kisrael

I doubt it, just because you'd see parallax effects. And if so, who cares? 2D is 2D! ONE LAST TIME: unfortunately, import only and relatively obscure, but Bangai-O proves you wrong. The N64 could do 2D great.

In Japan there was Bangai-O. Were the Rampage remakes 2D or 2 1/2 D? And then some puzzle games, mostly remakes: New Tetris, Pokemon Puzzle League, Dr. Mario.

foggy 3D bubble, whatever. It sure beat 98% of the stuff on PSX... Anyway, I've played Bangai-O for DC, and while I hear the N64 version isn't quite as polished, it would be pushing a TON of sprites around screen...so that's many sprites, I can't think of a game with big sprites off the top of my head.

SNK is much more of a niche market than Nintendo. NeoGeo, while very cool and still kind of around, was not really a player in the mid to late-90s console wars. And (I don't know a ton about this) isn't SNK mostly just Capcom vs. SNK-like fighters and, I dunno, Metal Slug? If the N64 had been only 2D games, or even if its primary first party releases were 2D, would be accused of even more "living in the past" (off of the established franchises) even more than they are. I mean wasn't that the Saturn in a nutshell? Great 2D, suck at 3? Anyway, I think the argument stands. But SNK is an interesting counterpoint.

DADDY!! My little sister put an invalid pointer to a memory address in my program. MAKE HER STOP! Leaky diapers, memory leaks, whatever.

""nuff said"...yeesh. 5 minutes of gooling on PSO BBA and PSOLoad, and I'm still not sure what it has to do with very young gamers....

"tried 3D and didn't do it well". Yeesh. Super Mario 64 was the game that pretty much established the genre, and still stands up very well. Zelda on that system is an undoubted masterpiece. (and Smash Bros, which is also brilliant, is a 2D game that just happens to use polygons anyway) What, you really expected them to even survive in the 90s sticking to their "2D roots"? That's what the Game Boys are for. Shrug. Your loss. I've gotten a lot more mileage out of my gamecube than my PS2, that's for sure. Monkey Ball 1+2, Smash Bros, Metroid Prime, Mario, Zelda, etc, not to mention the way so many more games support 4 players at once. And that "under 13 target" line is just dumb.

I think for political reasons, they're not too likely to ramp up the realism of the crashes. Hell, I'm still mad "Propeller Arena" for DC got canned.

I dunno, I don't see that many Rogue Squadron wannabes except for the "Starfighter" games. The more dominant genre seems to be "jedi running around with a lightsaber", which is in someways closer to SotE, but not as many interesting parts. For some reason I never do well with flying games, and I'm just sick of seeing Nintendo just rehashing rogue squadron. And the jedi hack n' slash is gettin a lil tired as well but they hold my interest better than the flying games. Nothing personal, but this seems like an unfair way of putting it: 1. All though Rogue Leader was a release title, it's not really Nintendo "rehashing" it 2. They've made two games in "classic Star Wars" mode and one in the "Phantom Menace"...that's really not that aggressive of a schedule. 3. And besides, with all the onfoot and non-starcraft vehicle action, you might be getting your wish...this is probably a lot closer to the varied gameplay of SotE than any other game, except within the limits of what was in the movie themselves, not the extended universe (Swoop bikes, heavy use of jet-packs, duels vs main villains like IG88 and Boba Fett, etc) and not quite so FPS-y.

I dunno, I don't see that many Rogue Squadron wannabes except for the "Starfighter" games. The more dominant genre seems to be "jedi running around with a lightsaber", which is in someways closer to SotE, but not as many interesting parts.

I dunno, Parappa seems a lot more fair, at least for the early levels

yes. this is the harshest game. I think you can look up a cheat code that'll let the game play by itself so you can see it all at least...

Given that they've included the original in a two player form, it's gonna be hard for them not to top it... Out of curiosity, are you more looking forward to Luke (Hoth on foot, Endor on Speederbike and AT-ST) or Wedge (good' ol' spaceships)?

Well, probably. True for my money, neither holds a candle to flying fighter craft in that galaxy far far away. It'll be interesting how the stormtrooper attack segments of the new Rogue Squadron come out. At least there will always be the traditional flyin' Wedge path, not just the new movie scene Luke way...

Pod Racer had this insane learning curve... easy, easy, easy, mostly easy, mostly easy, IMPOSSIBLE if it wasn't for the ability to totally dial down the eney's speed and AI, I wouldn't have seen all that much of this game.

Wow. I can't believe you're already coming that close to bringing up Godwin's Law (the one that says once people start talkin' on a message board about someone being like the Nazis, any chance that the conversation will be productive is Nil)

phew...usually threads with this kind of title aren't quite as nice as this one could be. :-) Off the top of my head (not even looking at my collection) I think Monkey Ball (or better yet, Monkey Ball 2, though it's not as cheap these days) would be a good bet. The normal game is accesible because of the super simple controls, though might get frustrating (except often kids that age don't even give a dang about getting through a game) but the minigames...the kids will almost assuredly find at least a few they like, plus assuming you have a memory card, it will remember the settings so you can set everything as easy as possible, and then let them play on their own. Bright colors and great music, simple but fun gameplay, not too harsh when you lose, monkeys....sounds like a winner for that age group to me! (for every age group, actually) Oh, one caveat...some of the games are locked at first (#[email protected]#[email protected]#$ frickin' who wants to play single player to unlock multiplayer games????) So either find a buddy who has a unlocked save game and can copy it to your memory card, or do what I did and just play the easy level over and over until you get enough points to unlock everything. (I put it in "Picture in picture" and watched a movie...) Unless you're an expert gamer yourself, in which case you can master all the levels that kicked my butt, rather than staying on the easy stuff all the time.

I'm not sure how much of this is sour grapes because my friend (who was a total newbie at AW2, but good at wargames in general) can usually beat me, but it seems like those games go on FOREVER. You spend so much time just waiting for the other guy to finish moving, and I would guess that two almost evenly matched players could go at it for a long while before one finally captures the HQ or otherwise gains the overwhelming advantage.

It was a very decent game. Especially the first level, but some of the one on one fights were super terrific. I think, though, that a lot of people (myself included) didn't like its huge, sparsely populated FPS levels, especially when combined with some rather severe difficulty. You'd walk walk walk walk walk, screw up when you finally got to something dangerous, and then have to walk walk walk again if you hadn't gotten to the checkpoint. Even some of the non-FPS levels had that feel if memory servers (it has been a while), like wasn't the Swoop race rather long and difficult? As part of a larger thing, Shadows of the Empire is interesting; I think it was a unique attempt to do a multi-media (not "multimedia", neccesarily) "expanded universe" project, with the different things showing different parts of the same story. The game wsa Dash Rendar, I think the comics were from the viewpoint of Boba Fett, not sure about the Novels. There were toys released as well. I had a neat book that was all about SotE as large multipronged project.

I saw her live in '94 or '95. She was HAWT.

The controls for that game suck like a thousand dollar whore. Did you heart that Lady Miss Kier from Deee-lite is suing 'em? http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsartic...e.asp?nid=17976 I think it's a pretty weak case myself, even though I loved the group. (Although the fact they offered her money for her likeness at first makes the case a bit stronger than it would be.)

The diversity of opinions on controllers here is pretty amazing. I put Nintendo consistently at the highest in terms of controllers, each one (except maybe the GC) raising the ante in what a controller should do, and always comfortable. A lot of people love Dual Shock 2, I think it pretty much sucks. Some people think the DC controller is the worst thing ever, other people think it rocks. I think Colecovision and 7800 are the only ones I haven't heard defended...and they're both similar in a way. Different strokes, etc.

That's a buttplug if I ever saw one. It's a sad world when three people watch a Ring Pop commercial at the same time, and when the announcer says "take pictures of yourself doing crazy things with Ring Pops!", they all bust up laughing at the same thought. Oh, is that the 'notch' he was talking about? More of a ridge or a groove than a notch. Yeah, that does look like a buttplug. Wonder if they were the same shape back then.

hey those are their cheap "boss" line, of course they were crappy, but they wernt the Command Control Joysticks!!!!!!!! hello different product completely!!!! Oh...well, you said Wico w/ the notch. The giant bat doesn't have a notch, does it? And I don't really see a notch in the stick of the other ones. I thought you were talking about the "flight" like control grip. So what notch ya mean?

no no no no! the Wico command controll sticks were red! like this: Not all Wico sticks were red, friend. Behold the Wico Boss! (and behold it turning off center)