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Last year, a new (yes new) Genesis game was released. Called Beggar Prince, it's an RPG that takes the old "The Pauper and the Prince" tale, and gives it a new spin. It's a simple RPG with a different battle system, but it's also an RPG with a somewhat unfair boss. For 90% of the game, with a little leveling up, you can kick some pretty righteous butt on the bosses. However, later in the game, you have to basically guess which or five columns to place an object in (I won't say what). If you guess right, you get to continue playing. If you guess wrong, you get to fight the guardian of that area... a blue dragon. It's attacks are simple. One normal attack, one special, much more damaging attack. Regardless of which one it does, you're taking a nasty chunk of damage by the time its turn is over. I'm not sure how many hit points it has, as I never beat it. Despite using magic on it, attacking it with a fully leveled weapon, and healing my character regularly, I just couldn't beat the thing. The only reason I moved on from this spot, was because I eventually guessed the right spot to put the object after dying several times and trekking back to that area. Nasty little spot in an otherwise pretty easy game. Even the final boss didn't give me as much trouble as this little area guardian.

Oy. So the PS3 and 360 games were handled by (in essence) "the other Sonic Team members"? I guess that explains the poor reviews (even Shadow the Hedgehog did better). But, should even the Wii game go bad, there is hope to be gained from the past... - The Sonic Advance series, Sonic Battle and Sonic Rush were done by Dimps - Sonic 1 for the Master System and Game Gear was done by Ancient (Yuzo Koshiro's company) - Sonics 2, "Chaos" and "Triple Trouble" (Master System and Game Gear) were done by Aspect - Sonic 3D Blast was done by Traveller's Tales. Even if all those companies only co-developed those games, that's a lot of outside help that resulted in some very good 8/16/32bit titles when Sonic Team wasn't the one on the job. So even though it seems unnatural for someone other than Sonic Team to be making a Sonic game, if that's what it takes to make the 3D Sonic title people have been wanting (and being promised), then so be it.

Yep. $4.99 new for my XBox. Curiosity got to me, much like what happened with Turok Evolution (also $4.99 new). I wanted to see how it was, and since renting it actually cost more than it would to just buy it...

Technical flaws, perhaps. But they're technical flaws that have been there since 1999. How many games and years does it take to fix it? They can pile on all the extra characters they want, but that just comes off as trying to bury the problems under "new options"... as if they're saying, "It's still broken in all these areas, BUT LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS AND AT ALL THE THINGS YOU CAN DO AND CHARACTERS YOU HAVE TO USE NOW!". Like what was done with other franchises, Sonic Team needs to refocus the Sonic series... hit "reset" as it were. They need to whittle off all the extraneous stuff, and focus on getting the core gameplay right, which is something I feel wasn't quite accomplished in any of the 3D games I played. It's there to a degree, but it's not nearly at the same level as the 2D games in terms of intensity, speed and design. ... To me, Sonic is close to hitting a critical crossroads. Other companies who have handled the Sonic series seem to be able to get the formula far more right than Sonic Team at the moment. The Sonic Advance series, Sonic Rush, Sonic 3D Blast... all these games felt more like Sonic games than what Sonic Team keeps putting out (at least up to Shadow the Hedgehog, which is the last one I bought). It's getting to the point that what Sonic Team are doing their franchise, is what Core was doing to the Tomb Raider franchise. Namely, hurting it. I honestly think unless the Wii Sonic turns out to be something spectacular, it may be time to let someone else have a go at the 3D part of the series. Or at the very least, bring in some fresh blood to help Sonic Team. Sometimes when you work on something for so long, you can't see what's potentially wrong with it until you get an outside perspective. And frankly, I'm wondering if Sonic Team can see how broken parts of the latest games are. As I said, I enjoy the series. I felt the 2D games were a blast (except Sonic Spinball), SA1+2 were fun, "Heroes" had its moments (the whole team gameplay got old though), and "Shadow" is at least playable (it's not as bad as the reviews made it out to be, yet it needed a lot more work to be sure). But to be honest, there were some serious flaws in those games that needed to be worked out... flaws which apparently haven't been if the reviews to the 360 and PS3 Sonic games are to be believed.

It's a bit hard not to compare the old Sonics to the new ones, TonitoX2. What drew people into the old Genesis (and Sega CD) Sonic games, were their simplicity, their colorful graphics, their happy tunes, and the huge levels that were still easy to explore around in. You had a jump button, and that was it. A special move here or there, but in the end, it was just simply a jump button... and you always knew where it was going to send you unless you were moving very fast. That single button, coupled with the speed the series is known for, enabled you to go just about anywhere. And usually what happened in the various stages were centered around those two aspects. Sonic Team struck a balance between giving you a lot explore, while keeping the means to do so simple, and easy to use. By far the worst thing about the new Sonic games, is the utterly spastic camera. It never stays still. You can run in a straight line, and the moment an object gets slightly near it, the camera spins off in another direction... and this makes your character run in another direction. You were running along the narrow patch of ground, but now your character turned left as the camera panned to the right. The end result, is your death. This happens on the rail segments (the camera pans away so you can't see what's up ahead), the open ground (now you can't see the enemy that was coming at you), the jumping segments ("Hey! Where'd the platform go?! OH SHIIIIIIiiiii...!")... there isn't an aspect where the camera stayed in place even after you maneuvered it to get the best view. Even Boss battles and the simple act of jumping became frustrating. Speaking of jumping, this becomes an exercise in cursing, as trying to land on things is made harder thanks to the camera wandering around. What was so fundamental in the 16bit (and 8bit) 2D Sonic games, was broken in the 3D ones. Running and jumping wasn't a means to reach new areas, but a new way to kill off your character thanks to not being able to see what you were jumping up at, or falling towards, half the time. The two most fundamental aspects of the Sonic franchise, haven't worked right since it went 3D. As I said, I still enjoyed SA1 and even SA2. The 3D games have kept the colorful graphics for the most part, and they did a good job transforming the 2D characters into 3D ones. Hell, even the music manages to be upbeat and catchy most of the time. But the camera that has yet to be tamed by Sonic Team keeps screwing with everything. You can't go full steam, because you're given a hard time seeing what's ahead. And jumping around isn't made any easier, for much the same reason. The 3D Sonic games have had a huge dent put into the series' core gameplay thanks to that camera issue. We know 3D cameras can work, as even the original Tomb Raider did a better job with it. Until Sonic Team can get a handle on coding a helpful camera, their 3D games are going to continue to have issues. And until the gameplay gets honed back down to what made the original games so memorable (do we have to go digging over a huge area just to find that one item... again?), the 3D games are going to be compared to the faster, streamlined, and less tedious 2D offerings. It's not about nostalgia. It's about getting the series back to what made it a success in the first place... *Sonic- Can run and spin dash *Tails- Can fly for short distances and spin dash *Knuckles- Can glide, climb walls, and spin dash. * The goal is to go as fast as you can to the end of the level, or jump around and explore the level, reaching new areas/power ups as you do. Make that into a 3D game, with a working camera (hell, try first person if nothing else), and Sonic could finally have a really good 3D game. No quests, no being chained to a team or partner, and no digging around to find the item to give to someone to blah blah blah. Just those four simple things. They're what made Sonic fun in the beginning, and they're what needs to be brought back. Of course, these are all just my observations. I'm not stating anything as fact, but rather what I think is wrong, and what needs to happen... soon.

I thought Sonic Adventure was decent, and the same goes for "2". Sonic Heroes was a bit iffy, and Shadow the Hedgehog, while not as horrid as some reviews made it out to be, was a mistake. It's like the same game engine kept getting used over and over again, as all the games have camera issues, control issues, and lack speed to the same degree. The only thing that changed, was the graphics aspect with the newer games. Maybe it's time for Sonic Team to let someone else have a 3-D go at it. And am I the only one who actually enjoyed Sonic 3D Blast? Sure, it wasn't as fast as the previous Genesis (and later, Saturn) games, but it was still fun.

But that's just it. Playing in the rain should have made for a far more interesting game, and in the first quarter, it did. Fumbles, stumbles, bobbled catches and passes... it was good watching. But once the second quarter started, the Bears died, and the Colts just took their sweet time getting points over a three quarter snooze-fest.

No, just over-hyped games of it that turn out to be boring, and one sided.

I guess every half-time show's going to be over scrutinized ever since the uptights of America were startled by a 38 year old tit... the scars from which still have yet to heal apparently.

New addition for the guide... How far can you push it? So now that you know about adjusting what are called "cycles" in DOSBox, just how high can you crank it? Well, there's a very simple way to find out... First, hit "Alt", "Ctrl" and "Delete" at the same time. This brings up the Windows Task Manager. In this new window, click on the tab along the top that says "Performance". Here you'll see four windows... two long, and two short. Pay attention to the short window in the upper left under "CPU Usage". With this window open, start up DOSBox, and run the game you want to play that's chugging a bit. Get it to an actual gameplay area (like say, the first mission in MechWarrior 2, or the first dungeon in The Elder Scrolls: Arena) and see where the percentage is under the "CPU Usage" window. The thing to take heed of, is what type of processor you have. If you have a Hyper Threading Pentium 4, or a similar dual core(ish) processor, know that the highest you'll be able to push the percentage is 50% (50% for each core or "Thread"). If you have a different type of processor that doesn't use Hyper Threading or have a dual core, your number will go up to 100% (note- even if a Hyper Threading processor says 50%, you're still getting full capacity. It's just the way things are read. You're not getting gypped in performance). Now, once you know what percentage you'll be able to reach, hold down "Ctrl", and begin tapping "F12" to increase the amount of cycles. As you do this, you'll see your CPU Usage level climb. Try not to go above 40% for Hyper Threading/Dual Core systems, and 80% for single core systems. You want to make sure you leave enough room for your CPU to grab power if it's needed, and you don't want your CPU to be constantly running full bore. As an example, when I run MechWarrior 2 and The Elder Scrolls: Arena, I can crank the cycles up to 30,000 with my Pentium 4 3.00E GHz Hyper Threading CPU. This makes those two games run very smoothly, and it still leaves room for extra power if it's needed during an intense part of the action. Doom and Doom II also run fluidly at this number. If you're on an older PC, you probably won't be able to push this thing much higher than say 10,000 cycles. But for those with faster CPUs, this'll be a godsend.

T2002 How many remember the Turrican series? Better still, how many remember playing them on an actual Amiga? Well, here's your chance to relive a little bit of that. T2002 is, in essence, a remake of Turrican II. Using graphics and music straight from the Amiga and PC versions (with permission too), this game basically makes Turrican II playable on today's computers. What little I remember of the second Turrican game, this game seems like a very faithful recreation. It also features a few tweaks here and there. Very good stuff.

I don't have any techno, but I've got the shits. Does that help at all?

I'll see your link, and raise you this one... http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/01/castlevania-dracula-x-chronicles-unveiled-for-psp/ The entire first stage being played in the 3D version.

Compress the MP3s into zip files. MP3s have always given me problems there (both uploading and downloading), but a zipped MP3 can be downloaded just fine, since the extension is different. You could also just try changing the extension on your site itself, and leave a note for people to change the extension once they've downloaded it.

Why not ask DS himself? If he's no longer in charge of them, he should be able to tell you who is. Here's his page with contact info.

Vocals are always an interesting idea, even if there aren't actual words, and it's just someone basically "La la"-ing their way through. The hard part (usually) would be writing lyrics that aren't going to detract from the music. That would require a good amount of time and thought.

Should Sony throw a hissy fit and completely refuse to give these guys the Ghostbusters license, I'm sure the game will surface as an original IP. If it was far enough along to make videos, then chances are Zootfly would just redo the character models, replace all the Ghostbusters references with something else, and go from there. You know, a new game in the "spirit" of the Ghostbusters franchise... so to speak.

Don't you love bosses that at first seem defeated, only to come back in a far larger, and nastier form? I found just such a boss, in a PC game called The I of the Dragon. I can't remember this thing's name, partly because I missed the cinema mentioning it, and made a save after said cinema. But basically, it's a big evil looking thing (kind of like a Diablo knockoff) who terrorized the world before and came back to try it again. You fight him the first time in the final "normal" land of the game. You pound on him, your town pounds on him, and he goes down without too much trouble. Then you learn that he escaped to some other place, and to truly defeat him, you must follow him. So, off you go. At first, there's a battle cinema, and this completely decides how strong the boss is going to be. If his troops beat your troops, he won't be as strong as he would be if your troops won, and he had to kill them off. This battle is completely random, which make getting ready pretty tough... especially since if your troops win, he gets seriously stronger killing them off before turning on you. His attacks are semi-varied. One, is a projectile that follows you like a heat seeking missile. It does a lot of damage if it hits you, and it only takes about three to kill you. Another attack, is also a projectile, but this one explodes on contact, and bombards the area with lightning blasts for about ten seconds. These too, do a lot of damage. Another attack, involves him literally destroying any ground you might be hiding behind... which makes the concept of a safe spot impossible. If he has other attacks, I don't know. Those three are all he needed to kick my ass quickly. And if you try to summon troops or monsters to your aid, he kills them in about two hits as well, then returns to hunting you down. Oh, and I forgot to mention, he heals very quickly. But since you can't do any kind of steady attacks, this makes doing any real damage nearly impossible. Why? Because even if you hit him with a big spell, by the time you cast it, you're already nearly dead. This means you have to flee, heal, and come back... by which time, he's all better too. It basically looks like an impossible to win fight. His spells do serious damage, he heals quickly, and any shots you get in are basically inconsequential... especially if he had to beat your troops. Even SNK bosses seem fair compared to this.

Right here is all I could really find right off the bat. The one thing I found for $250 was a 2001 article, and the company seems to be gone now. It's pretty expensive with a 4 slot external set up being $799. I can't imagine that there aren't cheaper versions out there, but I didn't come across any with my first search.

So which format are you? PC or Mac?

I'm not certain, but with a little searching I found external PCI slots, but they were pretty expensive (one was $1,399). One would think that unless your motherboard was a type that had empty slots where PCI plugs once were, but were removed for a lower cost version of the board (thus making it so you could possibly add those missing slots yourself), adding PCI slots isn't going to be cheap. I found some things for a Mac that added a bunch of external things (PCI slots, USB ports, etc.) that was $250, but it didn't say how many slots it added. I have a feeling it's going to run you at least few hundred bucks.

Not to come off as sounding like a jerk, but I honestly couldn't care less about an online StarCraft. I don't usually play online games, let alone RPGs where you can only play it online while paying a monthly fee (that's why World of WarCraft has never interested me). Having to basically repeatedly pay for the game over and over just doesn't do it for me at all gaming-wise. And in truth, I'm just not all that interested in a sequel to SC. The original was fun, but I never shared the "be all end all of RTS games" attitude that many have applied to SC over the years. Frankly, I'd much rather have the long rumored Diablo III come to pass, or perhaps see WarCraft IV.

Defend- OCR has a simple mission- if it's on the site, it's "good". By "good", that means it passed the written (and any unwritten) standards of the site in terms of arrangement, production, etc. (or at least, balances those areas out). There are no 10s or 1s here, no ratings, no "favorites" play lists... just remixes that passed judgment. And really, that's all the OCR higher-ups want it to be from what I've gathered. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll like the genre chosen, or even where the remixer went with it, as that's going to be opinion-based. But favorite "remix/remixer" threads do exactly what this site doesn't... it divides up the remixes into rated groups. If the people running this site don't want this, why would they let the posters do it? If folks want to break up this site's remixes into personalized "bad" and "good" sections, people can do that on their playlists. If they want to say how much they love a remix or remixer, they're more than able to do so via PM or in the given remix's thread. It's not about keeping people from saying how much they like a tune or person's style, but rather about keeping the site from becoming a mass of threads talking about nothing but. Plus, one of the things about favorites threads is that frankly, they've been done to death. Unless the topic is about a movie, game or what have you that just came out, the same points come up every single time (and the same insults too). And when you're dealing with OCR remixes and remixers, the same people and songs come up over and over and over. And as somewhat unlikely as it may sound, after a while, these kinds of threads may even lead to people ignoring any remixes that weren't mentioned in any of the "OMG BESTEST" lists... and that pretty much defeats what the whole judging thing's about. Basically, it keeps the bullshit to a minimum. No one's being silenced, or told to not say what remixes they like. They're just being told to put those comments where they belong. That's all

Open Office Microsoft Word costs a nice chunk of change to use, doesn't it? That's a lot of cash to fork out to be able to type up your paper for college, or whatever else you'd do. But there's hope. Open Office is a freeware program that gives you many features... too many to try and list. But if you need a free, "fully-featured office suite", here ya go. It's quite good. It's available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and a few others OSes. Be warned though, it's pretty big at 93MB to 121MB (depending on the one you need). The Elder Scrolls: Arena Here's a nifty bit of old gaming. Bethesda made their old DOS game freely available on their website. Since it's a DOS game, running it on modern systems it pretty tough. So unless you have an old version of DOS on your PC, you'll need this next bit of freeware... DOSBox So, how many remember those classic PC games of old? Wing Commander, Doom, the many Dungeons & Dragons games... stuff that not all got to play, but a good number may remember. Well, here's a chance to play them again. DOSBox is a DOS emulator. By that I mean, it creates a DOS environment for running older programs that require a DOS environment. It's a quite good, and depending on your PC, can run some of the more demanding DOS games well. For a little help on how to get DOSBox set up, head over here for a guide I put together.