AndrewTS

Corrected number

Based on the teaser CD I've been listening to, Dawn of Mana would count as well.

Zelda II will be available on virtual console this Monday. It's "different," you know?

I was deliberately vague.

Noted. 87. Sonic Next Gen on 360 -- the demo It's well known, and accepted, by now that the Sonic franchise is kept afloat not merely by kiddies who like the character (in fact, the amount of them are probably ridiculously overstated), but by nostalgia nuts who really should know better and a fanbase that is dangerously insane. While many hardcore games often bemoan the supposed "Nintendo cult" and fact that Mario games are practically an industry in and of themselves, most of the folks who buy and play them limit their fascination to playing, talking, and writing about them. The Sonic fanbase, or at least a vocal subset of them, are absolutely obsessed with the character and his "world" (any of many possible interpretations or "canons"). The quality of the games going to hell are no deterrent, as long as the game "builds on the world", "adds new characters," or introduces "great new story developments." In a nutshell, Sonic games are faithfully bought by people who are ultimately going to write lousy fanfiction and draw lousy fanart. And probably engage in other activities best left to the imagination. That being said, Sega knows this, so the sequels will never end. However, with Sonic the Hedgehog on 360 (later PS3),Sega announced that they were going to take Sonic back "to his roots" and focus on the game play over unnecessary characters and other gimmicks that seem to have harmed the Sonic franchise. After lots of interesting trailers and leaked info, players got their first chance to play the game through the Xbox Live Marketplace with a free downloadable demo. ....have you played it? If you have a 360, please play it. Now, assuming you have...wrap your head around this logic: Sega was honestly expecting people to play this and expected the quality of it to make people want the game? Seriously? If you don't have any chance of playing the demo (or the full game), you can still often play it at demo kiosks. In short, it sucked. In long, it's the worst 3D Sonic game made to date, and gives you an adequate glimpse of one of the worst games ever made. By playing it, you come to realize that its most basic play mechanics don't actually work. The homing attack, a staple of the 3D Sonics, doesn't really adequately "home in" on enemies. Well, at least not when it really should. It will home in on an enemy that's *much further away* than an enemy almost directly in your line of sight. Plus, sometimes you'll try to homing-attack a sole enemy in front of you, and fly over its head and fall to your death. Remember the Light Dash, where you tapped a button and Sonic would speed through a line of rings, collecting them along the way? You have maybe a 50/50 chance of it actually activating...and when it does, it will not grab all the rings. The control is so horrible that the waggled-up Sonic and the Secret Rings feels like Sonic 2 in comparison. I'm fairly sure you could play "Secret Rings" while using the Wii Remote as a suppository and you would still have more accurate, reliable control than "Sonic Next Gen." Now, there are still segments of that insane Sonic fanbase who played the game and bought it...but any and all potential players who were not so insanely dedicated surely would not bother. Considering that the typical 360 buyer likely isn't one who normally buys Sonic games anyway, the game unsurprisingly bombed. The demo, had it been of a good game, would have given players a chance to get interested in the game free of any financial risk. Sega blew it, and word of mouth from players killed the game's sales before it hit stores. At least for maybe the kiddies and the Sonic loonies. I actually still have the Sonic demo on my 360, and I will play it occasionally. If you ever get really frustrated at a game, questioning the competency of the design team...play that demo. You'll have a new appreciation for just about any other game you play afterwards.

QUINTESSENCE!!! 86. PROJECT ALTERED BEAST For some reason or another, when Sega nostalgia is brought up, Altered Beast manages to sneak into the discussion. Lord knows why, because Sega made much better games on Master System, and the title was one of their worst arcade titles. It was a shallow, stupid walk-and-puncher, that was more impressive on a technical level (parallax, chunks of baddies flying towards the screen, digitized voice clips) than on any gameplay terms. On the Genesis, it was something to boast about, again, on visual and audio terms. That's it. Anyone who revisits the game will find lousy, awkward controls, jumps that either send you too high or straight-on into enemies. The game's incredibly annoying design (grab the orbs or keep playing until you do, or you will never face the boss) discouraged you from playing it. While graphically impressive at the time, the art design was horrible, with gaudy pastels all over the place when a grittier direction would have fit better. The main character starts with a shred of an outfit and grows more horrifically shirtless. Oh, and those wolves you gotta kick to drudge through the miserable pile? They look more like pigs. When Sega of Japan introduced the Sega Ages line to PS2 (a line of mostly horrid remakes of Sega classics, many of which arrived here as Sega Classics Collection), one title that seemed to be missing was Altered Beast. However, Sega announced that it had something special planned for AB fans! Rather than a remake, Sega announced that a full-fledged sequel of Altered Beast would be made. Entitled , it was going to be big, brutal, bloody, and naturally have transformations in. Sega charged Wow Entertainment, aka AM1 to do it--folks responsible for the House of the Dead series and Vampire Night. So...a revival of a "classic" action game, on 3D hardware, with a respectable budget, featuring the gameplay mechanic of changing into several big, badass, destructive animals and monsters. They *couldn't* screw it up, right? Well, they did. Rather than going the traditional route and making a sequel with the same settings and theme, PAB took place in a modern/semi-futuristic setting, and the transformations were now the result of DNA experimentation and other such tampering in God's domain. But, hey, that's fair enough, right? Besides, God of War seemed to have that whole angry shirtless Greek killing lots of stuff thing cornered, anyway. Rather than trying to truly go next-gen, the gameplay stayed fairly true to its beat'em up roots (and thankfully isn't the annoying forced-scrolling affair the original is). However, when the original game isn't that good to begin with, a company should *really* take as many liberties as possible to make the game play well. Unfortunately, the gameplay is pretty much--kill, move on, kill, move on. sadly, the control is overly simplistic (jump, attack, and a super attack) and not very responsive. Transformations are based upon Spirit Energy, which is acquired by weakening and draining enemies. Once activated, the transformation ticks down on your Spirit energy...and you eventually go back to normal. Combat is dull, A.I. is poor, and there aren't really any cool twists or intriguing level designs to keep you going. The game was such a half-baked mess that Sega of America never approved it for U.S. release. However, the question remains--with a concept that could have been any of 1000 incredible games, whether a better beat 'em up, 3D action game, action RPG, and so on, why could Sega not make a mind-blowing, awesome action game to capitalize on the name value they had? well, they're stupid. Gameplay footage of Project Altered Beast : http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/alteredbeast/media.html 42 (Expanded version). VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 - SEGA GENESIS Fans of sega and owners of the Saturn were always rather disappointed that, while the system saw the birth of several original new games and series, several successful Sega Genesis games never got sequels and updates. Streets of Rage lived, thrived, and died on Genesis; a true next-gen Sonic game never made it out of development; Ecco was teased and never came to be; Phantasy Star was MIA, and so on. If only, perhaps those titles came out, the Saturn's fortunes might have changed. Of course, no, but it's fun to imagine. Sega did wisely invest in a lot of great original series like Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon...but strangely, rather than updating too many of the classics on Genesis, they opted to take a step back-asswards and put Virtua Fighter 2 on Genesis. If you've browsed sites that cover and review old pirate ROMs, you may know that plenty of arcade and console fighters for the 16-bit systems (and even Neo Geo) often ended up mashed into NES, Master System, and Game Gear carts. Among the likes of Somari, Metroid hacks, and massive Multi-cart, there were Fatal Furies and Street Fighter 2s for NES. Typically, besides looking like, well NES games, the titles were missing most characters, missing moves, were stuffed with flicker and slowdown, and had horrible, horrible control. Well, Sega channeled the spirit of Hong Kong pirates when they produced Virtua Fighter 2 Genesis in 1996. Actually...that's almost paying them a compliment. Lousy pirate NES fighters usually felt a *little* like the 2D fighters they were mimmicking. With VF2 being a top-notch 3D fighter at the time, and the Genesis translation being all 2D, it just doesn't work. The game loses Lion and Shun Di--the "new" fighters who were introduced in VF2. The animation, while fine for a 2D game, made it play drastically different, i.e. nothing at all like the original. The control was mushy and unpredicable, and while plenty of moves and combos did make it, who is seriously going to invest any time into it? In what must have been some sort of joke gone horribly wrong, not only was this "classic" brought to the PS2 and PSP in the form of the Sega Genesis Collection, but it has been made available as an 800 Wii Point download (that's 8 bucks, kiddies!) for the Virtual Console. If Virtual Console featured Doom for SNES or Mortal Kombat 56 People it wouldn't be as much of a pathetic, shameful, insulting ripoff.

Ray needs to quit all the ******* ****ing swearing, but aside from that you've got lots of interesting discussion on the series. 1up's had some great coverage and overviews of the series on their website. Jeremy Parish also has a nice tribute up on his blog about Mega Man Legends, along with some (perhaps futile) hopes that Mega Man Legends 3 will one day be made: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=816608...cUserId=5379721

The battle with St. Germain was, IMO, genuinely awesome too. Actually using the ID skill in a useful fashion like that should have been a staple throughout the entire game.

Come to think of it, yeah, I did feel that way about Chrono Cross.

It's happened to us all, I'm sure. You've either bought or rented a game...maybe it's a sequel, maybe it's been getting lots of hype and has great production values, or it could have been recommended by a friend... And it absolutely sucks. Hard. But not *totally.* In your search for redeeming qualities, you find it's absolutely terrific to listen to, or the music gets stuck in your head. Or, horror of horrors, the music is *so good* you press on regardless, torturing yourself just to listen to more. Perfect example--Castlevania Curse of Darkness. The game sucks. It's a step backward from Lament of Innocence in every conceivable way, except for the terrific soundtrack. I actually didn't mind the tedious grinding and muddling through empty corridors quite so much because it may have the best soundtrack in a CV since SotN. Megaman has hit many a high and many a low--but the great music is pretty much the only constant. Oh, and Final Fantasy VII has a darn good soundtrack, too.

VGCharts' numbers have been called into question many, many times ever since they were forced to stop using NPD numbers, but there hasn't been any dispute that it's at least at 6. The milestone is more significant right now than the current number.

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Nintendo_Wii_h...units_worldwide Nintendo has sold 6 million Wiis worldwide, making the Wii is officially the fastest-selling game system. Ever. Dayum.

preview trailer of Dewy's Adventure: http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/Dewy/ WARNING: it is TEH KIDDY

http://www.destructoid.com/elephant//ul/31899-tingle_man.jpg

Yes, I have. Fixthegame.com is where I got it from, but it worked through Ebay anyway. The site had a great tutorial on how to do the replacement, but it doesn't exist anymore. =/

No worse than Capcom actually designing loli jailbait Lilith.

It was a problem with the first-run Gamecubes. Mine was OOW but I was able to fix it myself.

You have a recharging shield. It should be going down a little bit at least. You don't have keys to the city/God mode on right?

Typically, anyone over 6' is "tall" anyway, so don't sweat not being more of a hoss than you are. Like, if they ever did a Final Fight movie (lol), Don Frye would be a great Haggar tho he's too short: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DonFrye.jpg http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e159/elu...char/haggar.jpg He's M. Bison, you North American scum!

Gamecube DRE?

That would have required them to actually come up with more than 3 gameplay styles, which they were too lazy to do. The gem-hunting went from quick, easy, and fun from the first game to annoying PITA in one simple step: the radar only lets you find them in a specific, arbitrary order. Because that's just metal detectors work, I guess. You can't find your Indian arrowhead before you find your lost house key. And we know drug-sniffing dogs will always seek out pot first, then hash, then cocaine. I think the day that they designed Rouge...then gave her ginormous breasts, they decided it was going to be a furrytastic hit and phoned it in from then on. Then they did some pot. Then some hash. Then some cocaine. In that order, of course.

What exactly are the problems you were having with the Crackdown DLC? Did you lose any save data? The "problems" where if you joined a coop game with somebody who downloaded the free DLC, your save would get borked. And no, I didn't lose any data because I haven't done any coop. Recently that's been fixed, it turns out. From the official Crackdown boards by a RTW poster: http://forums.crackdownoncrime.com/forums/thread/29363.aspx

$14.99 for my new copy, but used ones go for $12.99. Xbox version isn't playable on 360, unfortunately. Speaking of beat 'em ups playable on 360, Anya brought the Buffy games to my attention. Both play on 360, although the first one apparently is better. Sadly, there's no co-op on either one. Surprisingly, those games have high scores across the board.

SA2 would have been good if there were no Knuckles/Rouge levels, period. And arguably no Tails/Eggman levels, period. Well...maybe.

Pretty good I-no.