning them in Season mode," which takes too long. I find it odd so many people can blindly ignore gaping gameplay flaws that were pointlessly self-inflicted by Yukes. Nobody asked for that those to be in. *is becoming the Anglesault of the Video Game/Toy folder*

HCTP took baby steps forward in graphics and gameplay, but took a HUGE step back because of the lousy character balance. SYM is still better to me. HCTP makes it impossible to make CAWs and even start them with the correct stats. You have to build EACH ONE up first. Wrestlers don't specialize in moves like they could back when you'd make a wrestler have, say, a 5 in power moves and a 7 in Technical moves, or how Cruisers would have 9's for "Speedy" moves. "Strength" determines all damage. Hosses are favored heavily in the game. It sucks if you want to play with any non-main-eventers. Or wrestlers who vary in total attribute points. I'd rank SYM an 8/10 when it came out. I'd rank HCTP a 6/10. If it isn't broke, don't f*** it up, Yukes. If No Mercy were faster and had better graphics I'd not even clamor for an update. We just gotta hope WMXX on GC has a decent season mode isntead of that Revenge mode crap. However, No Mercy still stacks up pretty well today, but it can get hard to readjust after playing the PS2 games.

I don't know what the hell an ISO is, but I'm interested, DH. You're pretty damn late in the game to find the good DC stuff... As for the latter question, there's a disc called the DC-X (usually you can find one marked down at EB or Gamestops for 8 bucks or less) that allows you to play imports on your Dreamcast. I'd recommend to anyone to get a Dreamcast except if you only play RPGs (it has Skies of Arcadia, but otherwise is kinda lacking in that area).

I got Dark Cloud 2 at my KB for $14.99.

Believe me, I do regularly. However, the closest we're gonna get is a new Ultimate Muscle game (one is in the works for PS2, but dunno about an American release). Too bad...a Deathmatch Tornado Tag Tournament in glorious cel-shaded 3D with a bigger roster would be absolutely bitchin'

What it should be: Monday Night Jericho--the year in review. What it will be: a huge, condensed nugget of Wrestlecrap.

Both. They've done two Jack Frost (evil killer snowman) movies, and plenty of killer Santa movies (Silent Bloody Night, Santa Claws, and many more). You can see a bunch of them covered on http://www.x-entertainment.com.

To answer one of my questions, since I got the Genesis Slam Masters now, there's only singles (i.e. the one player mode), vs. (one on one 2 player) and Deathmatch mode. Deathmatch is awesome, but is only vs. Human. I guess it was that it's such a brutal match style it should be saved for sorting out real players' grudges. That or they were too lazy to program the A.I. to take advantage of the differences in the match. So, no four-player mode. Hence, no coop or competitive tag matches, no four-player battle royales. A big sacrifice, and extremely odd when you figure that the Genesis version came out far later than the SNES version--it should have had all the modes of play as the SNES version AND the Deathmatch, to make up for the delay and the downgrade in sound. However, I have a friend who has the SNES version..

Circuitcity online doesn't even have some of these titles listed, unfortunately. Gungrave OD? What's that, Ren?

Well, Xenosaga is on that list (20 bucks? HA!), but there are a lot of good titles there too, like Gungrave.

DH: SW Pennsylvania, near the Pittsburgh area. The Hollywood Videos are about as bad--charging brand new prices for used games. The best bets for me are Gamestops, EBs, and CD Warehouses. There's also a little mini-chain called "It's About Games" that has fantastic deals: Link to the Past for SNES for $5.99 (all 16-bit for that price, including lots of great stuff; there were some Genesis games boxes and all too) all DC games for 10.99 and under, and a lot of hard-to-find Playstation 1 stuff for under 10 bucks each.

Well, aside from the Greatest Hits stuff, the one around here never cut their prices, and they'll have a rack of old PS1 stuff (WWF Attitude, some old soccer game STILL in the long box, and other junk titles for brand-new prices). They also have some Dreamcast stuff lying around nobody wants (no really good titles, I'm afraid). On a side note, they're not quite as bad as the Blockbusters I've seen. I don't have any very close to me, but I'll run across their stores when going out of town. Couldn't believe it--USED PS2 Greatest Hits titles (that they'd rented out but opted to sell) for $22.99. That's some ballsy bull****. Still, one of the GH titles I saw was Simpsons Road Rage, which I didn't know was a Greatest Hits, because all the game stores around where I live (EB included) don't carry the GH version, so they charge full price. (And yes, I do mean Road Rage and not Hit and Run in both cases. Road Rage is the Crazy Taxi ripoff released quite a while ago, not to be confused with the GTA ripoff released recently.)

The problem with the KB deal--most of the games are so damn expensive in the first place that you're better off just getting used copies. Some of the brand new stuff you might score a good deal on, though. I'll check my KB up the mall, though. I deal in/trade games as a bit of a hobby, and I believe so, yes.

Broadband? Hehehe--no, we aren't talking about that. Also, I've admitted to playing Rockman and Forte on an emulator (long before it was announced for GBA), so I think you should know better than to think I'm opposed to emulating import games.

Because not everybody wants to download ROMs. I don't mind ROMs, but I've gotten rid of most of my ROMs as it is. I prefer to buy the carts for collecting and playing. Ditto. I hate playing on a PC, and I'm not a theif. No PC controllers I've had have felt quite right. I never have to calibrate my Sega or SNES pads to get them working correctly. I downloaded a ROM of Rockman and Forte once, and it didn't quite run right on my computer anyway. It was slow, chunky, and didn't have any sound.