Jer

Especially when it comes to fighting games, it is *very* rare that a new series will actually be worth playing. The established series have had years to add moves, tweak balance and improve the engine, and a new game isn't going to come out of nowhere and be at the same level. Sometimes a game like Guilty Gear will come out and obviously have potential, but even then, the first installment isn't going to be very good relative to what's out there already. So yeah, with fighters, I pretty much only look forward to sequels. There's just no chance that this year's Tao Feng will be as good as Tekken 5.

Tekken 5, MGS 3, Gran Turismo 4 and Suikoden 4.

The big problem with the limits in VIII, if I'm remembering correctly, is that you could pass your turn to get another chance at getting one, so if one character is ready, you can keep passing their turn and eventually they'll get a limit break. That meant that you could just do limit breaks every time, which was pretty lame. I liked limit breaks in FF7, although they were generally too random to build a strategy around besides just going into hard battles with everyone's limit full.

Six for PS1, one for PS2. I love that PS2's memory card basically has as much space as I'll ever need. I hated having to buy a new PS1 memory card every year or so.

Oh sorry, I should have been more clear, I was only comparing launches. I remember a lot of people at the time were complaining about how people should be buying DC instead of PS2 because DC had a stronger library, not taking into account the fact that DC was a year older and should, naturally, have more good games. My argument was always that it makes more sense to compare launches (otherwise the older system will always be better), and in that sense PS2 wins out. And yeah, TTT is worth buying the system for. DC did get some neat stuff later, and is still the system of choice for most 2D fighters, but I still find its library to be highly overrated. It seems like a good deal of people like it just because it's less popular with the mainstream. Shrug.

I never could understand the problems people had with PS2's launch lineup. TTT was better than the entire Dreamcast launch library. TTT is a vastly better game than SC. And besides SC, what did the Dreamcast have that was so spectacular? PS2 also launched with SSX, which was a pretty solid game itself. DC's other hyped game was Sonic Adventure, which was just terrible. I didn't like FF8 and was kind of annoyed that it got so much hype (more that it dwarfed Suikoden 2 than that it dwarfed DC), but DC is really overrated, and I'm not sure why it gets so much love.

Heh yay for two tweeners in the final battle. Magus.

Take your shoes off and save $270. But if you're going to get a metal pad, definitely get a Cobalt Flux. Anything else isn't worth the risk. You can get them off eBay for half the price, but the quality is terrible. The one I bought didn't work at all, the wiring was a mess and the right arrow barely registered. Total waste of money.

If you only have an American PS2, I'd say DDRMax. I like the song selection more than Max2's. If you have a Japanese PS2, DDRExtreme is by far the best mix out. For pads, I'd recommend an Ignition pad. It's relatively high quality and relatively inexpensive. You can get better, but they cost a lot more. Get one at www.levelsix.com. They call them "Deluxe Pads" over there.

Eh the villians final is perfectly fine, both characters are strong and either would make a good winner. The problem is just with the heroes final. Just the last couple rounds you had the wrong people going over. The final eight were looking good, then you just had stupid upsets like Terra over Tyr. Oh well.

Hero: Terra of Final Fantasy 6 Villian: Magus of Chrono Trigger

The one I remember most is the GT2 test course bug. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but if you took a car to test course, often when you went back to your garage something was really messed up. The top car in the garage often had like 4988 HP and 0 weight, and wouldn't accelerate when you told it to, and sometimes weird red ribbons appeared on the screen. It was really annoying, too, because it made it so that you couldn't use test course if you didn't want to mess up your cars. Test course was a big part of GT1 for me since it let me tweak cars to get a good acceleration/top speed balance, and not being able to do that was pretty annoying.

Sounds awesome, I'll definitely get it.

The only thing I really collected seriously were Magic cards. I started playing in 1994 and played pretty seriously until about 2000, when I sold off my collection so that I could try to get a life instead of wasting college playing Magic. My collection was pretty valuable. There were lots of old cards in our circle because we all started playing early, and I tended to be a little smarter than my friends when it came to trading. I tended to collect weird stuff, like I decided to get a set of Djinns and Efreets, which I was proud of because I got it almost entirely through trading (although I did finally give in and buy the Juzam and some of the more obscure Arabian stuff). I got about $600 for the collection when I sold it, although I wish I had hung onto some of it, since the values on old stuff has suddenly gone way up over the last two years. My Collector's Edition set especially, just that is worth more now than I got for the entire collection because P9 have become so expensive that CE P9 now have real value. Oops. Oh well. I collected Marvel cards as a little kid too. I remember really liking Series 3 because they had all those cool stats. I still remember stupid trivia, like Mephisto having the highest total stats of any villian and Adam Warlock having the highest of any hero and Ego having the highest of anyone. Heh I'm such a dork.

I'm far and away most interested in Tekken 5. Most of the rest of the stuff I'm interested in isn't new, but it'll be nice to see how MGS3 and GT4 are coming along. Suikoden 4 should be cool too, and maybe Guilty Gear Isuka. But yeah, really I'm just looking forward to seeing what T5 will be like.

I think Kain could have been really cool if FF4 did a better job telling stories in general. FF4 feels like it has a bunch of great ideas, but the dialogue is so bland and cliche ridden that it never quite pulls off the story it's trying to tell. The bad translation certainly didn't help, either. On the other hand, FF6 did such a great job telling its story that I ended up really liking almost all of the characters. I wouldn't mind seeing Locke, Celes, Setzer, Shadow, Cyan, Edgar or Sabin making it this far. The only main character in FF6 that I didn't like was Terra, who just never seemed to have any real free will. It always just felt like she was doing what she was told, or what she was expected to. She felt like a pretty weak heroine. I would have liked to see some other FF6 character in the final four instead of her.

Heroes: Celes of Final Fantasy 6 Tir of Suikoden Villians: Luca Blight of Suikoden 2 Magus of Chrono Trigger

Hero: Celes – Final Fantasy 6 Kain – Final Fantasy 4 Terra – Final Fantasy 6 Tir – Suikoden Villian: Grahf – Xenogears Jowy Blight - Suikoden 2 Queen Zeal - Chrono Trigger Magus - Chrono Trigger

YES! Finally someone else that was annoyed by that. Seriously, Xenogears is like the only RPG in the history of the genre that doesn't even give you the option to speed up the text scroll speed. Even Dragon Warrior has it as like the first thing you choose. When you talk to a "key character" and you're forced to sit there and read five screens of slooooow text, it's so frustrating!

Bleh it's too bad the Break is too small to run 2D and 3D stuff on the same day. I'll probably be down there on May 9th for NEB, but I doubt I'll go for ECC, since I don't actually play those games. Are you going to go to Philly for NEC5, whenever it is? I'll be at that.

Final Fantasy 10 fits most of those, particularly customizability. It gets rid of the level system for a very Diablo-esque extended grid system that lets you pretty much completely customize your characters. The battle system is pretty typical FF, but with a few changes. It's not ATB anymore, instead you can see the order in which people will go, and the order changes depending on the delay of the action you're taking (kinda like Gunbound, heh). You can also bring characters in and out of battle on the fly, which is nice. If you need a healer or something, you can bring them in right then, instead of only being able to change parties out of battle.

Action - Strikers 1945 3 (Arcade) Adventure - The Legend of Zelda (NES) Driving - Wipeout XL (PS1) Fighter - Virtua Figther 4 Evolution (PS2) Puzzle - Rampart (Arcade) Role-Playing - Final Fantasy - Origins Remake (PS1) Sports - SSX (PS2) Strategy - Sim Earth (PC) Action - Point Blank (Arcade) Adventure - Fatal Frame (PS1) Driving - Wipeout 3 (PS1) Fighter - Tekken 2 (PS1) Puzzle - Ms Pac Man (Arcade) Role-Playing - Sword of Vermillion (Genesis) Sports - NHL Hitz (PS2) Strategy - Gunbound (PC) Heh I'm really reaching now so I'm gonna stop.

Action - Doom 2 (PC) Adventure - Fatal Frame 2 (PS2) Driving - Initial D Ver 2 (Arcade) Fighter - Street Fighter 3 Third Strike (Arcade) Puzzle - Puzz Loop 2 (Arcade, because I own it, woot!) Role-Playing - Vagrant Story (PS1) Sports - NFL Street (PS2) Strategy - Sim Life (PC)

Action - The Ultimate Doom (PC) Adventure - Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (PS1) Driving - Gran Turismo (PS1) Fighter - Tekken Tag Tournament (PS2) - Just making absolutely sure, hehe. Puzzle - Super Bomberman 2 (SNES) Role-Playing - Suikoden (PS1) Sports - NBA Street (PS2) Strategy - Sim Ant (PC)

Okay, editing this to reflect the new categories... Action: Metal Gear Solid 2 (PS2) Adventure: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (PS1) Driving: Gran Turismo 2 (PS1) Fighting: Soul Calibur 2 (PS2) Puzzle: Bombastic (PS2) Role-Playing: Final Fantasy 6 (SNES) Sports: NFL Blitz (DC) Strategy: Civilization (PC) I'd also like to nominate DDR Extreme (Arcade), but I'm not sure which category it would fit into. Sorry if some of these are duplicates, I don't feel like checking all the old posts.