Games that'll put you in a bad mood: Nintendo Movie Games

"...If there is any game that'll put you in a bad mood, it's Castlevania 3."
James Rolfe aka The Angry video game nerd

We've all had games that are endless frustrating and that kick our collective asses there and eventually end us swearing or "rage quitting" and walking away.

In the last few years I've had quite a few games put me off in frustration and I'm sure you have to and thats why we're gonna take a look a few games across a few consoles and why they piss us off and put us in a bad mood.

NES

"Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The counselors weren't paying any attention... They were making love while that young boy drowned. His name was Jason."
Pamela Voorhes

This was one of the first games for the NES based on an R rated horror movie and boy was it a piece of garbage. LJN, the publisher for this game was beginning it's history of taking an established franchise like X men or Nightmare on Elm Street and turning into a cash grab game that was almost unplayable and endless frustrating. Awkward weapon use and some of the most annoying sounds ever put into a video game (Jason alarm) is what puts this game near the cream of the crap for the NES. The idea was sound, save the kids from Jason and free Camp Crystal Lake but as most things go awry when put into practice.

WHY this game will put you in a bad mood.

Hope you like this music because this track will loop constantly and only be interrupted by the jason alarm and then, it loops again. The difficult navigation of this game will also drive you crazy because it's hard to tell where you are going half the time via the map screen and then by the time you figure it out, the kids you are trying to save are dead. This was a terrible NES game based on an awesome franchise and seriously needs to wiped from the existence of mankind.

SNES

Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Ian Malcom

Jurassic Park, the marketing juggernaut and had all sorts of crazy stuff from lunch boxes to action figures and of course, a crappy video game for the Super Nintendo. The game put you into the role of Dr Grant and his mission was to collect Dinosaur eggs and destroy the rampaging dinosaurs..sounds simple enough until you press start..
The game itself was a mess and it was frustrating because of the layout of the game itself which would switch from overhead-ish view to lame 3D when entering a building and it was very easy to get lost. The SNES version was not without some merits, I think it did have a cool soundtrack and have some funny voices in it too such as whenever you heard someone say
"GRANT!"
WHY this game will put you in a bad mood.



This game is BORING as hell! I mean like watching paint dry boring. The entire game is spent hunting eggs and unlocking things and it's just repetition and no imagination at all and I don't even remember any boss fights at all...
The game will put you in a bad mood because you realize you could have been doing other things like
1) Making new friends
2) Kissing a girl
3) Helping the homeless
4) Watching cheese age
5) Learning how to knit

N64

My team. My team is DEAD. They knew we were coming, man. They knew we were coming and the disk is gone.
Ethan Hunt

We all know the theme song and what can I say, Tom Cruise made a kick ass movie franchise before he decided to lose his mind and jump on Oprah's couch. The game took the movie idea and made it's own and padded it out but did include some of the big movie set pieces like the bungie computer hack on a wire thing but nothing uber special. The game came out near the same time (within a year)as RARE"s Goldeneye and that is where the game drew alot of comparisons and where things fell apart in alot of departments. There were elements that had the gadgets like the mask maker and some other stuff but didnt feel as cool as the film. The game play was very hit and miss with some levels being a blast to play and some being frustrating due to random AI or just plain bad programming.

WHY THIS GAME PUT YOU IN A BAD MOOD

So let me introduce you to the most talkative N64 game I have ever had the displeasure listening to. The voice acting is so horrible and odds are you'll hear it often as you have to redo mission objectives over and over again...it's like audio rape on your poor ears and there should be a help line for people who are exposed to this horror.

There are alot of games that simply cash in's on movie titles and popularity and 9 times out of 10 they suck and suck really bad. Alot of these games will put you in a bad mood because they take your favorite movies and characters and give you a sub par experience meant to cash in on your fandom. Bad game play, repetitious enemies and horrendous graphics are the hallmarks of alot of movies games but occasionally there are some good ones that slip through such as the Genesis version of Jurassic Park and SNES version of the Lion King. Games that make us mad and throw down our controllers will always be around and sadly alot of them will be based on movies and that sucks.

Video game cartoons,I don't remember you sucking so bad...

Once upon a time when I was a young boy and the cold war had just ended and advertisers could still target children with animated TV series based on products like Nintendo, the world was good and full of promise wasn't it?

Recently on the Game Heroes, Handsome Tom and myself got to talking about the various video game TV shows that appeared over the years and so it was time to revisit those memories and see if they are still console fresh....

I won't be talking about the big name ones like Super Marios Brothers and Captain N:The Game Master and the Legend of Zelda but more of the lesser known ones like Video Power and Mortal Kombat:Defenders of the realm and even the infamous Street Fighter 2 cartoon.

One of the things that I am a huge fan of mid 80's to early 90's animation and one of the big popular trends was to have an animated series based on your franchise such as Kwirk, the chilled tomato....yes, I'll bet you have no clue what the hell I am talking about.

One of the first shows that featured a relative cast of nobody's was "Video Power" which would later be rebroadcast as "Acclaim Masters". The "Power team" was they were known composed of Kuros from Wizards & Warriors, Max Force from NARC, Tyrone from ArchRivals and the aforementioned Kwirk, the chilled tomato from the Gameboy and oh yeah I forgot, a talking monster truck, BIGFOOT. The cartoon I remember being kinda cool because I loved Acclaim games and especially Kuros because I was a huge player of those games. However the storylines were just kinda stupid at times but I did think the idea of using their game cartridges as a plot device was cool.
The animation wasn't bad for it's time and definitely fit into what was expected but the voice acting on the other hand would make your ears bloody bleed. Listening to Kwirk talk for any amount of time would incite sheer madness, I assure I have saved you from this pain.

Video Power also featured a live action component which was a game show and all things considered it a sign of the times, cheesy and over the top but it was a fun little outlet. Kids would appear on the show and answer some video game trivia and play some competitive stuff and run through a mall and stick video games to a velco vest. It was one of many shows kinda like this and it had it's appeal and i'm afraid we'll never see anything like this again.

Another one of the lesser known but equally as stupid is
Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the realm

Oh boy...where do I even start?
So this "show" takes places something in the space of Mortal Kombat 2-3 but takes the movie as canon to the show. Now let me preface this by saying I was an absolute Mortal Kombat fanboy back in the day and even wrote a piss poor fan fic back in the day and this show was a low point for me.
So I decided to sit down and rewatch the first episode of the show to bring back some of the memories and there are times like this that I could have my mind wiped by the Haitian from Heroes.
First off, Liu Kang flies a jet....yes a goddamn jet and the stupidity doesn't end there folks.... Sonya Blade's catchphrase

'It's kombat time!"

Yes, that pretty much sums up the thought that went into this...the entire cast of characters just isn't like the Mortal Kombat that I know and love and this pretty much crapped all over those memories. For some reason, the powers that be decided to make a mockey of the MK franchise but to give credit where credit is due, the writers did incorporate elements of the mythos in like Kabal's attempted assassination and Ermac and Rain's appearance. It's strange that the series has been released in places like Brazil and Russia but not here in North America, so sadly we shall not know of it's existence outside of bootlegs and Youtube.

The last series I will mention is the USA Networks...Street Fighter:The animated series and boy there aren't enough words to do this justice so I'll give this video and then my opinion thereof.


Alright so now that you have absolutely wasted ten minutes of your life, how do you feel?
Personally I feel violated and like something horrible crept into my soul and took up residence and did horrible unspeakable things to it.Capcom's Street Fighter series hasn't had the best luck on television considering it would later spawn Street fighter II V and that series also has a whole another set of issues to cover but I digress...
Street Fighter the animated series suffered from terrible voice acting, terrible animation and writes that I'm sure didn't understand how to portray the characters. The show did try to have some nods to other elements in the Street Fighters canon like Akuma and the cross over with the Final Fight series with Cody and Guy.

Overall, Street Fighter was a terrible show but did have some pretty animated movies done by Manga entertainment and are totally worth checking out.

It's funny when I was a kid I remember loving all these shows and thinking they were so bad ass because they were based on a video game but now I'm older and I know better.

Twilight video games: To be or not to be

"...the real difference [between Rowling and Meyer] is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer, and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good"
Stephen King

I'm just going to come straight out and admit it, I do not get this whole "Twilight" thing with people these days, I mean what's with the sudden popularity of Vampires and the whole Supernatural bit and how lame it's become..

So now that Twilight:New Moon came out, I really got around to thinking about games that have Vampires that aren't Castlevania because I'm surprised there isn't a Twilight Video game outside of Twilight:Scene it...which doesn't count to me because it doesn't contain any real element of skill other then memorization.

While watching New Moon last night I really got to thinking why isn't there a decent vampire video game outside of Castlevania and to a lesser extent, the legacy of Kain series.
I was really expecting there to be a Twilight video game because it makes sense right? I mean somehow the DaVinci Code and Jackass got video games so why not right?

Twilight was able to escape this fate and not become some substandard platformer or something similarly stupid. There is talk of a group of fans putting together some kind of a Twilight MMO which I agree on some level isn't a bad idea but it would require a really strong community to keep going. I'm not the most knowledgeable of the canon but I imagine that there are some stories that could be told in the series that aren't Bella and Edward. I liked the idea of Werewolves and other creatures in the universe maybe...kinda like White Wolf's World of Darkness and maybe Stephanie Meyer's universe is open to that. I want to know if there are other creatures like demons or zombies or maybe something like a ghost hell bent on revenge.

I'm not the biggest fan of the whole "Twilight" thing but at the same time, I am open minded to a good story and the new movie had me at certain points. I want to know about the other stories that exist in that universe like are there other wars being fought on different fronts and what other threats exist to the vampiric existence? I think the world that Stephanie Meyer created could very well lead to a very cool game if it was handled properly by the right development team and publisher but odds are it wouldn't be handled well.

The community is certainly there and the fandom certainly rabid enough but if you build it, would they come?
I'm not entirely certain if all pop culture phenomena should be turned into video games and let's look at how well a property like say Watchmen:The end is nigh and in the end, not as well as it could have been.
Twilight is maybe one of the universes that maybe doesn't translate well into a digital format like video games and maybe they are best left to film and books.

It's a fun thought to think about and for all the bashing that alot of nerds do of the "Twilight" Fandom, it would be an interesting world to perhaps play in if it was handled differently then a romance but more as an action adventure story universe.I just can't see Twilight as anything but a book or a movie and it's probably better that way. I want to believe there is something more this whole Twilight thing then "ZOMG! Edward is so hot!" and that people are smarter then I give them credit for...

Some of the elements are in the Meyers universe are plain stupid such as "sparkling" vampires and the whole non death in the sun but other things like they the vampiric powers are neat and the werewolves tribes is neat if cliched by being done before. I think it's a sign of the times and where the world is headed with the thought process of being immortal and never having to face life if you get what I mean but that's a philosophical discussion for another day.

However when all is said in done I'll say this in closing

Aim for the head..zombies

"Zombies, man. They creep me out."
Kaufman-Land of the Dead 2005

If there is one type of an enemy that seems to be everywhere in pop culture it's the zombie. Zombies have enjoyed a renewed sense of popularity with Resident Evil, 28 days Later and Romero's return to the genre. It seems that zombies are everywhere and they are very eager to eat not just our flesh but the lead that flies from our virtual weapons.

What can I say?
I love zombies and all that they are and most important it's the one end of the world scenario that video games that have actually prepared us for. We have all played Resident Evil or more recently Left for Dead and it's recent sequel Left 4 Dead 2 and now we feel prepared to take on hordes of the undead or so we think?

I mean what makes these walking dead so attractive that's spawned it's own genre of games? Its likely the fact these monsters are just so much cannon fodder and line up to be mowed down and show no fear or any emotion as they are cut down. Zombies tap into that aggression that boils deep down inside of ourselves and we just let loose and have our base instincts take over, kinda scary huh?

I mean think of rush most of you feel as you unload a full clip of ammo into a crowd of them?

Its' a feeling that we all can agree with if you loaded a game of Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil or any number of similar games. Its a mix of desperation when the crowd is running towards you and ammo is in short supply and then instincts take over and it's time to flip the switch to full auto and rock and roll.

Sure, we have other enemies in games that attack en mass but there is something about zombies that really triggers something primal inside of us. There have been attempts in cinema and even games to make us feel remorse for dealing with these threats to ourselves such as Diary of the dead and Resident Evil 5's Majini but ultimately it's the kill or be killed attitude that takes us over.

I could read into this a bit further and say zombies allow us to explore the inhumanity to man and what we do when faced with just each other to rely on but many others before me have talked about it before and so I'll let their words stand on their own.

It's an interesting thought to think such an enemy that exists purely in fiction allows such a rush of intense emotions to be felt and let's something else entirely take over for the few spans of a heartbeat.It could be argued that games like Call of Duty invoke the same blood lust but I think games like this trigger something else entirely within ourselves and just take a step back the next time your playing and see what I mean...

Games that should have been...Heroes

"Is there a hero somewhere, someone who appears and saves the day
Someone who holds out a hand and turns back time
Is there a hero somewhere, someone who will never walk away
Who doesn't turn a blind eye to a crime"

Poets of the Fall-Locking up the sun

Once upon a time there was supposed to be a video game based on NBC's "Heroes" by Ubisoft but sadly it died before it could be made. It would have been a really cool game especially when you look at the universe of Heroes and what it could have been for console or PC Gamers.

Tim Kring's Universe of Heroes makes it one of those places where a video game should happen in because like the show, it's like a comic book and full of possibilities. Now let's take a trip down speculation lane and imagine what could been...

HEROES: The MMO
This is one that comes the easiest to mind and I would imagine it taking place after season 3's start OR in one of the alternate timelines where everyone has abilities. The story would pick up with your character's ability activation and would involve members of the company taking you down and tagging you such as Noah Bennet aka HRG. Your story begins with Noah telling you about the others in the world with abilities like yours and that some of them are dangerous and he's letting you go because you can help him but if you double cross him you'll end up in a cell for the rest of your life or worse. This would allow for all sorts of interesting possibilities as you go on missions that help refine your abilities or put you in direct conflict with others with powers, maybe a sort of Cult of Sylar or something. You would be in an open city world kinda like the Matrix-esque and you'd occasionally run into characters like Mohinder or even Sylar. It could be a tremendously cool world as long as you had events like the Matrix MMO did and kept the player base entertained with live events and stuff that affected the whole world like maybe powers being stripped away for a few days or certain powers amped up for a day and allow for shifts in power. However a game like this would require a very strong community for it to remain viable so I can see why we didn't get the Heroes MMO...still imagine how could it could have been...

Now we move onto the next possibility of a game

Heroes:The Game
Heroes of the game would be a game similar to GTA in that it would be an open world and would feature you playing as several different characters over the course of an "arc". The plot line would likely be season 4's Fugitive's idea where one of the characters is on the run and meets up with the show's forerunners and gets intertwined into their plotlines. This could be cool and maybe run similar to the PS3's "Infamous" and gives you a choice of 20 or so powers and you get to pick 5 or so to give you kind of a cool load out or maybe make you like Peter and you can absorb other powers as you level up or something similar. This is the game I imagine we would have got and it likely would have been considered canon by the creator Tim Kring had he wrote the game's script and storyline. It could have a supremely cool game but sadly it did not come to pass.

Heroes:The mobile game
Ok,seriously who the hell cares? Am i the only that finds those mobile games kinda lame? I have only come across 2 that I like, Megaman 2 and Tetris. I downloaded a SF2 one but it was impossible to play with the keypad. I'll never get the point of mobile gaming on anything but an Iphone or similar device.

I know alot of TV and movie video game adaptions fail because of rushed programming or it's a stupid license but we've had a few such as "24:The Game" or Batman:The Animated series game. Developers and studios really need to work together to create good games and it's not a hard feat to do especially when you have a passionate team behind it. I can only hope that we do eventually see a Heroes game because it's a universe that I really want to play in at some point and kick the crap outta Sylar.
Infact I leave you with some cool and fan created because Heroes kicks ass

Gamer p0rn? Yes, It exists

Actress Ann Angel pictured above

"If it can be imagined, there is already porn based on it."
Anonymous

So finally I can write about porn and video games and how oddly connected they are in a weird way and get marked on it.
It's been a weird trend that has been around for a while and the earliest memory I have of it was an interview with adult actress Asia Carrea. I remember reading her blog back in 2000 or something and reading that she was a competitive Unreal tournament player and was actually quite good at it. There has always been a stigma around girls and gaming and it's quite undeserved for the most part, as I've met some MLG level gamer girls and well they rule but who would have thought they would be a connection between porn stars and video games...well not me for the longest time.
Still it would been cool to face Asia in a game of UT just to hear

"HEAD SHOT!"


A recent picture from a Counterstrike competition
Strippers & Counterstike for the full story

She even made her own set of custom skins for UT which I thought was pretty cool.Check here for it,yes it's safe for work
Don't know if they work with current versions of UT but if your feeling retro, give it a look


The past few years alot has changed on the digital frontier in terms of girl gamers and now oddly enough porn.One of the strangest things to come along and yet so simple I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner was "World of Whorecraft" series of movies and then well the whole lid seemed to get blown off the thing and well, now you see alot of Gamer porn which is kinda funny and just plain weird. Sometimes being a gamer and a porn actress isn't all it's cracked up to be because if someone puts 2 and 2 together...it can get you in trouble
Porn actress kicked out of Warcraft

However "World of Whorecraft" was NOT the first gamer porn to be mainstream infact, I can trace it back to the 90's thanks to Youtube and this funny as hell Youtube clip which kinda gives you an idea on how truly stupid this is and yes since it's Youtube, it's work safe but I wouldn't recommend watching it there.


Yes...Ron Jeremy as Mario...in the immortal words of my generation
"WTF!"

It's a weird world out there on the Internet but stuff like this is becoming more and more mainstream and some more mainstream games are being parodied like Valve's Left 4 Dead and I imagine it's only a matter of time before Halo or Gears of war gets the porn makeover.

The thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools

"These are the kind of things I think about when I'm sitting home alone and the power goes out..."
George Carlin




As often happens with most of my weird ideas and thoughts, they spring from a logical place and then go down a dark path and this is less dark but still kinda weird so hear me out.

Mario and Luigi have their rogue's gallery and a set of evil doppelgangers with Wario and Waluigi, so I had a thought.

"Why is there no evil Peach or Daisy?"



Having an evil set of the princess makes sense right? It could make for so many interesting parallels in the storyline and the games. I mean imagine the possibilities of having an impostor princess by Mario's side and Peach or Daisy fighting to their way back to Mario and Luigi. Yes, it's cheesy as hell but it would totally work and be something more exciting then some of the latest entries in the series.

It seems like a no brainer really. Put Peach in a black dress and make her hair black and green eyes and make Daisy in a blood red or purple dress with black hair and grey eyes or something. This would make for some really cool new characters in the franchise and maybe open up new things for games like Mario Kart or Smash Brothers.
Just seems so simple to me.

I think that would make for a supremely cool addition to the series...and maybe I want to see what the fan community can do with the idea.
For example

So maybe we should ask for this as a fan community with the release of New Super Mario Brothers Wii on Sunday,however I don't expect Nintendo to listen but hey, you never know right?

I think I'd find it kind of attractive...in a goth,emo kind of way...like I said off the top of this post..these are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.

Collecting video games, a labor of love

Our game rooms, or our lairs if you prefer are our domains where we game and compete in virtual athletics or have a place to simply keep your stuff.

Over the last few months, I've become a video game collector and what I mean by that I'll collect almost anything just to have it and increase the size of the stack. This past spring I had the honor of doing an internship at http://www.thegameheroes.com and it was an experience that took me from Hamilton to Chicago and down to Dallas for 2 weeks and it really inspired me because of Handsome Tom's video game collection.

http://www.screwattack.com/Random/Other/Closet
Take a look at this and see that I have a long way to go to compare.
and an updated video from last year


So after viewing this massive collection,I decided that I wanted something of my own like this and so began my quest to collect...but where was I to even start?

With all collections I had to start somewhere but it had to be something that I cared about enough to spend money on and decided on PS2 and Xbox games and I did this for several reasons.

1) The last generation of games would be widely available with many cool games easily accessible via Ebay and used game stores

2)It the was the consoles that I had connected the most with since the SNES and NES

3) GameStop and EB Games would be liquidating their stock of older titles and was offering insane deals on used games

4) I already had a library of older titles so I figure why not start where I am ahead.

I began my collecting in earnest with a raid of EB's and Gamestops and pretty spent $400 in a few weeks and managed to amass like 60 games and some real gems like Resident Evil:Dead Aim for 4 bucks. I began my massive spending spree in Texas with one of Handsome Tom's suitcases and continued to hunt in pawn shops and other second hand stores and found some real finds!

As I began toss down the bucks for games, something started to change and it's not that it wasn't fun, it was fulfilling because I wasn't focused about WHAT I was collecting. I had to stand back and figure what I wanted to collect and after browsing through my games I noticed a trend,the fighting game.

Samurai Showdown, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury and Street Fighter were all games that I enjoyed and this was the genre of games I decided to focus on and this is where I would build my collection on as a basis.I started looking for all sorts of Neo Game ports and other such things and my collecting started to feel fulfilling again.

It became a labor of love for me by searching again in all my usual haunts and finding rare games like Capcom vs Snk 2 or a mint copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the Xbox. One of my best buys for my collection was getting a mint condition of Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the Playstaion 2 for 30 dollars. It became more and more about finding the best fighters I could and getting them across as many platforms as I could so I could experience it in different way.

So with collecting video games isn't about quantity of what you have but collecting what you love so it's aboout quality. Collecting can also include other items from your favorite games such as press kits or pre order items,etc
This is one kit that I am hopefully going to get eventually


Collecting really can be a fun experience for people because it can involve some adventure and excitement beyond the Ebay sniping and going to places like conventions to find items and haggling in odd places like flea markets. If your going to collect and be serious about it, just remember to have fun with it and look in an unexpected places because you never know what you'll find.

For the love of the game-Arcade sticks

Some people collect baseball cards and some people collect Beatles stuff...my name is Mike Dodd and I collect arcade sticks.

An arcade stick is just what the name implies, it's a stick that is meant to replicate the arcade experience at home and it can vary widely in size,shape and quality. Everything from the buttons, to the artwork and the stick itself can be special and thats what I love about them. Let me tell you about my first arcade stick which is posted above...thats my Mad Catz Street Fighter 4 tournament edition stick for the Playstation 3.

I got the stick for review earlier this year to tie into my review of Street Fighter 4 and immediately I fell in love with it.Mad Catz built this things for the serious street fighter player by making it an absolute dream to play with with superior Japanese parts like the buttons and the joystick itself and especially with the design so close to the SF4 cabinet. Sitting down with this thing and learning how to use a stick properly became a zen like experience to me, especially with my SF mentors like Drekken and RXS from http://www.pownz.com

So as I learned the ways of the joystick I learned to love something about the craftsmanship that went into making these things. As I played more and more Street Fighter 4 and moved onto King of Fighters 12, I wanted something different...I wanted something that reflected me and I wanted to move up to something that was uniquely me...and so I wanted a custom arcade stick and i did some looking around. I searched for a few days and one name just kept coming up...http://www.arcadeinabox.com and Ed over there.

I contacted Ed and decided that I wanted to cover one of these custom arcade sticks for 1150 AM WIMA and I wanted to see what went into making one of these things. I've had a few conversations with Ed and I learned so much about the process and its absolutely astounding. Ed sent me an arcade stick which I have dubbed 'The TWIG stick" and here it is


It's an experience to play with something hand crafted and you really see why people make their own arcade sticks and the love that goes into it. The great thing about having a custom stick is that it can do so much more like being able to play on multiple consoles such as Xbox 360 and Ps3 on one piece of hardware and that is seriously pretty awesome. My custom arcade stick really made fighting games come alive for me again and I really felt like I was back when I was 14 and playing Mortal Kombat 2 in the arcades and tossing down some challenges in the local arcade in Street Fighter 2. Having two great arcade sticks really made things come back full circle again and felt like a real gamer again and it showed considered the amount of fight time I've logged on those sticks since the summer.

However I learned of something new and exciting and that was Capcom's newest fighter, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and it being on the wii...and this caused me great pain as I did not have a wii fight stick and I refuse to go back to being a pad player. I began hunting for the wii arcade stick by Hori

I literally traveled all the way to Cornwall,Ontario which is PAST Ottawa and all around the Buffalo area in the Us for this thing. So well over 1000 KM for this little piece of plastic but why? I could have ordered it off Ebay or some retailer...but this was about the hunt for something important to me and what can I say,it was fun.
This stick though shall remain unused till I get my Tatsunoko vs Capcom in January but thats okay because now I am checking out some new sticks such as.....


I know that's a little overboard since it's a TE stick the same as the other Mad Catz ones but seriously, I'm a sucker for artwork and variants. Hell I even a second TE for the xbox 360 that is the Street Fighter 4 TE round 2 with the different artwork and I love it just the same as my other sticks. I kinda of look at it this way, women love shoes....and I love arcade sticks... however if I end up a closet full of them at some point it maybe time to stop me.

My best arcade stick is this one though which is in the door of my house.

Life lessons from Solid Snake-A repost from the past

**Editors note**
I was thinking about some things today about life, the universe and everything and I wanted to share this article that I wrote a while ago as a contributor on Dailygame.net
So please, leave your thoughts on this and hopefully reflect upon the games that have changed your outlook in life.
Regards
Mike




Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt ...anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for.

We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing.

-- Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2

These are very deep sentiments, and it would surprise many non-gamers to learn that video games -- and this game's ending in particular -- forced me to take a serious look at who we are as humans, where we're going, and how we can restore a little bit of faith in the human race. The Metal Gear Solid series is one of those rare franchises with a storytelling mechanic that rivals Hollywood and is better than most of the stuff tinsel town produces. The story is something we all know -- cloak and dagger and espionage that would make "24" seem simple at times -- but it's always been about one man against impossible odds. Yet while Solid Snake's struggles with the Metal Gear tank are compelling, it's the subtext that has taught me the most about life.

As I played through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on several late nights, I started paying attention to Jack's questions of identity and his place in the world. As I continued to play, I saw some awesome fight scenes, most notably with the Metal Gear REXs and the climactic sword fight, but as the credits began to roll, the experience really got me thinking.

I've never really thought about the world in those terms -- of what we will pass on, what we will leave behind, and how history is written by the victors -- and I wonder what has been lost to the pages of time. However, it was something that Solid Snake's voice actor, David Hayter, said that really spoke to me:

Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt ...anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light.

If a video game can teach us that that we can own up to our mistakes, understand them and learn from them, that's an important point to make when people like Jack Thompson say video games are evil. It's really a sign of the times that a virtual man can inspire me more than some of the people making headlines today. What we can imagine and what we can create are very powerful indeed, and Kojima has created something within the Metal Gear Solid series that says a lot about not just the times in which we live in, but the times we've not yet experienced. That's why I like the Metal Gear Solid series so much.

In a way, Kojima's world is filled with people who have character flaws as well as identifiable goals and real feelings. For example, Naked Snake in Snake Eater, when he was betrayed but still soldiered on and did what he knew was right. Sure, he did some bad things later on, but he was given a choice. It's an aspect of the human condition that I never really looked at, and it was amazing that a piece of digital artwork like this could bring the experience alive for me. I've seen movies that make me think about stuff, but never to the degree of Metal Gear Solid 2.

I felt something within myself and with the ending credits of MGS 2: a hope that we could change as individuals and as a people. Then, with MGS 3, I felt betrayed, yet another incredible feeling. I even began to identify with some of the characters, specifically Otacon's sister, Emma. Not since Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger had that happened. Despite all the characters' flaws, I saw a real humanity to them. For a the space of a moment, no more than a few breaths, something fundamentally changed and the world became a better place. Somehow I knew something that maybe only a few others felt: true inner peace. Solid Snake showed me a world very much like Neo did at the end of the first Matrix, and it was surreal and hard to put into words. It's kind of cool, though, to experience that after fighting a guy with robot arms and a sword.

Where video games have come from to where they are now is quite incredible, as they have become so much more than an entertainment medium. Games have now become the best form of storytelling, with their ability to get players emotionally involved and inspire feelings about what's going within each character. It takes a special kind of video game to really do that; think of how you felt when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII.

I learned something from a video game that helped me see a new piece of humanity, and for that, I have to thank a special man in a headband. Because of his completely fictional humanity, I now have a new worldview that helped me see a new piece of the human experience. Who would have thought a guy fighting a nuclear tank would make the world seem like a better place?


Article originally appeared
written by Mike Dodd on 09/05/08
http://www.dailygame.net

A sneak peak at Crime Scene from South Peak Games

Crime dramas seem to be a dime a dozen these days from CSI: New York to such new fare like NCIS:Los Angeles....it seems like no matter where you turn, you can't escape crime and even transcended into the video game world. Crime games are nothing new and have been around forever and infact my first crime game was Deja vu on the NES and now I sit down with the newest crime game...Southpeak Games' Crime Scene.

I was contacted by South Peak a few weeks ago to check out one of their newest DS titles and Its one of the first times as a journalist that I've been asked to do something like this so suffice to say, I immediately jumped on the chance. It was really cool because it came on a cart that I have never seen before and I've got a admit, it made me feel like an industry insider.

Crime puts you into the shows of a new forensic detective named Matt Simmons and already not 10 minutes in the door you are called away on a case about a potential murder suicide of a fellow police officer. The game is portrayed like a point and click adventure with an art style that suits the game and seems right at home with the feel of the game's dark subject matter.



I'll only talk about the first bit of the game simply because no one wants to be spoiled before the mysteries are finished.

The play style allows you to explore crime scenes using tools of the trade like swabs for fluids and finger print kits and the tweezers to collect bullets and other small clues and several other forensic tools familiar to those of the CSI persuasion. It was something different then what I was expecting as I started swabbing blood from an exit wound on the wall from someone's murdered wife.

That was pretty cool.

The thing that I liked most about this game is that it didn't pull any punches when it came to descriptions of the crime scene's such as "..her chest was pulverized." and that really grabbed my attention. Using the stylus to interface with the crime scene can be a fun but at times frustrating especially when it comes to swabbing but this game also requires finesse and patience both of which are lacking on the FPS generation. Getting into the head of the investigative mind was a tremendous draw for me especially when you got into the crime lab section of the game and started playing with some of the forensic tools.



The game really does have a difficulty curve to it but that's part of the charm as it's like a crime itself,some crimes are easy to solve and some are quite the puzzle in themselves. You have something called a credibility meter and each time you screw up, it goes down so it really helps to pay attention when the game tells you to do something and do it right the first time. It'll take a little bit of getting used with tools like the fluid swab but eventually it becomes second nature. I'm a bit of crime nut and it was fun to play a game like this on a handheld since I haven't tried any of the CSI games or even the Murder she wrote games but thats more because of the horrible reviews then lack of interest. Solving crimes is something that happens every day and shows like Criminal Minds and CSI and the like all portray it in a different light and Crime scene tries to give you a taste of that world and I had fun with it. The difficulty is what will challenge most players but if you sit down and act like a real detective, I think your in for a real treat.



I was asked to not play past a certain point in the game and thats fine because I'll be looking forward to playing this game when it's released in February 2010.



Overall, I had a great time with this game and it's what I've been looking for in terms of a forensic game should be, challenging and really makes you think about examining a scene and one of the coolest parts is using the microscope and the laser to eliminate unwanted cells on a slide.

Look for Crime Scene in February 2010 for your Nintendo DS.

SWAG from video games

One of the coolest things that has come along in recent years is the cool stuff that comes with video game orders or special editions of games such as the Halo 3: Legendary edition. I'm not sure when this trend really started picking up steam but the last year or two has been really awesome for pre orders or just special editon goodness.

One of the best examples was Halo 3, and it's infamous cat helmet. The chief's helmet was a very cool piece of video game memorabilia that can be had but sadly you can't wear this bad boy because it's only big enough for your cat's hat and its meant to hold your game discs. Bungie did go the extra mile and made sure if you got the special edition that you got something really special and that include a documentary and alot of cool stuff packed on the bonus DVD. However one thing that did take away from the coolness of the Halo 3 helmet was the price and it was well over 100$ when the game was first released but now can be had for a much more reasonable 40 bucks or so if you look around.

That is the thing with some of the cool special editons is that they cost...and they cost alot. Let's look another example of a great game packed with some cool extras... Batman:Arkham Aslyum

As you can see, you get a freakin' Bat-a-rang and that was the main hook for me, however also was the 100$ price tag was also looming over my head. Looking at the picture its pretty cool till you find out, it's not removable from the stand and nor is it made of metal which is a great disappointment. The PS3 version did have the Joker challenge maps and the pre order bonus of the Scarecrow challenge maps but still was this enough to justify the price tag even with the included documentary and leather bound character journal and a sticker and that seems not as cool as to what was in the Halo 3 set. You do get a collectable packaging but good luck finding a place for your Bat carry case which is huge and awkward to put on a shelf. Batman was an example of a great game but with a little underwhelming in terms of a special edition. However its a matter of opinion depending when you compare Halo 3 and Batman, it's apples and oranges.

The next game that I think is closer to getting things right in terms of pricing and what is included is Ubisoft's Splinter Cell:Conviction and it's 80$ price point.

This package includes some pretty cool stuff like decals and some cool in game items but also a USB drive which has also the making of videos and artwork and such and thats a step in the right direction and the usual artbook package in and comic book tie in. This is where I think this is the right direction for pre order and special edition stuff should be going on....go digital and keep the price down, while some of this stuff is cool I believe keeping the price down is the right call and not outpricing it out of the hands of collectors.

This year has seen some really good LE items like alot of stuff from Atlus software like Hammerin' hero and more recently Demon Souls. One of the great things that a company can do is send out things like extras just as a thank you which Atlus does usually with CD soundtracks and the like which is pretty awesome and I really hope more companies follow suit and do the same,. I would have bought HALO:ODST's LE if it had included the soundtrack and not just the controller. The thing that surprised me is that some games didn't get an LE such as Terminal Reality's Ghostbusters or Double Fine's Brutal Legend, I mean this were big name releases or maybe even something for THQ's Red Faction 2. Weird to the least

However, I'll close this article out and say that I'm sucker for action figures and anything like that so you can bet I've already got some bucks down for the LE of Assassin's creed 2 and I totally plan on getting Sony's God of War 3 set when it drops in March and the big deciding factor is the Pandora's box replica and the Documentary narrated by Peter Weller aka ROBOCOP!
Seriously, its been a rough year on the wallet but totally worth it from cat helmets to batarangs and lastly Pandora's box.All things considered, it's been an awesome time to be a gamer and have these items around your game room.

Racing games: Why I love them again!

Vrooooom! The roar of the engine and the feel of speed as you whip around corners, that's what a racing game gives you and the ability to race cars that are worth millions of dollars.

Over the last year, I've played alot of racing games and haven't been too favorable towards alot of such as Atari's Race pro or Need for Speed:Underground. Something changed recently when I sat down with the latest batch such as Codemaster's Dirt 2 or Turn10's Forza Motorsport 3.

I'm not a car guy not in the very least, I'm sure cars run on magic and are appreciated by people who understand cars like a science. Car games have given me an insight into this wonderful world of cars and high performance machines and it makes me want to learn more and in specifically Forza 3 really opened my eyes.

Forza Motorsport 3 is one of the games that really gets you going because it's so accessible if you want a casual experience or can be a true driving sim if you want to turn on the professional settings. The experience was one that really brought back that feel of 16 bit racing of Top Gear to me and that's what made so much fun that is that it could be casual for players like me. The first time I raced out was with a tricked out Yaris...thats right the soccer mom of the speedway car. Cruising down the motorways with 400+ cars is a tremendously cool especially when you can customize them to resemble some of your favorite movie vehicles...so take a guess which one I love the most


That one option made Forza 3, a truly unforgettable experience for me but you could also go back and play as other movie vehicles like Transformers but I didnt see if there were ones like KITT or any of the cars from Fast and the furious.



Another game that captured my attention but for entirely different reasons was Codemaster's Dirt 2. Dirt is a rally racing game from the late racing legend Colin McRae and its one of the surprised that I've had recently with the racing game genre. I would call Dirt 2, the Tony hawk of the racing games because it's very much like the X games in style and attitude. Rally racing is like off roading and all the fun that comes with taking a truck or car and trashing it more or less. Dirt 2 really captures a different aspect of fun of racing and it all about the presentation and attitude and Dirt 2 absolutely nails it.

Dirt 2 has an awesome sound track and that really gets you pumped up and excited about tearing down tracks in Baja, California or over in Europe. I was SOOO surprised to hear some Rise Against and that just got me pysched up to put the pedal to the metal. The physics of the game also really surprised by how much I could fish tail if I wasn't driving carefully but that kind of added to it for in a sense for me. Controlled adrenaline is what I would call the experience and thats what made so cool. Dirt 2 was very much like an experience to be taken in with the crazy career mode races and call outs from famous drivers like Dave Mirra and just watching your own playbacks set to some wicked tunes.

I fell in love with the racing games again with these titles and I think it's worth your time to give them both a rent at least and shift into high gear and prepare to unleash your inner speed demon!