lazygecko

Movement is relative to where you're looking with the mouse.

Trailer Cam footage

I know about the plethora of expansion chips for the SNES. In the end I'm not a fan of them (though I can understand developers' frustration at the time with the lackluster native CPU. AFAIK this was because Nintendo initially planned backwards-compability for NES but scrapped the idea after the specs had been locked). Mainly because it jacked up the prices for the games themselves at that time, but also because I enjoy the craftmanship aspect of just making the most of what you have. I love watching tech demos for old computers and the coders constantly outdoing eachother with all kinds of crazy shit that's "not possible" on the hardware. The MD/Genesis took the dedicated add-on route (save for some real rare cases like Virtua Racing), but thankfully none of them ever really reached a "must-have" status and the most impressive titles remained on the native hardware. On the SNES such titles are harder to find due to the widespread adoption of these chips which feels a bit like "cheating" in my mind.

Doesn't hardware expansions kind of defeat the very point of what a console is capable of?

Chuck Norris

You don't need to buy expensive state-of-the-art cards every time you upgrade. You can get a mid-range card for less than $100 that is perfectly capable of handling pretty much all games from 2009 and below. The overblown myth about PC upgrade costs, coupled with the fact that console games cost more and you need to pay a subscription fee for Xbox Live, makes me think the cost argument isn't as true as most people make it appear.

wadaw woom

Console FPS tend to give the illusion of controllers being better than they really are by adding handicaps like auto-aiming. Fast-paced games like Unreal Tournament are also slowed down a bit for consoles.

The premise of MDK is kinda similiar to Mega Man. A scientist creates an advanced armor suit, and lets his janitor use it to save the world from the bad guys. Complete with his dog sidekick. In the sequel you could also play as the scientist or the dog.

I was kinda hoping for Dr. Light as the third one. Like how you could play as the doctor in MDK2.

Wasn't refering to Bloodlines (top notch tunes but technically lacking a bit, doesn't even use the PSG). What I meant was Konami's arcade hardware at the time. Listen to the arcade originals of Turtles in Time or Sunset Riders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RTENXlwfw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms9CIi2CB9c That's the sound they are going for with Castlevania Rebirth. Even the same orchestra hit and everything.

Sheep Man is likely a reference to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the novel Blade Runner was based on).

Can't help but rofl a bit at all the people complaining about the "Genesis" sound. Have you guys never heard a Konami arcade game? They used a mixture of FM synthesis and samples. They sounded great, as does this.

Not exactly unexpected, but it's coming http://protodudesrockmancorner.blogspot.com/2009/12/mega-man-10-announced.html And the awesome xtreeeme coverart of course

Here's a fun one: Mr. Write's house in Zelda: Link's Awakening has music straight from the first Sim City, and the character Mr. Write is a reference to Will Wright.

All this lego is making me nostalgic for OCR's Blockland sessions.

I've bitched about this for years. The Japanese used to be the biggest culprits (probably still are) with their Xenosagas and Metal Gear Solids. But now that western developers are setting their sights on more or less competing directly Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich it's becoming more of a universal problem. Single player games/campaigns in the vein of Modern Warfare are becoming so strictly linear and guided it feels more like you're playing a rail shooter. I absolutely loathe the new standard FPS narrative where you always have some NPC/dude on the radio hand-walking you through every objective, telling you exactly what to do and where to go, with invisible walls galore along the way to give you the illusion of the game world being larger than it really is. Compare this to levels of old school FPS'es like Quake or Duke Nukem 3D, they seem to be built up with the same philosophy as a platformer like Super Mario World, and I think that is inherently more fun. I don't want a cinematic experience. I want a great game experience and if you can't deliver on one without compromising the other, then stop kidding yourself and make a fucking movie.

Battle.net has poor sportsmanship because it is so ridiculously easy to just create a new account in Starcraft. Since people only care about their win-loss ratio, they'll keep preying on "n00bs only" games and if they get as much as a single loss on their record, they'll abandon their account for another. Dedicated server communities generally do a good job of discouraging asshattery.

More striking resemblances between game music and 80's pop: McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure - Magical Moon http://www.mediafire.com/?y2gtjkzktiz Scritti Politti - Boom! There She Was

Not going to happen any time soon. Microsoft loves having Xbox Live on a tight leash to maximize profits. Sony has shown to be more open-minded concerning online regulation, with mod support for UT3.

You can get mods here: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/ Gonna take a while before everyone gets accustomed to the toolset. For now you can find some good stuff like camp storage chests, respec potions, and new armor sets. After wading through the hundreds of inevitable nudity mods, that is. I read that BioWare are petitioning Sony to enable mod support for the PS3 version. We'll see how that goes, if it hasn't been shot down already.

Never saw a single episode of the new cartoon. Nostalgia for the 80's series is what got me interested. Luckily the whole thing is up on YouTube for those of us who can't watch American broadcasts. Overall, it was OK. The tribute to the original comic was really awesome.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61407 Always bet on Duke.

Obligatory