mikeszekely

Eh. At least you don't have to go out and buy a new video card that costs more than an Xbox in the first place. It's all irrelevant anyway. The only FPS I want between now and the end of the year is Halo 2. Oh there they go. There they go, every time I start talkin 'bout gaming, a console man got to pull Halo out their ass. That's their one, that's their one. Halo. Halo. Let me tell you something once and for all. Halo was good, but compared to Half Life, Halo ain't poo. Nah, I'm a gamer... I'll play games on both console and pc. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but its an undeniable truth that pcs are better for intense processing/graphics. And while you can say graphics aren't everything, they're a part. Actually, Half Life 2 is one of the FPS that I'm looking forward to on Xbox, once they get around to setting a release date... of course, HL2 will have to go gold for PC first... and my grandkids could be having grandkids before that happens. Other that that, I'm really looking forward to Star Wars: Republic Commando and Perfect Dark Zero (although PD0 is looking like an Xbox next launch game, at this rate). I only mentioned Halo 2 because I'm not really interested in Doom, Medal of Honor, or Rainbow Six... Halo's the only FPS I want this year (SW:RC was pushed back to Feb). The reason console gamers keep bring up Halo (opr Goldeneye) is because PC elitists seem to have this notion that the only way to enjoy a FPS is on a PC, preferably one that costs a ridiculous ammount of money, even though they're only going to turn around and spend another fortune to upgrade it when the next big PC FPS comes out. And yet, console gamers have found plenty of enjoyment out of the FPS made for Xbox or PS2 (although it'd be kinda weird on PS2... I mean, the Xbox, like the N64, has triggers... for your triggers...). Halo, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark were all highly acclaimed, Nightfire, Unreal Championship, and Medal of Honor were respectable, and some people even enjoyed stuff like Timesplitters and Red Faction. And, aside from the hardcore PC gamers, most people don't feel like spending fortunes on their PCs. They don't feel like downloading patches because their sound card wasn't supported. A lot of people, from casual gamers to hardcore console gamers (personally, I like to think of myself as a casual PC gamer, hardcore console gamer) prefer the ease of dropping the game in their console and playing... especially on the high def 54'' widescreen TV with the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround (it's a shame more games don't support more high def resolutions). And it's nice to have a buddy over and just ask him to bring an extra controller, rather than having him drag his whole PC out for a LAN. (Mind you, Xbox LIVE is leveling the online playing field between consoles and PC.) Fact of the matter is, for 99.99% of the games out there, I'd rather play it on console. It might look prettier on PC, but that doesn't mean that I'll have more fun with it there (of course, I speak for myself... I know I have friends who are insanely good players on PC, but suck on console). When I do play games on my PC, I tend to go for stuff like Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights. Oh, and by the way, some other company handled the porting of Halo to PC, not Bungie themselves, and they've got a reputation for butchering it. So just remember, if you thought Halo was fun on PC, you should know that the PC version sucked compared to the Xbox version.

Eh. At least you don't have to go out and buy a new video card that costs more than an Xbox in the first place. It's all irrelevant anyway. The only FPS I want between now and the end of the year is Halo 2.

One word for you, guys. Xbox.

Wait, wait... I got it. Let's make a Macross sequel where, after a time, the UN Spacy forces have grown complacent. In the meantime, a colony declares its independence from the UN, and is later take over by a facist family. The facist colony then begins cranking out new VF after new VF, and declares war on the UN. The UN gets their butts served to them on a plate for awhile, but a young ansty genius pilot turns the tide with an incredible new prototype VF. Oh, yeah, he has a mysterious arch-rival (you know he's mysterious because he wears a mask) who, even as he fights for the facists, has his own hidden agenda... ...no? Well, it was just a suggestion.

Still, not cool for those of us who prefered to by from Animeniacs instead of rolling the dice on eBay.

Graham, I kinda see your point... to a degree. I mean, I see your points about parody (G Gundam) and rehashing (X, Wing, and SEED). But the rehashes are mostly to attract a newer, younger audience. But the core of Gundam's fandom is in the original Gundam series, much like the core of the Macross fandom here on these boards are for the original. I'm not going to disagree with you that Macross had better music and mecha designs. I won't even argue that Macross had better characters, although Gundam had its share of notable characters. But Gundam had several other things going for it that made it stand out in its time. For starters, Gundam was the birth of the "real" robot shows. Sure, they're been mecha shows before it... but they were all what we'd later come to think of as the "super" robot shows. And sure, Gundam had its star hero robot, but Gundam was really the first to run with the idea of humans fighting humans with mass-produced robots in the hands of militaries. When Macross came onto the scene, it had great characters and mecha, but it wasn't breaking the same ground that Gundam did. Another big thing was that a lot of the technology and social issues being dealt with in Gundam were very much on the minds of people in the 70's. The design of the colonies, the notion of putting them at the Lagrange points were all figured out by scientists rather than the shows creators, as overpopulation was becoming an issue then and the idea of building space colonies was considered to be a very real solution. In fact, much of the science in Gundam is based more in actual science than the convenient blanket of "Overtechnology" reverse engineered from an advanced alien race. For more on that, do take a look at the very excellent site Mobile Suit Gundam: High Frontier.

Bust the kid in the lip. Bustin' lips is the fastest, most effective way to discipline a kid. Actually, I'm kinda thinkin' of the 'treatment' for A.D.D. in South Park...

Well, not really bitch slap him. You bust him in the lip. He asks to have something, you reply by busting him in the lip. He poos in your bathroom, you bust him in the lip. He starts to cry, you bust him in the lip again. Then, just to remind him who's in charge, you bust him in the lip later out of the blue for no good reason. I call for any kind of maintainance/repairs, and if anyone shows up with a kid, they're fired. They're not even gettin' in the front door.

Why should they? 20 years since the beginning of the series is one thing, but why would anyone celebrate 20 since DYRL? What's next, 20 since Macross Plus? 20 Since Macross Plus Movie Edition? Don't get me wrong, guys, I love Macross as much as the next. And 20 years of Macross was great. I hope they do something nice for Macross' 25th. But celebrating the anniversaries of Macross sequels?

Okay... the most important thing to remember about Lament is that, even though the Symphony crew worked on it, it's really NOTHING like Symphony. As was previously noted, it's more akin to Devil May Cry, although Lament has the block button that DMC was so sorely lacking. If that sounds appealing to you, then by all means pick it up... I think it's $30 tops at Gamestop (we might have even lowered it to $20). Okay... now that I've got that out of the way... yes, Symphony is also my favorite of the Castlevania games. But yes, it's far to easy... especially if you use the Shield Rod with the Alucard Shield on the last boss... but that doesn't mean it's the only good Castlevania, one_klump. If you have a GBA (or preferable an SP), the three GBA Castlevanias are all very excellent. Aria of Sorrow was especially close in flavor to Symphony, although Aria is kinda short. JB0, Rondo of Blood was a great game, too. Come to think of it, aside from the N64 Castlevania's and the original Gameboy Castlevania's, all the Castlevania games are good. Problem is, though, that the good ones fall into three very different catagories, which makes them hard to compare. Rondo of Blood falls in with Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines (the suprisingly good Genesis one), and the original NES trio, in terms of gameplay (although many consider it to be the best of that batch, and certainly better than the SNES version). Symphony was the first of a new breed of Castlevania that includes the three GBA titles, while Lament makes up the third catagory on it's own.

Well, I have a sort of love-hate relationship with MAME anyways. It's the only thing that emus a lot of the stuff I want, but other things have been left broken for ages, even after fixes were found. And the hypocrisy of the MAME team annoys me. "It's all about preservation and documentation, not playing games. We won't add a hack for optical encoder steering wheels, even though it would make them work more like the arcade machine does, because that would be UNFAITHFUL EMULATION! Now watch as we slap in 3 diffrent hacks for potentiometer emulation, including our utterly nonsensical "pedals are digital" hack, and a hack to make Defender work like it uses a standard joystick to make it more playable for people that get confused easily!" Oh and... "We don't emulate games that are still actually making money. Huh? why are Ms. PacMan and Galaga in there? And why did we just expend the effort to make Blitz 2K work right? Ummm... STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!" Ah, see, I never follow what's going on with the developers and new releases and what not. I just used to use Kawaks and another emulator to play the Megaman games, and then I had an older version of MAME to play Robocop. But once I realized that a newer version of MAME would play Robocop, X-Men, the Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the two Megaman games, plus the Macross games... well, you get the idea.

It could be argued that those choosing the tv series are choosing quantity over quality. Except that we're arguing a general lack of quality in DYRL in everything except the visuals. You have a general lack of character development in DYRL (although that seems to work in Minmei's favor), and a plot that's as bastardized from SDF Macross as Robotech is. Yes, the Valkyries do look pretty in DYRL, but Macross was always supposed to be more than flashy space battle scenes.

Here here! Although I gotta say, I'm hoping that if Sega AM2 releases another Macross game, I hope they just set it in the 2050's and have the VF-1, VF-4, VF-3000, VF-5000, VF-9, VF-11, VF-14, VA-3, VF-17, VF-19, VF-22, and VB-6 all as playable, with at least one new VF thrown in. Then, after you beat the game, have the VF-0, SV-51, SW-XA 1, SW-XA II, Fz-109, Az-130, and FBz-99 as unlockables in the free mission mode.

I don't understand. Do these games suffer because the cheat mode to make the game easier is gone, or because they no longer stay true to the original release? Well, kinda both. See, ever since I was a young lad, I've played the Megaman games. And back in the day, for young lad, those games really were HARD. But with those cool little tricks, I and many others managed to beat the games. Today, it's true that we don't NEED those little tricks. I've finished Megaman 1-3 on both the Genesis collection and the new PS2 collection, sans tricks. But those tricks were a part of our childhood (and they sure made things more convenient). It would have been nice if they'd kept them in, if not in the Navi modes then at least in the normal modes. Oh, and JB0, sure, there's other arcade emulators than MAME. Just like there's other SNES emulators than ZSnes. Sure, I've tinkered with some of them myself. But in the end, I went with MAME, because it was the one that worked the best for all my arcade roms, just like I went with ZSnes because it worked the best.

We know you're not being serious, Agent. Because Arnold wasn't in that version.

And I've played/owned them all save M3. And I STRONGLY prefer VF-X2. The fighter stages had some weird flight physics sometimes, but the gameplay was still pretty solid... not mention that the story kicked mucho ass-o.

I've just gotta say "Congratulations!" to you, 'cause I know that was the way I felt when I first got my PS2 modded. But if for nothing else, just like Mike and myself, this should stand as a notice to all of you PS2 gamers out there: GET YOUR PS2 MODDED! Its worth the price, in my opinion, if only to play Macross! And SNES-Station. And PGEN. The old NES emulator for PSX works too.

What if I KAWAKSed them? Didn't KAKWAKS only play one of them? Well, in any case, I suppose KAWAKSing them is pretty much the same as MAMEing them. Different GUI's, same result.

Well, we've got the Megaman Anniversary Collection to play for now. But I do wish it could come out in July or early August, because we're in for a dry spell. Instead, they gotta go and release it when Dead or Alive Ultimate comes out.

WHY does everyone want to see EVERYTHING remade as a live-action movie?!?!?!?!?!?! After seeing G-Saviour, I don't want to see ANY mecha anime remade into a live action...

Exactly what I said. Just not in so few words...

For Megaman 1, 2, and 3, you get the remixed music if they had a remix in one of the arcade games, if you play on Navi mode. For Megaman 4-6, the entire soundtracks are remixed in Navi mode. As for the the stuff with the second controller in 3, no, it doesn't work anymore. And yes, the developers included that stuff on purpose. As far as I know, it's common to program in codes for the purpose of whipping through the game in testing. Usually, the codes are programmed out, but sometimes they're left in on purpose. I finished the whole game. All 10 of them (well, I still have two more teams to finish the Power Fighters with, but that means I already beat it seven times, so cut me some slack). As far as I can tell, 1 is, shall we say, suffering from an altered pause trick? Two suffers because the easy American "Normal" is gone, and 3 suffers from the lack of the second controller tricks. 4-7 are as you remember them (if you remember them), and 8 is the PlayStation version. No cool Saturn effects, no Woodman, no Cutman. 8 also has a few audio glitches, too. If you hear a voice sample in the game, and think to yourself, "I didn't remember *insert name here*'s voice sounding like that," it probably didn't. The arcade games are a fun little treat if you've never MAMEd them. I still get a kick out of playing the Power Fighters every now and then. But they're definately bonus, not the meat of the collection.

Okay, yeah, I guess I can kinda see where you're coming from. I mean, if you're a big SF fan, you want the goods. Lord knows I wish I could get my hands on some of the Rockman stuff they have over in Japan. The original SF II movie just didn't appeal to me, is all (although, like I said, I loved SF II V). And for $30, I think the American collection's fine with Hyper Street Fighter II and SF III Third Strike.

Gamestop. According to our listing, it comes out in mid September, and will retail for $29.99.

TV series Minmei was flighty. In DYRL, she MIGHT have been flighty. Saying that Minmei was more mature in DYRL is kind of speculation. Fact is, in the movie, we don't spend enough time with any of the characters. LePoseur, while I'm sure we've all had our fill of angsty teenagers, it still made Hikaru more developed in the series. I mean, I know I wasn't any Roy Focker when I was Hikaru's age... I was probably a lot more like Hikaru. While more positive characters would certainly be appreciated, I still think character developement is essential.