mikeszekely

Different. This isn't a full list of games for it (the full list is supposed to have over 20 games), but I'm pretty sure some of the ones I'm going to list aren't on the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube collections, and most definately not on the GBA collection. Dig Dug Pac-Man Rally X Galaga Galaxian Xevious Mappy Dragon Buster Dig Dug 2 Bosconian Tower of Druaga King & Balloon Grobda Well, let's start with the obvious first. The PSP's screen is NOT touch sensetive as it is. In fact, the screen itself isn't even actually exposed, but cased in a layer of clear plastic that covers the face of the PSP. So, to have a touch screen, Sony would need to do one of two things: 1.) Release a newer version of the PSP which will include a touch screen. And if you mean PSP-1000 series to PSP-2000 series, as in a PSP that's identical in every other way save for a touch screen that could be out by the end of the year, forget it. Not going to happen. Looking further into the future, Sony is very likely to upgrade the PSP line the same way Nintendo's been upgrading their Gameboy line for like 15 years. In that sense, who can say what the future will hold for the PSP 2? 2.) Sony could release a seperate, USB touch screen. I honestly don't see them doing that, and I would definately say an official Sony USB keyboard for the PSP is more likely than a touch screen for the PSP.

My vote's for the VF-22. Face it, the 19 was flawed from the get go, killing a number of test pilots. While that may have be remedied in the F/S models, the A is essentially still the YF-19. It only one Supernova for two reasons: 1) After the Sharon Apple Incident, it was the only on still standing. 2) It was apparently cheaper. The technology in the BDS and the morphing wings was clearly expensive. So, when the first VF-19A's were going into production, General Galaxy had to take the 21 back to the drawing board to whittle it down the the more conventional, practical, and less expensive VF-22. Once they'd done that, suddenly the UN is interested again, as a replacement for the VF-17. And I think it's more telling that Diamond Force, Max, and Millia were all flying VF-22's while the VF-19s still hadn't actually replaced the VF-11, but was still used only by elites like Emerald Force and the VF-X Ravens.

To be more specific, they're saying that the Xbox 360 will have three 3.2GHz, for a grand total of over 9 and a half gigs of processing power. Not to mention that the technology they're licensing from NEC is supposed to all but eliminate the frontside bus so it doesn't get slowed up there. If it means that I can get rid of my current Xbox, I'll take the emulation. Oh, and IIRC, the original Xbox was actually 733MHz. Ooops. I've got a bad tendancy to round things to whatever's convenient. *puts dentures in* In my day we didn't have all this multi-processor multi-gigahertz stuff! It was all a single 1Mhz 6502. Maybe a 4MHz Z80 if we were lucky! And we had to walk uphill through boiling snow to put the cartridge in! Oh, it's cool, JB0. I just think that the exact numbers help to further show the leap in processing power between the 360 and the original. I mean, that .2GHz might not seem like much, but multiply that by the three total processors, and you've rounded off 600MHz... which is just 133MHz shy of the total processing power of the original. Seriously, at the end of the day... I'm no fanboy of any particular console. I'm very curious about what all the players will bring to the table. If it seems like I'm showing a little preference toward Microsoft right now, it's just because the 360 is coming out first. I'm sure this time next year, I'll have PS3 fever. (I'm still curious about the Revolution, but also skeptical.) It'll be kind of weird though... for the first time, I'll have a console that kicks my PC's ass.

It's funny that you should bring up Rally X, because it actually brings this thread back on track. Ridge Racers actually has Rally X as a minigame... if you score over 50,000 points, you'll unlock a special class car for the main game. Rally X is also supposed to be on the upcoming Namco Museum for the PSP.

Shelling out the money for a console is hard enough, considering how many good games come out around the holidays and will still be coming out for the current-gen consoles. And I happen to really enjoy Tiger Woods golf, so that and Perfect Dark Zero will probably be my launch games. To be more specific, they're saying that the Xbox 360 will have three 3.2GHz, for a grand total of over 9 and a half gigs of processing power. Not to mention that the technology they're licensing from NEC is supposed to all but eliminate the frontside bus so it doesn't get slowed up there. If it means that I can get rid of my current Xbox, I'll take the emulation. Oh, and IIRC, the original Xbox was actually 733MHz.

But what good is a PSP that can't run Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA? </sarcasm> I'm not sure what you're thinking, and I refuse to believe your mixing megabits with megabytes... but I have Killer Instinct for the SNES clocking in at 4mb unzipped. MAME. Hard disk images. Perhaps I should've picked games that weren't ported to ROM-based systems. Oh, okay! I got ya now. Yeah, I don't know, there have been some fun arcade games, but I never did more than dabble with MAME. ZSNES and Visual Boy Advance are my emulators of choice. I'm big on arcade emulation. Partially because my preferences lately have been more towards the kind of gameplay the arcade environment encourages, and as long as I'm playing them I may as well play the original versions since the console ports tended to be watered down by necessity for a long time. Though really, I've never emu'd anything that needed a hard drive, and don't see anything that I really care to. But the latest and greatest is the first thing a lot of people new to MAME lunge for. Then cry because Cruisn' USA runs at something like 5FPS on their machine. It might just be me, but a lot of the arcade games released since, at the latest, the Dreamcast have had pretty good console ports. And in many cases, a lot of the reason to go to play a game in the arcade is because of the setup. Cruisn' Exotica was a game I'd never bother with on a home console, but I blew probably $10 playing it at Dave and Buster's, because the console version fails to capture the arcade experience that included being linked with the other players and total force feedback from the seat. That said, there were a lot of fun games from the glory days of the arcade. In my opinion, the single best reason to run MAME is for the old Robocop game.

Absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I was really looking forward to the DS, but find it so dissapointing today. So much potential squandered on a handful of gimmicky puzzlers. But as previously mentioned, I do have fairly high expectations for Perfect Dark Zero, and Halo 3 is a given. DoA 5 has also been announced for the Xbox 360. That's enough to get me started.

Yeah but then you are stuck in the memory card computer swap cycle that we are trapped in now for reasonably priced alternatives to re-puchasing movies we already own. Have you fooled around with a fully loaded Hacked Xbox yet? A buddy of mine has his set up with a 150gig HD and he has over 6000 games loaded on to it, NeoGeo's full library, damn near every title for the NES/SNES/Turbografix16/Sega Master System/Genesis/Saturn/ every gameboy title worth playing, over 700 Arcade titles, 50 or so full X-Box games, it is a monster. When my PSP can do that I am going to stop participating in society. No, I haven't bothered to hack my Xbox. I don't often find myself playing even the best roms and emulators, so if I had the cash for a 150GB HD, I'd throw it in my PC so I have more room for the anime I'm grabbing off of bittorrent sites instead of jacking my Xbox so I can load it with games I won't play. In any case, I have a 512mb stick, so if there's a few roms I really will play, I could easily fit them. I'm not so lazy that I can't swap out a few files. Seriously, how'd some of you guys get along with mp3 players before the iPod?

But what good is a PSP that can't run Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA? </sarcasm> I'm not sure what you're thinking, and I refuse to believe your mixing megabits with megabytes... but I have Killer Instinct for the SNES clocking in at 4mb unzipped. MAME. Hard disk images. Perhaps I should've picked games that weren't ported to ROM-based systems. Oh, okay! I got ya now. Yeah, I don't know, there have been some fun arcade games, but I never did more than dabble with MAME. ZSNES and Visual Boy Advance are my emulators of choice.

Check your pm.

But what good is a PSP that can't run Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA? </sarcasm> I'm not sure what you're thinking, and I refuse to believe your mixing megabits with megabytes... but I have Killer Instinct for the SNES clocking in at 4mb unzipped.

I don't think any kind of hard drive attachment for the PSP is necessary. The PSP is designed to be able to execute software from the Memory Stick. The idea is that you'd be able to download demos and what not. Considering that most roms are rarely more than a few megabytes, even the 32mb stick that comes with the PSP would be able to store your game saves, the emulator, and a handful of roms. The trick, at the moment, seems to be getting the PSP to recognize the emulators as executable. Personally, I can't wait for a GBA emulator for the PSP...

Well, when I was a kid, I used to love Bon Jovi. Then I grew up on hair metal. My favorites were always Def Leppard, Queensryche, and the sadly short-lived T-Ride. Honorable mentions go to Blue Murder and John Norum's first album. About the only two 70's bands I've ever really been into were Kiss and Boston. Music's been on the decline since the mid 90's, in my book. I'm finding it harder and harder to find a CD I like, since a lot of it is mass-produced pop and R&B. The only one bad I can definatively say for sure that I think is really good anymore is The Juliana Theory. Although, I am starting to check out Jimmy Eat World. I have to say that I do like techno, but here's the thing... only compilations. It seems like ever techno act out there does two songs I hate for every one I like. That said, my favorite techno groups are Orbital and Elite Force. Seems like you can't watch anime without ever getting into jpop... so I might as well say my favorite jpop groups/singers include Melody, BoA, M-Flo, Yamamoto Ryohei, M-Flo, Globe, and Every Little Thing. Somewhere along the line (maybe because I got sick of everyone thinking jpop meant either Utada Hikaru or Hamasaki Ayumi), I branched out into Korean. Even though they had some boy band elements, I liked HOT, Shinhwa, and NRG, as well as BoA (again), Lee Jung Hyun, and S#arp.

That was freaky! I almost thought you'd found a clear case!

IGN has another new preview you can check out with screens and what not. Look here.

Likewise. Not really. It recently dropped to $19.99 used at Gamestop. And while it is a very good game, at this point, I'd probably say just wait for Gundam Vs. Z Gundam, which will retail for $40 brand new. What makes you say that? I might consider importing that one. But that's exactly why I liked it. I already loved Feddie vs. Zeon's gameplay. And those "different colored suits" happen to my most of my favorite mobile suits (if there was only some way they could have worked the Nu Gundam and Zaku III in there...). One of the downsides to Feddie vs. Zeon is that, if you were playing the Feddie side, it seemed like you'd occasionaly use the Gundam for a tough mission, then play as GMs for most of the game while you waited for the Gundam to recover. In AEUG vs. Titans, you had a ton of variety. Like if you were the AEUG, you could use Zeta, Hyaku-Shiki, or even the original Gundam for a lot of the tough missions, and you could alternate between the GM II, Rick Dias, or Nemo for other missions. Plus, you could save your mission points to repair the hero suits that recovered to slowly.

For what it's worth, Shin, I totally disagree with jwinges. Encounters in Space was leaps and bounds better than Journey to Jaburo or Zeonic Front, but it was still a pretty ho-hum kind of game. I loved Feddie vs. Zeon, and reguard that to be the best American-released Gundam game so far. In fact, I loved Feddie vs. Zeon so much that I imported AEUG vs. Titans. The engine was almost identical, but Z Gundam is actually my favorite Gundam series, so I was thrilled to play through the Z Gundam storyline with Z Gundam MS. From what I can tell of the demo, Gundam vs. Z Gundam looks to be some kind of amalgamation of the other two vs. games. As jwinges said, that's not necessarily innovative per se, but I don't really feel like it has to be. The vs. games still have the best engine for Gundam games, and with tons of MS from both series, I'm more or less sold.

From what I've read, this game should be fun. I really enjoyed the first Battlefront. This time, they're promising new classes, including Jedi (I'd rather they left the Jedi out, but they're supposedly working hard to keep the gameplay balanced). The console versions are supposed to support up to 32 players online, and the PC version 64. They're retooled the vehicle combat and added space battles, plus new maps including indoor stages and stuff from Episode III. All the modes in the orignal Battlefront will be returning, but perhaps best of all, they're redoing their single player mode to give it more depth. I'm not sure when Battlefront II is going to be out. No official date's been given, but the computer at work says November for the Xbox, and, believe it or not, May 18th for the PS2. I have a sinking feeling that 5-18's a goof on someone's part, but hey, I did first hear about the Episode III game around the time I first read about Battlefront II, and I already played and beat Episode III, so...

I could have sworn this was brought up before, but a search turned up nothing, so... Anyway, the Sony rep stopped by my store, and dropped a new demo in the PS2. In addition to a bunch of other "trendy" games like Juiced, I was suprised to find a playble demo of Gundam vs. Z Gundam! Hopefully this means the game will be out soon. According to our system, it should ship 6-28, but I don't think Bandai has announced an official date.

Well, Sony and Microsoft might not be known for games themselves, but some of studios owned by Microsoft and Sony are starting to come out with some really good stuff. Take God of War, for example. Their only real problem is that games like that are obviously aimed at a more mature audience. So, they don't have the kind of across the board appeal. I mean, gamers agree that God of War was an excellent game, but even non-gamers know Mario.

Hey thanks! I will certainly take the time to check out these stores. Estarland looks like EBGames or GameStop though. Well, Starland does do mostly videogames, sure, but they're a much smaller company (only three stores), and unlike Gamestop or EB, they deal with imports and modded systems. And, like I said, they also carry more anime and anime related stuff.

JB0 makes an excellent point. Innovation neither guarantees success, nor a fun gameplay experience. Likewise, giving people an upgraded form of what they already have doesn't guarantee boring, stagnant games and commericial failure. Look at the Gameboy family... they've consistantly outsold any of the home consoles, and it was only five or six years ago that the Gameboy even went 32 bit. Many people consider some of the Gameboy/GBA games to some of their favorites, despite the fact that many of them play like old SNES games. Likewise, the Nintendo DS, which JB0 rightfully included on his list of truly innovative game machines, seems to be suffering. Almost any store that deals in used videogame software/hardware has several (Nintendo's impressive holiday sales figures don't account for how many were apparently sold back). This is largely because developers (including Nintendo themselves) are unsure of how to best take advantage of the DS's innovations. The result is a lack of quality software, and even the good games like Wario Ware and Feel the Magic end up feeling gimmicky. Now with all that said, let's seperate Microsoft's Xbox division from the rest of the company. They're managed by different people, and aren't even located in the same building. The Xbox team, while far from Sony's spot as top dog, did a lot better that many people thought they would. They've enjoyed a level of success that an American company hasn't seen in the console market since before the NES. Part of that is that Microsoft has tons of money to throw behind the Xbox, but a lot of it was also because they were genuinely taking the time to try to figure out what consumers want, unlike Sony, who markets their stuff until you think you want it, or Nintendo, who just tries to tell you what you want (I still can't believe Iwata's "Gamers don't want online games" remark). So, I could be totally wrong, but I'm going on good faith that the Xbox team will continue to try to give consumers what they want. (They do seem to be trying, since they are working harder to get Japanese developers on board and since they haven't entirely nixed the hard drive.) And with that good faith, I do intend to give the Xbox 360 a chance at launch.

Assuming that next-gen games double in size, why use a more expensive 15-20GB format when your games are going to be MAYBE 8GB? Using regular DVDs will keep the cost down. Besides, what if Microsoft went with HD-DVD for the 360, and Blu-Ray wound up winning the format war? Shell out maybe $30 for a memory card, or shell out an extra $100 for the hard drive. I'm probably going to shell out money for the hard drive. If the rumors about it doubling as an iPod-like music player are true, it'd be worth it. Supposing Blu-Ray wins the format war, I have no doubt that that's true. But I'm also not going to rush out and buy my 100+ DVDs again on Blu-Ray just because they'll look better on an HDTV. Also, while I did start buying DVDs to watch on the PS2, within a year I had a stand alone DVD player. The ability to play movies isn't a strong selling point, IMHO. In any case, no one said people can only have one console in the future. At this point, I plan to buy a 360 this year and a PS3 next year.

I have 2 questions on those specs; 1. I thought 360 will support HD-DVD, no? 2. I guess no backward compatibiltiy? The HD-DVD thing was a rumor, but Microsoft, perhaps wisely, decided against it. For starters, using standard DVDs will keep the cost of the Xbox 360 down. Most of the games on the market barely break 4 gigs, so there's still room to grow on a dual-layer DVD. Also, it's insurance. Right now, the're a lot of competition between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. By using regular DVDs for the 360, it's kind of like not taking sides. As for backwards compatibility... the rumors are saying that backwards compatibility is looking good... if you buy the hard drive. This is another smart business move. Backwards compatibility was good for the PS2, the GBA, and the Nintendo DS. Even though most people eventually quit playing the older stuff, at launch (especially if the launch is a little on the weak side), it gives users a huge library of games to play on their new system. Not having any backwards compatibility could hurt them, since the Revolution and the PS3 are almost confirmed to have it. But getting people to shell out extra money for it, knowing full well that a lot of them will... you get the idea.

Personaly I'd rather they ripped off the SNES or PS style pads. **Waits to get yelled at by the so-called "true" gamers** I'd rather they scrapped the gamepad totally and packed a half-decent joystick in. If it's like the d-pad on the regular Xbox controller-S, it shouldn't be too bad. Yah. I've heard it's a darn nice d-pad. And in a moment of rationality, I DO admit that joysticks don't work as well for the kind of games that are usually released currently. Though I could argue that that's partially because they develop games for the controllers instead of controllers for the games. You could argue that. It seems that when they make controllers for games, you wind up with something gimmicky, like the bongos for Donkey Konga or the touch screen for the DS.