Daeval

I'll put up another vote for X-Men arcade, but specify the double-cabinet version. Nothing got the entire arcade together, friends and friendly foes alike, like that game.

School's starting up for many I'm sure, that could have somethign to do with it

What makes you say this anyhow? They practically have a lock on the market in the US. CvS2 and MvC2 were two of the most requested, if unavailable, titles when I worked at a game store not long ago. It can't be!

Yeah, the darkstalkers sprites look all fuzzy, the game looks like it'll be fun though. And I could be wrong, but based on that video from burningdojo, Bison (vega, evil mario) isn't using the stay-puff alpha/Z sprite. It looks like CvS2 to me. And the pic of Ryu (fighting bison, actually) on the first link in Mr. X's post doesn't look like the kiddie alpha sprite either. I'm amazed, and relieved, that there aren't more shoto-clones. The SF3 lineup is weak though: Urien and Yun? Bleh.. And Why not just dump Zangief and include Chun Li in the SF2 category? Alex is close enough, and more fun, and it would make room for someone more interesting from SF3s crazy roster, like Ibuki for example. And Karin from zero? Meh, shoulda been Rolento or even Adon. But, I'll be getting it and probably playing the heck out of it anyway. *sigh*

Dude, most Chechens are Sunni Muslims.... Yeah, Muslim, as it is usually used, is a religion and Chechen is a nationality, I'm pretty sure. You can be American, or Chechen, and Muslim at the same time too.

Hey man, in my first high school the only programming class was PASCAL! This was after everyone else switched over the C++ in the early to mid 90s. But the second high school I went to had an entire computer science curriculum from C++ to Operating Systems (actually learning how to code one). I went to high school in the last half of the nineties and we had no programming cirriculum to speak of. I did have a programming class in middle school, but it was on Apple II e's. In all honesty, it did do a reasonable job of introducing the basic concepts, but I'd already done that research at home (yay qbasic!).

Yeah, I bought this hoping for something anywhere near as good as FFT on Playstation. That is still one of my favorite (tactical, if you must) RPGs. However, you're right, it sucked. Hard. Fire Emblem was 10x better.

In other words, no one could ever say that the war is definitely over. Hmmm........ Bush said "we can't win the war on terrorism" I wasn't referring to "The War" so much as the strategy of warfare in general. There's been terrorism forever, but it is becoming a more prominent weapon, and one that doesn't fit into the gameplan of a traditional, large-force-based war. The way we fight wars does not work against it, and it is no longer necessary for an opponent to be capable of fielding an expensive "army" to have a tremendous impact. The world will have to re-develop its tactics somehow to maintain real stability. "The War on Terror" is a stupid term, and it really only makes sense from an intelligence perspective at this point. For now, it isn't something anyone can "win" so much as "keep under control" for a while at a time.

You already mentioned Bridget. How could you possibly top a young boy, with a girl's name, dressed in drag, as a NUN, with a yoyo that he frequently extends between his spread legs, and a deadly teddy bear that speaks in the disembodied voice of SHAFT?.... He/She/It is the alpha and the omega of strange character designs. If anyone in this thread can top that, there will be tipping of my hat. On an only psuedo-related note, I got a tour of Sammy Studios today, it's a pretty strange place. I've worked for a video game company before, so I knew what to expect, but there were design elements in the building that invoked a combination of "Wow, that's cool" and "Now I know something about their budget priorities that helps explain the crappiness of about 80% of their games." For example, there is a short hallway, maybe fifteen or twenty feet, that is lit entirely with blue lights at about knee level, and has a wide opening on one side, and a small opening on the other. It creates the optical illusion that people coming in the smaller opening are HUGE, and vice-versa. And probably the weirdest thing to me is that most of the doors inside the building, such as to the many offices and things, look like your average wooden door, but don't have turning handles and don't open on hinges. Instead, they slide open along rather bulky tracks above the openings, leaving the door on the outside of the room, next to the door opening. Strange stuff. Oh, and one of thier meeting rooms has for a door a massive wooden panel, like 8ft x 8ft, with no holes or handles. Pushing on one side of the door makes it rotate around the center, secret-bookcase-passageway style. A very funky place.

Part of the appeal of the eye-toy is that you can see yourself on the screen. We used to set one up on a demo system at my work, but hide the camera part amongst a display, and then watch people's reactions as they realized that, not only were they on the screen, but that fireworks were exploding on them or something similiarly silly. The quality didn't look too bad on a TV, as long as you had it focused right. I'm not sure how well it would turn out on a monitor if you were expecting any amount of resolution. Let me know how it works out..

Wade Hixton's Counter Punch. 'nuff said. And while Advance Wars (2) and Fire Emblem aren't exactly underrated, they should be on your must-play list if you're even a marginal strategy fan.

Yeah, obviously this was a horrible, horrible thing. Terrorism is quickly replacing "war" and, while I never thought the end of "war" would be a bad thing, that's what it's looking like. I'm curious, and curious is nowhere near strong enough a word, about what kinds of developments, military or otherwise, will help combat these attacks. Traditional armies, security forces, and even "special forces" seem to be dangerously innefficient, not really accounting for opponents who seem to have no concern for their own lives. Since it looks like fanatic nutjobs aren't in any short supply, someone's going to have to think outside the box on this one, and I hope they do it soon.

Man, they never had anything as cool as an HTML class when I was in high school. Even a boring one. We had "learn to use Microsoft Word" class. Yeah, I skipped that one.

Not for CDs, but a friend of a friend (we all worked at different stores for a video game retail chain) introduced me to the most effective voodoo I've ever seen for cartridge games: You know how you blow in 'em, right? Everybody does that, and sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. Well, when it doesn't, put the game under your shirt (assuming a standard t-shirt or retail-tool polo) and pull it tight around the "open" end of the game, so that your shirt forms a kind of "filter" between your mouth and the inside of the game. Then, blow into that as you normally would. I swear to all that is holy that this has never failed me, even when dealing with ancient, kid-owned NES carts.

MMmm.. While I can't say I'm entirely surprised, I am a little dissapointed. Non-hardcore fans aren't going to notice the few extra moves and other minor changes in this release, so I can understand them holding back, especially so soon after Evo. The $20 price tag on Evo deosn't really help this game either. We've still got a few years before the next generation of consoles comes around, so there's plenty of time to hear good news about a port. Or, heck, VF5 for that matter.

After the merger completion this coming October, Sammy is moving all it's arcade divisions to Sega. Yes yes, I know.. Heck, I've got a buddy that works at Sammy and is constantly burbbling on such matters.. That doesn't make it any less mind-boggling to see these three names together after so many years.

The roster is shaping up to be interesting. It looks like there's at least 7 open slots on the roster (according to that video), and since we know they're drawing from many sources, this could get really cool. I'm looking forward to it. Did anyone else's brain have trouble registering SNK/NeoGeo, Sega, and Sammy all at once? My instincts are rejecting the notion as some kind of blasphemy.

I saw it at E3. The graphics were decent, and it looked really heavy on counters. Like, really, ridiculously heavy... Unless the guys I saw playing were actually from the company or something, I'm thinking there may actually be a "counter" button a la Bushido Blade or similar. The fight looked pretty organic, even the counters looked like they were varied for the particular punch of kick coming in. And when the round was over, the finishing blow did some kind of crazy x-ray thing. I think it was similar to the doctor's attacks from Tenchu 3, but it's been a while and I only saw it once, so I dunno.

From the video, it looks really heavy on linear rush combos and pop-up-to-air -combo stuff. The supers are interesting, if somewhat anticlimactic in that they have these huge dramatic effects for the "dramatic pause" and then a rather understated move effect (although the one guy's slow-mo haymaker was cool). Character designs range from decent to downright silly. Backgrounds aren't bad. The new animation style (outlined in the gamespot review) looks interesting in some of the more complex animations, but seems to cause weirdness when the characters change direction or make abrupt changes in stance. Y'know what it reminds me of? ROTD... Dunno why...

Since I had trouble finding decent info, here's some links for others: THE link: http://www.sammy.co.jp/japanese/product/am...fish/index.html Previews (first one w/ TINY screens): http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=499 http://www.gamespot.com/arcade/action/rumb...ew_6087135.html Screens: http://emulazione.multiplayer.it/mamend/extra/rumblefish.jpg http://www.system16.com/other/screens/rfish.jpg http://www.system16.com/other/screens/rfish_a.jpg (TINY) http://www.arcadiamagazine.com/aou2004/ima..._rumblefish.jpg Movie: http://www.sammy.co.jp/japanese/product/am.../data/movie.zip

Evolution was entertaining, but a step down from the X-Files.. hehe.. There may be a trend here though, maybe duchovny is just a big fan of random cheezy sci-fi. As for Willie Wonka.. Have you gone back and watched the original recently? They used to play it where I worked and it was downright psychotic.

Midway's shaping up for another "innovative" hit alright, featuring awesome graphics just short of Unreal Tournament 2004, never-before seen zombies, angry guys in hazmat suits, indistinctive soldiers, and even some really inspired aliens which can only be described as "people with claws, spikes, and glowy eyes." All of this wrapped up in the awesome story recently tested in the first Resident Evil movie, and countless sci-fi serials before it.. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/area51...ns.html?page=32 And that will be voiced by Marilyn Manson... Duchovny should have fired his agent after Evolution.

"The link works only on one computer - there's no netplay or something like that" - From the link

I'm interested! Mostly because I want to check it out, but I could also use it as a means of transporting programming class homework. I came in kinda late for the other quizzes though (I had to copy anti to get anything right!).

Nice, detailed review. I've had a few people suggest this one and I might just check it out.