I-n-j-i-n

Wii is pretty much all Nintendo across the board. The 360 has a good stream of new games and PS3's isn't bad either if you look past the outrageous prices. And yeah, the PS2 still has some of the best lineup for early 2007. God of War 2 is almost perfect. Gaming perfection. It's worth the full price.

I actually agree with that. DKC is pretty much the best choice IMO. Overall, all the common NES games that most everybody has played isn't too enticing on the system, though some of them may be good for the replay value. And a lot of professional game critics out there are seeing that the Western gamers are getting a short end of the stick with the Japanese VC getting a lot more content.

I really wonder if they had to blow it up and consider it to be a channel option entirely though. And I'm going to lose my faith in Nintendo further if they have to actually question the need for Earthbound on VC. Another strange thing with the whole VC thing with me is that I tend to only play the older games on the system instead of the normal Wii games now. It's strange, but fiddling with the Miis and playing Sonic is way more fun than anything else right now. Too much for my protest of the whole VC idea. But at the very least, it's the cheapest option for me to play such games on the big screen and with some 480p support instead of worrying about modifying expensive gaming hardware. And I suppose it's cheaper to buy $5 and $10 games instead of constantly being reminded of giving all my $60 and $70 games away to little cousins who then promptly threw them away.

The problem is that Nintendo said they wouldn't go multimedia but they HAVE. So now what they're doing is giving us these little snippets but not the big thing. The 360 and PS3 can both provide full video and even fully high definition downloads and music libraries built inside. The PS3 even has a pretty nifty image scrapbook feature in there, not to forget the Bluray drive. So they're stuck between providing us snippets of such features or just halfass the rest. I really like the channel features, I really do. But the Wii most probably isn't built to even handle all these full features the way the 360 and PS3 are. Because they were built ground up to be fully multimedia devices.

To my surprise, despite me calling others Narutards for liking the show, I actually watched through every shitty Naruto filler episodes. It's a mix of accomplishment and shame. And by the way, the new official, canon storyarc they're selling as a new series looks really good. I hope the OP and ED are good too.

I agree actually. It's just that in the NES and SNES days, EVERY SINGLE Nintendo game was a deemable classic. One release after another. Now, we see the constant Pokemon rehashes, the constant spinoffs and remakes on the DS and the Wii now with the few true sequels. Even with full sequels, they just don't seem to have the depth the older games did (it's impossible to compare Mario 2 to New Super Mario Bros for example. Mario 2 is so much deeper and comprehensive in every way). I think they should worry more about the simple stuff like the camera and the way to use the attack moves and the character quirks and make a balanced game before they get into changing the aesthetics.

I can only recall Shenmue (probably discontinued forever), Virtua Fighter and the odd outsourced games to Amusement Vision. But it takes Sega years to make one good game instead of coming up with streams of great games (IMO way better and more experimental than many SNES games of its time) in its glory days. Nintendo, to me, has fell from grace of making each games into absolute classics, but Sega did so a bit worse. It's like the only franchise that is almost faultless nowadays with the two companies is Zelda and Virtua Fighter.

I don't think the current direction is really the problem. It's the execution. I thought the cartoony style was obviously the way to go, but it was the gameplay nuances that kept the game down. If Yuji Naka stayed on board and refined his games, it could have started improving a lot by now. Then again, Sega as a whole doesn't really seem capable of making great new games anymore. Also the entire mechanic of Sonic platformers are a bit archaic by today's standards. You can only run and jump so much before it feels redundant. That's why other platformers like Ratchet and Clank has the heavily gun-oriented gameplay and Sly is based on a lot of stealth on top of the apparent platforms. Both are leagues better than any Sonic game since 2000.

I thought the music in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were really good for the most part. Even the cornball ones in Sonic the Hedgehog weren't too bad (In this worrllldddddddddd). The amusement park theme of Sonic Adventure 1 is permanently stuck in my head. I think the reason why the recent Sonic games doesn't seem to have a direction is because Yuji Naka isn't making the games. It'd be like Miyamoto not handling a new Mario game or Aonuma not directing a Zelda game. If either of them leave their posts, their respective franchises could suffer too.

I'm talking about current sales though. In the last few months, the 360 was way up there, possibly in the number one if I remember correctly. I don't know about the PS3 though since some stores just don't sell them at all from my experience. Maybe the stores don't see the demand for it yet either. It's really a strange dynamic. Read EGM, watch 1UP or some other gaming commentaries around the net and people are treating the 360 like the new Playstation. PS3 just isn't registering with a lot of gamers yet. And it's strange seeing the Wii shelves totally empty. I know the demand is pretty high, but I wonder if the stocks are out? I guess we'll see all three consoles readily available in March like it's been predicted.

I do see a pattern that the Wii and its controllers are getting harder to find. I'm glad I got them while they were available, but I think the reason why the 360 sales is so far above most other consoles is that it's available everywhere. The Wii, I've only seen a few in stock when I visited a game store. PS3, obviously a no show.

Sonic Advance 1 was slow. Sonic Advance 2 was just like the oldschool Sonic games though. Sonic Advance 3 had a strange tagteam system that sometimes worked well and sometimes didn't. I like the inventive ideas of the newer Sonic games, but they surely don't know how to pull it together. Because most of the attacks are totally useless.

I actually liked the Sonic Adventure series too. But those were definitely not very good titles objectively speaking. Horrible camera, on-rails platforming, music that was borderline insane at times, etc. But at least the characters were cute and the whole atmosphere was pretty good. But you hear the same complaints about Sonic games now: Too short (even if the oldschool Sonic games were very short in their own right, a 3 hour game is considered too short nowadays. And I spent one day of Sonic Heroes rental and beat it all), too easy or too difficult depending on how much the camera angles mess up the action and etcetera. At least I can argue that one other game series is falling apart in a worse fashion and that is the Silent Hill series.

Why do people hold out hope that the Wii version will be any better? The same company is making it and you can expect the same horrible results, only with a wonkier control scheme. But seriously, I think just about all Sonic games outside the GBA/DS Sonic games can go to the "crap games we love" list. And even with the handheld Sonic games, the attacks are just bad. Actually, the core gameplay of Sonic games are a bit suspect. You can barely see the action happening in front of you and you merely jump and attack out of impulse a lot of the times. And a lot of trial and error gameplay.

Prime 2 was way too obsessed about item collecting and the dark world literally left me feel like I was choking. Too restrictive, too gloomy even by Metroid standards and story that just came out of nowhere (even if that's Metroid staple).

I thought that too, but do they have to play it out to the public like some perverts? I agree with some who say that was probably one of the best half time shows ever. Prince has remained a pretty good artist in my opinion. Unlike a lot of old timers who tends to recycle their music and go to tour to get money. He's what Michael Jackson would've been if he didn't go crazy. As for the game itself, you can't expect much when they're playing in a heavy storm. That was just ridiculous. The only thing missing was thunder and lightning.

If I'm not mistaken, certain cables could actually improve the visual sharpness by a bit. Like how some PS2 games had that effect with composite cables.

Bumping for discussion's sakes. Does anyone know a good cable brand that enables the widescreen mode for the Wii? It's great having all the games and all, but with games that have widescreen enabled, I'd rather turn that on instead of worrying about burn-ins or wasting the screen size.

Still great production values. I'm not quite sure you can classify it as a thoroughly crap game. My favorite bad game is Tom and Jerry for the NES. Ridiculously cheap and frustrating platform game I can't believe I beat. And maybe Nightmare on Elm's Street NES 4 player. Possibly the worst 4 player ever made, but still strangely fun.

^ Why do that when the ATHF electronic boards were distributed to at least 10 major cities in the past few weeks? Which is the strangest thing. Because out of all those cities, only Boston was the one that reacted like that. And though I think it makes perfect sense from a superficial view from that of the Boston police force, I think it's equally their investigation team's fault for not digging into it a bit more before closing the entire city down and running up that $500,000 bill they apparently ran for taking such drastic action. I think the situation is sorta funny, but I feel sort of bad that it even had to happen at all. The way the entertainment industry is hunted down is not good news at all. It's not just with cartoons or anything either (though cartoons have gotten the brunt of it in the last decade with excessive censorship rules only to do with cartoons). It could may as well extend to video games, it already has ravaged radio, and it will definitely extend to sporting/music events, television and movies.

Just as silly as asking for Katamari Damacy on the Wii. Since Namco seems to be part of that new Cellius plan for Sony.

It's pretty stupid no matter the context. That would've been a possible vandalism/bomb scare even pre-9/11.. They always had a lot of problems with 'pop art' and viral advertising on city streets for a while. Everything from billboards to graffitis. This is pretty expected.

Lack of a coherent story hurt a lot with FFXII as I see it. Things just happen and it's hard to connect with the situation since so little of it is explained. And the license board thing was a bit silly since lot of it simply increased the grind and the game wasn't any more or less customizable with the characters as they leveled up. It may as well have been the traditional "level up then get your spells and benefits" deal and it would've played out similarly to having the license board there. I'm pretty sure it's because the game engine can't handle it. It's funny when enemies are wailing on me and my characters are standing around like statues for their spells to load up. If there's more than two spells going off for some reason, the game lags noticeably. The problem is that there are almost no twists in the story to speak of, no real personal input for the majority of the game in terms of dialogue and insight. Even FF4's cornball story had way more insight and back story for its characters.

I think you are actually supposed to feed an Elixir to the Magic Jar. Do not attack it, but just feed the Elixir first. It's supposed to snap out of its invincibility so you can attack it.

Also, "convoluted stories" are what makes JRPGs and a lot of Japanese games with vague and mysterious sets of circumstances and stories. I mean, FF8 was probably one of the worst examples of it, but even then, I thought it was pretty interesting because it was so convoluted.