lazygecko

Interview and real screens here: http://wii.ign.com/articles/951/951126p1.html

Making a new UI yet again. Using these addons: Chatter Dominos ButtonFacade SatrinaBuffFrames Pitbull pMinimap OneBag Quartz SharedMedia library (for extra bar textures, fonts and stuff) MinimapButtonFrame Digits Not finalized. Gotta setup party/raid frames properly, and I'm gonna try doing something with MikScrollingBattleText

I played close beta a bit. But it was mostly just populated by the most hardcore of the hardcore so I could never really be competetive and enjoy it.

Come on Bubba, les' play some Bubble Bobble. Yeehaw!

Outlaws, true Morricone-style soundtrack from the same guy who did Monkey Island. It has been played in some VGM concerts, but other than that it has recieved little recognition.

I remember Cyberdogs. The guy who made it lived in my neighborhood.

Sega is known to use ROMs and hire talents from the emulation community when working on their classic collection. Also it would be odd if emulation was considered taboo on a site that has its very roots in the subject.

You do not even need to emulate the lock-on technology for S3K. You simply combine the Sonic 3 and S&K ROMs into one single file, and there has been numerous software that does that since the dawn of Genesis emulation.

It's generally more laid back than the rest of the NES Mega Mans, making it more interesting IMO. It also pulls some technical tricks that weren't really utilized in the others like the triangle bassdrum.

By "upgraded" to "HD" they mean they've slapped on a 2xSai filter on everything, and simply upscaled it to the point where it all looks like a smudgy mess.

I can't really get into most of those old RPGs anymore. I finished a bunch of them such as Final Fantasy IV and Breath of Fire 2, but after that the DQ/FF template of JRPGs got old real fast for me, and the small niche differences between the games weren't eough to capture my interest. Story or music cannot really carry a game for me if the gameplay doesn't hold up. By the time I was trying out stuff like Lufia and Final Fantasy VI, I noticed how I pretty much started cheating my way through the actual gameplay sections just to find out what happens next, and by then it just felt like I was watching a movie instead of playing agame. Apart from that, the plots too were feeling more and more cookie-cutter and template-based with the teenage orphan heroes, token puppet bad guys and big evil demon masterminds that simply want to destroy the world.

Crusader: No Remorse/Regret - Action game(s) by Origin. The controls are pretty clunky, but the game overall is a lot of fun and has awesome music. It's very much like Robocop, set in a dystopian future with plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor, live-action FMV and extreme violence. It's also set in the same universe as System Shock. Constructor - This is basically Sim Suburbs with a lot of black comedy. You build your own suburban community and rent the houses to families. The twist is that there's also a rival player on the same map, and you need to sabotage his efforts in a variety of creative ways. For example, if one of you rival's houses has caught fire, you can send a hippie to start a rave near it. When the firefighters arrive, they'll be distracted and start dancing, completely oblivious to the fact that the house is burning down and the flames are spreading to the neighbours.

Abuse - old Contra-style platformer with FPS style keyboard+mouse controls. This really added a whole new layer to the genre as the much more flexible controls allowed them to really pump up the action in the game, add more complex enemy movement beyond the same old predictable patterns, etc etc. Ecstatica - Old survival horror game which used spheres instead of polygons to build 3D models. It was pretty creepy at the time as there was always that demon monkey stalking you and those fucking minotaurs could seemingly chase you all across the game world. Little Big Adventure - Really one of the best adventure games ever. The gamplay would change depending on what stance your character uses. In normal stance, you talk to people and read and all that shit, in aggressive stance it's more like a beat em up, athletic is the platforming stance for getting across obstacles and stuff, and in sneak stance it turns into a stealth game. You also get a bouncing ball you can throw around (which changes depending on which stance you use). This can be used for either attacking enemies or solving various puzzles. Oh, and you can beat the crap out of your wife too. Albion - Old CRPG. It's sort of like Phantasy Star, with a mix of top-down and first person 3D environments, but with the added depth you'd expect from a WRPG when it comes to dialog and stuff. Combat is also more strategic/tactical. This game really puts into perspective just how fucking dumbed down the genre has become as of late.

The flood always comes on saturday afternoon, when it's morning across America and most of the moderators are asleep. The posts usually remain there for hours until someone takes care of them. You really need to expand to a more global mod team so the forums can be kept tidy during the odd hours.

They are mainstream all over Europe, and probably the rest of the "developed" world with music chart markets. America is pretty much the single one out. The big beat acts of the mid-to-late 90's were as close as it could get to reaching out there because it was more akin to rock than typical dance music. Pretty sure they've been there almost since day 1. The music is all Liam, but once they hit it big they had to market themselves more as a typical band so the average listener would "get it".

Sounds like something that would have come out inbetween Jilted Generation and Fat of the Land. I stopped listening to them once they went for the whole punk sound and image with FotL.

This made me ponder a bit. The archetypical ninja game focuses almost exclusively on combat, while stealth is just as much of an iconic ninja feat. But the archetypical stealth game is always centered around covert op soldiers and the likes. Therefore, the most genuine ninja-type game to date is probably Assassin's Creed. Failing that, RPGs such as Oblivion where you make a sneaky-sneaky type character is a good contender.

Joe Musashi killed Spider-Man, Batman, The Hulk, The Terminator and Godzilla.

This is taking forever to stream. Why is this always the case with shit not hosted on youtube...

I had this on the Mega CD. It is one of the few tolerable FMV games out there.

It's not unusual for publishers to have production teams that overlap with the developers under their wing. I suspect that the game's original soundtrack had arrangements based on themes from Sonic 1 and 2, that music was made by Dreams Come True and I'm pretty sure there have been legal issues in the past with re-using their material (this would also explain why the shit we hear in Chronicles is from the spinoff games). Regardless of wether this rushjob was ripped by Sega or Bioware, the cataclyst was the legal issues and instead of delaying the game to fix it properly, Sega lets this pass which is both ridiculous and highly unprofessional (especially from such a high profile brand in these times).

Seems like another disgruntled Sega employee has spoken out after the last one. http://www.tssznews.com/2009/01/14/another-sega-employee-speaks-out-on-sonic/ There's some alleged stuff on the next Sonic game, but what I found really interesting was this snippet regarding Sonic Chronicles for the DS: I don't own the game, but I looked up the music on YouTube and it really does sound like they were vgmusic MIDIs hastily run through some converter. This is from Sonic CD This is from Sonic 3D I am in sheer fucking disbelief they have let themselves fall to this level, and that's saying a lot after the trainwreck that was the GBA port of Sonic 1. EPIC FAIL, SEGA