The Coop

Isometric platformers are fun. I had quite a good time with the likes of Sonic 3D Blast, Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole and Dark Savior.

WWII side scrollers weren't too common. The ones that come immediately to mind are P-47: The Phantom Fighter, Fire Mustang, and P-47 Aces. There's also Progear, which has a 1940s steampunk vibe to the settings. You might want to check out Carrier Airwing and Armed Police Unit Gallop too. And Air Buster and Metal Black popped into my head when you mentioned fighting through buildings.

It makes sense to me on the surface. I guess the only reason vB devs may have avoided it is that it's a free-form link, which people might tend to populate with links to spam, malware, etc.... the Yahoo, last.fm, etc. icons are locked down to those specific URLs, so they're pretty safe. Now, granted, you can click on the URL from the user's profile field, which means the risk is still there, but it's multiplied when it's on every single post. I dunno, I definitely see the value, I'm just concerned on this specific point... Perhaps I'm oversimplifying this, but between posters and mods, most spambot accounts that would use such a link for spam, malware and whatnot, are spotted and gone in a matter of minutes. Also, if a real poster were to abuse the homepage button, couldn't they just have that privilege revoked permanently? I mean, if someone puts the wrong info if their "real name" field, or turns off PMs, they get warned and/or temp-banned, right? So why not do the same for a "home page" link? We can link to our sites in our sigs like I do, so the possibility for abuse is there already to a lesser extent. Adding a homepage button would free up sig character space that's wasted by having to do this, and it would look more professional/cleaner than having people with something like "Click here to go to my site" under a bunch of posts.

Yes. Yes you should.

No one said Sega had to be the one to make the retro Sonic title. Capcom didn't make MegaMan 9, Inti Creates did (the folks who made the MegaMan Zero games). So there's no reason Sega couldn't follow a similar lead, and let Dimps, the people behind the Sonic Advance series, make the game.

"Pledge to be veg"? ... I refuse to substitute any vegetable for Turkey on Thanksgiving, nor will I give up all the turkey sandwiches, bowls of turkey soup, or gallons of turkey gravy, that follows said holiday.

I don't recall seeing it as I skimmed through, so I'll throw one of my personal favorites here... RPGs that give you virtually nothing to start with, yet expect you the save the whole damned world... King- "The kingdom is in danger. Darkness has descended upon our lands, the people are in need of a savior, and we call upon you to defend us all from the great evil that approaches. Now here's a stick and five bucks. GO FORTH AND CONQUER!" You're a king! Gimme some money you cheap bastard, so I can buy something other than the absolute weakest armor and weaponry. At least let me get the second weakest.

Ah, shmups. A genre I've held near and dear to my heart for a long, long time. I've never considered Run 'N Guns part of the shmup area. We've got Vertical (Ikaruga, Raiden II, Kyukyoku Tiger II Plus, etc.), Horizontal (Thunder Force IV, Border Down, R-Type Leo, etc.), Isometric (Viewpoint, Zaxxon, Raystorm, etc.), 3D (Galaxy Force II, Star Fox, etc.), Arena (Robotron 2084, Geometry Wars, etc.), free roaming (Granada, Time Pilot, etc.), single-screen (Space Invaders, Galaga, etc.), tube (Tempest, Gyruss, etc.), and the bullet curtain/manic sub-genres (along with the "Euroshmup" sub-category too). When set next to them, games like Contra and Metal Slug simply don't feel or play the same. In those kinds of games, you're running on platforms, falling to your death, grabbing on to things, all that kind of stuff. And really, FPSs definitely aren't shmups IMHO. I have no clue how they ever got lumped in with the likes of Gley Lancer and G-Darius. Sure, there are the occasional oddball titles like Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 for the 32X, where you can jump onto enemies and take their firepower for yourself, but they're the exception that proves the rule. But since there's no real definition of what is a shmup, what we end up with is a "what is a shmup?" debate that can get pretty anal and volatile at times. Oh, and yes, Raiden III is good. There's a PS2 and a PC version, and they both have the same music, options, and so forth. I have the PC version, which looks a bit nicer. Now if someone would just port Raiden IV to PC, I'd be stylin'.

According to the review, not interrupt the good sections that are reminiscent of Sonics gone by (daytime) with iffy plodding ones that aren't as fun (nighttime).

The first couple reviews are out... IGN= 7.0 (PS2) IGN= 7.2 (Wii) - Notes - - Not the best frame rate (30 fps with drops below that) - The night scenes are iffy at best + The day scenes are supposedly a lot of fun + Looks good. +/- Sounds like they ditched the 80's guitar music too.

Fallout 3

WISE FWOM YO GWAVE! Having gotten back to playing Fatal Fury Battle Archives Vol. 1, I was reminded of something... Geese Howard. Now, I'm not talking about the Geese Howard from later games in the KoF franchise, I'm talking about the first Geese Howard in Fatal Fury. The word "infuriating" comes to mind. Why? Because he's one of the most odd bosses out there. He's not insanely cheap all the time like Rugal in the KoF series, but he has this pattern that is simply unbeatable... and it comes along at the most inopportune moments. Normally, Geese can be gotten with the occasional throw, a jump kick, and so forth, making it so you can pick away at him. But once in a while, the CPU gets a wild hair up it's virtual ass, and Geese Howard only does one move. This move consists of his grabbing you when you try to attack him, and then he throws you for quite a bit of damage. Jump kick? Grabbed out of the air and thrown. Punch? Grabbed and thrown. Foot sweep? Grabbed and thrown. If you come in contact with him at all, you're grabbed and thrown. When the CPU gets in this mood, there is simply no way for you to win, as Geese will also avoid any and all projectile attacks. Sometimes it'll last for entire round, and then stop (enabling you to kick his ass). Other times, it'll result in your losing two rounds in a row, and missing out on the full ending because of your having to continue. I was reminded that the Genesis version of Fatal Fury does the same thing from time to time. It's a particularly cruel bit of coding if you ask me. And unfortunately, it's one SNK took to heart.

I'd hate to see another boss music project bite the dust. I was part of the "UnMod R Bad Men" project back in the day, and it was basically the same premise... boss themes. It was going along alright until the whole sidebar thing hit. Then the project makers took it to unmod.org. There, it died a slow death over a month's time. It sucked, because some cool themes had been chosen, and it was moving forward. I'd like to see this attempt at the same thing come to fruition, and not whither away. If it has to be put on hold for a time, then so be it. But hopefully it won't simply vanish. Having the same fate take the concept down twice would suck.

Probably because I was involved with it many moons ago. But rest assured, my post held no reference to past events. I'm not the sour grapes type. It's simply a matter of fact that putting such a requirement in place limits the size of the pool you wish to draw from. And as someone else mentioned, when you keep drawing from that same pool for virtually every project, the artists get overextended, and the projects they had been a part of start falling behind due to the artists doing the same because of a lack of time/interest.

I think part of the problem is also that many of the projects want OCR quality. Now, I'm not talking about letting something that sucks to high hell go through, but having the project bar in the same position as the OCR bar kind of cuts out potential remixers who might have been interested, yet don't meet what's expected for this place. And thus, you're limited in who would and wouldn't be able to take part.

If you heard a door slam just now, that was probably bLiNd making a run for it. You gotta learn to keep such time-based info away from guys, as it panics us

So basically, bLiNd's officially JaDEd now? ... Yeah, sorry. Anyway, congrats

I have a question. Why do we still not have a button that appears on/with your posts when you plug in your website into your profile? I know you folks are busy, but doesn't it seem kind of odd that after over two years, you can put your website URL in, yet there's nothing that allows people to visit it when you post? A button next to "Quote" and "Edit" might not work, but what about something along the top with your AIM, Yahoo! and whatnot icons? Pretty please?

It served it's purpose at the time, but all the other ingredients needed to make it so the engine could run weren't exactly environmentally friendly... ... as you can see.

Yeeesssss. Come play with ussss... Plaaaayyyyy... Foreeeeeeverrrrrrrrrr...

A bit late, but, thanks As for the review, it wasn't bad. Not his funniest, but it still make me chuckle several times along the way. Of course, I've yet to play Dead Space, so...

Not really. One aspect that can be delved into is if a reviewer did a good job telling the reader what the game's about, what flaws are in the game, etc. If you want a prime example of how not to review a game, look at gamespot's and IGN's reviews for Taito Legends 2 on the PS2.

The funny part of all this, is that once people do make an engine that allows for a glimpse of that oh so tough to get to other side of the valley, it'll still likely have women with size double F tits, men with muscles that can't be achieved without steroids, and soulless eyes that whisper dark secrets into your mind late at night.

That last part can be taken care of by watching a rerun of last week's Dirty Jobs.

Saints Row 2