Rendclaw

Personally, I'm glad that they didn't do that angle, it had the potential of being as bad as Al Wilson (if not worse).

I saw that match, and my GOD was it horrible... I hope that her time up in OVW did her some good because it was obvious that she was picked off of TE because she was cute...

I read how they are celebrating the anniversary of Astroboy in Japan, and they are redoing the series, I think.... if I can find the article, I'll post it. EDIT I found it... As a kid in the 1960s, nothing could get me into the living room faster than to hear the cheerful strains of the Astroboy theme song coming from our old black-and-white TV set. Astroboy was in many ways the original Japanese anime, with over 100 original black-and-white episodes and over 50 color episodes from the 1980s sequel series. The brainchild of the late Dr. Osamu Tezuka, Astroboy was (according to the storyline) "born" in Tokyo, Japan on April 7, 2003. Today, of course, Japan is celebrating this milestone on many levels and in many ways, and not just at the official website. Today, Fuji Television Network broadcast the first segment of a new 50-part Astro Boy series that is to travel to the United States later this year. With this export in the offing, Astro Boy will contribute to what one essayist recently called Japan's "gross national cool." Unless you've seen (or grown up with) the original Astroboy, you can't fully appreciate the true genius of what Tezuka created, infused with a childlike wonder of the world seen thru Astroboy's eyes and sweetly endowed with his philosophy: "Love all creatures! Love everything that has life! Preserve nature! Bless life! Be careful of a civilization that puts too much stock in science! Do not wage war!"

when you do, let me know how it is, I've been curious myself.

And Tekken. To continue the links...there is Tekkenzaibatsu.com, pretty much THE Tekken community. Like I said earlier, as far as high level and tournament play goes it's never been more organized. People from KOREA travel to play in tournaments here! It's just not like the MK II days were EVERY arcade had a cabinet and a ton of players. I guess you could say it's more underground and hardcore. Too many people mash buttons as Eddy and think their masters or can do Honda's hand slap and think they're experts. Oh yeah, I ran across such websites during a search here at work one night.... I couldn;t help but think that if they had such a thing about 12 years ago, the arcade scene would be a little different today. But then again, no one saw the Crash coming, either. Ah, the proliferation of the Internet has changed us all.... some for the good, some for the worse.... And I agree totally with your assessment on players, Sakura-chan... I used to be like that with Chun-Li before I actually started developing strategy.... by that time I had graduated to play Sagat, who is probably the best defensive fighter, even though he had sick power in CE. Capcom balanced him out in SSF II, but I just loved watching people's faces when I would drain about 40% of their life meter with a well-placed Tiger Uppercut, knocking their asses off the machine. A friend of my roommate's is heavily into Tekken, and he plays Eddy exclusively... I saw from the first how cheesy he can be used, though his combos are fun to look at.

Oh yes, I remember it..... back when it first came out 1988 I think.... with the huge-ass button that would give you a different move depending on how hard you hit.... I'm in agreement, that game was pure ass, in looks and gameplay.

Ack. Triple Post. My bad.

I wonder, whatever happened to taking a portion of your profits and putting it back into your business to make it better than it was? Oh never mind, this is the 21st century now, the "I get mine and I don't give a damn if you live or die" era.... we see it in the ring and in the WWE, and its just a reflection on what is going on in this country and to some extent, the rest of the world, too.

I wonder, whatever happened to taking a portion of your profits and putting it back into your business to make it better than it was? Oh never mind, this is the 21st century now, the "I get mine and I don't give a damn if you live or die" era.... we see it in the ring and in the WWE, and its just a reflection on what is going on in this country and to some extent, the rest of the world, too.

And here I thought that Sting was financially set and with no need to wrestle anymore. I guess his movie career wasn't as great as it could have been. Uh huh. While I would not mind actually seeing him in the ring, I agree with the consensus. Another attempt at a quick fix.

dammit, how the hell COULD I forget Karate Champ? Way back when the game first game out, I was *one* fight away from beating the game, and my nerves got the best of me. Hell I still remember the high score I had... 210,500. If anyone here beat that game, let me know, because I always wanted to know what happened at the end. Yie Ar was awesome, which (along with Time Pilot) was the reason why I bought the Konami Arcade Classics for the PS1... that and it was only 10 bucks at the time. Also, Tag Team Wrestling was fun.... it actually had you learn about placement and tactics... I remember once doing a piledriver on the outside..... complete with a run-in by the manager who hit you with a cane..... that game was way ahead of its time..... Speaking of side-scrolling beat-em-ups, data east made one that I have trying to find in emulation.... I can;t remember the name, but you could select from three characters (typical in that one was fast and weak, another average and the last one was slow and strong) It was unique because during a stage you could pick up pigs and they would turn into footballs which you could peg the enemy with. Anyone know that one?

Amen, Dames... that was the only good thing about the Genesis was the advent of the 6 button controllers.... having ANY controller with diagonals (something that I am still looking for in PS2 controllers aside from the crappy, low-quality, last for about 4 months of heavy gameplay Mad Catz brand) made games on both systems that much easier to play.... I have to admit, Sakura, I lost interest in MK after MK II... there were no major innovations to the game, although MK: DA looks like a game that could seriously revive my interest. Oh I knew about the SF communities back in their infancy, at least in the Orlando area... they really started coming out when SSF2t hit the market... I think my ex-roomie was one of the first in the area to fight Gouki/Akuma and beat him (with freaking Blanka, of all people). By the way, I hardly ever was one who went to the arcades for competition, though I had no qualms about wiping the floor with anyone who would just interrupt my game without asking, unless he was better than I was, and not many were.

Quoth the late, great P.T. Barnum, native of my hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut: "There's a sucker born every minute." Vince does just enough to keep the people coming back. He cockteases them to no end, every so often throwing them a bone to keep them happy (as in having the face winning the championship or getting his revenge on his hated heel rival), but in between using fans like a dime-store hooker and making them feel like its their priviledge to be treated in such a fashion, all the while taking their money and putting it in his own pocket. It has only gotten steadily worse since WCW and ECW went under, now that he is the only major player in the game. This is why i hope that MLW (which looks to have the best chance to challenge for a bigger piece of the pie) gets successful and in a hurry.

I thought that SF II: SCE and SSF played inifinitely better on the Genesis than the SNES... Then again back then it was about better gameplay (Genesis) vs. better sound and graphics (SNES). Then the Playstation came out and put systems out to pasture, and Sega and Nintendo have been trying to catch up since.

::gets lost in his own days of playing those games, even though he was close to the same age then as Dames is now:: Dammit, Dames! Yep Sakura, I was the same way.... hell I remember when I actually beat Wrestlefest in tag team mode for the first time, I cut a promo on LoD right there in the arcade, to everyone's amusement... hell I was so easily satisfied back then, every little accomplishment was cause for celebration... ::sighs with longing for easier, less complicated times::

I always eat the strawberry and lemon ones first.... ::runs to the vending machine and buys a pack::

nah, no need for a Trish/Victoria-style feud here.... although I will buy tickets if it goes that way

I was about to say Bubblegum Crisis is what got me into anime, but I have to go way the hell back to Speed Racer, when I was singing the theme song when i was four years old.... of course going through grade school and high school I was hooked on Voltron (though I thought vehicle team had a better storyline that the lions, everyone went ga-ga over the lions), and Robotech of course (which wasn't *too* bad when compared to the original Macross, but that's up the personal taste, I guess). What hooked me for good was Bubblegum Crisis back in 1990. Then when I moved to Florida in '93, by then roommate (the biggest otaku I ever met to this day) got me hooked on Ranma and Saint Seiya... then we found a contact that got us original Dragon Ball Z episodes from japanese tv, and it was all over. I still remain a major DBZ fan, though more of the original japanese version than the americanized version. Ever since Cartoon Network has started faithfully airing anime series, such as Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, DBZ, etc., they have earned my respect. Not to mention I FINALLY get to view Yu Yu Hakusho from the beginning...

Oops! I guess I had two trains of thought collide when I posted that

Depends. Is it a dedicated machine(does it have a full picture of Raiden on both sides and all the art on the control panel)? Mine is in the original dedicated cabinet and I paid 500 for it. I also own 6 other games, including the first MK and MK4. ::falls to his knees and worships Yuna:: Call me silly, but I mark out for people that actually own arcade machines... a friend of my ex-roommate owned a cyberball arcade game and I thought that rocked... I wouldn;t want his power bill at the end of the month, but cool nonetheless. EDIT: BTW Yuna, could I commission you for a banner?

I had heard that on BTR, when they interviewed Joey Styles.... and the first thing I thought of was "damn, I picked the WRONG time to move to Michigan!" I just hope they keep it going and in time, start to challenge WWE... as I have said before, Vince NEEDS competition, someone to raise the bar and keep things from getting complacent. MLW needs a major name inthe next year or so to take it to the next level, though.

And this coincides with what I heard int he Joey Styles interview on the 4/2 show of between the ropes. You can check that out at betweentheropes.com. Joey said that he had some differences with Shane Douglas and decided to part ways with him, and now he's doing the play by play for MLW, which from what I heard in the interview, is looking better and better now.... they're going the same route as ECW did, with late-night TV in some markets, but from what I heard about the talent their using and landing, if it stays on a steady track and does NOT make the mistakes that ECW did, in a year or two they just MIGHT make some serious noise.... Joey may be bombastic (nowhere near old Vince levels), but no one ever accused him of being stupid.. could it be that he saw what was going on and jumped ship before it went down?

Now that I remember, the funniest thing for me was LL Cool J verbally punking out Booker T... Rebecca Romjin-Stamos getting drunker and drunker on beer as the APA tried to play strip poker with her.. I know that was intentional comedy, but there are times where I wonder what is intentional and what isn't.

Boy, that really hit home. It's like, I've gave 15 or more years of my life to watching and attending wrestling shows. I've got nothing to show for it except for some useless wrestling knowledge...yet if I try to say something, it falls on deaf ears as if I'm just a piece of sand in a desert. That's one reason why I liked ECW so much. It seemed like the entire crowd was smarks. It made the live events better because they were all there to have a good time. That and ECW was more geared towards it's fans. At least I think it was. Who were the fans who asked for Justin Credible to go on top. It all fell apart at Anarchy Rulz 99 Mistake 1) Should've let Taz keep the title, and start talking about how he was going stay champ, even if it meant taking the damn belt to Stamford. Mistake 2) RVD should've dropped the TV title that night to Jerry Lynn. The fans were begging for it. It would've paid off Lynn losing to Storm earlier that night. Mistake 3) RVD wins the title from Taz at November to Remember. Say what you want but he was the most popular guy around, he should've got a run with the damn belt. No shit. Thank you for reminding me of that.... that was one of the things that used to kill me about ECW, and lets face it, RVD was their last version of HHH, especially with that series of matches with Jerry Lynn. No matter what he did, finishers and whatever else, he could NOT get over on RVD. Then of course, One Van Damninator and 5-star later, its over. Then of course if we're going to bitch about HHH, Ric Flair had that act down pat, but at least he would drop the damned title every so often, if only to gain it back in the space of a month.

It's like you said, Rudo. They don't care, as long as they make $.01 of profit. Never mind that if they gave the fans (the smarks included) what they wanted, they could make even more money than what they're doing. It's the American pastime of "fat, dumb, and happy". Why change things and make an effort to make a quality product when the average fan will go to the shows, spend X amount of dollars and be pissed when he/she doesn't get what he/she wants or get it in a way that isn;t as palatable, said fan gets pissed off, only to fall for the same crappy build-up in time for the next PPV? Smarks are blown off as "know-it-alls" and for the most part they;re right in that we see the answer as being completely obvious, yet we don't have any experience in the business, so any suggest is shot down almost before we can say/type it. I've said it before and I will say it again. Vince McMahon is going to totally destroy professional wrestling, not just dominate it.