JB0

Projectors. It's actually been done in an arcade setting. I can't find a link right now, but they used a hemispherical screen in front of the player, and a projector mounted right above the seat. Back view is harder, but not impossible. EASIEST way would be raising the seat assembly into a spherical chamber, and using a handful of projectors to get near-360 coverage(You can't see under your chair, so who cares if there's no screen down there?). Feed would be provided by several cameras mounted in the fuselage, possibly with computer interpolation for perspective correction and adjusting image overlap for a seamless sphere. Ejecting would be an interesting engineering problem, though...

*laughs* I LOVED Atomic Burn*. Pity it was a caster-area spell and Lucia's AI was worse than pure random at picking spells and targets. For Lucia's use, plasma rain WAS her best spell, since it was good damage AND unfocused.... *SegaCD names, they shuffled most of them for the PS version, and I can't recall what wound up on what. Whatever Lucia's caster-area attack spell was. .... Gah.... If I had space to connect both power bricks, I'd be replaying Lunar 2 right now. Poor SegaCD.... victim of my lack of outlets.

Naw, people have just suddenly started to realize that there's a big ball of nuclear fire in the sky that gives you cancer.

Evil god is trying to resurrect himself with a corrupt church that claims to be worshipping the good god. Good god is dead, but no one knows it. Evil god can only be defeated by the power of humanity! Seriously, it wasn't overly blatant, but the Granas/Valmar thing left me with a very strong "Lunar 2.5" feel. Not just the general concept, but the development path. Character-wise... Party consists of a scruffy adventurer with a mouthy animal sidekick, a divine force discovering her humanity through the lovable rogue, a circus performer with a secret past, a noble beastman with a strong sense of justice... I'll grant one or two, but too much overlap starts looking pretty funny. Android girl reminded me a lot of early Lucia. Only with less awesome(it was stolen by Millenia!). Mareg gave me a VERY strong Leo vibe. They're generic enough that it shouldn't matter, but it felt a lot closer than most generic stereotypes. Maybe due to the setting. Also to be fair, I only just now noticed the Skye/Ruby/Nall connection, so that's probably not fair either. And I DO grant the scruffy adventurer had a lot more depth in Grandia 2 than Lunar 2. Lunar series was about the people AROUND the hero more than the hero himself(Heck, in the first game Alex was a classic mute character).

Grandia 2's big problem for me was that I'd already played it when it was called Lunar 2. Both times. Okay, so it's a tad of an exaggeration, but large portions of it WERE lifted straight from L2. Was really one of the major signs that Game Arts had gone totally bankrupt, creatively speaking. Especially coming so close after the Lunar 2 remake. Or maybe it was their last hurrah. Lunar Legend was really the point where they went totally down the crapper(even ignoring it was the second remake and FIFTH release of Silver Star in 6 years... at least they stopped at 5 versions instaed of making the SS remake an anual project)...

Perhaps they're a non-combustable propellant? I think you could technically call the reaction mass used for space motion "propellant," though most poeple will think of a combustable product.

Don't those shoots almost always use hand-painted protos that look nothing like the end product anyways?

I've seen the Frenzy on shelves. It's a "Fast Action Battler" Whoops, beat me to it.

The Studio 2 was RCA's video game system. It featured exceedingly low-res black&white graphics(no grays, just on and off), had a speaker for sound(it was incapable of sending audio to the TV), and two integrated phonepads for control(yes, if you could talk someone else into playing, you'd both have to huddle over the system). It came out after the original Odyssey, and WOULD have been the world's first programmable video game system(The Odyssey, while reconfigurable, wasn't programmable. The "game cards" actually physically rewired the system). BUT.... Fairchild's Channel F beat it to market by a few months and was a vastly superior system, featuring such things as "high-res" color graphics and wired remote controls. Both systems were rendered completely irrelevant a few months later when the 800-pound gorilla known as Atari released their own Video Computer System(later renamed 2600), which was itself vastly superior to the Channel F. It's a hard platform to like. It's klunky and unreliable(there's a ribbon cable inside the adapter that tends to work loose over time), with a smaller library than even the Jaguar. And it's a shining symbol of everything that was wrong with Sega at the time. Though it DOES have a few gems(even some EXCLUSIVE gems, like Knuckles Chaotix and Star Wars Arcade). The biggest flaw, IMO, is that you can't use a Power Base Converter through a 32x. Given the choice of SMS games or 32x games...

I assume you know it's already coming back, albeit after having a love afair with a SRPG?

To be honest, I've only ever played VO in the arcades. So it just seems WRONG to play it with a gamepad. And yah.... Saturn, especially with a RAM cart, is an absurd 2D powerhouse. Puts a lot of arcade systems to shame. ... I wonder if Saturn or CPS3 wins in that regard... Guess it doesn't really matter since CPS3 only got 5 games, and three of them were Street Fighter 3.

I have the US VO:OT. Never actually played it, though. Picked it up, then realized I'd never be able to find a set of DC Twin Sticks, and was greatly saddened.

It's not unheard of, particularly if a glitchy game makes it to market. FF3 was REALLY good at corrupting saves when the sketch bug was triggered. Sometimes with incredibly awesome results. Other times with the complete loss of all 3 save files.

I know. Personally, I'd add Mars Matrix to the list. It's just amazing how quickly the system's reputation got turned around in the eyes of the masses after it was killed. I think it was just taking potshots at Sega because "LOL TEH SEGACD AM SUX!111 32X AM ROFL!1111" Sega only made 2 expansions. One of which was intended to be their next-gen system(at least, that's what Sega Japan told Sega America when Sega America started developing the 32x, JUST so the american branch would look like idiots when the Saturn was announced a day after the 32x was unveiled. Yes, the America/Japan infighting was THAT messed up.). Neptune never got out of the prototype stage, and was nothing more than a Genny with a built-in 32x. Given Sega America was told the 32x would be Sega's next-gen system, it made good sense to offer an all-in-one 32x console alongside the upgrade component for existing Genesis owners. As far as major Genesis revisions that made it to production during the system's life, you have the Genesis, Genesis 2, CDX, and Nomad. There's also the X'Eye, but that was manufactured by JVC(apparently they licensed the hardware to JVC to get a discount on SegaCD components), and wasn't sold in large quantities. Genesis 3 was post-Saturn, and manufactured by Majesco, not Sega. It was a mild rebirth of the system, smaller than even the CDX, and... plagued by quality control issues. But hey, it was cheap. 2 major revisions is standard in the console industry. The Nomad was a good idea, hindered by poor battery life(much like the TurboExpress, only with a larger software library). CDX was a deliciously tiny combo unit that also functioned as a portable CD player at a time when such devices were uncommon and expensive. And a great option for people that didn't own a Genesis, and wanted to go straight to full SegaCD. But it was all cosmetic anyways. They all played the exact same Genesis games. And with the exception of the Genesis 3 and Nomad, could play the exact same SegaCD and 32x games. The Jaguar library isn't half as bad as it's made out to be. It's easy to say bad things about a system with a library of roughly 50 when about half of those suck, but really... half of it's games don't suck. How many systems can you say that about? Probably a lot less than you think. And it was quite impressive hardware in it's day. The Cybermorph pack-in, despite being crapped on regularly now, absolutely blew the doors off ANYTHING the SNES or Genesis could offer. It's not the greatest game ever, but it IS damned impressive for a game released ion 1993. Besides, no system with Worms can truly suck. I KNOW both systems were good. It's a comment on how bad the video's selection was that I EXPECTED to see the Saturn. I said it was a GOOD thing they didn't show up, and was probably the only good thing I COULD say about the video. The Saturn's big flaw was actually that it was a monstrous beast that was both expensive to make and difficult to program for. 2 CPUs, 2 GPUs, and 3 more processors in the wings(2 in the sound system and 1 more processor designated as a CD controller), all handled in raw assembly. Compounding matters was the fact that the twin CPUs didn't have their own memory. So whenever one was reading or writing to RAM, the other couldn't do anything. The PS1, by comparison, was delightfully easy to code for, and this was made easier by the fact that Sony was the first company to include C libraries with devkits. ... That and Sega'd been abusing developers almost as badly as Nintendo was in the NES days. PS1 was also cheap to manufacture, and Sony was turning a profit at every stage of the price war while Sega was bleeding red ink on every Saturn sold when they attempted to keep up. Saturn actually outperformed the PS1 in 3D as well as 2D, in many cases. But Sony pushed 3D aggressively, making the PS1 library heavily weighted towards 3D, and the Saturn's more balanced library combined with Sony's marketing left the impression that Sega focused on 2D because they COULDN'T do 3D. The early PS1 titles looked FAR worse than the Saturn's 3D games did. In conclusion: No system sucks. Except the Studio 2.

An LCD is an LCD, far as I'm concerned. Neither can plasma sets. Nor most DLPs, even the ones advertized as 1080 sets(for a while they were using offset mirrors to "fake" 1920*1080 display with a good deal less actual pixels) Yeah, I've got no idea where the 1366*768 LCD comes from. I suppose it's POSSIBLE someone thought that elongating a 1024*768 panel was a good idea, but it doesn't really make sense to me from a PC OR TV perspective. 'S what happens when anything goes mass-market. 'S pretty embarassing how badly things get mucked up when they move to a market where buzzwords can make up for low quality. Example: I was looking at mice a while back, and realized while everyone was hyping "high resolution," "2x resolution," and "superior tracking resolution"... no one was printing the actual resolutions except on the highest- and lowest-end products. And I assume the lowest-end was just to impress with more technical-sounding "high" resolutions, since anyone of competence knows 300dpi sucks for a mouse. Far cry from ye olde days, when most computer part manufacturers printed their actual product specifications on the packaging, often in absurdly high levels of detail.

I thought the DC was subject to the same revisionism as the rest of Sega's work(people will argue the GENESIS was a massive failure). I've been told the DC had "no good games." Mention Soul Caliber, they stare blankly for a minute, and go "Okay, it had ONE good game!" I figure it's more the DC and Saturn fans are a lot louder than, say, Jaguar fans. They didn't want to wade through the hate mail naming either of those would've gotten them(though Saturn was probably closer to inclusion). And the world's only Virtual Boy fan isn't gonna e-mail them. But seriously.... Studio 2! Let's be honest. I LIKE the Virtual Boy. I can find GOOD points to the 32x. I at least respect the Odyssey's place in history, if not the actual system. When I can't find a good thing to say about a system, you KNOW it's bad.

There's no functional PS2 emu right now. BUT... VFX and VFX2 are PS1 games. They can be emulated. I recommend pSX. http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/

A high-end AGP/PCI-E card will probably have dual video connectors anyways. SLI is a waste of money. It's cheaper and more effective to buy one good card than 2 lesser ones. And if you're buying 2 top-end cards, you have more money than sense.

Just like AVP and Tempest 2000 kept the Jag off the list? Yeah... they just new better than to stir up THAT nest of bees. They'd never see the end of the fanboy hate mail if they said bad things about the Dreamcast. The Power Glove WORKED. The big problem with it was that wrapped a fully 3D motion-tracking controller to 6 digital buttons doesn't work well. Where the Power Glove DID find use was on PCs. A LOT of the gloves sold were converted to computer VR gloves. Laser Scope... I've heard good things about before. Vintage reviews said it was absurdly precise. The big problem is... well, it's a zapper. There's maybe a dozen games you can use it on, and you likely only owned Duck Hunt. But heck, those were 3rd-party products anyways. If you meant the 32x... that was INTENTIONALLY sabotaged by Sega Japan. It's the crown jewel of an inter-division war that nearly killed the company.

That's actually a limitation of LCDs, not computer monitors. I still find it ironic that TV moved to an explicitly multi-resolution setup at the same time it moved to an explicitly single-ersolution display format. Most likely. Hell, I've seen them using NTSC RF feeds to demo HD sets before.

LUCIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I remember having fun with Sewer Shark, desite it being an FMV game, but that could just be defective memories. I don't have it, so it's been years since I even saw it running. ... Hmmm, maybe I should burn a copy... gogo gadget lack of copy-protection! Exactly 3 32x CD games exist. At least the 32x's additional graphics chip allowed for a reasonable color depth, so they didn't look quite so much like .... well, words fail me when it comes to SCD FMV. The resolution improvement, while nice, actually depends on what the 32x was mated to. It's a result of the 32x using a better NTSC encoder than later Genesises... Genesees... Genesii.... US MEGADRIVES! The 32x is passed video in it's native RGB format, and is solely responsible for the NTSC encoding, even in base-system or SegaCD games. The earlier revisions of the Genesis feature similarly sharp images. Sadly, they also lack stereo sound except through the headphone port, which has low audio quality. And if for some strange reason you use RGB output, there's no difference between base-system and 32x-passthrough video, regardless of what revision you have. A graphics chip in the SegaCD would've been nice too. One of it's failings is it didn't add any layers or color depth over the base Genesis visuals like the 32x did later. So it wasn't quite the SNES-killer it was meant to be(SNES' primary advantages being absolutely amazing graphics and sound for the era, though it was hobbled by a weak CPU). And yah, PS4 on SCD would've been awesome. 2 servings of awesome, in fact. With a side of amazing. Oh yeah, the joysticks ARE the achilles heel. I LIKE them and admit they're flakey and unreliable as originally designed. I just get sick of hearing about them(it's MOST of the 5200 discussion over at AtariAge, and a lot of people's ONLY reason to not like the 5200). Especially since they aren't any worse than the Intellivision or ColecoVision's. And it DOES have other flaws, like being a 3-year-old chipset when it was released. Though it actually stood up well to the Intellivision and ColecoVision. It's still a nice system that never even gets a chance from a modern perspective. It's also well as the only platform to have a Space Dungeon port, and the BEST port of Qix(retro compilations really change things sometimes, as both games now have "arcade-perfect" emulations on the PS2 and PSP, though I think only Japan has Space Dungeon). It's one of my two favorite 1st-era systems, with the other being the Vectrex.

Pretty sure they still have the dinobot molds. I know they did as of the G2 toyline, which was after they'd figured out the brand might have lasting power. If they lost the dinobots AFTER G2.... then they're hopeless screwups.

Worst consoles is easy. Studio 2. Channel F. Studio 2. Odyssey 1. Studio 2. Odyssey 2. Studio 2. There's simply no way anything can be worse than the raw unbridled SUCK of the Studio 2. Their list starts with a system that never even existed? Sheesh. SegaCD was the hot thing back in the day. It only gets crapped on now due to the post-Saturn pro-Nintendo revision of history. I also feel obliged to point out that. much like the Phantom, neither the SegaCD nor the 32x were actually consoles. And their history of the SegaCD is both the first part I've listened to beyond the system names, and excellent evidence they know NOTHING about what they're talking about. They're comparing different time periods on the CDX VS Genesis+SegaCD pricing, forgot the CDX was also a portable CD player at a time when the Discman cost a good bit of cash, and completely skipped the SegaCD2. Yup, the SegaCD did SO bad that Sega invested EVEN MORE money in redesigning the hardware so they could sell a sleeker sexier version to go alongside the sleeker sexier Genesis 2. .... THE 32X WASN'T CD-BASED! Though it WAS a disaster of almost comical proportions. Hell, the first games weren't available until a week after it launched. Only reason IT shouldn't be there is it wasn't a console. The VB was a DAMN fine system. It's one of gaming's great tragedies that it was killed so early on. I own one. Got it on clearance. Got a second one when some dipshit broke into my house and knocked my first VB on the floor, throwing the displays out of alignment. Of course, before it even launched it'd been labelled as a "red gameboy", and it never shook that reputation. Despite being able to eat the GameBoy for breakfast, AND being the only 3D game system EVER. Jaguar wasn't THAT bad, though it was far from the best. It actually has a good ratio of not-sucky games. The library's just incredibly small. The controller... is a Genesis controller with an option pad tacked on. Big whoop. It's not like you were REQUIRED to use the phone pad during normal gameplay, and it's a great place to stick secondary controls like, I dunno, weapon selection? ANYONE that would use Jag Alien VS Predator in this video AT ALL, much less while talking about the worst exclusives of all time, has NO fartING CLUE what they're doing, given that's widely considered one of 2 must-have titles on the Jag(the other being the legendary acid trip shooter, Tempest 2000). Again, it's a nice system that should've done a lot better. And it's noteworthy that the Jag's hardware design has been ripped off by modern systems, which have turned the video chipset into a full processor(Jag was doing pixel shaders in 1993. Think about that.) 5200.... is ALSO a damn fine system. That DID do better. 7800 is a better system to use for this, and there's far worse than that too. <peeve> For God's sake! The controllers aren't THAT bad, and certainly DON'T define the system. The software library is quite good, and quite playable with the stock controllers. Honestly, if we're gonna rip apart consoles solely because they have bad controllers, then let's trash the ColecoVision, which is far worse in that regard. Or the NES, for that matter(seriously, it's a HORRIBLE controller design). </peeve> Most of their RZone imagery is Saturn video(or the Game.Com shots they actually identified, which I'm pretty sure was AFTER RZone). Personally, I'd've ripped apart the Game.Com instead, given it was more of a "real" console, while the RZone was a Game&Watch with delusions of grandeur. About the only thing I can really say for the video is it doesn't name the Saturn or Dreamcast on it's walk of shame, and uses a Vectrex for the title sequence. Vectrex is love. I think I've said everything worth saying... The gaming history nerd has spoken. Complete with his personal bias towards the crimson and feline ones. Second video only has one real sin, and that's the omission of the NES Advantage.

Doesn't matter if it looks good. Personally, I think it does. A high-gloss box like that would be BEAUTIFUL. A. It's not on BR. It's DVD. B. You can get away with a lot more on BluRay, since you have 50 GB per disk and more advanced codecs than MPEG2. Of course, being 1080p takes the space advantage back out(6x the pixels, 5.9x the space, so ALMOST even in terms of space per pixel), but there's still more room to be lazy with the better codecs offering double(MPEG4) or even triple(VC1) the compression at a given quality level. Again, no it's not. They're talking about DVDs. Pity I don't have a regionless/R2 player. I'd so buy this set. Same reason I never bought the DVD of the movie. VHS rip doesn't appeal to me at all, and I can't use R2 disks. .... I hate region codes.

No need. Infiltration is book 1. I have it.