AndrewTS

It's amazing that Kenzo has (accidentally) killed a man, Jones is an ex-con, but you can't take them seriously since they look/act like such goofy bastards. Test being back is so damn pointless, though. I'd rather have Heidenreich anytime.

Funny you mention that. I found it at a pawn shop for 10 bucks today.

There was a GBA Sonic Spinball? Surely you don't mean that piece of garbage on the smash pack, do you? Actually, the original Sonic Spinball was kind of crap on Genesis too, IMO.

Agreed. Plus, it's not like I expect WWE to have great wrestling anyway, especially on Raw. Some goofy crap that entertains me is better than their "edgy" angles or their horrible main event programs. Still, probably his first week back he'll be praising Vince as having a gigantic penis. I could *swear* that Rene Dupree was released. Was he signed back earlier this month? I checked the WWE page and it seems he's still there.

Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures if you have access to two GBAs. Smash Bros. Ultimate Muscle is a rather simplistic (total arcade-style play) wrestling title, but it's very fun and the tag team specials are insane. Alien Hominid (it's a Metal Slug clone, although it's not GC exclusive) If you have room for the bongos, Donkey Konga 1/2 is great fun. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (*dirt* cheap, and who doesn't love kaiju fights?) Soul Calibur 2 (not exclusive) Super Monkey Ball series Puyo Pop Fever Depending on tastes, naturally.

Slayer

Source: ign

I've yet to get into the DS online thing because I'm wired and I'm not about to get the dongle. Is the single-player mode any good? Is it at all like the GC Prime titles, or just "kill everything?" I'm not really a FPS fan at all but I lived the Primes on GC.

fanofcoils: check out these sites: http://www.xenu.net/ http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/scientology/ The first one, Operation Clambake, basically is where we learned the secret "truths" that you saw illustrated in the In the Closet ep. It isn't something they put in their pamphlets, since it would scare any sensible person away. It's something that is revealed after years of brainwashing, when members are surrounded by other members, have brought in family members, and have spends thousands of dollars supporting the "church." The Rotten article basically sums up everything quite well.

They did that with Cena last year, he had the popular intro of "Thugnomics" and two weeks before WM, he debuted "My Time is Now" which has the more dramatic opener and fans were still not used to it by Mania time. Batista's Evolution-era singles theme beats what they replaced it with.

The localized titles lead to confusion. Dracula X: Rondo of Blood is followed by Dracula XX on SNES, which is followed by Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight (aka SotN). If Richter is in it, it's a Drac X game, basically (Saturn/PSX versions are basically the same for story purposes). IGA struck CV Legends, Circle of the Moon and the N64 games from the canon. Everything else is assumed canon except for the parody games/appearances. "where does the canon start and where does it end" Currently-- Lament of Innocence starts it, and the game that takes place last chronologically is Dawn of Sorrow. The games are ordered here: http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/storyline.html Storyline conflicts, mistranslations, and localization (Japan never had the Poltergeist King who gave Trevor the VK in CV3) have led to the storyline making absolutely no bloody sense, and Iga hasn't helped at all.

Nintendo, Sega and Panasonic had brief affairs with educational software, IMO because it made them look good PR-wise. Remember Pico? Those blue-stripe Genesis games like Ecco Jr. (ugh) and GameFAQs long-running joke Barney's Hide and Seek? Or that load of educational software Panasonic plugged while simultaneous dishing out gory fighters? Mario Teaches Typing I can't comment on, since I've never even seen it. However, it probably doesn't have the rush of the greatest typing game of all time, Typing of the Dead. Speaking of which (and back on topic), Pinball of the Dead was really fun, although I didn't make much progress on it. Anyone play Mario Pinball?

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2034&p=.htm Amusing that Pink friggin' Panther is outperforming V. PP is *still* in theaters around where I live. I guess we're getting a sequel.

Mario's Time Machine, Mario is Missing, and Hotel Mario say hello.

Yeah, fuck individual rights.

Fanfreakingtastic. It seems to be a Wind Waker sequel...with the ability to chart your own course with the styus. The perspective looks excellent, too.

It's the only "version" of Dracula X, right? The SNES game is Dracula XX and is a different game, and although SotN is considering part of the same "series" it's not a "version" of the game. It bridged the gap between the old school titles and Castletroid. It would be great to see. Considering that Konami cracked down on distribution of the ISO, I thought they had plans to release it here (IGA likes the game and has pushed for it, but nothing came of it). Renegade has played it and says it's a good game, but is screaming for an arranged mode because of the cheap hits, which makes it rather unbalanced and frustrating.

It's very sweet, but TGX had...Bonk and...? Considering Sega's utterly incompetent attempts at classic collections, it'll be nice to see, especially all of those rare imports that are hard to even find ROMs for.

credit to UYI for "discovering" it first, but anyway... (1up.com coverage of the GDC:) "GDC 2006: Zelda for DS Announced Phantom Hourglass coming this year! by Garnett Lee, 03/23/2006 In his keynote this morning Nintendo Co., Ltd President Satoru Iwata revealed something sure to thrill DS owners. A new Zelda game is coming to the handheld, and, better yet, it will be here by the end of the year. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass made its debut in a video that showed off the beautiful new game. Graphically, the game is fully 3D using the cartoon style from Wind Waker. While little is known of the gameplay yet, it was clear that the action moves across both of the DS's screens. There will be puzzles that can be solved by using the touch screen. Examples we saw were throwing a boomerang along a path you draw with the stylus, directing your Wind Waker-style ship using the stylus, and opening up sealed areas by pressing on the correct pressure plates (like how you would stand on them in other Zelda games). You can also put out a fire and make notes on the map using the stylus -- and then put the map back onto the top screen. And it wouldn't be Zelda without a fairy that looks just like Tingle. Yep, it's in there. " Awesomeness. EDIT for vidness. Fanfreakingtastic. It seems to be a Wind Waker sequel...with the ability to chart your own course with the stylus. The perspective looks excellent, too.

SOURCE PLEASE?!??! (EDIT: nevermind, thanks for the heads up) Wind waker art style, traditional top-down gameplay...I'm so freakin' there. When it was mentioned that a four swords style title was cancelled and started anew as something different, I wondered...

The GI article manages to throw in very little info with tons of packing peanuts of nothingness. Like several paragraphs detail that a sequel should keep what made the original appealing while not changing "too much." and losing things that made the first game good. Yeah, knew that. Jaffe has been promoted so isn't the director anymore. Kratos has been stripped of his throne, and so he's going to take it up with the 3 "Sisters of Fate," the gods' gods. There still will be buckets of gratuitous violence, and they claim they won't shy away from the sexual elements as some people may have feared. Movement on walls is quicker. Subweapons will be integratable into combos and combos will be a bit deeper. Magic will be quicker and more useful overall. Kratos can use the chains to swing around...which they swear will make you think of Bionic Commando (and totally not inspired by any more recent games, oh no.). Kratos will be able to fly/glide with the wings of Icarus, which you'll "acquire" from a boss battle with Icarus himself.

For a group that loved to molest children, they weren't exactly in a hurry to do it. That part when they were trying to get chef back...and the SAC was all "I'm going to have to ask you to leave" and calling security...I didn't get that. Maybe it's partly becuase they'd done a ridiculous pedophile/possible victims chase scene already in the NAMBLA ep, but it really dragged, whatever it was.

Oh, God yes. It's not even close, and ZM is a pretty good game. Everything in Fusion rocks. I'm still a little afraid to play it in the dark due to the awesomely eerie music and the basic concept of being the only one alive on the station. Then again, I have a seriously overactive imagination. I disliked Fusion at first, mainly because of the linearity/computer direction, but back-to-back play with SM, and playing ZM helped me put it all into perspective well. The graphics, gameplay, music, story--it all comes together so extremely well that I don't care if it's different or a bit more structured towards a narrative. However, opinions differ, and I've seen plenty of folks online still swear by ZM and often don't bring up Fusion. Ah well. "great stuff, thanks man!" You're welcome. There was a lot of info there, but I wanted to at least emphasize that some of those classics are free unlockables, so they're often a better value to get something like the Pac collection or Wario Ware.

I'm not much of a sports gamer, but there's literally one basketball game on the entire system: NBA Jam 2002. And it sucks. Super Dodge Ball and Fire Pro are good, though. Super Mario Bros. is just the NES game in portable form, plus the ability to save after each world. Super Mario Advance (Super Mario Bros. 2) is a somewhat improved game, but it's a title I played to death on Mario All Stars, so I'd pass on it. Super Mario Advance 2: Super Mario World has some minor changes/enhancements (GameFAQs has a section detailing them all), but like SMB, nearly everyone has played this game. Super Mario Advance 3: Super Mario World 2 Yoshi's Island: If you've never played the original, you missed out on a great game. It's easier to find this than it is the original SNES game, IMO, so pick it up if you missed it. It's just a fantastic game and shouldn't be passed up. Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3: I think it's one of one of the best games ever, so if you don't own it, get it. I was annoyed that it incorporated e-reader features, but it doesn't take away from the original game at all. Also, all of the "Advance" Super Mario titles (so not the NES Classics one, but the others) feature the original Mario Bros. arcade game. If you have a friend with any of those titles, you can play it with him/her. Not really exciting, but it's a bonus so what the heck. Yeah, there's plenty of other classic titles, but BE WARY, because not all of them are worth your money. Bomberman -- Good, but there's better, newer versions available. Castlevania -- Worth 10 bucks, since it's a bonafide classic and has a save feature, which makes it much easier to enjoy. You can only pick up where you left off if you save after a boss fight, though, but still a sweet feature. Donkey Kong -- Get the Game Boy version, which has all of the original levels (NES version was missing the arcade cement factory), plus after those initial stages there's like 90+ original platformer stages that are way fun. Mario vs Donkey Kong is a sequel of sorts to this version of DK (and is also a darn fine GBA game but one I haven't seen in a while). Excitebike -- good game, but wasn't really my bag. Ice Climber -- didn't like it personally. Metroid -- Another true classic, however, not only is Zero Mission a pretty good remake of the game, but Metroid Zero Mission has the original Metroid available as an unlockable. If you buy this game used it's a pretty good bet you'll even have the game unlocked already, too. So the NES Classic version is redundant unless you gotta have the retro box/instructions. Pac-Man -- Pac Man Collection has more and better versions of the classic game. Super Mario Bros. -- Good port overall, but only if you have to have it portable. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe actually has way more features, but the sprites are much larger so the original screen ratio in that title isn't true to the original like the GBA version. Dr. Mario -- Unnecessary, since it was inferior to Tetris, and Dr. Wario (Wario's OMGBOOTLEGVERSION) is available as an unlockable in the original Warioware, and is the same game minus multiplayer. So if you must play Dr. Mario linked up with another player, here's your game. The Legend of Zelda -- Good port, although it's also on the Collector's Edition bonus disc. But makes for a great portable title provided you're not going to need to shut it off frequently. Once you're in a dungeon you can save and it will pick you up from the dungeon entrance, however save on the overworld and you start out outside Old Man's cave. However, somebody needs a kick in the nuts for a black and white manual and a pathetic *grey* cartridge. There's not even a decent map in the manual. Some of the in-game Engrish is fixed up a bit. Xevious -- rather fun shooter, but I'm not a shooter nut so it's nothing I'd play extensively. Zelda II -- A spot-on port of the original love-it-or-leave-it side-scrolling action RPG. I'll probably be buying it just to try to complete it before TP ships. There's more of them that were Japan-only (Famicom Mini line), but only those titles made it to the US.

I heard lots of good review for Tekken Advance, although I guess it hasn't aged well at all. And I meant more for DR's overall playability due to having enough buttons to accomodate the game. Naturally, versus play against humans will vary, but the GBA is seen more as a "toy" while I see older gamers lug around their PSPs a lot, and wireless play is less cumbersome than using a link cable. MK Advance is total garbage. Even if you adore UMK it's a terrible port of it, graphically, sound-wise, control-wise, ai-wise, etc. I assume she was joking since it is so infamously bad.