Adrian M

I bought ActRaiser when it was first released back in 1991 and have loved the game to this day. I've lost count at just how many times I finished it...both in normal and professional (action scenes only) modes. Never has a sim game and action game been blended together so perfectly. Great graphics, imaginative background, and a cool premise add up to instant classic status. I mean, you played the part of a god and actually travelled down to earth to help your followers when the need arose! None of the elements were deemed fruity and the action was violent and precise, as we expected back then. It's really too bad the sequel sucked so badly. It's also a tradgedy that these types of games no longer exist.

Well, they do offer roster updates via XBOX LIVE on some sports games (Namely the NFL Fever games, though it seems the whole XSN sports lineup is dead now).

It's a solid 2D horizontal shooter and a pretty good port of the Toaplan coin-op. The sound is mostly correct as well. There's a PC Engine version on CD that I'd like to try someday.

I couldn't imagine how much worse the draw-in could have been had they pushed for 30fps (instead of 20fps)! Gotta admit, that was a pretty bad port when compared to the silky smooth, high res goodness of the coin-op!

I never said or did anything to forbid you from playing your "stupid games"...by all means, play them if you must. But as you said yourself, it's a "stupid game!"

I'll definitely pick this up within the week...I sort of forgot that it had been released. Playing the demo, it does appear that the engine hasn't been tweaked too much (IMO, a good thing!) and I do like the interactive damage mapping. Also, they've added a "hard steer" function to this year's installment, though I couldn't really figure out which situations demanded using it. Any insight on that?

What?? Oh dear god! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Two questions.... 1. Who is the power hungry mod that you speak of? 2. Who is this chubby kid who speaks before he thinks? That is all.

THe only difference is, you won't look like a tool when you play Halo... I usually agree with you, Adrian, but this is uncalled for. This game is fun. Halo is fun. BOTH ARE FUN. Playing one does not make someone a Tool. People play games when they like them. A Tool would be someone playing a game because everyone else is. (Leaves out PlayStation reference as Adrian will probably mention it anyway.) I like Donkey Konga. That does not make me a "Tool". It makes me a "Game Player". Well, have fun then.

THe only difference is, you won't look like a tool when you play Halo... So you'll only play with TOYS that you feel don't make you look like a tool? Keep lookin'! Nope, I make it a habit not to play with TOYS.

THe only difference is, you won't look like a tool when you play Halo...

A small percentage do. I don't however. I do.

By that logic, so is the XBOX since you rarely see XBOX games for sale in these forums.

Exactly. Sadly, 99% of today's "gamers" think these collections are great and accurate! Same goes for those pathetic all-in-one controllers. Play Pac-Man on one of those and anyone can tell you that it resembles the broken NES version rather than the arcade. I think you guys are being kind of harsh on these. Sure they aren't perfect but they are better than stuff just fading away. In the case of GBA collections, I love them because I can now play Scramble(Konami Advance), Ms. Pacman(Namco Museum) and Centipede (Atari Anniversary) on the trainride to work. Are they perfect? Nope but much better than nothing at all.. In this day and age of cheap and powerful technology, companies SHOULD be able to emulate (or port more accurate versions) of the classics to these collections and all-in-one devices. For some reason, they choose not to or simply lack the skill. There's always something a bit off with these rehashes whether it's a different sound effect or a different screen layout or whatever. Granted, the Midway Collection seems to be mostly correct, but the Namco conversions of Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man have always been off, and more so in the all-in-one units.

True, but the Super System card is generally easier and cheaper to find. The Arcade cards still seem to command a pretty high price and there werent' as many released over the course of the PCE's life.

Exactly. Sadly, 99% of today's "gamers" think these collections are great and accurate! Same goes for those pathetic all-in-one controllers. Play Pac-Man on one of those and anyone can tell you that it resembles the broken NES version rather than the arcade.

There are only a handful of games that take advantage of the Arcade card...notably some of the Neo Geo ports like FFS and WH along with a few others. Not necessarily worth the cost, unless you absolutely MUST have everything for the system.

Actually, I did have a disc suddenly "stop working" for me on the Gaycast...err...Dreamcast. It was one of the last ODCM demo discs. Worked fine for the first few demos and then suddenly the disc just wouldn't load for some reason. What was odd was that I never took the disc out of the system or anything like that. It just stopped working and no amount of reboots would get it to play. In the trash it went.

What's Gaylo? Is it a new Gamecube or Dreamcast game?

That feature did carry over to a few post-PCE games.

20 bucks! wow - is that where pricing is heading now a days? Hehe! Nothing wrong with that! Even better for us who have potential items to sell!

Let me give you a hint as to Next Tetris' value...I recently sold an extra copy I had for well over $100. It's one of the hardest games to find on the NUON partly because you could only get it with the Toshiba player as a mail-in offer intitially! Good buy!

I may have one. PM me.

Damage is basically just cosmetic. PGR has always been about arcade-style racing and PGR2 does not deviate from this formula! As for the difficulty, this is where I think PGR2 really excels over PGR1. The bronze level races are painfully easy while earning golds will really challenge you. The medals in between (silver, etc) have their difficulties tuned accordingly as well. So, if you just want to beat the game quickly and easily (no small feat as there are tons of classes to play through), you can just race each event as bronze and basically breeze through the game. You won't earn as many kudos which will impact the amount of cars you can unlock, but it's less restrictive than PGR1 was. If you find yourself having a particularly hard time beating a particular event in a given class, just spend some of your kudos for a better car and that should take care of it. There are some tracks (particularly the Neubering Germany course) and events (the street races for example--the first lap can be brutal with all those cars crowding together and trying to slide around the first few turns) that may require you to retry, but I feel the frustration factor is definitely lower in PGR2.

Go with option B. PGR2 is an absolute joy to play. Lots of variety, tons of cars to unlock, an easier difficulty curve, awesome usage of LIVE, and you get to play GEOMETRY WARS (vector arcade game).