I-n-j-i-n

DS is a given, but I'm surprised at all the original ideas coming out for the PSP. Then there's the incredible ports of Hot Shots too, from what little I played of it in the demo booth.

Is it any coincidence that IGN is down right now? Whenever IGN does something dramatic, it always gets flooded.

I didn't care for Gundam Wing when it was first released, but watching it in fansubs, I appreciate it a lot more. Now I think it's actually one of the stronger Gundam shows out there. It's really not all that different from 00 except maybe for the two or three or four very charismatic bad guys in the mix. I really don't think something like Wing is easily digestible for the kid audience despite them showing it on afternoons on Toonami. You're right in that there were just a whole lot of politics involved. As for Frontier, the first ep they released was a very early director's cut that they showed for the sake of the 25th anniversary in 2007. The actual, full season will start from the finalized episode 1 (does that make sense?) until hopefully 50 episodes or so starting from April 3rd. Which is actually tomorrow, so expect fansubs to start coming out soon.

I agree with 00. For the first 10 episodes, it was basically a Gundam Wing ripoff and not even a great one at that, but the final 10 episodes more than made up for it. Now nobody really knows what the second half will be like. Code Geass really ended up as a mystery and Lelouch's 'brother' Rollo is just out-of-the-blue. Everything about the show is a bit of a mystery. It's going to be fun to speculate each week. Then there will be Macross Frontier and the whole mysterious part with the Zerg style enemies. I don't even like robot anime especially but this year is just an overload. Maybe adding Gurren Lagann from the last year (another gossip worthy mecha anime back then), and there's at least around four possible all time great robot shows.

Only around a week until Code Geass season 2 and one month until Code Geass is on Adult Swim. I don't think I ever anticipated a robot anime this much. Apparently most American/Western anime viewers too. And I wonder if the Pizza Hut endorsements make the transition.

Piano is relatively easy to go back and I can still play and read notes. That's more than enough compared to someone who doesn't know how to play at all. I also was pretty close to being competitive when I was 1st and 2nd grade (as in professional competitions). I regret not diving deeper, but then there was no money in my family to feed that rich-kid habit. No money to ever buy an instrument either. But I know I had the ability too.

I guess it depends on the different track aspects of Mario Kart, because by far, the higher CC class you go on Mario Kart, the more it resembles a hardcore game. I can't really pinpoint that on MK:Wii until I buy it and play it (yes, all the criticism and I'll end up buying it. I'm a sucker for Nintendo sequels even if I hated New Super Mario Bros to death). I agree F-Zero is the more complicated series, but I still think Mario Kart as a whole are on another level of depth than something like Mario Strikers, which you can basically master in a matter of days. Hard to say you can do the exact same with Mario Kart personally. Though Mario Golf made by Camelot had that kind of deep depth to it, apparently it's not in vogue all of a sudden. I agree that Mario Kart now more than ever is being sold in the light of being a simple game to play, but I think taking the more advanced techniques and automating them is a huge step toward parity between the newcomers and veteran players more than ever. I mean, go from the totally unassisted, minimal-boost power turning of the original to Mario Kart Advance to all the automation in the Wii version. It has since simplified, if it is even to be considered a simplistic game to begin with.

I have to disagree. The overall difficulty level in the original Mario Kart was definitely not for the easy-over crowd but rather those who cut their teeth on some of the harder stuff like F-Zero. Mario Kart games, for the most part, had a bit of a learning curve and depth to it that people seems to underestimate. But now with the newest version, they definitely are trying to baby-it up. The battle courses already look pretty straightforward and bland compared to the more elaborate battle maps even in the first Mario Kart games, and all the relative depth of the Mario Kart Double Dash and MK:DS (snaking and all, and no, it's never overexaggered, Imagery, because MK:DS basically became MK:Snake So Nobody Has Any Fun). There always was the Mario game, the Mario Party games, all the simplistic Mario Sports games, then the was Mario Kart. I know they were intending to sell the game to the casual audience like with every Mario franchise, but I think their depth as a competitive game is equatable to Smash Brothers. Both games are a class above in terms of depth than the more casual of Nintendo franchises.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I tend to disagree with that in general. Sequels don't need to overhaul that much to be compelling in most cases and I've been satisfied with them since the 80's. Why break what's not broken? Also, I think gamers are a bit more open to lesser known games than people assume. Persona has been a constantly been a huge hit despite it being sold strictly for the hardcore crown, Suikoden have since been a lock for being ported over, games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero basically came out of nowhere and it's not a phenomenon and a bunch of smaller games are doing very well on the download services. Then there's the freakish successes of something like Puzzle Quest too, which it deserves. There always were the underappreciated games since the NES days and just because they're out there, it doesn't mean the whole system is broken. And someone said DMC4 should've been for the older generation consoles? But why? I think the HD leap is big enough for most publishers, especially the forward thinking (at least technically) companies like Capcom. Also, harp all about how the new generation of hardware comes in and nudges the old one out, but that's how the market moves. Not just the developers/publishers, but gamers in general tends to move forward with the hardware. It's not some evil conspiracy. Also, it's business. Get used to it.

That and the auto-boosts too. The game basically is babying up to the Wii demographic according to Nintendo... which is sad since most of the Mario Kart games were more for the slightly more hardcore type of gamer.

That video brought up a lot of the best moments in Seed especially the final ship showdown. Some of the Miverva vs Archangel moments were great in Destiny too, but I haven't seen any ship versus ship battles as involving as that one in Seed. 00 ones are great too, but they didn't build it up for 50 episodes until everyone started dying.

The moment 0083 was mentioned, I knew that was the typical UC fanboy rant. Must've heard the same thing at least a hundred different times in other forums. I find that ironic since the UC shows created the definition for 'running it to the ground' with a lot of their horrible shows after Zeta. It's good thing that they moved away from it since the 80's.

You see them every time in video game stores, which is where I tend to hang out some days. Parents or just ill informed newbie gamer who only buys stuff based on their biases about gaming and choosing only due to their genre and not how good it really is. I mean, Adam Sandler movies and all those "movie" movies like the Date Movie, Superhero Movie and Meet the Spartans constantly gets close to 100 million dollars each, so there is a giant market out there for gullible, shallow-entertainment consumers. It's sad but true. It's like how all the truly great movies tends to be indy-films, documentaries or entirely foreign. At least movies don't have that much of a parity in quality as games do. Truly great videogames do get recognized by its vast hardcore gamer group. Then there's the idiots who buy Wii Fit instead of spending that money for a year's enrollment in a gym instead.

Oh yes there were support. Not in any population/community based way but with the mass media actually giving him a fair shake (IMO he doesn't even deserve one even in fairness) and the politicians who sticks like flies to that kind of attention. I fully understand that the normal joes supporting something and the politicians supporting something are different. These types of people who spin misinformation are just dangerous, period. I'm just glad at least one of the spinsters destroyed himself. PS- Someone actually follows the Geki Rangers? Isn't it all about Go Ongers now?

I think that's unnecessarily harsh. I personally thought it was one of the best I've played in a while (at least since Persona 3 and Suikoden 5). There's also this love it or hate it quality because of all the novel-reading moments but I think it lent it a unique flair. Also its sentimental story that edges on both being innovative and somewhat cliche. Apparently some people just refuse to give it a fair shake, and that's fine. I just wouldn't take their word for it on how bad it is if they don't even play it.

I wasn't a big fan of the 2D Metal Gears either until I kept playing and it grew on me. Then I realized that 90% of all Metal Gear Solid gameplay derived from Metal Gear 2. MG2 is still my favorite Metal Gear game of all time. Maybe that could change once I buy the GBC version.

I heard a lot of good things about the Gameboy Color Metal Gear Solid. Apparently it's even above the PSP ones. Also, every Metal Gear game should have the VR modes. It's like a precursor to the strange puzzle games like Portal.

There's this magical thing called 'patience'. If you don't have it, forget about Lost Odyssey.

If you mean Starship Troopers, I agree. But the book, it's just a masterpiece. Makes you just want to smack someone who wants to rush into war.

I think even non-Gundam fans are watching and enjoying it. Pretty impressive for what is basically a Gundam Wing overhaul. The production values are crazy too. It makes every use of the high definition video.

I just watched the finale of H2O. Very soap-operaish but I thought it was good. They could have done more of the drama though, instead of pushing it on one episode. The final minutes were pretty moving. PS- A creepy real life version!

I can only name Starship Troopers because I don't really think of books in terms of 'cyberpunk'. It's either sci-fi or it isn't.

Snaking is beyond exploit in that game. It's just plain cheating. The former Mario Kart games weren't as totally broken as Mario Kart DS was. And like I said before, it's impossible to win against true expert snakers. The chance for victory is almost nil. Casual snaking is still cheap but people who can do it well are untouchable. That, and even if you use all the red shells in the world, it's about impossible to win anyway. Which is exactly opposite of what Mario Kart games should be: accessible and more strategic with the course shortcuts and item usage. Snaking basically canceled all that out. With SSB games, the exploits can't be used throughout the entire match like you can in MK:DS with such dramatic results. It wouldn't be a problem if Nintendo stays on the curve with everyone else and learns to patch/update the online modes. It's just another example of Nintendo falling behind the times in certain aspects of their games. Namely the online competition. As for the Wii game itself, it does look like they're going to simplify things. But if cornering is going to constantly open itself for exploits, I'd rather see them try to tone down the cornering aspect a bit instead of giving you a boosts all the time.

The Heroic Map pack will become free after roughly four months. I wonder if this coincides with Call of Duty 4 outselling Halo 3 now. So with each pack, it's between $5 to $10 for each map pack. I think most of the maps sounds good (including Chinatown for CoD4), but it comes at a price.

The media paid every attention to Jack Thompson for the 6+ years since the Columbine incident (elaborating a bit further, web information says he was at it since 1997..)and he had an insane amount of coverage. How many times I wandered onto CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC or any other newsmagazine covering Thompson and his support for videogame censorship, it is simply innumerable. I do not buy your idea that he did not have media exposure. Because that is factually false. Like I said, the millions of actual gamers who know about their games know he is an idiot. But what about all the idiotic non-gamers who are easily swayed by the idea that games in general are harmful? Thompson was just another fuel to the fire. It wasn't successful, but he did nag on the gaming issue for almost a decade. That is NOT insignificant. Yes, he has since lost his significance. But this was the final nail in the coffin not only for Thompson but slanderous and exploitive litigations as well. You saying it is a non issue doesn't automatically make it one for me. You aren't really selling me on that. The only way I can see it making any sense is if you're spinning it in some layman-speak.