mikeszekely

I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case 100% of the time, but it does seem like the scratches are caused by moving the 360 while a disc is in the tray. Story from Llama.com.

Meanwhile, people with preorders who honestly just want to play with the damn thing can't get one. You buy a ticket to some kind of sporting event or concert, then sell it at an inflated price, and it's scalping. It's illegal. Frankly, I don't see how this is any different.

That would be me. DoA hasn't been around long enough for me to say my childhood's been raped, but maybe I could say that my late teens were molested? What a shitty time for us DoA fans. First we have this godawful trailer letting us know that they're making a godawful movie about our beloved franchise, now we have DoA4 getting delayed... again! What the hell am I supposed to play? I beat Perfect Dark, and I'll be done with Call of Duty 2 long before DoA hits the shelves...

I don't believe in plugging anything over $100 directly into a wall. Far worse than worrying about a lack of current from a powerstrip is a spike in the current that blows some vital components. In fact, the really good stuff goes into a battery backup that monitors the current coming through. Any abnormailites, high or low, and it kicks to battery mode.

Right now, I have mine plugged to a power strip. Got no choice. 348503[/snapback] Are you having any issues?

All I'll say is that I'm yet to see an ending for Evangelion that I've liked. A shame, because I enjoyed the series up to about the last two episodes.

Seconded. Frankly, I'm sick of having to sift through 90 pages of some "super-thread" to read up on things that were only marginally related to the original topic. And getting back on topic, that is some freaky stuff made all the freakier because that's exactly the kind of crap Hollyweird seems hellbent of force-feeding us.

I am. Gamertag is Pharaohman (as in the one from Megaman 4). Honestly, I'd really love for someone to try Tiger online with me, but I guess I'd be up for NFS and definately DoA when it comes out. I don't really enjoy FPS with strangers, though.

I assume the brick is okay. Sure, it gets toasty, but I'm given to understand that should be normal. Abnormal power supplies seem to create abnormal behaviors with the console itself. And I can honestly say, after having gone through TWO sets of batteries now (I really kid you not when I say that I'm either at work or on the 360) that I haven't had any freezes, no weird purple bubbles, no shut downs, no failures to boot, and no failures to read discs. And I've done it all. I've downloaded crap from the Marketplace. I've played Xbox Live Arcade games from the HDD. I've played Call of Duty, PDZ, NFS, Tiger Woods, and Project Gotham. I've played alone, and I've played with up to four other people. We've used combinations of wireless and wired controllers. I've played on Live, and chatted on Live. Everything genuinely seems to be functioning normally. It did occur to me, though, that my 360 is plugged into a rather expensive battery back up style powerstrip/surge protector, and not directly into the wall. It'd be interesting to see how other people have theirs plugged in, and who's having problems. I told you. Although they say that the 360 supports standard definition and they give you that standard yellow video cable, the 360 looks like crap through it. I've heard a lot of people say that if you don't have an HDTV, you have to at least get an S-Video for your 360. And actual HD makes all the difference in the world. PS2 games look nasty on my HDTV, Xbox 1 games look fair in 480p, but 360 games look simply amazing in 1080i.

Oh man... this was one of those things that, whenever I saw they'd cast Devon Aoki as Kasumi, I knew it'd be a travesty. But I finally brought myself to watch the trailer, and I've realized that Dead or Alive is the worst movie ever. Of all time. A movie so bad that, in 1,000 years, people who see bad films/holovids/etc at where ever people go to do such things 1,000 years from now, they will say to themselves, "That sucked, but it was better than Dead or Alive." The movie sucks so bad that its very existance is a violation of natural laws. This movie sucks so bad that I wish they would have got Uwe Boll for the director, because not even his movies suck this badly.

Or would have been, if they had bothered to cast a girl who was remotely attractive. Casting one of the fugliest "actresses" in Hollywood to play one of the hottest videogame ladies was simply an unforgivable offense. The movie simply as no redeeming elements at all.

I got NFS, Tiger, and Perfect Dark. Employee weekend is coming up on the 9th, and we get 25% off then. I plan on getting DoA, Call of Duty, Ridge Racer, and maybe Quake at that time. DoA missed launch for whatever reason. But we do expect it in on the 7th. It was a fun job, back when we were Software Etc. Recent management changes have brought all the stores under the Gamestop umbrella, and it's all been downhill since. Now, we have two main problems. The first is that our company got damn greedy. It's not enough to sell videogames anymore. We gotta push the used videogames, because they have a higher mark up. And to have a good used inventory, we need trade-ins, so we have to ask EVERY person who walks through our doors for trade-ins. While selling used games and getting trade-ins, we gotta push that stupid magazine/discount card deal, because that secures future business. And speaking of future business, we gotta push reservations. Supposing customers like being pushed and we're successful in posting great used sale, trade-in, reservation, and subscription numbers, what do we get? To keep our jobs! With Gamestop's revolving door policy, there's no need to offer bonuses or incentives. Employees either perform, or they get fired and maybe the next guy will perform better. The second issue I have with the company is Loss Prevention. A company has the right to protect itself from internal theft, sure, but Gamestop takes it too far, treating its employees like felons (although maybe Gamestop hires a lot of felons. You can't be too picky when you change employees like underwear). The security cameras don't monitor the sales floor, they monitor the cashier counters. Regular employees don't have access to any of the drawers or cabinents with games in them, only management does. In many stores, employees can't even get into the back room to put their lunch in the fridge or hang up their coat without a manager to open the door for them. Bag and pocket checks must be done (and logged) every time an employee leaves the store (including mall stores). What's more, while customers can trade in their games at any store, for cash or credit, employees can only trade their games at the store where they work for credit. Similarly, employees are not allowed to cancel reservations. But I digress. Of course you should. Everyone is getting more. But as I've already explained, we still have preorders to fill. (In my store, after we factor out the cancelations, we still have over 90). Since our first shipment was 28 units, and that was supposed to be our largest shipment, we figure an average of 20 units per shipment and one shipment per week based on Microsoft's statements. If that's the case, it'll take five weeks to fill all the preorders, putting us damn close to January. As a matter of fact, though, a Gamestop e-mail said that we weren't likely to get any more until the week before Christmas, and that it would be something like 6-8 units. If that's the case, it'll take a lot longer to fill the preorders, possibly as late as February. I disagree, but I assume you're hooked up to a standard TV, myk? I've got mine hooked up to a 52" Toshiba widescreen DLP TV and set mine display settings on the 360 to 1080i. Right from the start, you can see a huge difference in just the dashboard going from 480p (the default setting) to 1080i. Compared to standard-definition games that look jaggy and ugly blown up on my TV (especially PS2), the visuals that the 360 is cranking out are simply breathtaking. Likewise, although a lot of Xbox 1 games supported Dolby Digital with the fiber optic output, the surround sound effects are done much better on the 360. But a lot of what says next-gen to me isn't graphics, framerates, or number of enemies on screen. It's the way they've integrated Live. If you don't have broadband or otherwise haven't hooked your Xbox 360 up to the net, you're really missing out. And at least it's smart enough to shut down and cool off instead of just burning up. But, I'd like to state again, for the record, that I've had my console flat on its shelf (which seems to be well-ventilated), and that if I've been home and awake, my 360 has been on (I've already burned though a pair of batteries in the controller), and I have NEVER had a problem with mine.

I can't stand people or crowds, even though I've seen some good deals advertised ($997 for a 42" plasma, $8 for Greatest/Platinum Hits PS2 and Xbox games, etc). I'm not really a morning person anyway. Since I don't work until 2:00, I don't plan on hauling my ass out of bed before 10:00. On the other hand, my local Wal-Mart is doing a "You Snooze You Loose" sale from midnight to 4:00am. Since the crazies will have gone to bed to get an early start, and since it was only advertised in store, I don't think it'll be too nuts then, and I'm usually up that late anyway. I'm going to go check it out, since they're saying a lot of stuff is going to be half off.

Likewise, and I've pretty much been playing with it every waking hour since I got it, outside of those wretched hours spent at work. That's what we're estimating, based on how many preorders we have left to fill, and assuming Microsoft supplies us with 20 a week every week until we reach a point where we have 6-8 on hand at any given time. Yes and no. Gamestop can't replace a defective item if there's no units in stock. But Microsoft is providing their own options. The console is warrantied for 90 days, and I'm assuming you got the same extended service contract offer in your box that I did (about $60 for two years). Microsoft says if you have a defective unit, to call their service number, and a pre-paid box will be overnighted to you. You put the 360 in the box, send it out, and a repaired/replaced console is supposed to return ro you within five days.

Sarah Carter may be, but Devon Aoki is NOT. Whoever cast her as Kasumi needs to be taken outside and shot.

I think it's partly that, but also partly the timing of the launch. Microsoft starts heavily advertising it in September, and little Timmy decides that's what he wants for Christmas. It launches right before Thanksgiving, and even though there aren't nearly enough to go around, it joins the ranks of Tickle Me Elmo and Furby as the hot holiday item for it's time. How much faster do you want it to sell out? Instantaneously? By 9:00am 11/22, there wasn't a store within 30 miles that had any for sale. Perfect Dark Zero. I wonder why you're so quick to dismiss it, when you clearly have a lot of love for Halo and Goldeneye? The original Perfect Dark improved the Goldeneye formula to the point that the former was almost unplayable. Perhaps it was merely released too late in the N64's cycle and too much time has passed for the prequel/sequel to generate enough buzz? True, it's not mind-bogglingly better graphically than some of the shooters to have come out lately on the original Xbox, like Half-Life 2 or or Doom 3, but it took 4 years for Xbox graphics to get that good (and PS2 never came close). If all we had graphically were Xbox launch games, then the Xbox 360 launch games look simply awe-inspiring. And while I can't vouch for the multi-player (on or off Live, since I've only played on Deathmatch), I finished the first three missions in single player. So far, in terms of single player gameplay, PDZ > Halo 2.

I guess you figured out, I picked up mine last night, with NFS, Tiger, and PDZ. This'll probably be my last post for awhile...

Screw CE. I would have been happy with a UC vs. game, overhauled engine, that took UC mode from Operation British to the end of Char's Counterattack by following the pilots from the Federation/Titans, Zeon/Neo Zeon, and AEUG/Londo Bell. For added spice, include units, pilots, and scenarios not just from Gundam, the 08th MS Team, Z Gundam, Gundam ZZ, and Char's Counterattack, but also units from War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, Blue Destiny, Advance of Titans, Sentinel, and other side stories and MSV between the early days of the One Year War right up through Amuro stopping Axis from hitting the Earth, with plenty of alternate histories too.

I saw it, and I enjoyed it the best of the four. I thought the first movie was disjointed, like they were having trouble squeezing a book into a movie, and I thought the second one was just stupid. PoA was significantly better, in my opinion, and GoF was better still. I think they did a good job of keeping the movie going at a decent pace, so that I didn't feel that it was dragging or rushing at all. In fact, the only overt sign that they might have had difficulty editing a book into a movie was the fact that the events of the movie seem like they could have played out in a few weeks, but when you remember that the film opens shortly before the new school year, and concludes at the end of the school year, you realize that the movie actually covers nine months or so. I don't really think of it as "dumbed down." The Harry Potter movies are certainly more intelligent than your usual "explosions and car chases" summer fare. I think it's simply a matter of giving fans of the books something a little different than the story they already know exactly, as well as editing rather thick books down to a size that fits in the time constraits of a movie. As it was, Goblet was already 157 minutes... over two and a half hours.

I'm going to have to say that it pretty much has to be someone hooked it up wrong. Like David said, you blow up a standard-def signal and display it on a high-def screen, it looks like crap. And, while I'll admit that when I saw Call of Duty I wasn't blow away like I was the leap from Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES to Super Mario World on the SNES, the game was still smooth as silk and abundant in lots of tiny details that definately looked better than the jaggy bland mess that was Tekken Tag Tournament.

From what we've been hearing, all Wal-Marts should get some, but the more rural ones will be getting very limited numbers... as in 2-6 units. Line starts at 8:00pm, I believe. And guess who gets to work the midnight shift? I'll give you a clue... he preorded his back on 5-12, and thankfully gets to pick up his 360 in about 25 hours...

How can you tell? Now, I'm as psyched for the movie as the next comic book geek, but let's be hoenst with ourselves, that trailer revealed nothing. Fleeting glimpses of the Kent farm, the Daily Planet, a teenage Clark falling in the barn, all set to some cryptic comments from Jor-El? Here's hoping that the next trailer actually shows something. The new Harry Potter movie kicked ass and you know it.

345937[/snapback] "Okay, this is your friend code, so you can play online with your friends. But whatever you do, DON'T SHARE IT WITH ANYBODY." I guess your friends are supposed to guess your code?

My excitement was kinda waning, as we were being deluged in tons of great games for current-gen platforms. I mean, just since September, I'd picked up Castlevania (DS and the new PS2), Mario Kart DS, Resident Evil 4, X-Men Legends II, Star Wars Battlefront II, Burnout Legends, Ultimate Spider-Man, Soul Calibur III, From Russia With Love, Genji, We Love Katamari, and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, among a few other lesser games. But now that the day's almost arrived, I'm starting to get pumped. I think a big part of it is working at a games store. I've worked everyday this week, so I was there when the Xbox 360 units arrived (which had me seriously tempted to just grab a box and leave, never to return), and the games, and the accessories. In fact, as previously mentioned, I'd already picked up a wired controller (after which, I downloaded the PC drivers and used it to play Super Mario World), and today I picked up Need For Speed Most Wanted. I'm gonna try to settle down, and pick up Tiger Woods and Perfect Dark when I pick up my Box... but I have a feeling I'll actually pick them up this Saturday.

I was interested, but it sounds like I'd be better off waiting for a DX version.