Necrotic

Not sure who you think you are when you're so confident in saying something like that will never happen, but I can already tell you it's already being done on the 360 with Games on Demand and XBOX Originals. Sony's a company like any other. If the profits outweight the expenditure, there's nothing that will stop them if they want to put in the infrastructure for it. Just because you have issues managing your HDD space on your PS3 doesn't mean everybody's having the same problem (I'm definitely not) and that the demand's not there or that Sony would ever avoid trying to make money. As for a matter of bandwidth, 4GB+ downloads are nothing new these days. It's being done on XBL and Steam and other download services all the time. There is nothing unusual about this. I've reformatted my PC dozens of times and have had to redownload 20-30GB's worth of games from Steam each time if I forgot to back them up. It happens, it's just the nature of the beast. It's not much different from running out of HDD space and having to redownload games over if you want to play them again. I think most of us agree the issue is a matter of limitations. Every PS3 out there is gonna need to play those PS2 games somehow regardless of model and a solution to that might not come for some time.

I'm almost 100% sure it's not PS2 compatible. I am 100% sure it's still PS1 compatible. I remember reading on 1up.com one time that Sony put a patent up for Emotion Engine emulation technology that they were working on. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the next year or two, we may end up hearing about something that comes out of that. Or maybe we'll never hear about it again and the whole idea just falls into the void because Sony ends up realizing there's nothing they can do to make it happen. Who knows. But it gives a little glimmer of hope that one day everyone will be able to play PS2 games on their PS3's at some point regardless of which model they own. The latest models of PS3 literally lack any kind of ability to play these games, downloadable or not, so until they can find a solution like building a software emulator (no easy task), this'll never happen.

Honestly I don't think either the prettiness of the upscaling or the lack of frame lag is "the better situation." It's all a matter of preference. I really do personally appreciate the convenience of having a 60GB PS3 though. It bugs me to have to go back to a wired controller any time I want to play vintage games, and anything I can do to curb that is fine by me. Keeps my room uncluttered with wires and cables and saves the time of wrapping and unwrapping cords which I hate doing all the time just to play a PS2 game for 20 minutes. All I have to do is keep a single controller by my bedside and suddenly I have access to whatever PS2 game I'm playing at the time or to my media server if I want to watch a movie. No need to switch power cables or video connectors (my TV is an old bubble that was given to me for free but it only has one set of inputs). No need to get up and grab a seperate controller. No need to pull my PS2 out of the cabinet to put it on the floor so I can have my controller long enough to reach me at my bed. Plus it helps that I never have to worry about memory cards ever again. They're small differences, but I appreciate them nonetheless.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

Those as well.

Valve is a company that as far as anyone can see is completely devoid of using exploitative or shady business practices. They genuinely value the customer, and the massive plethora the extra content and regular updates they release for games for free is a testament to that. I refuse to use any other digital distribution service. I find it utterly impossible to trust other companies when it comes to handling that sort of thing. For example, from what I remember hearing, EA's service gives you a limited amount of time to keep a copy of your game "reserved" on their servers unless you pay to have it "insured" otherwise it's lost forever. So you're paying extra to make sure a little binary bit of information that says 'yes, you do own this game' stays on your account for a longer period of time. I couldn't see Valve doing this for as long as Gabe Newell and Doug Lombardi own and operate the company. When you pay for a game, it will always be there for you to download and access forever. That's always been the philosophy of Steam. This is why if a game is not on Steam, XBL, or PSN, I will not even consider anything but a physical copy of the game.

I'm sure PC owners are just crying oceans by now.

I played NS religiously back like 4 years ago. Easily my favourite HL1 mod. I like the idea of NS2, but I think everyone is a little bit skeptical about whether it's going to take off as a stand alone product or not.

Get a DSi, what with its better controls and play FF6 Advance on tha--oh wait. To be perfectly fair the DSi pretty much nailed the buttons and D-pad if you like the precision of the clicky buttons without the flatness and annoyingness of the original DS's. In fact it seems they nailed a lot of things, after toying around with my roommate's for a few hours. I still just wish they didn't remove that damned GBA slot. Native Jovian, if you don't mind the lack of a GBA slot get the DSi. It's worth the purchase.

Not just a dictionary, but a lot of dictionaries. Plus generic and specialist encyclopedias. They mentioned that they're even going as far as trying to get the most obscure species of dinosaurs only a paleontologist or dinosaur-obsessed people would know into the game, which is cool because dinosaurs are inherently awesome by definition.

Because it's being made by the Drawn to Life devs.

Leave it to the rumour mill to completely blow everything out of proportion, right? 3D Realms is NOT closing down. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174278

Also, this: Source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174259 In other words, from the sounds of it, this may not be an MGS game. Knowing Kojima, it's not.

MGS Portable Ops

Metal Bands: * If you're allergic to death growls you might want to avoid the ones below, but otherwise I know open-minded folk might take a liking to them. Pan.thy.monium - Oldschool Swedish avante-garde/death metal band with a fair bit of jazz influence. - Lomska Forsat Moonsorrow - Folk metal. Their older stuff had more Finnish melodeath influence, and their later stuff is getting progressively more black metal-like. Epic 10 to 30-minute compositions are not unusual from these guys. (part 1) - Jotunheim (part 2) - Jotunheimhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUKGIIursvE (part 1) - Pimeaa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUhbrf4-5o (part 2) - Pimeaa Xasthur - Ambient black metal. Really freaking cool. It's intense, but it's so ambient it rocks me to sleep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DDRIfd0QYs - Prison of Mirrors http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuODwiF5j8Y - Instrumental

They're probably just lying, anyways... right? But seriously listen to Snapple and Tensei. They're actually not trying to discourage you from being good at making music. Quite the opposite. They're just incredibly blunt and don't massage their thoughts to spare your feelings.

Screen protectors go a long way.

Take a break from the forums and go get wasted or something. Happy Birthday, man!

Listening to The Czar right now. Very solid album.

So Black Sigil is apparently going to be coming out this month. Amazon says it's coming out on the 8th. Jeremy Parish from 1UP seems to have mainly good things to say about it. Let's hope this doesn't go under the radar like so many other good low-budget games. I'm probably gonna snatch this up. It's available on Amazon.com and only $28 (!!!) which is like the cheapest a new game could possibly be.

Moonsorrow - Pimeä One of the most epic folk metal songs I've ever heard in my life.

Sakura's my main in Alpha and I'm really diggin' her in 4. She has some wicked combo setups still plus her EX Shououken and Shunpukyaku are awesome. She also has a lot of safe setups. She doesn't have many effective cross ups though. The thing is, with the changes to some of her moves and the gameplay style, I'm not sure it's as needed as it was in Alpha, and she still has a really big toolkit of moves with some good properties like her c.HP being super effective against almost any jump in. And her Focus Attack has some gnarly range, although I'm not sure how much that'll matter if people start learning to counter it effectively. Easy trap to begin humiliating scrubs though. P.S. Sloogs on PSN for anyone who wants to play, although there's a good chance you'll be playing my room mate instead of me unless you instant message me ahead of time.

The obvious ones are MGS4, Disgaea and the like. Also, Uncharted. IMO it's the second best exclusive title (that I've played) and stands by itself as being a stellar game. Killzone 2 is coming out ridiculously soon as well.

Just want to point out that because the company that hosts the ClanOCR Friend Code Database is a bunch of nitwits, we had to get a new domain for it. So, for those of you who still find use out of it, direct your bookmarks and etc. towards http://ocr.anarchygaming.com

For those of you who are fans of 1up.com, Jeff Green's blog details a little more about what happened and what to expect. I found it to be informative. http://jeff-greenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/01/no-youre-not-same-1up.html EDIT: Some other good reads about the goings on at 1UP and EGM: Thierry Nguyen's blog: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8977895&publicUserId=5380025 Matt Leone's blog: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8977863&publicUserId=5380373 James "Milkman" Mielke's blog: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8977836&publicUserId=4549175 Jeremy Parish's blog: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8977660&publicUserId=5379721