The Coop

Gears of War 2 Pretty good one. And for those who were stuck on the accent last time, be sure to read the last part of the credits. It's intended just for you guys. Oh, and be sure to read it from behind a chest-high wall.

"What's going on with you?" "Hello." "Farewell." "Good day." ... all done in the exact same voice.

Useful? Likely not. But who could resist having a degree that says "The trustees of UC - Berkeley, by virtue of the authority invested in it hereby confer upon **insert name** the degree of Associate of Zerg Rush with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto", with all its underlined areas being done with "^_____________________^"... and getting to join the Honor Society of ΚΣΚΣΚΣ?

ohhh.. its the same game just easy system had a different versions of it... lol Im a noob. Thanks though ... was a much better game, though. The Genesis version of the fighter was painfully basic for a fighter of the time, and even though they did a decent job with the graphics, the Genesis could have done much better aurally, animation-wise, and gameplay-wise. IMHO of course.

Well. That first one was certainly some good old fashioned nightmare fuel. While not quite oldschool, it's still one of the best 32bit commercials made in my opinion... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmxRHiNhlYM

Joe Musashi.

Another story. This one's a bit shorter than the last two. Back before I got my Genesis, while my Atari XEGS was still my main gaming system, I had a small, three-drawered night stand that I used to keep stuff in... including the games for my XEGS. At the time, one of the games I played a lot was Choplifter for the XEGS. It wasn't the best port to be sure, as it only had a single level, and the goal was to rescue as many of the 64 hostages as you could. After that, the game ended. Still, it got a lot of use, until it disappeared one day. I spent a week looking all over my room for it, but it never turned up. I knew I hadn't taken it to anyone's house (only one person I knew also had an XEGS), so it had to be in my room. Despite that, it was gone. I sulked a bit, and eventually got over its loss for the most part. Then one day, over a year after it vanished, my Mom wanted to use that small nightstand, so I had to clean it out. I took out out each drawer so I could empty them, and that's when something in the back of of the nightstand's insides caught my eye. Pressed up against the interior back side, sitting on a small ledge guide that kept the top drawer in place, was a small, gray shape. I reached in, pulled it out, turned it over, and found myself staring at the Choplifter artwork on the front of the cartridge. I ran out into the living room, holding the game like a trophy, and proclaimed "I found it!" like a little kid. Needless to say, I was stupidly happy, and I played it for like two hours straight, over and over again. I have no idea how it fell behind the drawer, let alone how it stayed up against the back of the nightstand's interior like that. I mean, it was there for over a year. Regardless of the hows and whys, it's a memory that's stuck with me for a while, simply because I was so happy to find it.

I believe he was just parodying the accents he poked fun at early on in the review.

Far Cry 2

Wasn't that basically Street Fighter II V?

Well that's a bummer. I remember Fantasy Island when I was pretty young, and of course, the famous Khan. I even remember his playing an Indian in an old western or two (which gave me a chuckle). He always seemed like an interesting person, and he certainly made his characters memorable. I imagine where he is right now, everything is upholstered with soft Corinthian leather, and everyone's a wienie but him. R.I.P. Ricardo.

Seems a week was skipped here. So... 2008 Awards Tomb Raider: Underworld

Goddamn right I was still playing Atari, and I continued doing so virtually daily up until 1989 when I got my Genesis For tale #2, I'll talk about a game that took me 13 years to finally get to play... Curse. See, back in 1990, INTV was supposed to release a shmup by the name of Curse. The EBs around where I lived had it on their computers, and I was looking forward to getting it. That's when the journey began. Bit by bit, the release date kept getting pushed back. No reasons were given, and according to EGM, the game was either out, or about to be out when they reviewed it. 1990 became 1991, and delay after delay kept showing up... sometimes just a week before the game was supposed to arrive. 1991 drifted in 1992, and by the summer of that year, I moved... Curse-less. The town I moved to didn't have a real game store; just a K-mart and a Wal-mart. Needless to say, they didn't always get things in a timely manner, let alone have release dates to give you. I kept checking for Curse in the display areas of both stores as the months rolled on, but eventually the game began slipping from my mind. After a while, I figured I had missed out on the game, and just stopped looking. Years went by, and around 1998 we moved again. I discovered a company named Funcoland, which as we've all learned, dealt with used games... a lot of used games. I checked out one of their stores a while after learning of them, and picked up one of the price guides they used to print like a newspaper. Going down the list, I saw a familiar title for seven dollars. I asked the guy at the store if they had it, but it wasn't in stock. I later saw the title on-line on their website, but I saw no way to find out if anyone had it. After a few months, the title vanished from the website and the newspaper, leaving me Curse-less again, with seemingly no way to find out where it was. In 2001, I got my first PC. By this time, the game had again slipped from my memory, and later that same year, I discovered eBay. However, it wasn't until 2002 that Curse popped into my head again as I was browsing eBay one night. I typed in the title, and POOF!... there it was. Curse. I got to see the box and cartridge for the first time. I tried to bid on it, but lost to what I later learned was someone and their proxy bid. This happened again a few months later that same year, leaving me bummed and tweaked at the same time. However, when 2003 rolled around, I had learned more about eBay. And when I had to the funds to try again, I was determined not to loose. I found a copy of the game, still sealed. I wanted it, and I was going to have it. I won't say when my proxy bid was, but let's just say that anyone who might have outbid me would have had to REALLY want it. The auction eventually came to its final day a week later, with me sitting there, refreshing the screen every few seconds for the final minute or so. The auction ended, the screen refreshed, and I was the winner for a lot less than what my proxy bid was (thank God). About a week later, the game arrived at my doorstep. I opened the box, pulled out the game, and stood there... holding what I'd been after for 13 years. I took off the wrapping, and flipped through the Japanese manual. I stood there with a child-like grin, ready to play... until I heard a clap of thunder. Yes, at the end of my quest, a thunderstorm was drawing near. For an hour I sat, listening to the rain and thunder. I kept flipping through the manual, looking at the box, all with a smile that could only be surgically removed. When at last the storm moved far enough away, I fired up my Genesis, plugged Curse into my Game Genie, and entered a little piece of gaming heaven for a while. Was it the best game I'd ever played? No. But I sure as hell enjoyed it after being teased with it all those years. I later learned that INTV, the folks who were going to publish the game, went under just as they were about to release the game. The problem was, no one informed any retailers. As a result, stores were stringing people like myself along for who knows how long before the game title was taken out of the databases. Not a lot of fun, but that's how things were back then... just keep checking the stores, and hope for the best.

One of my stronger Christmas memories isn't a particularly happy one, but it does have an eventual happy ending. Walk with me for bit, yes? Back around 1987, I had been bugging my parents for an Atari 7800. See, I was something of a nut for the arcade game Xevious. If I saw it, I played it (or at least tried to sucker a quarter from my parents to do so). I also put a good amount of time into Pole Position II, which, like Xevious, was released for the 7800. I was dropping hints, looking at them at places like Toys R Us and whatnot, and doing it with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. The idea of getting to play these games whenever I wanted was mind bogglingly awesome to me at the time. Before long, the big day rolled around. I got up in the morning, come downstairs, and there were my parents with their usual morning cup of coffee. After a bit of waiting, we all got started with the presents. Even back then, I was in the habit of opening the largest gifts last, and because of this, one of the first presents I opened was a copy of Xevious for the 7800. Needless to say, this made my mind go crazy, and I knew what the big present had to be. Or at least, I thought I did. When I eventually got to that big box, I tore into it like Denis Leary going on a rant. When the wrapping paper came off, I was staring at the big blue box of an Atari XEGS. This puzzled me... a lot. My Mom told me that the man at the store said it could play all the Atari 7800 games, as well as games made just for it. So, I eventually went upstairs unpacked the Atari XEGS, hooked everything up, opened my copy of Xevious, went to pop the cartridge into the system... and found out that the cartridge wasn't even close to fitting. The wind was then knocked right out of my sails. I went downstairs, Xevious in hand, and said that my game didn't fit in the system. My Dad came to my room and checked it out, seeing for himself that there was no way that big 7800 cartridge was going to fit in the much smaller XEGS cartridge slot. So, downstairs we both went, with me feeling like I'd just lost my best friend. I was crushed. My Mom apologized in that way parents do when something doesn't go right for their kids, and said that we'd take the game back in a few days. I went back upstairs, put Xevious back in its box, and half-heartedly tinkered around with the XEGS and the two games that came with it (Bug Hunt and Flight Simulator II) for the next couple of days until we took the much wanted game back. I honestly don't remember which game I got for the XEGS when we went back to the toy store. It might have been Gato. Anyway, for a while, I barely even touched the system. I just didn't want to play it since I'd had a game I really wanted returned because of its inability to play it (yeah, that was the mindset I had... now of course, I know it was the moron at the store who gave bad info to my parents). But then something began to happen. Little by little, I started messing around with the programming guide that came with the XEGS. Typing in simple programs that would make borders, or colored letters, and what have you. I found out that Missile Command was accessible in the system, and that there really was a lot of "land" in the little cartridge Flight Simulator II. Bit by bit, I began warming up to the gray gaming box. I learned that I could play virtually all the older Atari 400/800 games that were still on store shelves at the time, along with the new games made for the XEGS. I saw games like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Joust, Donkey Kong Jr., Pole Position, Moon Patrol, and a host of other titles that had come out on the 400/800 systems, along with the likes of Battlezone, Star Raiders II, and Hardball for the XEGS. By the following Christmas, that Atari XEGS was getting a lot of usage. I didn't have Xevious, but I did have great games like Rescue on Fractalus!, Into the Eagle's Nest, Ball Blazer, and Mario Bros., all of which lead to many a good time. To this day, I still have my Atari XEGS. I guess I should also say that I wound up selling my Atari 2600 and its games back then so that I could get games for the XEGS. It's something I view as a remarkably dumb decision these days, but what's youth without poor decisions, eh? However, despite the down moments associated with the XEGS, it's a system that really grew on me the more I used it. Over time, I eventually got most of the games that came out for specifically it, and at one point, found a little store that sold the old 400/800 carts pretty cheap (yeah, I raided that place regularly). In fact, just a few years back, I picked up several games that I was never able to get for the XEGS back in the day (Space Invaders, Crossbow, Dark Chambers and Karateka). Now if I could just find a copy of Crystal Castles and Zaxxon that aren't way overpriced... So, while it came into my early gaming life on a rather sour note, it eventually became a cherished console for me as I got older. And thus is the tale of Christmas '87.

Jooooooiiiiiin uuuuuuuuusssssssssssss... We like to plaaaaaaay... **faint, echoey and sinister giggling**

Or the free version of Alcohol 52%.

True, but what they say according to their ratings system, isn't necessarily how going to be how it's perceived by others (or used by others as well, since we all know how companies love higher numbers to spout off about). Lots of stuff with 7s that got 5s from others, 8s that got 5.5s or 6s from others... it all might ring as GI being less critical at a glance to people, even with the reviews basically saying the same things overall between the various magazines/sites. It again falls to the "on paper" comment I made, and that's something I believe is part of the anti-GI/Gamestop argument, as GI giving an average rating looks better than say, GamePro or EGM giving an average rating. Anyway, that's my take on it. GI may be 100% honest and truthful with their reviews, and I'm not going to comment on that one way or the other. I haven't picked up an issue in many years (a decade I think), so I can't speak of their current status and crew. I'm just trying to shed a little light on why some folks don't see GI in the same light as yourself and others. Hopefully I did that without being prickish or confrontational

I have a feeling more people understand GI's rating system than you think, and that's why they get bent out of shape over it. If I were to continue the X-Files stuff, with other review sources having a 5 as average, GI's system can be construed as inflating scores by making their "average" what others have labeled as "good" when you take the GI/Gamestop connection into account. GI may be honestly sticking with their rating system, but on paper, the higher scores look better regardless of the rating system behind them... both to customers and to game companies (both of which can benefit Gamestop). GI has 7 as "average", with 5 as "passable". That seems like a good sized area for what could be considered average overall (average is passable in school after all). Get someone who really questions the GI/Gamestop relationship, and the theories will be off and running.[/DA mode] Again, I'm not saying it's happening, or that it's even happened in the past. I'm just trying to take a completely objective look at both sides of this, and why people are saying these things. And as I do this, to be truthful, the scenario is certainly there for it to happen, given the arrangement Gamestop and GI have. As such, what I am saying, is that I can understand why people make the accusations, even if there's no proof of wrong doing. Society as whole is a lot more suspicious of things than it used it be, which is why people are so questioning about the GI/Gamestop stuff. When you couple that with the fact that Gamestop has done some pretty shitty things to their employees and customers over the years, it's like Mr. Jackson being seen with a kid that's not his... the accusations fly. It's no great stretch of the imagination given the company's history and other informational tidbits, you know? And that's likely why people question the integrity of GI's reviews, and overall honesty. just64helpin- Yeah, that was an interesting coincidence, wasn't it?

Actually, they can have a biased magazine, even if they don't make it themselves. It's well known that GI is essentially Gamestop's magazine (it's the only place to get GI after all), much like GMR was EB's (same situation). Even if GI isn't owned by Gamestop, they obviously have a deal of some kind going. Now, if one were to roll with what's been suggested about GI, Gamestop could make sure its big incoming titles get good reviews. If Gamestop wants everyone to preorder and buy Halo Wars due to the popularity of the franchise, yet GI gives it a horrid score before it hits store shelves, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot with their own gun. So even if it is a bit conspiracy theory-like, Gamestop could have a biased magazine that takes steps to help them out with game sales, and not hurt them. Keep in mind, I'm just playing devil's advocate here.