HatefulGravey

I looked into the light guns on good ol' Amazon and the reviews for the Dreamcast are in fact scary. Seeing the quality of the Saturn light gun I thought for sure the Dreamcast would have something like that and I was dead wrong about that. What gun should I get? As I understand it there are only 2 and both have some strong negatives listed in the reviews. In your opinion(s) which is the better of my options? Is there a way to mod the import version to work for the Dreamcast I have or something? That might be cool. Hell, does the PS2 have better stuff for this? I don't have one right now but I can get one and I know there were a few gun games my brother had for the system. I never played any of them, but he seemed happy with them. I just want to be able to play a few of those games without too much trouble.

Well, I can get Stunners for the Saturn on town from the local store. I think they are $15 each but I've spent more on less for sure. Maybe I'll get them anyway and hook them up or not from time to time. I have to say I had hoped that there would be more gun games for the Dreamcast, but House of the Dead may have me sold anyway. Area 51 on the Saturn might be too tempting for me not to try it. I looked at some videos, and it isn't too far off but does it alway have the cross hairs on the screen or what? I never actually saw anyone playing it, just screen captures so I couldn't tell if they were playing with the gun or a controller.

I'm 27. I remember some arcade machines in odd places. I remember riding my bike to a laundry mat down the road to play Ms Pac Man and Tron there. To this day I still look at these places as I pass to see if maybe I could stop and play a game. This is the perfect place for a machine btw, people have change and time to kill. There was one arcade in my city by the time I got old enough to enjoy it. I was still a little young to really get into it then. I used to go with my uncle. It was rare that mom would let me go as she had the opinion that they were dark holes for sin and corruption in the middle of the mall. It wasn't a large arcade, and it was mostly fighting games at the time. By the time fighting games were allowed in my house for me to get good at them the arcade was gone so I couldn't go up there and show off.

So yesterday I picked up a Dreamcast from a local pawn shop. I got 2 controllers, 2 memory cards (the ones with like 4 memory cards built into each one) and 6 games for $50. Both Sonic Adventure games were in the set so I was pretty happy with the deal. To the point, I was thinking about hooking my Saturn up to the TV in my MAME cab to play Area 51 and the like with friends and get the "arcade feel" as much as possible. Now I'm thinking maybe the Dreamcast would be better. I saw House of the Dead and that made me think about using the Dreamcast. So, which system would work better for this and what do you think would be more fun? What gun games should I get for them? Is the quality of the light guns for these systems even worth the effort? Also, I'm leaning toward the Dreamcast so I can play MvC2 on the machine. I tried to emulate it with mixed results so I may just hack some DC controllers into my control panel and go that way.

OMG, WRONG FREAKING FORUM, SORRY, ITS HUMP DAY!

I find it ever refreshing how adult these threads get sometimes. To the point, it doesn't sound like the "crash" really screwed many things up too bad. I have always had the impression that the crash had more to do with arcades then home systems. There were just too many arcades and too many cloned games and poor designs being thrown out there with the hope that they would make big money. I clearly wasn't of age to be aware of a crash in anything but my toy blocks around the time. Reading about the crash and listening to people talk about it the crash just never seemed that dramatic. If anything I think we can thanks this time in the market for showing companies how to do video games right. Sure, there are always people that try to do it wrong, but I think for the most part we can thank the fall of gaming in the 80s for the success in modern gaming. Nothing helps you do things right like paying for doing them wrong the first time. I do with arcades were still on every corner though. That would be sweet.

There is more to Blue-Ray then movies. Sony may have spent too much money on the format, I honestly don't know what they spent, but there is much more value to that format then TV. This happens all the time, someone invents product A for this one thing, product A turns out to be the best them for something entirely different. I can't agree with that at all. Nintendo seems to be bullet proof. I think it has something to do with selling a cheap system and then $1,000 in extra attachments to play your games. Can we agree this is Nintendo's business model? They have done it with every system since the SNES and people still flock to them. The PS3 is high on the list of things to own with my non-gamer friends. Sure, they play some games, but they are not "core gamers". They see Blue-Ray and Netflix in one box with internet access for their tv. The 360 is a little more "pure gaming" in function and even that has Netflix, access to social networks, ESPN3 stuff, News.... To think of modern systems as nothing more then games is false. They are much much more and people see that. Do they cost money? Sure, they cost a lot of money sometimes. Then again I know people with $200 sun glasses, and they aren't what I would call "core sun glass wearers" either. I think it is safe to say I liked Nintendo a lot more before we started this conversation about the Wii and all that. Back to the point of the thread, and my original point about it. I can't see where this will gain alot of steam with the casual gamer. I expect there will be enough negative press and the cost will be too high for people to want to test this out. There are going to be 12 year olds that have to have it, but they wont get it till Christmas anyway. This will be something to see I guess.

Holy crap! I would have never thought of that but now that I'm thinking about it that does seem like a great idea. I would just worry about it being to harsh on the metal, but it seems to work great. This is something to keep in mind for the games that are really bad off if nothing else.

Almost said the same thing in my post. But then I remembered I now people that say "lol". Losers! I have noticed the same thing and didn't say it to stay out of trouble. Seems like a European thing to me.

Where can I play this thing. That is pretty freaking cool. Thats a lot of time spent though. I would like to see a video of this thing in action.

Oh man, this means there will more then likely be a Passion Purple Jimmy up at an auction in that area soon. I always wanted a POS Passion Purple SUV, its the only part of my back robbery plan that isn't in place yet. I'm going to have to get up there and buy that thing. Really, just WTF was this guy thinking? "MUST HAVE MORE METH!!, MUST HAVE MORE METH!!"?

Who says "snes"? I see that 2 people have voted that way, but no one has commented on that. Thats just silly. I say S.N.E.S. as it isn't a word, but an acronym. I have never heard "snes" but I do hear "nes" often when people talk about the NES.

I'm thinking about using a more modern TV in my MAME cab. It would just make things a lot easier for me. So I decided to look into bezel images for my TV to cover up some of the black that is left in the screen. Some games just leave a lot of black around the game. I can get the normal bezels to work, but I can't get the larger ones I find to work at all. Can someone with some know how please tell me what to do? Treat me like a dumby if you have to but I want to get this working. I found some images I like here: http://www.cooleywire.com/jimmyh/mame/artwork.html but I can't get them to work at all. I have tried just about everything I know to do. Please explain how to make these work if you know of more like these that would be handy too. I know next to nothing about making these things to fit what I need but something tells me I'll know more about it real soon. I'm thinking I'm going to have to learn to make them to get that I want done.

I'm not a fan of Nintendo's home systems anymore. They went a down a childish road with the GameCube but I got the system and liked it enough to play it alittle. They really screwed the pouch with the Wii IMO. Uber childish and 3rd party companies are doing too much with the system for me to care about. Atleast nothing that stands out. They couldn't even get HD. In short I feel like they fell WAY behind. They have also left their orginal market to make kids games only. In the hand held market I've been burnt by Nintendo too many times to care anymore. I got the GBA, then came the GBASP, I got that too because I thought it was worth it. Then the DS came out and I didn't get it because I knew there was a better version coming soon. So I got the DS Lite and to be honest the games that were good on it were also good on the N64 and other systems. I owned very few games for the thing by the end because there just seemed to be very few games worth buying. I still think they have the ability to do something right, I just don't think they know how to make games for adults anymore.

A few point to be made here. They block systems that are modded because it is illegal to do that. Sure, the company that makes the system doesn't want you modding it. They don't want you modding it because there is no good reason to mod a modern system but to allow copy rights to be broken. Be honest, thats what that is all about. It is illegal because of the FCC. They aprove an electrical device to perform certain task, a modded console works beyound that. I agree with banning systems from online play once modded because it could allow cheating in multiplayer, and I think people that have to cheat in multiplay should be burnt at the stake. I agree that DLC being only on your hard drive sucks and that means you may lose it in the future. Its the thing I hate most about modern gaming. That said, the EULA says you aren't buying the game, you are buying the right to play it. That makes a big difference in the way games are stored and played in the future. This is why I have a problem with DLC, I want to buy the game. I can't, so I do what I can. In all things vote with your money! I know it sucks, and thats why I'm not doing it either, but the more you let them get away with the more then will get away with. Thats a fact. These companies want to make money not help the customer. I like the idea of getting rid of region coding in all forms of media, and would love to see more quality from my $400 piece of hardware so I'm good with both of those for sure. I would add the following: If you are going to have DLC out on the same day the game launches it should have been on the disc. Dragon Age, looking at you here. $60 not enough for the game, gotta spend another $15 to download more stuff as soon as I get the game home on launch day? Not advertisments in games. Advertisments are how you pay for something without paying money for it. You could pay $20 to watch that football game or you can hear about eSurance. When I pay $60 for a game I don't want to have to see advertisements too!

NEVER MIND, I'm DUMB!

While I don't have answers for your questions I feel the need to give you some helpful advice. First though, if you already have a MAME cab start ignoring me now. If you are going to build a cab for all this start thinking of how you want to control switching between emulators now. Also, start thinking about how you are going to play your arcade games. Are you going to use those xbox sticks or a IPAC set up and make what you want, or what? Also, think about how you are going to hook all those controllers up to the machine and where you are going to store the ones you aren't using at the time. All these things can be tricky and can be sloppy without proper planning. In the end I just use the arcade panel I built for everything and the result is great. Using a wide screen for these games can also be tricky. Many games don't scale right. This is something I'm working on with my machine now as a modern screen would be a lot easier to use them the older style tv I have in my cab right now.

Rage quiting is well known to those of us that play COD. The problem really is when someone rage quits and you are trying to join a game you are thrown into the game that made them quit. So, they get mad because they are losing their ass, and now you are losing your ass. There isn't often much you can do to recover from it and your Win/Lose ratio suffers. Not that it really matters to me, but I know people that get pretty upset by that too. Just play the game, if you suck get your face kicked in and learn from it. This is how people learned to play 2D fighters in the 90s and how I learned to play chess. Makes you a better winner by showing you what losing feels like and sooner or later you learn what you are doing wrong and stop losing. I think this is a great idea. As for the people with bad connections, get a better connection. There are a lot of connection options out there now. Even in my small town I have 3 different ISP options. If you don't have options yet they are coming fast and life will get better.

Again, untill I personally see the game in my house I can't be sure we will get the game. Why are people so sure we are going to get it like they have forgotten the last 10 years? Just watch, the trucks carrying the shipments of the games will all fall into the center of the earth.

Yeah don't go counting on that one. One company may fold, hell all the old companies we know may fold, but video gaming is here to stay at this point. There are simply too many people spending too much money on these things for them to go away like that again. Someone will be making games as long as people will buy them like they do now. Oversaturation here is only really applying to the motion gaming crap and the gimmicks. Good games are selling like gang busters, and people are still buying the systems themselves. I can't speak for the motion additions, but who really cares anyway?

I hear ya! Thanks for putting all that information together. I have to tomorrow off and was going to have the time to do the research, but you just helped me out a freaking ton man. Thanks oh so very much. This will make a great Sunday after noon project. You may very well have improve the quality of my gaming time by a bunch. Thanks again, much props.

My man! Its about time someone else showed some class in this thread!

Post crash for me. I love my pre crash stuff, but there are so many good games in the 16 bit erea that just can't be ignored.

There is just no way they are coming out with new stuff yet. I really think it has more to do with hardware limits then anything else. The stuff out now does really really crazy things if you think about it. To release a new system they would have to be making a marked advance in the way things look and feel and there doesn't seem to be much room for that right now. Put another way, it really can't look too much better then it already does. I really hope these motion controls don't become too popular for real games. Its ok for party games, or casual games, but I don't want to see them using it for Forza/GT or the big FPS games. Lets leave things alone. I am also looking forward to these shooter titles for the move. The Wii just didn't do it right for me, and the PS3 looks to be getting it right. Having to use booth controllers on the Wii killed it for me, I want to reload by shooting off screen.

Has anyone actually contacted GameStop or someone like that for a release date? I haven't been able to yet, but the videos on the internets give a different release date then Amazon on the internets. I think the videos I'm seeing are saying its May, and you guy are talking next month on Amazon. When is this things really going to be playable? EDIT: So yeah, the OP says Feb 1st, even Amazon says May 3rd. Right after I posted I started feeling like I missed something so I double checked. Already moving backwards. Its the curse of Duke I'm telling you.