Gamelore

This is way, way too heavy on the magical motion-blur / special effects. At its best, Streets of Rage is, to me, aesthetically gritty and dry and satisfyingly plain. Just bare hands and raw weapons being used in physically realistic ways with fairly clean combat frames. We can at least be fortunate that it's true to its side-scrolling predecessors.

$8 is pretty cheap considering it was a $110 MSRP game when it came out. It was also my first Phantasy Star game, and actually my first RPG. I bought it for $55 when Virgin Megastore was having a "50% off" closing sale. The only two JRPGs I've come across that measured up to it were Final Fantasy I and VI. I keep telling people to play Phantasy Star IV, but people won't listen to me Through the years, I've played through all the other Phantasy Star games (excluding the ones within the past 5 years), and I'd have to say Phantasy Star I was the second best one. II and III didn't do it for me -- dungeons and combat in II dragged forever, and the environment in III was uninspired. Granted, they all had their great qualities at times. Like modern Sonic series, Phantasy Star Online was nothing like the originals. As for me, I've burnt out on JRPGs and I've recently sworn off them in favor of western-style ones. Your analysis is insightful -- It's probably just that I've been playing derivative crap for so many years, that I don't get involved or emotionally moved by any of them anymore. I'm looking at you, Skies of Arcadia.

Didn't see any mention of video-out. With each DS version, I keep hoping they'll follow the PSP and provide a way to legitimately play my huge library of DS games on my 10' projector. Maybe through the Wii somehow with a Wiimote cursor in place of the stylus.

Holy cow! I just went through all 230 pages of totally cool stuff. Geez, after having to sell all that, no wonder he was depressed!

Not happy with the translation which was nearly literal for 90% of the movie, but almost entirely for the worse the remaining 10% of the time. More "300" style slow-mo and poor editing. More unconvincing acting. I'm upset that they made Manhattan out to be a victim. Upset that Nite Owl seemed to care more about Rorschach than what Ozymandias had just done to the world. Upset Rorschach didn't give his memorable "Never" and "Joking, of course." Particularly upset they made Rorschach into a butcher of humans. He gave the child-murderer a chance to live... And now that humanity isn't united on the alien front, but on the Manhattan front (which they can totally replicate in their own countries), they don't need each other's help. How could that point be ignored? However, I did like the portrayal of Comedian. Seemed a bit more convincing than the book.

Didn't particularly like the movie. The Joker part was well-played, but the script was a total failure. He wasn't funny, and I wasn't convinced. Two Face was just terrible altogether. How do you convince a hospital not to protect your gangrenous face or not to give you drugs? That just isn't possible. Also, I cracked up several times when Two Face fell onto the acid, on-queue, and when his face caught on fire, on-queue. Almost comically contrived. Maybe he should have been Joker. I liked the cellular sonar. Cool concept -- I think it would require 4 phones to create a 3D map, but maybe not a good idea to rely on it for martial arts... Wasn't a fan of a lot of the moral choices in the movie. And sure, the boat full of criminals is going to selflessly toss out the detonator... haha. Maybe makes for a good Joker scene, but... k. And glad they confirmed that the hospital was evacuated! Whew! Thx PG13. Can't wait for Punisher War Zone. It was like they went down a checklist of all the things that a successful movie needs, but didn't really stick their head out for anything in particular.

Yeah, but mostly it was just *really dark*, literally. The game was dark. And that was awesome. Pixel-level grit was present in both games. Some of the polygons in Diablo 3 are a bit too smooth, and it almost looks like it's done on purpose through the game engine -- not sure what's up with that. Ah well. My main gripe is the still the red hearts that appear after you kill monsters. I thought potion-use was the solution to that sort of cheap abstraction, not vice versa. I can't think of any precedent in the previous Diablo games, where something on the ground wasn't literally an object. WTF red orbs?... Haha, nice petition. Totally agreed w/ it!

Glad it's finally seeing the light of day. Happy to see that it remains top-down and "M"-rated. Still looks rogue-like and scary, so I'm relatively happy. Still, unhappy about: 1) DRM. As announced in the FAQ (translated from marketing lingo). 2) WTF red healing balls. "Let's just abstract out the whole vampirism/healing stuff." 3) Overly smooth WoW-like environment (see dungeon gargoyles). Where's the grit and detail of the previous two? If 3D can't cut it, use 2D. 4) Over-the-top character designs. Give me the subtlety of the original, not WoW-inspired chaos! Looking kinda like George Lucas got his hands on Diablo.

Yeah, I figured it would include MG/MG2 because that is technically part of Subsistence. Nice. I'll check a couple Gamestops for it after work. Ebay is a bit pricey when all I really want is the Persistence disc.

I've only played Metal Gear. Not sure what all this "Solid" crap is about, but I might buy the Essentials at some point to see. Not a big fan of 3D. I mostly just want Metal Gear 2 (MSX) but apparently this is considered some kind of cheap "bonus" material now, rather than actual content, and was excluded from the Essentials set. Pretty lame. Anyway, it comes back to Konami in the end. They can be assured I won't buy MGS4 as long as I can't get my hands on Metal Gear 2.

Well, I've returned from Japan. Thanks for all the recommendations. I took a lot of them into account during my initial search. I spent most of my time around Akihabara -- there is just so much to see in each part of Tokyo! I'll plan a more diverse trip sometime else. I visited a lot of retro game stores, tempted to buy out the entire store. At one point, I had my arms full of MegaDrive strategy-RPG games and space shooters. I decided I needed a better approach (only 4 suitcases, only so much money), and MegaDrive gamepacks are a little big. I ended up focusing primarily on those PS2 story games: Ever 17, Never 7, another game in that series (#34?). I bought another 4 random story games. Also picked up Black/Matrix+ and Vib Ribbon. I bought the Cowboy Bebop Limited Edition PS2 game -- I found it the last day I was there, sitting in a corner, thinking it was some used, battered game, that had gone through hell and back. It was actually new/sealed! AWESOME packaging. The abundance of tape on the plastic wrap is a nice touch -- totally fooled me. I randomly found Warsong and Populous for US Genesis, being sold for almost nothing. I imagine them thinking "Who will ever buy this English garbage from us? Let's mark it down to 50 yen!" I picked up the Nights into Dreams re-release special edition for PS2. I looked at Trizael (PS2) in a few stores -- not too expensive. However, I saw some videos of it online, and thought I should probably try beating Ikaruga first. Looks insane! I am SOO buying Populous, Sim City 2, and Super Dodge Ball for DS, but I am going to wait to see if they're released in US first. I picked up this new paintbrush game for writing kanji, Electroplankton, a handful of mech-based DS games, and about 5-6 GBA games including a Dr Mario + Tetris Attack combo cart -- sweet! I saw that they were selling Mother 1 + 2 for GBA, rather cheap even. To get full resolution, I'm going to pass. I already played Earthbound Zero (was this an official translation?). I was thoroughly confused by all the "Tales of" games, so I just passed on them. I don't know where to start and I'm a completist. I decided I should just work on the US-ported RPGs I already have, and I don't like this new-fangled 2D+ RPG-type. FF6 and under for me. I mean, hell, I haven't even bothered with FF7 yet. Finally, I picked up a new ceramic white Japanese PS2, so now I can take my sweet time researching what to buy, and just pick it up online if necessary. I nearly bought a used 60GB Japanese PS3 for 62,500 yen, but decided I'm not *quite* that hardcore yet (since I already have the US 60GB PS3). Plus it had a scratch in it...

Yeah, I have that covered. I bought this gigantic suitcase (3" x 2" x 1") entirely empty to fill up with all required Japanese consoles. Not going to alter my existing systems. I feel like I'm going to enter one of these stores in Akihabara and spend 6 hrs in a daze, and walk out utterly confused about what's actually good.

So this morning I find myself in Tokyo. Only waited about 25 years to cough up the money to fly here. For the next few days I'm a man on a mission: Buy all crazy Japanese games I never had the chance to buy in the US (despite the weak-ass dollar today). The question is, which great games were never released in the US and might be commonplace in Japan? I'm particularly looking for older games (from Megadrive to Dreamcast), but I'd also easily buy newer games (PS2, DS, PS3 etc) if they were just great. I don't care if I can't play due to the language (studying). Games I like: Top-down, Sim-City-like, turn-based strategy. Beat games. Side-scrolling beat-em-ups. Deep anime-influenced RPGs. Censored games. Other wackiness.

To get the whole "NES experience", you must play a few required games: -Super Mario Bros, to completion. -Zelda, moderately. -Metroid, moderately. -Double Dragon and Double Dragon II, as frustrating as they are, are required. -River City Ransom, at least get to the high school. -Contra, to completion (30 lives code). -R.C. Pro-Am, at least get to the trucks level. -Bubble Bobble, lightly. -Castlevania, try to beat it. -Metal Gear, moderately. Despite what you may think, you don't need to play Final Fantasy. The game was so far ahead of its time that it really doesn't fit in with the retro "NES" experience. Same goes for Dragon Warrior. A few other highly-recommended titles to polish off: -Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. -Stinger. -Life Force (same 30-lives code as Contra). -Goonies II, try to complete it. -Super Mario Bros 2. Try to spend a good solid 2-3 hrs on each of these games. I don't think I'm missing anything else you absolutely need.

Umm, I played it like a year ago and it was amazing. Why in the world does the year matter? The best games ever made were well before 1999, back when companies didn't water shit down to appeal to the masses to recoup their $10M investment.