The Coop

I've tried GI more than once over the years. I honestly gave it a fresh chance each time. But frankly, $5 for a subscription is too much. It, GamePro and "Official" magazines are good for catbox liners... and that's about it. IMO of course.

I'll say goodbye when you're about to leave, Bahamut. Saying it months ahead of time seems... odd. But I will say thanks for the work you've put into helping this site run. A nod indeed deserved.

DeathSpank & Limbo

Just for the sake of easiness, for the Genesis soundtracks, go to Project2612. All you need is Winamp, ChipAmp and the VGZ zip file in question from 2612, and you'll be good to go. As for the Sega CD soundtracks, throw me a PM and I can point you to handy sites that'll make getting their music pretty easy. If you want the Saturn games, I also know of a site that has their soundtracks. PM me if you need to. For the Amiga games, all you need is Foobar and to visit Exotica.

An awful lot of Nintendo stuff there. Let's see if we can't help balance that out... - Genesis - Alien 3 Alisia Dragoon Batman Castlevania: Bloodlines Devilish Dragon's Fury Elemental Master Heavy Nova Master of Monsters Mega Turrican Midnight Resistance (namely, "Flood of Power") Phantasy Star IV Ranger-X Red Zone (namely, "The Habam") Revenge of Shinobi Ristar Road Rash (namely, the title screen song) Rocket Knight Adventures Streets of Rage Super Fantasy Zone Sword of Vermilion TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist Thunder Force III Thunder Force IV Whip Rush - Sega CD - Android Assault Ecco the Dolphin (especially the unused track, which is on )Robo Aleste Shining Force CD Soul Star Stellar Fire The Terminator ... and a few random ones from other systems... - Saturn - Blast Wind DoDonPachi Hang-On 95 (for this one track) Panzer Dragoon Panzer Dragoon Zwei Thunder Force V - Amiga - Shadow of the Beast Turrican Turrican II Turrican III - PS1 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (Especially "A Dragon Temple (with Choir)" and "Credits (with Choir)") I could go on for a while, but I'll stop.

Shmups that give you, in essence, "Congraturation! You are great!" and then credits. RPGs that do the same after playing for 40 hours. Perhaps I was spoiled with the likes of Thunder Force IV and Phantasy Star IV, where the endings were rather long for their respective genres without being drawn out (like say, Golden Axe's ending on the Genesis). But the ending is part of the reward for beating the game. If you don't get that reward, the experience feels cheapened. I can remember fighting my ass off against the final bosses of Shinobi and Thunder Blade, only to get a quick picture with "The End" on it. NOT EVEN FUCKING GAME CREDITS! Sure, playing is fun and all, but that last little bit called "the ending" is important. When you leave it out or make it unimaginably short, it just feels wrong.

The somewhat prickish question that comes to my mind is, "Who's fault is that?" Even back before I officially joined OCR, browsing the forums told me that each one was different. Gen Dis was about games, movies, music, etc. and was more moderated, UnMod was semi-controlled (fun) chaotic nonsense, the WIP forum was generally helpful advice on making remixes... and this was seen by me back in 2002 when I was a complete forum newbie. That's why you have to check things out. See what goes where, how things are run... basically "lurk moer!". It's the best way to find out if it's someplace you want to visit, and works far better than just going with a knee-jerk reaction and turning away before you even give the community a shot. After all, if you walked out after the first bits of "The 5th Element" because of how it initially makes the movie seem, you'd miss out on how entertaining it gets later. Right? So, why treat forums any differently? Give them a shot and stick around. Like the movie, they may get better as you see more. Of course, that analogy only works if you liked that movie, but you get my point

How could a single forum keep people from joining a site (be it PPR, UnMod, whatever)? It's not like it sought you out in the middle of the night and kidnapped you, only to tape your eyes open and force you into watching loops of the various "shock" images or abortion arguments. ... You had to donate to the site to get that ride

I AM going to name names, but I'll do so in a text and color that can only be viewed with the special OCR decoder cursor that will be going on sale this upcoming November. Be sure to keep an eye out for the official announcement. And now... - - - - - - - - - - ... and those are just the ones who were there at the beginning.

Crackdown 2

I got it some time ago and had already beaten "Season of Ice." I was pretty far into it, but set it down as I began working on more important things. However, I picked it back up a few nights ago and am determined to beat it so I can finally move on to Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, to possibly get things back on track... Singularity

Why for work, my dear Canadian fellow! He speaks the truth, Kanthos. To make his videos, sephfire goes to Canada where the air is both thinner and slightly mixed with helium. It's how he gets his voice higher for the videos.

Now that you mention it, I'd love to play some Wing Commander III. Haven't played it in a while. I'll let you know how it goes.

On the other hand, the likes of Streets of Rage and the NES Castlevania's came out rapidfire, yet each was noticeably different and/or improved over the previous entry. They were all good games with noticeable additions and tweaks. It goes to show it's not a matter of time, but of ideas and implementing them well. Some companies/people need a lot of time to do this, others don't. Just because a lot of time has passed doesn't mean what comes of it will be an improvement over earlier entries, or even be of matching quality.

Actually, the frequency isn't in play IMO. It doesn't matter if four games come out over 15 years or five years. If they don't really change much, it's still stagnation and should be called on it. On the flip side, you could have a game series get a new release for four years in a row, and each game could be worth owning because of good changes, adjustments and additions. This admittedly doesn't happen very often, but...

It doesn't have to be OMG AWESOME NEW FEATURES that utterly change the game. But when you consider how stagnant the likes of MegaMan, King of Fighters, many sports franchises and quite a few other game series grew when virtually nothing significant was done from one game to the next and the next, it does need to advance.

Perhaps stagnation isn't something to be sought after. Look what it did to the likes of Tomb Raider, Madden, Street Fighter II and even the Castlevania series to a lesser degree. There's having a good thing, and then there's beating it into the ground. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" leads to the latter faster than you think.