XZero

I was a big Lego fan when I was young (I remember building a replica of Super Mario 3's 1st Doom Ship out of Legos with hidden wheels underneath to allow for it to 'fly'), so I can imagine that this would make it more difficult for Canadians to acquire the toys. That having been said, I have a question for you or any other Canadians: are there any other major companies in Canada that have amended their business practices in such a way as to render Lego (or any other company) unable to market through their stores due to exchange rate issues?

Antipode, I agree about the Mario Galaxy song idea, but I think the one that fits best is Gusty Garden. It sounds like something out of Melee already, though the Dreadnought theme is a close second.

Yeah, I was expecting more characters as well. I'm not complaining, and the amount of material being thrown in here is tremendous, but I guess the Dojo site revealed all of the best characters before the game came out. Oh well... Honestly, the game's soundtrack is one of its biggest selling points for me. I love arrangements of classic Nintendo music, and from what I've heard, they knocked the Ocaring of Time overworld theme out of the park in this soundtrack, so I'm happy.

DDR is, for me, primarily an aerobic exercise machine. In 2006, I lost 18lbs playing Mario DDR and mildly dieting, which took me from 187-169. I actually am considering buying it for the Wii for that very same purpose (I've since gained about 10 lbs back). I am not, however, obsessive like many other people are when it comes to this game. There are people out there (you know who you are!!!) who do nothing but play this game all day, every day. While I don't completely criticize that behavior, I agree with Necrotic that those who take it too seriously (it isn't a game; it's life) are annoying.

This may have been stated already, but Mizar from Jet Force Gemini was very difficult. That having been said, I'd love a Virtual Console release of the game so I can play it again (I know it probably won't happen), but I was actually stuck at Mizar for a good week or so before I finally finished the game.

I want to comment on the first post from page 1. You and I are in basically the same situation, with one difference: I work in a game retail store, and have for almost 5 years. Now imagine how I feel on Christmas day, just after having sold games all of the holiday season, when I receive video games. This year, I got a number of games (many DS titles), and the only one I really got into was the uber-old school Contra 4. As I've gone through college and approach Law School, my interests have changed. I still enjoy going back to play some of the old games, but newer ones tend not to hold my interest. Take for example Super Mario Galaxy. Ten years ago, I would have been so excited for that game. I would have lost sleep in anticipation of its release. Now, I actually forgot what day it was coming out, and only remembered because one of my co-workers called me to tell me the shipment was in. And yeah, it was a great game, and I completely finished it twice, but I still prefer going back to Super Mario 64. I think what the issue simply boils down to is an idealized notion of games. When we were young, NES and SNES were great, and N64 and PS1 were revolutionary (I imagine you, like I, would have been in roughly 5th or 6th grade at the time). We remember the best times, and since games today are not the same as we played in the past, our ideal notion of gaming is a return to retro games of old that we remember fondly. That doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the current games, but as great as Mario Galaxy and Zelda Twilight Princess are, I will still always like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time more, even if Galaxy and Twilight Princess are indeed superior titles from an objective standpoint. This very fact is the ultimate value of the Wii. Beyond the numerous compilation games from the GC (Mega Man & Mega Man X, Sonic, etc.), you can download the old games you remember playing 'back in the day.' In short, yes, games are still fun for me, but I won't be playing 90-95% of the releases this year. I'm most looking forward to Apollo Justice, SSB:Brawl, and Mario Kart, and honestly don't see myself buying too many beyond those (maybe DQ9 if it comes out this year). The older you get, your interests change, and nothing coming out now or into the future will ever live up to the ideal gaming experiences you had in the past (even Brawl). Accept that, and enjoy them for as long as you can.

When there's trouble you call DW... Dustin Waldron! Let's get dangerous! Sorry- I couldn't resist

I should have mentioned in my original post, but Rocko's Modern Life was then and still is now excellent, and needs a DVD release more than anything.

I imagine a good number of the members of this forum (and those who frequent this site in general) fit into the 18-25 age category, meaning that many of us are 80s and 90s kids. What were some of your favorite TV shows from way back then, and how do you feel about them now? For instance, I always loved Darkwing Duck back in the day (I'm 22, so I would have been 5 or 6 at the time). Buying the DVD releases now, the show still stands up as being a quality program that I can enjoy 15 years later. Super Mario 3 was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid; looking back with the DVDs, I feel nostalgic about it, but honestly it's a pretty crappy show compared to what it could have been. Finally, Dinosaurs (Jim Henson) was pretty good back then, but watching it now, it's drastically more interesting (and different) given its political commentary that I now understand rather fully. What about you guys?

I didn't watch it (no interest really), but I was curious: why is it a mid-season show? If it's the 'Year's most anticipated series' as Fox has been saying, why not release it in September; after all, it's not like they knew about the writers' strike back then. So if this comes out at this point, would that indicate that it wasn't considered good enough to air in the true beginning of the season, or was it legitimately a new production slated to begin mid-season? (I'm not trying to insult the show, especially since some of my favorite shows were mid-season pick-ups; I'm just kind of curious given their furious advertising.)

When I saw this topic, the first thing that came to mind was Weird Al. I know a great many people who know 'White and Nerdy,' but can't tell you anything about the original song. Same for 'Yoda,' 'Almish Paradise,' and many others. I would argue that his versions are more memorable in some cases, and outright superior in others. The connection to OCR is that there are songs here that are indeed more memorable, even greatly superior to the original versions of the songs, and not just in sound quality. An older remix comes to mind here for me: Scott Peeples' "Another Inspiration" from Chrono Cross. The original, "Dream of a Shore of Another World" is excellent, but I find "Another Inspiration" to be superior in every way.

I'm stuck at puzzle 5 in that I can't get the video to display. It brings up a log-in box (not the style to type the answers in); what do you do to get past that?

Got the game yesterday. It's gameplay is alright, the boss battles are fun, and the voice acting is good. All around, it feels like an incomplete project, like it needs to be further tested and tweaked. However, since this page is about the interview, I will note that while the game did not impress me as much as I think it should have, the soundtrack did. It f***ing rocks. It's beautiful, memorable, and any other positive adjective one could conceive to describe music. A mediocre game (in my humble opinion) like this isn't saved by a masterful soundtrack, but if nothing else, I'm definitely sold on the CD next month. Kudos to the sound team.

So as many of you probably know, Capcom released 4 CDs in the last month or so; OST versions of Mega Man 7 & 8 and Rock and Techno arranged remixes of 1-6 songs. For those who have them or have heard songs from them, what do you think? My opinion: The Mega Man 8 one sounds fine (it's the PS1 version), and it actually includes the cutscene music. I have a slight problem with the Mega Man 7 one: there was a Mega Man 7 gamerip available for a few years prior to this CD coming out, and whoever ripped and encoded it did so at a slightly higher quality than the CD version. As for the remix albums, I'm kind of torn. I was expecting something like the Dracula Battle or Black Mages remixes for the rock CD. These songs aren't bad, but I feel that they're lacking something. The techno album is better, yet I still feel like something's missing. Regarding the remix CDs, I have two main complaints. The remixes, while good, don't blow me away. I've heard comparable (better in some cases) remixes on OC for the same songs. Also, their choice to include single-loops of the original NES versions of the songs remixed seems like a way of getting out of doing two or three more arrangements and just taking up space. I, like many other owners of these CDs, already have the Rockman 1-6 album, and don't need to be reminded what the songs originally sounded like. Overall, despite my complaints, I still felt these CDs were worth the money (well, not the Mega Man 7 one). I restate my question from above for the rest of you: to those among you who have heard the remixes or own the CDs, what do you think?

That's So Raven 1 & 2 were the result of time constraints, budget restrictions, limitations on resources, Raven's fat ass, and ... no, that just about covers it. I don't think people set out to make a bad game per se, but I think that a lot of the crappy games are the results of the above problems and the added issue of a lack of interest. Using Raven, for instance, I can almost guarantee that half of that team would rather have been working on something worth playing over that game, but they probably weren't given a choice. This is, of course, speculation, but I consider it reasonable nonetheless.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the opening managers at my GameStop on Friday. It actually wasn't terrible after our 20+ Wii's were gone, and we had a fairly good day business-wise. And Dhsu, I agree that it's often about getting the item and not necessarily the price. Did anyone else know how hard Guitar Hero III is to locate for the Wii? We got some in on Friday morning, and they were gone in a few minutes. Someone told me that we were the only store that had any in stock anywhere in town.

Yeah, your head starts to hurt during the first galaxy. The second galaxy, Honeyhive, is a lot better. It's a more traditional type of world. Incidentally, about the Mario call, there's an mp3 floating around out there from GameStop. Give it a week and it'll be easy to find.

^^ Who's promoting? It was an honest answer to the question. Spanish for Everyone tops My Spanish Coach, but the fact is you won't be learning to speak Spanish from this game. You will be laughing too hard. I guess several years with EB/Gamestop has placed me in a position where I just automatically recommend games without thinking about it. Let me revise my post from the first page: If you want to learn Spanish, go buy "My Spanish Coach." If you want a fun[ny] game, go buy "Spanish for Everyone." See? Problem solved.

Okay, number one, it's awesome to speak to you, EEX (even if it is through a message board). Number two, on behalf of EB/GameStop employees everywhere, thank you. Your contribution to the DS libraries of so many gamers (well, the ones on this board at least) is well appreciated. Now, it's off to Mexico.

According to Wikipedia, they are doing a Guitar Hero episode this week called "Guitar Queer-oh." Work is going to be a bitch after that episode airs, assuming this information to be true. Last year, when the WOW episode aired, sales jumped up for about a week or two. With Guitar Hero still popular, and this episode exacerbating the situation, I expect to sell tons of Guitar Hero games this weekend.

Sorry, q-pa, you're right. They touched penises, not put them in their mouths. That doesn't change my original post, but I apologize for my inaccuracy, and thank you for pointing it out.

Has anyone else noticed the trend they had this season with Cartman? Early on, he put Butters' penis in his mouth. Then, in the Tourette's episode, he "admitted" that he and his cousin put penises in their mouths. Now, he spent three whole episodes trying to get Kyle to suck his balls. Of course, there are excuses for all of these. Cartman wants to humiliate Butters and Kyle, and he can't control what he's saying in the other example, but still, 5 episodes spent with an obsession with male genitalia? I can't help but think that next week they'll spoof the Harry Potter 'scandal' and reveal that they, too, have a gay main character: Cartman. EDIT: He admitted in the Tourette's episode to touching penises, not putting them in his mouth. Thanks, q-pa.

SoloGamer, thank you so much. I knew this was hard to believe when I just wrote it out, so I appreciate you posting this so everyone can enjoy the intro.

While I did get to play it, I don't have any means of putting a video of the game on my computer. I don't have a cable to transfer videos from my cell phone, and I don't have any video recorder to speak of otherwise. Sorry. This brings up a point, though. I know there are more GameStop employees on this forum. Someone who works at GameStop or Game Crazy, please record the intro for us. After it plays, you can erase the data so that it appears that it was never used.

Sorry, Pezman, but I don't think enough people bought the game to understand its glory and post it on Youtube. I can't prove it myself, but I assure you with 100% certainty that the intro proceeds exactly as I posted, and it can be verified by purchasing or renting a copy of the game.