The Coop

A part of me misses the old days. Riding my bike to a local arcade with a pocket full of quarters, seeing how long I could get those quarters to last, deciding if I wanted to try a game I'd never played before when I only had a few quarters to spend, the sounds of different games filling the air... good times. Then there's the other part of me. The one that does not miss the loud mouthed morons banging on machines, the smoke-filled rooms, dickheads who drop a quarter into the game you're in the middle of playing without asking if they could join (and then beat you out of the game because they're better with a given character), busted buttons and joysticks that work sporadicly at best... a major bullshit feat to be sure. These days, it makes me happy to see so many compilations coming out. No driving and wasted gas to play some of my old favorites, no dealing with busted cabinets or asshole-ish people, no wondering why every game is fifty-cents (or more) now regardless of how old it is... just a quick trip to Gamestop or Game Crazy, $20, and I'm good for years of play time.

DarkeSword's thread? It got shifted to the competitions forum, where it lingered and died off slowly. It's been almost a year since the last post in it, and sadly, those posts were about letting the thread die. Seemed folks simply lost interest (after 95 pages, and two versions of the thread before it, I can't say that I blame them).

I got a wild hair up my ass a few days ago, and decided to pop The Adventures of Batman and Robin into my Genesis. A bit of a long run 'n gun, and it's as hard as Chinese algebra. Still, it's fun. Most of the bosses aren't too bad. The Cheshire Cat is a pain in the ass, but I was reminded that there's another one that really gets irritating after a while. On level 3, you fight the Mad Hatter at the end. He hovers about in a giant top hat, throwing little spinning Tweedle men, and exploding rabbits, at you. The men aren't too bad to avoid, as they fall somewhat slowly down the screen. The exploding rabbits however, are tougher. They're killed in a couple hits, but when they explode, they knock you to one side or the other. They do decent damage, but it's when you're on the side of the platform that they do their real evil work... by knocking you off. More damage done by the evil little bunnies. Anyway, the battle really starts getting hectic when the ground starts moving. Now you're racing forward into the screen, and after a short time, cards start coming at you along the platform you're on. After you do more damage, the game starts throwing the Tweedle men, exploding rabbits, and the card obstacle patterns at you. As you weaken him further, the ground moves even faster, and cards come screaming at you. Eventually, you're hopping all over the place, trying to get out of the way of the cards, jump over the rabbits, avoid the falling Tweedle men... it all gets pretty frantic. Level three in general is a real bitch in the game, thanks to the difficult stage, mid boss, and boss. But when a boss fight has you hopping around more than the rabbits that are trying to kill you, that's a boss worth noting.

- I used a Game Genie to beat Road Rash after being stuck on the final three races for over a decade. - I've never played a Zelda game, a "Brawl" game, and just one Final Fantasy game (though I don't feel shameful about that really). - When I was younger, I actually called the 900 hints number in the Landstalker manual so I could find those fucking black ice spike boots (which were in a near-black pit... fuckers).

Schwaltzvald- Under Defeat and Border Down were Naomi board shmups in the arcade. They got ported to the Dreamcast in fine form, but they were only released in Japan. They're great games though, despite that they aren't the easiest things to acquire these days... cheaply at least. Sag Ee Mana- Bullet patterns can be fun. I don't deny that. But these days, that's pretty much what shmups seem to rely on for challenge more often than not... bullet patterns made up of a couple hundred bullets/lasers. That's fine and all, but it get monotonous after a while. It's like when people used to complain about how shmups were constantly just one lone spaceship fighting against an armada of sci-fi enemies back in the early 90s. They wanted things changed up from the current norm, and that's what I'd like... change. ... Maybe Obama can make a shmup for us Oh, and Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer is on the PC and PS3. The PC version comes with a physical disc and assorted goodies, while the PS3 version is only in downloadable form. The PS3 version had a few tweaks done it to try and make it easier, but frankly, I didn't find it to be all that impossible in the first place (I've beaten it). You can buy the PC version of it for $10 on Play Asia for a limited time, and you get an artbook, soundtrack CD, and a snazzy slip case for it all.

Have you played Ikaruga, Gradius V, Under Defeat or Border Down? All of them are loli-less, non-bullet curtain shmups, and they're all polished and challenging. This comes from stage designs, enemy placement, and bullets... not just bullets. This is a trend I would like to see expanded upon. Tougher regular enemies, more challenging enemy patterns and stage designs, and attacks from bigger enemies and bosses that do more than just fill the screen with 329 bullets at once (the final boss in Thunder Force V is a good example of what I'm talking about). Like the shmups in the late 80s and early 90s, you can only push things so far in a formula before you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with new ideas, or even go back and try to enhance older ones. If you don't, things stagnate. I feel that time has been reached, yet the bullet curtains and lolis just keep coming. When the occasional shmup like Gradius V, or Under Defeat comes around, it's like a breath of fresh air. The problem is, that only happens once in a while. I don't want bullet curtains to vanish altogether, but I'd like to see a broader range of shmup types getting released. It's time for the genre to get an infusion of shmups that feel more like the 80s and early 90s stuff (with new ideas), to sit along side the lolis and bullet curtains. I'd like to see more side scrollers, as they've been way too under represented for quite a while now. I'd like to see companies use their creativity on enemy placement and patterns, and stage layouts that do more than just go straight from A to B with hardly any danger beyond enemies and their bullets. There's more to shmuping than just pretty bullet patterns. Treasure gave the genre a shot in the arm with Ikaruga, so I know it can be done if companies try. I honestly don't think I'm asking for the impossible here. I just want more variety in my shmuping life. But sadly, I don't see much of a light at the end of the tunnel.

Joy. Yet another bullet curtain shmup filled with loli-tastic characters. Haven't both of these trends gone on long enough? I love shmups and all, but I think it's time for another shift in shmup design.

50 Cent: Blood In the Sand I enjoyed this one more than the last few.

There are a few on my site that Doulifée never grabbed (mostly ones that were made after the whole badge thing died off)... http://coop.herograw.net/badges/index.html

Really? Huh. Guess I've been out of the online musical loop too long. I shall now go and slam my face into a thumb tack-filled bucket as penance for my ignorance. brb...

Music is a tough thing to classify when it comes to downloading to me. Yes, it's a no-no, and there's little can be said to legitimately back reasons for downloading it for free. But if there's one in my mind, it's simply this... You can't rent music. Unlike games and movies, which you can rent for a small fee for a few days and see if you like it, there's no way to rent music. How many times have we all been stung by hearing one or two songs on the radio, only to find out that those where the only songs you actually liked on the whole album? Just as an example, Def Leppard was a band I enjoyed listening up to their album Retroactive. Once Slang hit, to me, they took a turn for the worse, and they've been sliding downhill continually ever since. I was less than happy with Slang, and even more so with Euphoria. I haven't bought an album of theirs since, and wish I had the money from Slang and Euphoria back. If I had been able to listen to those albums in their entirety beforehand, it would have saved me a good deal of monetary regret. So what are you left with? Well, if you spend twenty dollars on a movie and hate it, then you're a fool for not renting it first (assuming it's actually rentable mind you). That goes doubly for games when they're fifty and sixty dollars a pop. But what of music? Being told I'm SOL after buying an album for twenty bucks that I feel is horrid overall doesn't sit well with me, and it's this fact that makes me very wary of buying an album on impulse. It also makes me sympathize a bit with those who truly do grab an MP3 set so they can hear an album before dropping cash on it (as opposed to just being cheap and wanting it for free). I really wish more artists would do what Alice Cooper did with his latest album, Along Came A Spider. A few weeks before it was released, the entire album was put on his MySpace page at 96kb/s. Sure, it was pretty iffy quality, but you got to hear the entire thing, and decide if you wanted to buy it when it finally came out. But no, the music industry throws up a middle finger to that idea ninety-five percent of the time. As a result, it makes music buying less of a pleasure, and more of a, as Ozzy might say, shot in the dark.

Give rehashes of old games a rest. Let MegaMan take the day off. Leave Street Fighter alone for a while. Give us Darkstalkers 4 dammit.

I'm glad things are working out for you, despite your busy schedule, zircon (that's not sarcasm by the way). But know that there are institutes that do put such a burden on their students, and places that don't offer much in the way of public transportation after 7 or 8 PM (hell, we don't have public transportation that runs out here at all). And in those situations, I don't see extending the trial of something like After Effects as that big an issue as long as it's gotten rid of once the classroom need for it is over. Kanthos- That's the problem. Nearly every professor I had only made a very generalized list of supplies, and didn't provide a price range. They just said "Here's what you need for next time, go get it". It's not that they were bad instructors (though some later turned out to be very questionable in their abilities), it was simply them expecting the students to have a healthy amount of money right off the bat... which wasn't the case if students were relying on the refund from their tuition loans/grants to get their supplies (this would take anywhere from a couple weeks, to a couple months, to receive).

No, it's not. If Drexel students can afford to spend the money and time to get back and forth constantly, and don't have to worry about a job that keeps them busy on their days off or when they're not in class, that's great. I'm glad life is working out for them time-wise. But there are a lot of other people who have to work and go to class, and they can't get to a computer lab at 10PM (or later) to work on their assignments (be it because there's no more bus service that late, can't afford the taxi fare, the computer labs are closed, etc). And I won't even go into the idea of when the computer labs are actually open, and not housing a class for three hours at a time. You're counter argument reminds me of past art instructors who used to tell their students "Money's not an issue" when they told them to buy a hundred dollars worth of supplies for the next class that was two days away, and half the class says they can't afford it. Sure, it's not an issue for those with money, but for those who don't, it's a big, big issue. As such, because one part of a student body has the means to do something, doesn't mean all of every student body does. Does any of this make downloading $1000 programs just peachy keen? Of course not. People grabbing a copy of Sonar or Lightwave so they can play around with it and use it for their job isn't something I look fondly upon either. But, there are times when you need to use a program for two months for a class, so you extend the trial period because you can't get to a computer lab at the drop of a hat, or fork out $300 willy-nilly for a student version of the needed program that you'll likely never touch again after that two month period's over.

Not everyone lives on, or near, campus. As such, driving out day after day can eat up a lot of gas, money, and time. So, you wind up with people downloading a trial version, and then using a program like runasdate to make the trial version last longer than 30 days (assuming they just don't download a cracked version outright).

It's off of Dracula Battle 2: Perfect Selection, called "Theme of Simon". The album is a remix collection done by Konami.

I contacted Activision and Activision Value half a dozen times each, being sent back and forth, before I was finally told that they didn't support that disc any longer... which is their nice way of saying, "You're SOL. Bye." And, since id wasn't the one making the CD, it wasn't their problem. So, I took action myself to rectify the situation. Fun game by the way.

I downloaded Spear of Destiny, the follow up to Wolfenstein 3D. Do I feel bad since id is selling the game on Steam? Not in the least. See, I bought a CD from EB that said it had Wolf 3D and SoD on it. I got home, installed everything, and guess what? SoD was nowhere to be found. There is an executable that gives you a choice of which game to run, but none of the actual game files for SoD were on the disc. So, I tracked down a copy of SoD, and downloaded it. I paid for it, and didn't get it. As far as I'm concerned, my actions were 100% justified, as I was only taking what I legitimately paid for, yet was denied.

Considering SoA alone will run you about $40, the price thus far is quite reasonable.

It won't die off. Right now there are so many projects going, that it wouldn't surprise me if quite a few of them had long lulls like this one has had thus far. Also, with Summer coming up, people might get more free time, so there's hope yet. I'd join, as I'm a fan of the series. But not being able to match the quality being sought makes that idea a no-go.

AirForce Delta (Flying) Alien Front Online (3D Action) Bangai-O (Shmup) Border Down (Shmup) * Capcom vs SNK (Fighting) Daytona USA (Racing) Dead or Alive 2 (Fighting) Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm (3D Hack 'N Slash) Ecco the Dolphin (3D Action Puzzler) Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves (Fighting) Giga Wing (Shmup) Giga Wing 2 (Shmup) Grandia II (RPG) Gunbird 2 (Shmup) Ikaruga (Shmup) * Last Blade 2 (Fighting) Last Hope (Shmup) ** Mars Matrix (Shmup) Marvel vs Capcom (Fighting) Marvel vs Capcom 2 (Fighting) MDK 2 (3D Action) Metropolis Street Racer (Racing) Red Dog (3D Action) Resident Evil 2 (Survival Horror) Resident Evil 3 (Survival Horror) Resident Evil: Code Veronica (Survival Horror) Skies of Arcadia (RPG) Soul Calibur (Fighting) Street Fighter III: Double Impact (Fighting Compilation) Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Fighting) Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Fighting) Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage (3D Hack 'N Slash) Test Drive Le Mans (Racing) Test Drive: V-Rally (Racing) Under Defeat (Shmup) * Wild Metal (3D Action) Zero Gunner II (Shmup) * *= Japanese import **=Homebrew

If you get burned out on a place or hobby, it's not that odd to leave it, and all those associated with it, behind. Sometimes to get away from something and move on, you really do have to sever any and all ties.