Evilhead

Wow, a magazine/advertisement with an extremely biased viewpoint hawking their own company's games with a very limited scope going out of business? OH MY GOD! Seriously though, if you are devoted to Nintendo games and all that's perfectly fine, but why pay for a monthly commercial? Yeah, I guess if you are too lazy to look for walkthroughs and codes online it's worth it, but for reviews and actual opinions? LOL. Nintendo Power is corporate garbage. It's like subscribing to the Playstation Underground or whatever it was called and not getting the free demos and extras every month. Even the Xbox magazine made sure to give you a demo disc with each issue. Nintendo power is shit. Good riddance.

It's pretty damn easy. Download a Dreamcast ISO from your favorite torrent site, burn it to CDR with DiskSwapper, and pop it into your Dreamcast. Plays without any mods or disc swapping whatsoever.

get an exclusive and you'll get pretty much whatever you want for it. I have pearl so I just go to the underground and dig up some some armor fossils, trade them in for lvl 20 sheildons in the mining town, and trade them on the gts for anything I want really.

Yeah, KoF Dream Match 1999 is so awesome. The title is misleading because most people probably think it's a port of that POS KoF99, whereas it's actually an awesomely enhanced version of the best KoF games made by SNK before they became SNK-Playmore.

First of all, if you buy a Dreamcast, it's very cheap. I wouldn't pay more than $25 or $30 for a Dreamcast. Plus I'm not sure about how you feel about copies, but you can just download and burn ISOs to CDRs and play them without modding your DC at all. Even if you are anti-piracy though, a Dreamcast is worth having, since it's really a great system. As for importing on a PS2, modding the PS2 is painless and not expensive, but will cost you as much or more than buying a used Dreamcast. I'm not sure why you're against having a big PS2 library, but buying imports is pretty expensive since Japanese games are priced higher and I'm not sure how available used Japanese PS2 games are to you. So I would say get a Dreamcast? The PS2 port of SF3:TS is better, and KOFXI is apparently amazing, but NeoGeo BC isn't so hot and Namco X Capcom SUCKS. Don't even bother with it, seriously. I'm a huge fanboy for Capcom characters and I hated it. But then again, there are a lot of great import fighters for the PS2, and the language barrier is almost non-existent for fighting games. The only fighting games with language issues I can think of are games with mission modes like KOF Maximum Impact 2, Soul Calibur 2/3, Guilty Gear XX #reload etc, which already have English releases.

well, what do you expect from a $8 arcade stick? I got the Soul Calibur 2 stick for 10 bucks at some game shop and it worked well enough for a while except one of the buttons is stuck on turbo and the stick gets stuck sometimes. It's pretty much a POS, but for the price it's okay as a second player stick or something portable to carry around. Nice and compact, plus you can use it on PS2, Xbox, and GC.

Whoa, I didn't realize this smiley was implemented in the forums! And with the name I came up with to boot! Sweet! :waka waka:

You can use a program like TuneBite to record the files as they are playing. You might suffer some quality loss but it's probably the closest you'll get until Apple offers their DRM free tracks.

Does Jack Thompson have a DVD player in his house? A TV? A bookshelf? All of these things have horrible media available for them. Kids shouldn't buy Manhunt, just like they shouldn't buy snuff films and bestiality porn. But it's out there, so it's up to parents to do their job. But anyway, JACK THOMPSON LOL

Awesome stick!! The actual construction of the stick isn't hard to do at all, but the awesome art sets it apart. Still, if you want to add art like that to your stick, all you have to do is find some image, photoshop it into a template that works for your stick and have it printed at a professional print shop. Some places might print directly onto plastic, but an easy way to do it is to print it on high quality paper and place it under a clear peice of plexiglass. This involves drilling more holes and making sure everything lines up right but is definitely doable. Almost makes me want to make another stick...

Ah, what I meant by feeling cheap was the quality of the buttons, not "cheap" in a game sense. The old American style buttons just feel nice to my fingers, while the Japanese style buttons just seem flimsy and low-quality to me. I know it's NOT the case, but I just like the feel of American buttons. Maybe it's just years of playing in American arcades; I love that feel. And as far as speed though, I don't really notice that much of a difference in practice. There's not a lot of parts of fighting games where you have the mash the buttons THAT fast aside from Chun-li's kick/Blanka's shock, etc, which I never use anyway. Yeah, I guess it might shave a few milliseconds off my reaction time, but I don't play competitively and I'd rather use a stick that feels nice to me. As far as the stick goes, I can see why people like the Japanese sticks for tournies and whatnot but I'm just not that good with them. I guess if I practiced more with them I might come to prefer the Japanese ball stick, but right now the way I use a stick lends itself to a bat-style stick. I rest the stick in the area between my thumb and index finger, and roll the stick around using mostly the knuckle of my index finger and thumb. Just doesn't work on a Japanese stick, but there are parts of the bat stick that sucks. Mainly air dashing in Guilty Gear and other double tap moves like parrying and dashing. The Japanese stick definitely has a speed advantage there. But as far as pulling off a super move in KOF or whatnot, my accuracy is almost 100% with an American style stick, but it's like 80% on a Japanese stick. Which leads me to get my ass kicked even HARDER in Japanese arcades. But yeah, I do take back what I said about buying only Happ. I forgot that Sanwa made the Japanese style parts. If you want to build a stick, get either Happ or Sanwa though. Basically my point was buy real arcade parts. Your personal preference will vary, but if you have some tools laying around you can build the best possible stick for about $40 or $50. Button and stick selection, button placement and box construction are all ways you can make that stick that much more perfect for you. And for those of you who don't like sticks.... Just get a good one and practice with it. You'll be converted after a while. At first your game will suffer a bit but when you master it (after a few weeks) you'll be much better at 2D fighters than when you started. For 3D fighters I prefer a pad most of the time, although Tekken plays well with a stick and most 2.5D fighters like Project Justice seem to be made with sticks in mind.

Well, I guess I'm biased because I hate Japanese style controllers. The ball sticks are a pain to use and the buttons feel so cheap. But yeah, if you do like the Japanese style controllers go crazy with the Sanwa stuff. I just don't like it personally.

Yeah, the PSX-USB adapters work great. I'd suggest getting the 2-player version, and your comp becomes and full arcade. Here's a good guide for building a stick, although there is a LOT more information out there. http://wrongcrowd.com/arcade/joystickp1.shtml As far as wiring and whatnot goes it's very good with some nice pictures, but his button layout he chose is totally retarded for obvious reason. The best way to do it though is to design your own template. You can download a template off many sites and then adjust it to your hands in paint/photoshop or just use it as is. Order your parts directly from HAPP (http://www.happcontrols.com/) or find a smaller supplier like I did. As long as they stock the HAPP parts you will be fine, and you might be able to get the parts a little cheaper than ordering them direct. Don't use any non-HAPP parts. If you are going to bother building a stick, you might as well use 100% official arcade parts. Your stick will be better than anything you can buy (even X-Arcade, etc) and better than most beat up arcade machines.

Well I have no experience with this seller, but there are plenty of legit sellers in Hong Kong, China, wherever. I order stuff from China quite a bit. This guy seems to have a lot of positive feedback so why not go for it? If you are scared you can always buy from PlayAsia (http://www.play-asia.com/). Also, I wouldn't consider playing imports piracy...

Japanese games ARE NTSC, but yeah, you can save Japanese/USA/PAL PS2 games all on one card.

Still my favorite pad: But sticks will always win at fighting games for me. Yes, I I can pull off fireballs and dragon punches about 95% of the time with a decent pad, but for doing more complex inputs like some Guilty Gear finishing moves and other crazy KOF moves (like two halfcircles back, etc) the stick is just a lot more accurate for me.

Well, it's made of wood so it's not light. But it sits pretty comfortably on your lap, and since it's pretty tall (about 15-20cm?) it comes right up to where your arms are. Or it sits nicely on a table. Kind of a pain to lug to a friend's house though.

That would be the goal indeed. I'd say they could retain some of the feel of D2, since it went online very well. What I liked about D2 is you could have dozens of characters instead of constantly working on one dude for hundreds of hours. True, to get to level 99 took time, but getting to level 85 could be done in a week or two easily.

Yeah, I know a lot of people like to make custom graphics or cover their sticks with stickers and whatnot, but I always go for the "less is more" approach. I like simple designs, but in the end it's all about how the thing plays anyway.

Sweet! Glad to see all of these up!!

I made a custom stick. It wasn't hard at all, and it's so awesome. Fits my hands perfectly, has a nice wide area to rest my forearms, and the hardware is all real arcade parts (no, I don't like convex buttons or Japanese style sticks). I wired it for PS1/2 and bought some adapters to use on my PC/Dreamcast, etc.

Yeah MAS sticks are probably the best arcade sticks available since they are pretty much the only makers who only use real arcade parts.

I must have watched them at some point, and remember some nice voice acting in there, but once you get involved in online play you are too busy clicking through them to get your character to Hell so you can pwn some cows.

You know it's weird, but I've beaten Diablo 2 well over 100 times and I don't think I ever watched any of the cut scenes all the way through, and sure as HELL didn't listen to any of the NPCs. Diablo 3 could have us battling the easter bunny for I care.

I'm Speshal