Jer

Nope, I've just played DoA4 and T5, and they both get laggy unless you play someone within a couple hundred miles of you. What's GGPO?

Online play's not the answer for tournaments. You're always going to have to travel for real high level play. But as far as just getting games in, with arcades basically nonexistant now, online is pretty important. I mean, if not for online play, I have literally no one to play within like 50 miles of me. Even with lag, online play is infinitely better than playing the computer. I'm not sure lag would hurt 2D fighters more, either. You're not gonna block a crouching short offline either, it's like 3 frames, so it's just a pure mixup. Maybe I'm just trash, but it always seemed like blocking moves on reaction was less important in 2D fighters since the moves had so few execution frames. Which could actually make the lag less frustrating, since you're not gonna be hit by like Law's d/b+4 or Bryan's d/f+3 when you'd always block it offline.

Sony's totally right! Who would want to play those crappy old PS2 games now that they can play Lair on their PS3?! This is a good move, though, as long as they make the $399 model widely available. $399 is starting to be fairly mass-market, so sales should pick up somewhat. Knowing Sony, though, the $399 model will be impossible to find, defeating the entire purpose of the price cut.

I'm guessing not from the way everyone's talking, but is there any information available other than the trailer?

Interesting. Is it being developed by the same team as the previous Capcom fighters? It's hard for me to see Street Fighter really working in 3D and still being Street Fighter. No 3D fighter with projectiles has ever not been trash, and no 3D fighter has ever played as fast as Street Fighter. I'd love to see a new 2D Street Fighter instead, but yeah, it'd be too niche to make money. Hope they can pull it off if they go that way. If anyone can do it, it would be the old Capcom team.

Fighers at the top of the card that draw money should be paid according to how much they draw. If they draw $10M worth of PPV buys, they should get a good chunk of that. It's hard for me to understand the argument that no matter how much they draw, they only "deserve" $200K or whatever. So where does the rest of the PPV money go? To Dana White and the Fertittas? What makes them deserve millions while the fighters that people pay to watch get much less? It sucks to see Randy go, but I certainly understand that he'd feel disrespected being in fights that draw millions and only getting a tiny fraction of that revenue.

Rayden, because he was a god, so he had to be the best. And because as a kid I couldn't do Hadoken motions, but I could press back, back, forward, and that's all I needed with Rayden.

Played some more Tekken last night and it wasn't nearly as bad. Maybe people are starting to realize how to connect. If both people have the PS3 hooked directly to a cable modem and they're not thousands of miles away, it's definitely playable, even feels like real Tekken. You've just got to stay away from wireless, that murders it.

Yeah it's up, I got it. The interface isn't bad, but the lag can be fucking brutal. It's great when you actually get a good lag-free match, though.

Word on the TZ street is that Tekken 5:DR online is up for download but everyone's getting a bunch of errors. I'll try anyway when I get home. Would be so hot if it's legit. If anyone wants to play, PSN tag is PSUJer. I'll probably get SPF2 also.

A week or so until online Tekken! Seems like the Japan/Korea version has been getting mixed reviews. It sounds like the lag is noticeable but it doesn't make the game unplayable. Eh, should still be fun. Anyone else planning to get it?

Yeah, these 25 minute sappy save the world segments between sets are gonna get annoying *really* fast. It's probably too much to hope for that the TV broadcast will have less of that.

It's streaming live at www.liveearth.msn.com, which is kind of neat. I'll probably watch the Tokyo one for a few minutes until I fall asleep.

Hey, if they can pull it out so that lag doesn't affect gameplay, that would be the greatest thing ever. It's hard for me to see how that's possible, though. When I used to play Subspace online, the best ping I ever got was 30ms, which would be like 2 frames. FPS games can work through that with prediction algorithms, but it's hard to see how that could be applied to fighters. But if they can do it, awesome.

If it's like DoA2 was, the lag isn't going to be so bad that it'll make the game look totally different. It'll just make certain things, like breaking throws and punishing moves, a lot harder. And yeah, that'll change the way people play online. I'll do Mad Axes a whole lot more. That might end up messing me up in tournies, shrug. But whatever, I get to play DR now. It's so worth it. Tekken is that way too, and lag will definitely make things somewhat inaccurate. Face to face will definitely still be the competitive standard. But even inaccurate DR is a hell of a lot better than no DR. You can still practice with the lag.

TZ says that Tekken 5: DR is going to have online versus play soon. Even with lag, that is the greatest thing ever. The thought of it makes me giddy with happiness.

Haha you worked there? Awesome. Yeah I was at Penn State from 2000-2005 and wasted many hours at Playland on Tekken 4, Soul Calibur 2 and Star Wars Pinball.

Ticket games can be alright if the prizes are decent. I liked playing them at Dave and Buster's; I've got a set of beer glasses and a set of shot glasses from playing video poker. Of course that probably cost me like $50, but whatever.

When I went to Penn State for college, it had the best arcade ever, which is now closed. When I moved to Hagerstown for my job, we had two decent arcades within 10 miles of me. Both are now closed. There's still a movie theater that has a DDR SuperNova machine, which is nice, but there's no real arcades or places to play fighters anywhere near me. It sucks, I've always loved the arcade scene and there's no way to replace it. Online isn't even close.

I actually loved my old arcade, but alas it went out of business. 1. Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection - Hacked so that if you select King, you get Julia instead. 2. Street Fighter 3: Third Strike - It seems more popular than Marvel nowadays. Better too. 3. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core - It's all flashy so it's got some casual appeal. 4. Time Crisis 4 - The newest, best gun game. 5. Initial D (Newest Version) - Seems like by far the most popular racing game, always people playing it here. 6. DDR Super Nova - Best, newest DDR. 7. In The Groove 2 - I think IDG is kind of crap, but it lets you play Ayumi simfiles so it's all good. 8. Beatmania (Newest Version) - Most popular non-DDR Bemani. 9. Striker 3 - Because it's what I always played when I was waiting to play fighters. 10. Class of '81 (Galaga/Ms. Pacman) - Gives people their nostalgia trip. Yeah, looks a lot like Anya's and PK's. Can't really deviate too much from that or else no one would play your games. One thing though, all the fighters would cost 25 cents. That's one thing my old arcade really did right. Because the fighters all cost 25 cents, people were always playing them. So many arcades nowadays seem to think the way to make more money is to charge more for games, but all that does is make people not play them. You make a ton more money if you've got a line of people always waiting to play a 25 cent game than you do if you have a bunch of 75 cent games with no one playing them. Edit: KKK - That sounds so much like Playland in State College that I have to ask if that was your arcade, especially since you're in PA. Best arcade ever. RIP.

Pfft no way. I'm all for saving the planet, but I'm not going to give days of my life up for it. I've driven my car 50,000 miles over the last two years. At 75 mph, that'd be 666 hours. At 55 mph, that would have been 909 hours. Thats over *ten days* I would have lost, just in the last two years, for some marginal gas savings. No thanks.

Nah, when games sit on the backlog for too long I just give up on them and look for something new to play. Heh I never even finished FF12. I have no attention span for RPGs anymore.

Well duh, but it's a pretty bad one player game, heh. I guess I'll get Assassin's Creed, but wow, this is going to be a really weak year if MGS4 doesn't hit until next year. PS2 got off to a slow start too, but nothing like this. On a random note, Blast Factor is awesome.

So are there any good games coming out between now and the end of the year? I feel guilty not playing this thing I spent $600 on, heh. Blu-rays are pretty at least. Sometimes.

I was annoyed at how obviously they jobbed Blake. I mean, come on. At least in seasons past both finalists got to sing their own horrible single. To force Blake to butcher the kind of crappy pop ballad that Jordin has been singing all season was just silly.