The Coop

So... since it would seem that Benoit did indeed choke his wife and son to death, should it be changed from Rest In Peace (RIP) to Rot In Hell (RIH)?

Gamespot/EB is pretty much a "current systems only" store chain now. XBox, PS2, Gamecube, Wii, XBox 360, PS3, GBA, DS, PSP, and (for the moment) GB/GBC are all they take back game-wise. They won't accept games or systems that are older than the ones listed, and they no longer take PC trade-ins (they don't sell them used anymore either). Also, as others have stated, most game series that gets regular updates aren't worth the gas it would take to drive them over there, since at most you'll only get a buck or two. So as long as what you have to trade in doesn't fall into those areas, you might (key word there is MIGHT) get some decent money for it. Otherwise, save your gas and just hang on to them.

Ya here that boys? The jig is up! The cops are onto us and we gotta scram outta here, see? Myaa.

Well, a good number of the ones I listed in my first post are as blatant as the E3M3 example you just mentioned, if that gives you any indication about how similar they are. And yeah, I know the whole "OMG DOOM MUSIC IZ A RIPOF" thing is older than dirt, but it's interesting to see to just what degree this whole thing went.

Greetings all. About a week and a half ago, John Romero of id fame released a zip file filled with unused tracks from the original Doom game. Some of the tracks are early versions of ones that would later get used in the game, but as I listened to the others, I couldn't help but notice how similar they sounded to songs released by well known bands... like various riffs or rhythms had been taken out nearly note for note, or partially changed, and then used for part of the midi. For example... un46- Alice in Chains' "Angry Chair". un45- "God Smack" by Alice in Chains. un44- shares a number of similarities to "Dirt" by Alice in Chains. un42- quite similar to "Junkhead" by Alice in Chains un41- feels a little like "Rooster" by Alice in Chains in the beginning, but possibly only because I'd been hearing so many AiC riffs up to this point. un32- "Outshined" by Soundgarden. un36- I can't place this one, but it's rather familiar. un28- "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains (wound up in the game) un23- blatantly "Sex Type Thing" by the Stone Temple Pilots un20- "Man in the Box" riff by Alice in Chains So this got me thinking... how many other riffs, bass lines and such are in here? How many others can you guys recognize?

Did Sensational Sherry get a tribute? She died just a bit over a week ago.

Yes. They "blew up" Mr. McMahon a couple weeks ago. I imagine that story line's been canceled.

Guess you should have fought more with UnMod

Silly judge. Everyone knows that CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

So you're saying you're not a little lad who loves berries and cream?

Really? All I got was a big, bi-ped robot telling me to drop my mail, and that I had twenty seconds to comply.

Redemption: Granted. A long time ago, back when I first bought Doom Collector's Edition, I played the games within a lot. But I'll be the first to admit... I cheated. Not on Ultimate Doom, but on Doom II. Why? Because the Icon of Sin was pissing me off to no end. So for those not in the know, here's the scoop. It's a huge demon head, with part of its brain exposed. You have to fire somewhere between 2 and 5 rockets into that exposed brain area to kill it. However, there's a catch. To reach that area, you have to activate a tall tower that will slowly come down, and then ride it as it slowly goes back up. However, you can't fire when you reach the top, because you'll be too high to get a rocket into that brain area. Instead, you have to time it just right before the tower stops raising. Whether you succeed or fail, you then have to jump down, reactivate the tower, and wait as it slowly lowers again. Sounds fun, huh? BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! As you're doing this, the demon head it firing out cubes that travel varying distances, then spawn a random monster. This monster can range from a simple zombie gunner, to a nasty Arch Vile, and everything in-between. It does this about once every seven or eight seconds roughly. Needless to say, in a very short period of time, the area you're running around in becomes very, very crowded. Pain Elementals get formed, and they fire off Lost Souls, Arch Viles start resurrecting all the beasts you killed, Revenants fire homing rockets left and right... fun stuff. There's not much in the way of ammo replenishers, so you've gotta be careful what you use to deal with the ever growing number of hellspawn. Anyway, yes, I cheated to beat this bastard, and it still took forever. I kept getting knocked off the platform by Lost Souls and homing rockets, or knocked askew by something else (which resulted in my rocket going off course). But a short while ago, I redeemed myself. Being on a retro kick lately, I've been playing the Doom games in DOSBox (original control options, resolution, etc.). And though I had to restart the level over and over, I finally beat the Icon of Sin on Ultra Violence. No cheats, no tricks, and no exploits. Just a lot of running, a lot of timed BFG-9000 shots, and a whole lot of hiding around edges. Damn nasty, but what else would you expect from the final boss?

Hurrican Remember the "Turrican" series for the C64, Amiga, Genesis and SNES (among others)? Well, here's a new remake/inspired game that uses that series as a base. It's taken a good few years for this game to be made, and looking at the graphics, you'll see way. A lot of time was put into this game, to update the tunes and graphics, while keeping that familiar gameplay style... and it shows. The graphics are "Euro style", the music is good, the controls are on the money, and there are all sorts of familiar faces to be seen and blowed up real good. It's quite well done, and worth the 40MB download to play it.

Might it have something to do with this, or the Sega Gold collection in general? If it's a music CD, it could just be tunes or remixes from the games that were part of this "Gold" collection. If it's a game CD, it may be a compilation of them (or at least some of them).

Put the compatibility mode of your MechWarrior 3 executable shortcut to "Windows 98/ME" or "Windows 95", and it should run without problems.

Why be unhappy with Microsoft? They told you what you're allowed to do with their product right there in the fine print as you said. It's been known for a while that when you buy your average edition of XP Home Edition or XP Pro, that it's only good for installation on one PC (I believe you can purchase special multi-system licenses, but I'm not certain). I recall a lot of complaining about that several years ago here on OCR, because of the hassle surrounding having to reinstall/re-authorize it if your PC went through a destructive restore, or had its hard drive die abruptly. It's Microsoft's attempt at protecting itself from having one person buy the Operating System, and then hand it out to everyone they know for use. So really, if you're going to be unhappy, be that way towards the store for giving you false information, and yourself for not taking the time to read up on what you can (and can't) do with the XP version you wanted.

What in the bloody hell is this spam doing here?

Two threads with basically the exact same posts. ... Did I miss a meeting?

Another round with nothing for me to vote on? I mean, I can comment on the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 2 and the PC version of Half Life 2, but not the GC and XBox versions.

Wow. Nothing for me to vote on for the first time. ... Weird.

Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors (XBox)- The first game took the hack 'n slash premise, and dressed it up in an interesting mythos based on real-world mythical people/beings, great and stylish graphics, constant action, cool bosses, very nice music, stages that were nearly 100% destructible, and a tough challenge... all while keeping the gameplay simple, streamlined and accessible to anyone willing to take the game on. This second game does all that, with even better graphics, more diversity in the stages, more characters to choose from, new spells, a quest that's nearly as long as the first one, more bosses, and a greater level of replayability. To paraphrase IGN's old review, "It's more of the same, but better". A very solid YES. Test Drive: V-Rally (Dreamcast)- This game was originally called V-Rally 2 on the PS1. But Eden Studios went back and gave the game a facelift, and tweaked various aspects of it. The result is a fun rally game that looked good for its time, had a nice solid framerate, some nice tunes, good controls, and something that adds a lot to the game's fun factor... a track maker. Yes, you can build your own tracks on this thing, and save them to your VMU. Massive hills and drops, hair pin turns, the terrain... a lot is at your disposal, and this addition makes for a lot of fun once you've bested the default tracks that the game offers (which are fun as well). The main downside to this game, is how easy your car flips over... unrealistically easy. Nudge a hillside, and your flipping like coin. This makes for some frustration at times, but it doesn't detract from the game too much. The good courses, variable weather, and the killer track maker help deaden some of the flipping pain. In short, it's a good game that stands in Rallisport Challenge 2's shadow, but it's still deserves a Borderline YES. WipeOut Fusion (PS2)- Like Otogi 2, "It's more of the same, but better". It plays basically just like the first three games in the series, but now it looks a lot better. Plenty of tracks to race on, some good electronica tunes, lots and hectic action as you bounce, blast and careen your way through the increasingly nasty courses, and it still delivers a sizable challenge without having to resort to cheap tactics that prevent you from winning. WF is a very good addition to consistently fun series, and worth a YES. Project Gotham Racing 2 (XBox)- MSR started the ball rolling with a quality racing game. PGR1 kept the momentum going by beefing up a lot of the traits of it's predecessor, from the graphics, to the music, and to the tracks themselves. Now here's the third game in the series, and it continues that upward climb. Graphically, the game is gorgeous, and littered with day, night and rain details that make the real world tracks look great. The kudos system still gives you points for stylish racing (power sliding through turns, etc.), and there are a lot of tracks and track variants to work through. They did a good job licensing some nice music for the game, and the AI in charge of the other drivers is tough, but not cheap. There's even a very fun mini game tucked away that many may have heard of... Geometry Wars. It's (supposedly) in the garage which you can walk through in first-person mode to view all the cars in the game. Of course, all this racing wouldn't mean squat if the controls sucked, but thankfully, they're kept, responsive, arcade-y and clean. This game's probably one of the best racers on the XBox. It does so much right, and so little wrong, it's a game that any race-loving XBox owner would be foolish to pass on. YES.

Gunbird 2 (Dreamcast)- While not the best shmup on the DC, it's still a fun one. Quirky characters, a good challenge, plenty of different characters to choose from (including Morrigan from Darkstalkers), and an easy to understand scoring system for those who like going for score. The graphics nice, and the tunes are decent as well. It's not really a big stand out shmup, but its well constructed qualities still bring it up into the Borderline YES range. GunValkyrie (XBox)- A sleeper hit. Very nice graphics, good control, big levels, fast gameplay that still allows you to explore, and a good challenge that keeps you on your toes as you play. The gameplay is kept simple, but flexible. You can choose your weapons, and then head out to scour the landscape looking for the bug-like aliens you have to kill. Whether it's running along the ground, or using your boost pack to bound high through the air, it's a lot of fun to play this game once you learn the controls. It came and went pretty quickly when it was released, but it's one I feel shouldn't be left to rot in the bargain bins. YES. Soul Calibur 3 (PS2)- dsx100 more or less summed up any points I had to say. The gameplay balance is a bit off from the second game, but like SCII, there's a lot to be done in this fighter. Between the large fighter roster, the very nice visuals, the good tunes, the sharp controls, and all the stuff that lies underneath them, this one's a YES to me. Metal Slug 4 & 5 (XBox)- While Metal Slug Anthology brought the whole 2D series together, some of the games on it didn't quite match the versions that came out on the XBox (MS-3, 4 & 5). The load times in the "Anthology" package don't hurt 4 and 5 much, but the XBox's lack of such load times gives it a point in its favor... as does the graphical handling (no shimmering). They're still the same fun and gun blazing madness-filled games on either compilation, but the XBox's MS-3, MS-4 and MS-5 do have a few qualities that "Anthology" doesn't. As such, I give this game a YES. There's no "Anthology" on XBox, and anyone with just an XBox (or simply no PSP, PS2 or Wii) would be well served to get this combo pack.

Street Fighter Alpha III (Dreamcast)- A lot of folks consider "Third Strike" to be the best Street Fighter game out there. But to me, "Alpha 3" holds that honor. A huge roster of every last fighter up to that point (over thirty), very nice and clean graphics, good animation, good music, endings for everyone, great gameplay balance, lots of fun modes to play the game in... this game's got a lot to it. A solid YES assuredly. Dead or Alive 3 (XBox)- The third entry in the bouncy DoA series, offers up a lot of what DoA 2 had, but spruced it up with some nicer graphics, bigger and more detailed arenas, more costumes, and a final boss that's hard on the eyes thanks to the blurring effect used during your fight with him (think major drug trip). Of course, the "Ultimate" version of DoA2 came along and out shown its sequel, but DoA3 still packs in the same fighting formula that the series is famous (infamous?) for, and offers up a fun gaming time. While the "Ultimate" DoA2 is really the bright spot of the series, DoA3 is still worth a Borderline YES as it stands in that game's shadow. Rallisport Challenge 2 (XBox)- Like Rally racing? Like lots of tracks, plenty of cars, gorgeous graphics, good sound effects, nasty courses that can be raced in the day or night, and the challenge of having cars that can be damaged? How about simply liking good racing games? If you answered yes to any of that, then get this game. Where RSC1 made for a really good Rally game with its graphics, physics, tracks and decent car selecting, RSC2 took everything and upped the ante by a healthy bit. Everything looks just a little nicer, the tracks are great to race on in sun/rain/dark of night/snow, the controls are spot on, your car still takes steady damage as you race (tire wear, body damage, performance loss for impacts, etc), the driver camera is a lot of fun with how it's set up, and the whole game is simply well made. This is a rally game that does a lot of things right, and one of the better rally games out there thanks to its blend of arcade-y and sim traits. A YES without a doubt.

Get the PC version. It has the same games as the XBox version, it runs just fine on US PCs, and here's the cool part... you can play the games in MAME (with dipswitch settings accessible). The PC version installs ROMs, and these ROMs play in MAME without any problems. All you have to do is zip up each folder, and drop the zip file into MAME's "roms" folder.