AndrewTS

Squeenix is going to milk that FF3 DS engine for a while, it seems. Considering how long it will be before the game comes out, I guess they felt PS2 was going to be a dead system by then. Yeah, the visuals are going to take a hit on DS, but remember that DQVIII was the only main DQ game that didn't look completely like ass. EDIT: DQ9 gameplay footage- http://www.gamebrink.com/news/735-Dragon_Q...ay_Footage.html

Special for the Wii, and they're different from the GC component cables. VC releases were just those 4; thankfully they were all much better choices than last week's. BTW, after skimming through the ESRB page, you folks should be interested to know that Kirby's Adventure, Kid Icarus, Pro Wrestling and Punch-Out! all have been rated, thus probably are coming soon. Probably next week will include, at the least, Dungeon Explorer, which was hinted at by Hudson on their page as coming soon.

I got Gunstar and Alien Crush. Gunstar is of course terrific (and seems to have cleaner sound here than the original game). Alien Crush is pretty good but do you actually get to progress to other tables? I'm not quite clear on how it works exactly.

So you are so bad at the game you're actually hearing that often? That isn't the game's fault. Suck it up and get better at it. I haven't ever seen that to be a valid reason to dislike the game. If anything it increases the sense of urgency.

Silent Bomber: this is actually out in the Japanese Playstation store. An excellent 3D action game where the basic play mechanics are based on laying bombs and blowing them up. Very good graphics for the PS1, great music and some huge bosses. Just a ridiculously fun, if not altogether hard game.

Or you could see it at matinee price for $5ish too...

It's absolutely terrific, amazing, a classic, and one of the best platformers ever. Extremely creative play mechanics, A++ level designs, spot on control, a very funky and unique graphic style, and oddball graphical effects. The only problems are that the bosses are easy and there's far too little variety in the music (a handful of tunes are rehashed throughout the entire game).

Mega Man ZX is great stuff. It's from the Zero team, who had carved out a niche for themselves for high-quality but brutally-hard games that hardcore skilled players love. Fortunately, ZX is more accessible and fun. I disagree with Mario, but Mario Party has definitely worn out it's welcome. New Super Mario Bros. tho---that thing is still a huge seller and it's been out since May. Tomb Raider Legend was a great game, but all the previous TR games were definitely milks. Hopefully it wasn't a fluke. The Sonic games all suck now but they make tons of money, sadly. The MK games are 100% definites. Just look at MK Armageddon.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155765 It appears this Monday's VC update will include Alien Crush. Shame it's not Devil's Crush--but I assume they're somewhat related.

OBJECTION! Except for when they attacked Galoob over the Game Genie, claiming it allowed for the creation of "derivative works". Suing Camerica for making an NES Advantage clone, violating that patent (imagine a company suing today over a 3rd party controller). And suits against the makers of those "unlicensed" cartridges (even if they did suck), including the Tengen lawsuit And the usual anti-piracy stuff. One of the most awesome moves Sega made back then was not attacking, or even taking a blind eye to the Game Genie, but giving it their official seal of approval. While on the Nintendo side, having lost the previous suit, all they could do was alter the machines to not accept the Game Genies. So if you have bought an SNES game genie and it never worked--it most likely was 1994 and newer--which I believe is when the alterations went into place. Your Genie probably works fine, it's the system that's the problem. Nintendo sued Blockbuster for photocopying SNES manuals, and won, too. Hell, just review those and the other ones in brief here: http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/...tendosuits.html Of course, this is pretty much all Evil 80's Nintendo, FWIW.

It's by the same folks who once made Backyard Wrestling 1 and 2. It doesn't have a prayer of being good.

Just saw it plugged on the show tonight. That's terrific. I love the part where Conan seemed surprised there was no site like that on the internet already.

Street Fighter 1 isn't so hard once you get past the really crappy controls. I beat it in like 15 minutes, most of which was continuing on Sagat. On the easiest difficulty. Good Lord it sucks. Although yeah, Super Turbo is, was, and always will be pretty brutal. That's the original arcade game A.I. in all its glory.

Once you have a fish hooked, pull the Wiimote up...and *hold* it there. Link should be keeping the rod taut until eventually you pull it up on the dock. It confused me at first too, because it isn't like you have a reel, so I assumed you kept on yanking periodically.

New 1up Retro Roundup: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155734

That's mine. Beavis was a bit trickier since the proper hair isn't exactly in.

Just got the game, and 1up.com has a review up (8/10 rating). So far I really like it, although it's nowhere near as good as Dawn. The portrait areas are almost totally linear, and it seems to aim was to make the game more of a classic side scroller, though it feels still like one of the Symphony children. The big swag bag is really cool, as you get a stylus, a game casing, a music cd with music from nearly all of the games, an art book, and a Portrait poster.

There's some screens in J. Parish's 1up blog. http://toastyfrog.1up.com/ Apparently it ties in Bloodlines, and either that's the same John or maybe his son...?

1up has a new preview of the game and lots of new tidbits. http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3155700 Wow, I actually have hope for this game now. The new director seems really cool and committed, he's taking blatant digs at Jaffe, and the revelation that he was going to originally put wall-running in (convincing me all the more than he is/was a POP fan) seems encouraging.

Except for one throwaway, possibly incorrect claim on a game blog summary of a press conference, nothing has come to light saying GC games will be on VC. I would think there wouldn't be enough space for a GC game except for Alien Hominid. =/ A relatively "small" modern game like Tekken DR (PSP version anyway) takes 800 MB. So unless Wii begins supporting external hard drives, don't count on it.

Kotaku has Wii Play impressions: http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/wii-launch/wi...ions-219961.php Maybe one would be best to just buy an extra wiimote outright. =/

FISH ON!

I believe that's the one. There's a monkey with a baby cradle further down the small lake. Use the hawk to hit him, recover the cradle, and bring it to the lady on the bank who was looking for it.

Using quote marks to speed the reply: "Oh, I don't hate the game enough to not it. I might sound like I'm dumping on the game, but that's pretty much the way I am with everything. I like to be thorough, so I might bring up some issues with a game, but it doesn't mean I think it's bad. Hell, I could put together a few paragraphs on FFXII's large flaws, but I still thought it was very good. Same with TP." No problem, I just misconstrued your onslaught of negative remarks and no immediately noticeable positive comments. "Tales of Abyss, Valkyrie Profile 2, Grandia III, Magna Carta and Shadow Hearts: From the New World are all kind of recently released RPGs that aren't typical fare." I can't honestly keep track of the Tales games so far, because there's so damn many of them. I didn't like Grandia I or II. After hearing about VP2's reviews I have put it on the back burner, and I never liked the Shadow Hearts games. However, are these the titles that supposedly have the puzzle-solving and dungeon complexity of Zelda? Since you said that "RPGs" are doing that better. "I will admit that it's easier for RPG developers to mix things up, just because there are more options. They can significantly change how characters progress and how battles are fought, two things that can't change a whole lot in the Zelda series without making it a completely different game. As I said, there's not really much they can do to significantly change the games, outside of completely rehauling the battle and character system. And if they added something like character leveling, the game is then an RPG. Not like I'd complain" I would. "RPG elements" are fine and good when it's a cherry on top, but it doesn't fix a broken foundation either. And it can be really out of place in areas it doesn't belong. Having to hack away at enemies in preparations of really strong enemies/bosses doesn't appeal to me at all. The Metroidvania games can sink or swim depending on that balance. Circle was poorly balanced, SotN made it way too simple to become overpowered, and Dawn seemed to strike a fair balance overall, although within Julius mode the concern was moot. "Not really a matter of getting sick of them, more that I don't like certain parts of the formula." Like I said previously, you're being extremely vague here. All I keep hearing are these "played out" concerns. I haven't ever been able to develop such feelings. We're lucky to get 2 of these per console generation. Once in a while a quality action/adventure game arises besides that, and I'm glad to try those. Besides the Zeldas, the only ones that come to mind are Beyond Good & Evil and Star Fox Adventures. The former has been greviously overrated because of it's production values and has been (unjustly, perhaps) ignored by most gamers. The latter has been critically reemed for being a cookie-cutter me-too with plenty of weaknesses besides. Both are good, although not (IMO) great games. Okami is definitely the pick of the litter, though. Sure, it suffers in the difficulty area, but the brilliant interface (which eliminates almost all sub-menu switching--one of the problems that had plagued a lot of the Zelda games), art design, story, gameplay polish, etc. all make up for it. Although the game's overall feel, right down to the "Okami chime," makes it come off at a tribute to a certain other game series. So, yeah, I honestly don't understand why so many people bitch because a certain company makes good games and makes them often (which isn't very often for Zelda, I'm just going off on a tangent). Too many times I hear annoying squawking about "OMG ANOTHER METROIDVANIA!!! (not in the context of wanting a traditional CV, either mind you). Or gripes about "another Mega Man game! (even when it's a really good one, like ZX)" when it's their best and most original entry in years. Mega Man X6's problems weren't necessarily it's lack of originality, it was that the game itself was pretty awful and took many a step backwards. The only times I've really felt "too much of a good thing" were the GTA games. GTA3 was all the GTA I would ever need, and I pretty much put the series out of sight and out of mind after that. Even hearing about all the newer games' revamps did nothing to sway me. So, in conclusion, I don't see why "lack of creativity" is really a valid point to make against a solid quality title, it's just something that far too many game reviewers use arbritarily to use a lower number for their arbitrary review scores. A good game's a good game. It's just that it's the "game journalist" standard to "judge against similar games on that platform." Therefore we have silliness like a FPS getting demerits for lack of a quality story. "And I've probably overstated my dislike of the game and series in general. LTTP is still my favourite SNES game. And I still like a good chunk of this game, and my gripes basically amount to me not thinking the game is truly great, but it's still very good. The dungeons and mini-games are fun, I just don't like the battle, platforming elements and a lot of the forced events/puzzles that happen outside the dungeons." Fair enough, and the platforming elements are something that Okami really has in its favor. Okami *is* much more like a true platformer. If the wolf sections in TP played as well as Okami, we wouldn't really be having this discussion. I don't happen to think they're awful, though. "Aaaanyway, I still liked WW more than TP A replay might change my mind though, I kind of don't remember specific details about the game." It certainly seemed that way. It'll be very interesting to see what approach PH takes. So far it's very difficult to judge what the main gameplay will be like other than controlling with the stylus.

No problem. You're in England, though, right? I wonder if it will still work with all us U.S./Can folks.