Rogmeister

I don't think this is fair. You should have labelled this "The Newest Consoles" rather than "The Current Consoles". I feel a console is still "current" as long as new games are coming for it. I don't know about the original XBox but I know there are still games coming out for the PS2 and there are even a few GameCube games coming out (Radio Allergy, for instance, is due out at the end of this month unless it gets delayed again). Of the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360, I have nada.

I received two video games yesterday... Battalion Wars for the GameCube Peter Jackson's King Kong for the Xbox These were bought via Amazon.com's Marketplace program. Unfortunately, I was supposed to get a GameCube version of King Kong. I e-mailed the seller who says he basically screwed up...he was selling his son's copy and he accidentally put it in the GameCube section instead of the Xbox one and he doesn't have a GC copy. While I'm trying to concentrate on GameCube purchases these days, I decided to just keep this Xbox game since I do have that system. I think this gives me about 76 Xbox games. Battalion Wars brings my GameCube collection up to 118. I don't think I have any other games on order right now. I have a little project going now...I call it The Pittsburgh Pirates Video Game Project. I've decided that with every 10 games my baseball team (the Pirates) win, I'll allow myself to order $50 worth of games. They got off to a good start, sweeping the Astros in the first 3 games of the season. Unfortunately, they then lost their next two games to the Cincinatti Reds. I hope they win today or their record will fall to 3-3. If they win, they'll still have a winning record at 4-2. I still have subscriptions to a few video game magazines. One is PSM...I'm not sure why I subscribed to that one again. It was cheap but I rarely buy PS2 games anymore and they may stop releasing PS2 games before my subscriptiion expires and I've no plans to buy a PSP or PS3.. Nintendo Power is a similar story. I don't have a Wii and don't plan to get one and GameCube games are few and far between. At least, I do have a DS so the magazine is worth checking out for that. When I subscribed, my subscription included a player's guide to the new Legend of Zelda game and a CD of the soundtrack so that made the price worth it to me. I also get Game Informer which covers all the systems as well as Tips & Tricks and Hardcore Gamer Magazine though those latter two should be expiring soon. I think I'll let all my gaming magazine subsriptions expire when their time comes. I'm a bit behind in my game reviews. After today I'll try to do a couple in the next several days. To make it easier on me, I'll probably do reviews of games I've played recently so I don't need to play them a lot to be ready to do a write-up of them.

The Pirates win the World Series! Okay, not really...just in a video game I have. Baseball Advance for the GBA was a game I heard good things about so I managed to get a copy about a year or so ago. I do like the game...it has an interesting way to bat. You hold a button in and release it when you want to swing the bat. There's a round target you can move around and try to place it where the ball's coming to make contact when you swing. The better the hitter, the larger this blue target. On my Pirate team, the target is smallest obviously for my pitchers (it's not so big for guys like Jack Wilson, either) and largest for Brian Giles. When the ball is hit you get a further back shot where you can see your fielders. They are pretty small but you can still make them out. You can play an exhibition game or a full season of 162 games or just go right into playoff mode. I had my team go through and win the World Series against the Chicago White Sox. Then the credits roll. My one problem with this game is that the rosters are completely out of date. I play as the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pirates team in this game only has one guy (SS Jack Wilson) who is still with the Pirates in real life. The game has the logos of both THQ and Sega so I'm not sure who's really responsible for this. Good game, though. This was the only baseball game I could play on my Nintendo DS until this year...Major League Baseball 2K7 has now come out for it. But whereas the ratings for the console versions of this game have been so-so (mostly garnering around a 7 on a scale of 1-10), the DS version has been dubbed to be absolutely horrible. So I guess I'll continue to play my Basseball Advance, outdated rosters and all.

I only have the first volume of MAT so I can't vouch for either volume 2 or 3...I once bought the XBox version of the 2nd volume but never played it. I heard someone saw one or two of the games on it (especially Wizard of Wor) was too fast so I wound up giving that copy to someone as a gift.

Midway Arcade Treasures System: GameCube Publisher: Midway Rating: T (Teen) Memory Requirement: 4 blocks As with my first review, this is a collection of arcade games. Midway gave us 3 volumes of this series...Volume 2 had 21 games, I think, and they got theme-oriented with the third series which was all racing games. This series contains adaptations of no less than 24 games that were originally games for video arcades. They include: Spy Hunter, Defender, Defender II, Gauntlet, Joust, Joust II, Paperboy, Rampart, Robotron 2084, Smash TV, Bubbles, Roadblasters, Blaster, Rampage, Sinistar, Super Sprint, Marble Madness, 720, Toobin', KLAX, SPLAT!, Satan's Hollow, Vindicator and Root Beer Tapper. I think that Root Beer Tapper may have originally been called simply Tapper and was renamed to keep kids from wanting to haunt real bars. And Defender II was originally called Stargate...possibly they had to change that because of the TV show Stargate? Perhaps copyright issues were at stake here? I played many of the games on this disc several times but some I only tried a few times because I either was never a fan of the original arcade game, was not very familiar with a few (some I had never played at all) and just never cared for some. I couldn't figure out quite what to do in Toobin', for instance, and couldn't get the moves right for 720 (720 degrees but I can't get that raised o up there). Of the games I was familiar with, I generally liked them a lot. I don't know if I'd ever played Joust II but I seem to prefer the first Joust game. The second offers a few twists including changing play fields. Defender was always a favorite but the controls are a bit hard to adjust to here...in the original arcade machine you had a joystick and about 7 buttons to use. My main problem is my ship kept switching direction when I didn't want it to. The controls for Paperboy and one or two others took a bit of getting used to, also. I'm sure I'll get used to them sooner or later. Robotron 2084 has one button firing to the right, one button firing up, etc. but it's easier to just use the little yellow "C" stick on the right which lets you fire at whichever direction you point it towards. And Marble Madness was originally played using a trakball...a regular GameCube controller just isn't the same. Smash TV is fun...I never played the arcade version but have played the SNES version Super Smash TV. But one of my favorites here is a game I never played in an arcade but which I played for the first time on Atari's portable Lynx system. That game is the puzzle game KLAX. It's a match the brick kind of game...they come rolling down at you in 5 columns...you make them disappear by matching 3 in a row of the same colors. There are goal-specific rounds. One round you may have to just make a certain number of "Klax's"...others you may have to do diagonal ones, another round you may have to reach a certain number of points or survive capturing a certain number of bricks. You play by "catching" each in your holder (it can hold up to 5 at a time) and depositing in any of 5 rows that you wish. It's what they always say about puzzle games...easy to learn, difficult to master. Overall, I had a lot of fun with this and will probably get the 2nd volume soon. I'm not so sure about the 3rd volume. I don't know if a collection of nothing but racing games would appeal to me. Roger's Rating: B

Yeah, the DS Lite seems very popular. The only thing I can see them doing is maybe making it available in more colors or something like that.

My main credit card is an Amazon.com Visa...the nice thing about that is that, as my rewards program, I tend to get a $25 gift certificate now and then towards Amazon.com purchases. One arrived in today's mail and I used it to order a copy of the GameCube version of Call to Duty 2: Big Red One. In other gaming news for me, I'm trying something that will likely result in my buying fewer video games. I call it my Pittsburgh Pirates Video Game Project. Other than special occasions like the above, the only time I'll buy any video games is every time the Pirates (the baseball team I follow) win another 10 games (like after their 10th win, their 20th win, etc.). Whenever that occurs, I'll allow myself to get online and spend $40 on video games. It can be for one full-priced game but will most likely be a multi-game purchase as few games I buy these days are over $20 (except for the occasional DS game). The Pirates actually won their first game of the season last night so we're on our way already. I was going to put up a new review in my GameCube series but I'm playing Midway Arcade Treasures and there's 24 games in that sucker so I haven't even gotten to half of them yet. So it will be another day (possibly two) before my next review is up.

You can shop around online if you decide to go that route. I've bought from eBay in the past but not so much recently. I mostly buy from Amazon.com (especially from their 3rd party "Marketplace" sellers) and have bought a few things from Half.com recently. I even went back to Ebay recently for a few items.

Thank you. My next review will be the one other compilation I have, Midway Arcade Treasures but I'm sure I won't get to putting that up until at least tomorrow.

I'm starting a little project in which I'm going to play each of my GameCube games one by one and do a review of each. I'm no professional reviewer, of course, so this is just for fun. I may go through long stretches where I do a review every day...then I may slow down from time to time. Some games I've played a lot, some not so much...or not at all. I have been buying a lot of games lately so many will indeed be completely new to me. At first I was going to do it strictly alphabetically but I've now decided to just review whatever I feel like. So today I decided to start with an arcade compilation... 1. Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary (Yes, I'm going to number these reviews so we see how far I am into my collection as we go along.) Publisher: Namco Rating: E10+ (Suitable for anyone 10 years old and up) Memory Requirement: 4 blocks First of all, Namco has not been making video games for 50 years...that industry started in the 1970's. Namco started back in 1955 and their first product were children's rocking horses. They eventually got into other products...eventually including video games. This game is actually comprised of over a dozen different games, a compilation of old games that appeared in game arcades in the 70s and 80s. The ones I've played so far... Pac-Man--I like this game though a GameCube controller isn't the best for this game. I'm sure most of you know how to play this...eat the dates and avoid the ghosts until you can eat the power pills that make them vulnerable. Pacmania--A 3D version of Pac-Man, this has to be unlocked by reaching certain scores in Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. In this one, Pac-Man can actually jump which helps him out...he can often jump right over a ghost about to get him. Ms. Pac-Man--Many like this even better than the original Pac-Man. One reason is it has 4 different mazes whereas Pac-Man has just one. I never liked the 2nd maze...it's just too hard. Galaga--A space shooter that was a sequel to Galaxian (also in this game) where you're fighting enemies that look like multi-colored insects. This is one of the few games I scored over 100,000 points in the arcade. At one point you can link two ships together for double the firepower. This disc also includes a sequel which, like Pacmania, has to be unlocked. Dig Dug--In this, you create your own maze, digging underground while dealing with dragons and other enemies. I once scored 490,000 points on the arcade version, the most I ever scored on an arcade machine. Rally-X--This is a racing game where you have to drive around and collect flags while avoiding a handful of other cars that try to smash into you. It's simple but challenging and fun. Sky Kid--This is a game I don't remember ever playing until now...you are flying a plane who has to shoot down other planes and pick up a bomb and drop it onto an enemy ship out over the ocean. Mappy--This is one of my all-time favorites. You control Mappy, a police mouse, who is in a department store where various cats are out to get you. To clear a stage, you have to capture the gifts in the store before the cats can get you. Other games on the disc, which I haven't got to yet, include Galaxian, Pole Position and Pole Position II (a racing game and its sequel), Xevious (an overhead shooter), Bosconian (space shooter), Dragon Spirit and Rolling Thunder (an action spy game). The rules on all of these games are pretty simple and most are fun though there's a few I'm not crazy about but others may like. Most only require the use of the joystick (thumbstick on a GameCube controller) and one, sometimes two, buttons. This game is also available for the Xbox and PS2...and the PC...and the Game Boy Advance...and... Roger's Rating: B+ Special Note: For the time being, this blog will be primarily involved with my GameCube reviews, so I've changed the title of my blog here to reflect this.

That's pretty good. I expect to buy less the 2nd quarter. I've decided to play more and buy loess. I've also decided to start a little project I'm calling The Pittsburgh Pirates Video Game Project. With every 10 Pirates wins, I'll allow myself $50 worth of video game purchases. The Pirates haven't seen 80 wins since 1992, I don't think, so it looks like 7 will be the magic number over the next 6 months...

Last year I had given myself a limit...no more than 20 game purchases during the year. For this year, I decided to forget about any limits. And it's a good thing...I've already gotten 52 games this year and still have 4 on their way. Here is a list of what I've received so far this year: 1. Go! Go! Hypergrind (GameCube, Jan. 5) 2. Red Faction 2 (GC, Jan. 5) 3. Dark Summit (GC, Jan. 5) Free game 4. Avalanche 1080 (GC, Jan. 6) 5. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC, Jan. 7) 6. Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (GBA, Jan. 7. Serious Sam: Next Encounter (GC, Jan. 9) 8. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC, Jan. 10) 9. From Russia With Love (GC, Jan. 10) 10. The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer (GC, Jan. 11) 11. Nolan Ryan’s Baseball (SNES, Jan. 12) 12. WWE: Day of Reckoning (GC, Jan. 25) 13. Kao the Kangaroo, Round 2 (GC, Jan. 25) 14. Viewtiful Joe (GC, Jan. 25) 15. X-Men Legends (GC, Jan. 25) 16. CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution Country (PS2, Feb. 5) 17. SSX On Tour (GC, Feb. 10) 18. Alien Hominid (GC, Feb. 22) 19. Zoocube (GC, Feb. 22) 20. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (GC, Feb. 22) 21. Chibi-Robo! (GC, Feb. 24) 22. Donkey Konga (GC, Feb. 26) 23. Odama (GC, Feb. 26) 24. Super Bubble Pop (GC, Feb. 26) 25. Madden NFL 07 (GC, March 5) 26. Wario World (GC, March 5) 27. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (GC, March 5) 28. Puyo Pop Fever (GC, March 7) 29. P.N. 03 (GC, March 30. WTA Tour Tennis (GC, March 31. True Crime: Streets of L.A. (GC, March 9) 32. Batman Begins (GC, March 10) 33. All-Star Baseball 2003 (GC, March 12) 34. MLB SlugFest 20-04 (GC, March 12) 35. True Crime: New York City (GC, March 12) 36. All-Star Baseball 2004 (GC, March 15) 37. Tomb Raider: Legend (GC, March 21) 38. Roadkill (GC, March 21) 39. Metroid Prime Hunters (DS, March 21) 40. Pac-Man World 3 (GC, March 23) 41. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (GC, March 23) 42. Mario Party 6 (GC, March 24) 43. Puyo Pop Fever (DS, March 26) 44. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (DS, March 28) 45. Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams (GC, March 28) 46. Tak: The Great Juju Challenge (GC, March 28) 47. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 3: Night of the Quinkan (GC, March 28) 48. Gun (GC, March 29) 49. Pool Paradise (GC, March 29) 50. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (GC, March 30) 51. Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary (GC, March 31) 52. Medal of Honor: European Assault (GC, March 31) The four games I have on the way are Battalion Wars, Peter Jackson's King Kong, The Sims 2: Pets and SSX 3. These are all for the GameCube. I think I'm going to scale back on my game buying now...I will allow myself to buy one game every time my Pittsburgh Pirates win 10 games...knowing my team, that will be about once a month...

I know a lot of people are feeling that putting Mario & Sonic in an Olympics game is kind of lame...though I'm not sure what other kind of game you might fit both in. They're completely different. I guess Sonic will be the big favorite in the track & field races, but Mario should dominate in the hammer throw

I never got into RPGs but I voted for the one known as Final Fantasy III here in the U.S. as I do have that for the SNES. I've tried it a couple of times...still can't get into it.

Ah well! I can annoy my sister-in-law with that. Everytime I go up to my brother's and am playing Zoo Keeper, she usually asks me to turn the sound down. Wait'll she hears Baby Mario wailing...

Yesterday I received my 10th game for my Nintendo DS. Considering I bought my unit back in 2005, I haven't exactly been splurging on the system but I've been buying more in the last half-year or so and will probably continue to purchase games off and on (I do have one more on order right now). Here's what I have so far in alphabetical order... 1. Animal Crossing: Wild World is the sequal to the GameCube hit. I don't love it as much as I did the original. Maybe I'm just tired of the whole thing. 2. Metroid Prime Hunters is one of my more recent purchases and I haven't really started playing it yet. 3. Metroid Prime Pinball was one of my first 5 games on the other hand and one I enjoy. I would like to see some more traditional pinball games come to the DS, however. 4. New Super Mario Bros. is terrific and one I played pretty much non-stop for a couple of weeks. 5. Nintendogs: Dachshund & Friends is one I like a lot but haven't played in awhile. I should get back to it soon. There's a cat version coming out (but not made by Nintendo as I recall) called Purr Pals. I'll pick that up, too, if it gets good reviews. 6. Puyo Pop Fever is the game I got yesterday. I got the GameCube version recently and enjoyed it so much that I decided to pick up this portable version of it. 7. Super Mario 64 DS is another game I need to get back to and play. I really like the Mario games, evidenced by how many I have, both on this and other systems. 8. Super Princess Peach is another game that takes place in the Mario universe. 9. Yoshi's Island DS is yet another. I haven't really played this yet...I hope Baby Mario doesn't bawl like he did in the SNES version...that was so annoying 10. Zoo Keeper was my first puzzle game on the system...I find it interesting that the two puzzle games I have for the DS are so far the only DS games I have made by a company other than Nintendo. I do need to get at least one more puzzle game. I think it's a law that every gamer has to have Tetris....

I'd like to see a good up-to-date baseball game for it. The early word is that Major League Baseball 2K7 on the DS is horrible so I won't be going near that one.

Metroid Prime Hunters for the DS arrived today...I only tried it out briefly. Some parts seem to be pretty dark so I may have to adjust to that. I also got a pair of GameCube titles today, RoadKill and Tomb Raider: Legend. I've also officially decided to avoid Major League Baseball 2K7 as a possible DS purchase. I've seen a few reader reviews at IGN which say the game is absolutely horrible.

Even though I voted for the first one, I do like Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure which I've played on both the SNES and Jaguar. I'm not sure there's much of a difference but I think it's an important game for the Jaguar because the Jag never got much in the way of good platform games. By the way, I now have Pitfall: The Lost Expedition coming for my GameCube. It seems like there's been a Pitfall game for every generatiion. When will there be one out for the Wii?

I probably don't agree about Tekken 3, Hot Shots Golf and Medal of Honor as I think those are great though there's a moment in the 2nd Medal of Honor where you create a robot to help you and it just looks so bizarre that it kind of messes up that part of the game. Overall, though, I'm also a huge fan of the system and it's one of just two systems that I have reached 200 games for, the Super Nintendo being the other.

Of the ones I've played, I had to go with Donkey Kong Country also. It's just the most fun for me. The first arcade game was fun and certainly ground-breaking...but with onlly 4 different screens I eventually am ready for something else. There's lots of different things to do in Donkey Kong Country and the graphics and sound for the old SNES are pretty amazing.

I've been saying (here and elsewhere) that I was going to stop buying games for my GameCube library once I'd reached an even 100 games which seemed like a nice round number. Well, I've decided to change my mind about that...there are just too many games I'm interested in that I'd still like to have. So, as l ong as I can find games that still interest me, I'll keep buying them. Interestingly, I've not bought much in the way of Xbox games lately and that's what I mostly was buying last year. I may get Superman Returns soon, though, since I see that's now down to $20 at my local Wal-Mart. I don't know what it is about the GameCube...maybe it's those cute little discs...but I really dig playing it. I now have 5 games on order for it...Tomb Raider: Legend, Pac-Man World 3, Pitfall: The Lost Expedition, Star Wars--Jedi Knights II: Jedi Outcast and Roadkill. I did decide to cancel my pre-order of Radio Allergy. I just don't think it's a game I would really enjoy. I also finally ordered a couple more games for my Nintendo DS. I only have 8 games for it so I'll soon be bumping that collection up to 10 titles (plus the 3 GBA games I have that I can play on it). The two I have coming are Puyo Pop Fever and Metroid Prime Hunters. I understand that's a rare FPS game for the DS. I wonder how many others there are? I know there's a James Bond game for it though I've heard some don't like it so I'll probably pass on it. I know the PSP (which I don't have) got a Medal of Honor game recently. I wonder if there's any chance the DS will get a World War 2 first-person shooter?

Speaking of Mario, can someone explain to me why all the Mario Party games for GameCube won't go down in price? Today I wound up ordering a used copy of Mario Party 5 for about $30...I can live with this as the item is described in "like new" condition. But actual new still-sealed copies (at Amazon.com's Marketplace) are going for $125 and up! What's that all about?

The website IGN.com has picked the 25 best games ever this week for the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox as well as the GBA. They figure that they've all been supplanted by new hardware and this is the year they'll gasp their last for the most part so they may as well celebrate them by picking (in their opinion) what are the best games for each system. GameCube--I was surprised to see that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess wasn't even considered since they consider it to be primarily a Wiii title. Still, it was made for the GameCube so I didn't think that was a correct decision. Of the games that were allowed, Metroid Prime came in at #1. Since I have more GameCube games than XBox or PS2 games, it's no surprise I have more of their GameCube titles than those of the other systems. In fact, there are only 4 GC titles listed I don't have in my collection: Baten Kaitos, Battalion Wars, Killer 7 and Pikmin 2. XBox--No big surprise here as Halo came in at #1 and Halo 2 came in at #2. I have both of those as well as another of the XBox top 5 in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Unlike the GC, there were some traditional sports titles in this console's top games including my favorite baseball title, MVP Baseball 2005. PS2--God of War came in at #1 and I do have that but, just as my library for this is 3rd among the big 3, so is the number of games I have that made the top 25. The only other game that made the PS2 Top 5 that I have is the #2 title, Grand Theft Auto III. I'm kind of surprised that that was the top-listed of the GTA games. GBA--I never had a GBA unit so it's no surprised I have none of the top 5 here. I do have 3 GBA titles and I think the two Mario games I have made the list. Their pick for #1? Wario Ware Twisted. Overall, an interesting list and you may want to go over there to read their actual thoughts on each of the games. I jot down the entire lists in a notebook...they may be good suggestions for future game purchases.

No, I don't have that. I never had an Intellivision, to be honest, though I did have an Atari. I have Activision Anthology for the PS2 and an Activision collection or two...for the XBox, I think. One DS game I'm waiting to find out if it's any good is the new baseball game.