AndrewTS

Lots of reviews in--nearly all very positive: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/...ideranniversary

So stupid fake celeb commits some crime, violates patrol, goes to fake court, gets sentenced to fake jail, has a fake breakdown, but now is going to go back to fake court so they can decide whether to give her "time out" or send her to bed without supper?

POLICE TRAINER--I see that game all the time. It seems so dull and generic. Bubble Bobble rules. I actually picked up both Taito Legends collections, incidentally. The 2nd one has Darius Gaiden, G-Darius, Elevator Action 2, and VIOLENCE FIGHT, among others.

I just killed the T. Rex. Fun fight, excellent set up to it as well.

GT isn't going to be exactly "sold" anytime soon.

Killzone 2

Coming up with a good list was hard--but here's what I got: *Old School* NBA Jam T.E. -- No explanation needed--one of the most flat-out incredibly fun sports or arcade games in existence. Sunset Riders ; 4 player version -- Up to 4 gun-wielding vigilantes bust caps into various old West baddies and racial stereotypes. Killer Instinct -- The originator of the insane, double-digit combo strings. Features empty promises of the amazing Ultra 64 in its attract screens. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker -- The King of Pop fights to save children, occasionally turns into a robot that destroys all in his path. TMNT Turtles in Time -- The final and best arcade fighter featuring the Turtles, has lots of terrific settings, tough bosses, and cool voice samples. Almost as good as the SNES home version. *New School* Tekken 6 -- It's going to be testing like, this month. So it's as good as released, practically. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core -- The latest, greatest version of Guilty Gear until I presume it goes to XXX, and we get the expected crossover with Melty Blood. Time Crisis 4 -- Top-notch gun shooter Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2 -- good racer, *great* soundtrack courtesy of Yuzo Koshiro. Mo-Cap Boxing -- What Wii Sports Boxing could be like if it didn't suck.

I will meditate and then write my own list that will destroy yours.

Arcades today are desperately missing hand-to-hand violence. I can't believe my arcade doesn't have *one* game where you can punch somebody in the face. That's like, criminal.

Which is my point. It was like an apology for DD NES and DD2 arcade.

Double Dragon II?

1up's review for MK Armageddon on Wii is in: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3160128 6.5/10. Milky reviewed it. I told you so, Anya.

Before I post this--I just want to say I don't mean this to deride Sony, troll PS3 owners, or anything of the sort. That being said.... HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Motion controls sucked back then too, you know. And unless you just see big fat slobs on it all the time, I don't see why you'd object. Typically when those machines are in use it seems to be mainly young girls using it. This is the theory I mainly subscribe to. I know it fairly true for me, mainly because I am horrible at playing fighters with joysticks. It seemed like beginning of the end was Playstation. When a game takes about a year to come to console and the graphics and sound are severely compromised? Sure, I'll pick the arcade game. If it's coming out on console in two months and has extra features? Well, I'll play it if it's there, but if it's busy or there's another game I want to play, ah well. Besides, my Pocket Change (where I mainly got to play fighters) had a bad habit of yanking fighting games shortly after putting in a new machine. I swear the Street Fighter Alpha machine was there like a week.

It seems the game is coming to 360 after all--but maybe not in disc form: http://kotaku.com/gaming/raidin.-ur-live/t...-360-266578.php What the hell--split up by levels? Eidos needs to spill details, like, a month ago. WTFITS? There has to be a physical disc coming. There's no way its going to fit on even a 512 MB card. EDIT: the 360 "version" is going to be DLC for Tomb Raider Legend-- http://www.eat-sleep-game.com/news/2007/06...o-the-xbox-360/ But not for a few months, apparently. And Legend will apparently be re-released with the "bonus" content as a special edition. *sigh*, Eidos, why you milk Lara so?

What's this "age limit" thing for Dave & Buster's? I've never been to one and it sounds crazy.

Picked it up, and so far it's wonderful. The old music seems to be here in remixed form, the old sound cue has returned, and the battle music when you encounter enemies is better than ever. Hearing that howl before being attacked by a pack of wolves, ahhh...great job CD. It uses the original game as a blueprint but doesn't appear to slave to it. *finishes first level* HOLY FREAKING CRAP!!! A BEAR!!! IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR ME!!!!

Interesting theory. Granted, that means a lot of people are seriously stupid enough to think it's worth it to spend ton of money on a game and earn tickets for stuff that they could buy with real cash outright with less money/time spent.

Correction on my last post. They still have DDR, apparently broken, though, curtained off in another area along with Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. So I guess they'll fix it and make it available again. Ghost Squad is quite good...but...another on-rails shooter? More arcade gun games need to steal from Time Crisis and offer at least ducking and cover. I also tried Ranger Mission. Not as good as Ghost Squad, but the gun and the ability to just pump to reload made it a blast. I was blasting every enemy in sight almost--even got all the enemies in one area! I notice that I seem to have better luck when I don't bother with the sight. Maybe its my height? Anyone else have better luck without using the gun's sights?

Think of Tomb Raider infused with Prince of Persia Sands of Time feel, and you pretty much have it nailed. Since there's no time rewind, there's a generous (I'd say too generous) checkpoint system. You die, you start from the checkpoint. The checkpoints are less than 5 minutes apart, I'd say. Lots of the reviews knocked the game for its length, though. Legend is a short game if you're just going for start-to-finish completion. Finding all the treasures in the game is a much longer process, though. You can jump and swing just as nimbly as the Prince, but can't run up walls (although there seems to be a wall run feature in Anniversary with the use of her grappling hook). Legend is quite linear overall, so don't sweat having to backtrack. The controls are spot-on excellent, with only the gun play in need of any notable improvement IMO (not so much hard to use, just kind of tedious). I think the team had in mind to do this game from the very beginning--in Legend there's an area where you take control of Lara in her classic look (it's a flashback), and they attempted to mimic the visual style of the early Raider games. Toby Gard was called back when they were starting Legend, so that probably had a lot to do with it, too. If you don't have Sands of Time play under your belt for a basis to compare, for crying out loud go get it. It has to be easily obtainable for under 10 bucks.

When I was really little the rollerskating rink was *the* arcade: The Simpson, Moonwalker, Street Fighter 2, TMNT--good times. Eventually it closed and was demolished, and currently is a car lot. About the time it disappeared the mall got a Pocket Change, which stayed around throughout most of the 90s. I remember first playing Darkstalkers there and being blown away. I pumped lost of quarters into X-Men vs. Street Fighter, too. When it closed, there was *nothing* around for a while, but out of town I found a mini-golf course that had lots of good machines--Super Turbo, X-Men vs. SF, and some beat 'em up (X-Men) I think. Based on what a friend who lived closer in the area told me, apparently it was burned down as part of an insurance scheme, and the land sold off for storage garages. I have no idea where the arcade machines went--probably privately sold under the table before torching, as I remember at least the Street Fighter machine was for sale. My current arcade opened a few years ago, and its stuff has rotated to a ridiculous degree. It once had Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur, now it's new and old random lightgun games. Hell, even the DDR is gone, which seems insane. Malls around me have mini-arcades that are pretty much tiny single-rooms with one showpiece game (DDR, for instance) and a bunch of random old games like pinball, iron claw machines, and Crisis Zone. House of the Dead machines are seemingly everywhere too, like a horrible plague. Movie theaters seem to all have that one, along with other junk like Police Trainer and Deer Hunter.

If you bought both of them brand new, that would be $50 (Tomb Raider Legend is now $20, at least on PS2/XBox).

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3160088 1up review in. A good score, though they gripe about occasional camera issues. The only thing that disappoints me really is that the checkpoint system from Legend is back. I hoped for the crystals to return, but not to be single-use. Ah well.

I was discussing with Anya about the rather poor state of arcades, at least around me. There's one arcade that's kind of decent round where I live. However, they usually don't have much to speak off, their Tekken 5 / DR seemingly was there and gone pretty quickly. I checked it today, and nearly everything is a gun game: Silent Scope EX, Ghost Squad, House of the Dead 1, Virtua Cop 1, Deer Hunter, and Time Crisis 2 were present. Not a single fighting game. It had Daytona 2, skeeball and air hockey, though. However, despite being open like a half hour, half the machines weren't even turned on. How are they around you? Do you ever make use of them? Are they sometimes-good then get rid of the good/new stuff all the time as well?

I want a Servbot game. Has anyone played the new Pirates of the Carib game? I downloaded the 360 demo, and holy crap it's awful. Most of it feels like a really lousy, retarded Prince of Persia. Despite the fact that *every system you play it on* has analog joysticks you have to HOLD A BUTTON to run. Jack has two speeds: Fat Wario speed and Sorta-ok speed. The combat is pathetic for the most part (attack, attack to defeat most enemies, at least in the demo level), except for the ones that you need to use a special attack to defeat (hooray for context-sensitive commands!). The platforming is total rip on the Prince, but reaaaally slow and stupid. I love how you have to push a crate (YES CRATE PUSHING MADE IT IN) to get to ledge where the ledge already has a stack of crates that are arranged like two big steps and would be easier to climb. But you can't climb it because it's part of the scenery. It's also one of the games where you can't do *anything* until the game tells you how to do it. For example, the attack button, she does nothing, until the games tells you "oh, you can attack with A." To break up the boredom, there is a sword duel minigame. If you've ever played Great Swordsman, think of it like that. It's fairly simple, 3 attack levels, being quick or lucky, but it gets boring quick. It looks ok, but as if the graphics are where all the programmers efforts went.