VW

It got too rich for my blood as well! I remember that MULE went for like $170.

Media streaming? I just use a VGA cable. No more file format compatibility issues. I use a media server program on Linux to my PS3 and haven't had any file compatibility issues. I know the PS3 is rather limited in the files it natively supports but the media server program seems to take care of that so my PS3 can watch anything now.

Me too, Steam sales make up the majority of my gaming now. If Japan would ever port games like Disgaea, Catherine, and Bayonetta to PC, I wouldn't need a console at all except to do media streaming with on my TV.

I don't prefer buying online but Steam sales have got me to the point that I now buy the vast majority of my games digitally. They're just too cheap not to, in the last month I bought Arkham City, Deus Ex, Alan Wake for $15, $7.50, and $15 respectively, never mind great deals from the past like Bioshock 2, Red Faction Guerilla and Mirror's Edge for $5 each. Even if you treat all of these as long term rentals and not ownership, they are fantastic deals. Like others of you have said, they have ballooned my backlog of modern games to the point that I haven't played any retro games in quite a while. I do think that while there is more quantity than in the old days, there is less quality and I'm not sure how many of the current gen of games I will want to replay in future years.

I think warping gives you more points than if you actually played through the levels. I will have to break this game out tonight and see if I still remember how to warp.

Gog just added the formerly very rare Worlds of Ultima series (Martian Dreams and Savage Empire) and they are literally giving them away. I love gog, looks like they have all the Ultimas except the last one, which I heard was very poor anyway. I need to quit resting on my laurels and start Ultima 6.

EA can do whatever they want, I've been boycotting them for a year now.

I voted Pole Position but am curious as to how you would do Star Raiders as an HSC. I haven't played it in forever but I don't remember it having a score, you just warped around and killed all the aliens until they were gone.

Agreed, I think some good stuff has come out of Japan in the last few years like the Persona series, Demons Souls and Catherine. Catherine sold over 200,000 here and I forget what it sold in Japan but if games like that can turn a profit and still have high production values (Catherine had a few anime episodes at least of cutscenes that were well done), then EA is either doing it wrong, obscenely greedy, or as you all are probably thinking, both. EA is a cancer on the industry and as Cimerians said, has been since even before the days of Ultima 8.

After 20 years of waiting, I finally gave in and played through Ultima V on the ST a few years back. Great game, would play it again on the 8 bit if it existed.

Would this work with an American 800XL?

To this day, I don't understand the piracy excuse that is still used by game companies to defend their delaying/canceling of PC versions of games. To me it should come down to are the expected number of copies sold going to generate enough revenue to make a profit on the port? If your break even point would come at 200,000 copies sold and 2 million people end up buying it and 10 million pirate it, the port is still worth doing.

I agree, I like my Lara snobby and cooler than everyone else.

I have been playing that game for like a month now on PC, got the retail version for $20 and got the 2 DLCs with good reviews for $2.50 each from a Steam sale. Didn't even think about it until it hit $20 and as a bonus, I avoided all the bugs that I heard this game shipped with.

I am outraged at this and I got this game for $17 on a Steam sale last year. I have to agree with Mord that this entire industry is going to hell quickly and keeps treating its customers worse and worse. The stance I am taking is that if the industry is going to be like this, I will buy nothing for full price. $20 is my new sweet spot and most games get to that within a year of release, if not lower. Steam sales are gamers' best friends now where most top titles can be found for under $20 within a year and many times under $10.

Sony has succeeded in becoming Darth Vader as they keep altering the bargain further and further. First there was Linux on PS3s until Sony took it away, then there was good USB device support on PS3s until Sony took it away, then there was game/DLC sharing on up to 5 different PS3s until Sony cut it to two last year. Their firmware upgrades have only removed features for about the last two years, they have no regard for their consumers whatsoever, just as I will have no regard for their next console. If the government gave a damn about consumers, they would do something about firmware upgrades removing features from a device that you already bought and paid for, with said features being part of the deal when you purchased a device.

I haven't seen or heard of any problems with the slims but the original models were awful. Myself and three other people I know all had blu ray drives die within 2 years and Sony wanted to charge $150 to fix them. My brother even paid the $150 and had the same problem a year later. Sony's Quality Control has really gone to hell this gen.

I have not bought Starcraft 2 and am not buying Diablo III or ME3 due to DRM issues and high price. I don't pay over $20 for any PC game that has DRM/one time use code crap on it, and most of the time I pay just $5 - $10 with Steam sales. Vote with your pocketbook everyone, if they are going to take away your ownership rights and sell you a service instead of ownership of a game, the price should be much lower.

Are you talking about system link? Yeah, EA does not support system link (LAN play) as they believe it promotes piracy. System link is the reason we can still play Xbox1 titles over the Internet via XBConnect or Xlink Kai. I downloaded every single copy of SSX for Xbox1 (softmodded), praying that it had system link and none had it. Then I read online that EA games don't have system link because of the piracy issue. I meant something as simple as split screen multiplayer that many games have. I have seen LAN play in a few ps3 titles like GT5 but not very often. That piracy argument is garbage of course, they just want you to have to buy the newest version of their game. Even on PC nobody supports LAN anymore because of the alleged piracy issue. It's really all about control and having an off switch for their game.

Ran into yet another reason to hate EA this weekend. I was at a friend's house and he had just got SSX and wanted to show it to me. EA thoughtfully left out local multiplayer in the game and to play head to head you have to play online (with each person buying their own copy of course). Then when EA shuts down the servers in a couple of years you can't play multiplayer with your game at all!

Thanks for the links, now I can get rid of the triggers again!

Try another one? I have a 360 -> PS3 adapter that works great, and a combo 360/PS2 -> PS3 adapter that also works. Do you have a part number or amazon link to the PS2->PS3 adapter? I would love to get another one that worked, I still hate the triggers.

I have some extenders I got at Hastings and they are great, definitely reduces strain on the fingers. I really wish they would have just kept the same design from the PS2 controllers, I hate the L2/R2 being triggers now. I hated it so much I bought a $20 PS2->PS3 controller converter a few years ago that worked great until Sony disabled it in a firmware update for God knows what reason.

This. When I do buy used, I only buy from ebay or a local mom & pop store as I hate gamestop and their cheating of consumers. I never pay more than $40 for a disc game or $20 for a digitally distributed game and even then, only rarely. I can always wait until Black Friday to buy something new when even brand new games can be had for $40. Lately I have been buying more from Steam sales than anything else. While I hate the idea that I don't really own the games I buy on Steam, I feel their ridiculously low prices compensate me for it. While I don't buy used very often, I often sell my games on ebay if I don't like them or feel they're worth holding on to so if any of the next gen consoles lock out used games, I will not buy them.

I have hated EA since they stopped making games for the Atari 8 bit series of computers before everyone else. Since then, I think their crimes are as follows: 1. Buying good studios and ruining them (Origin, Bioware) 2. Online pass nonsense 3. Ignorance of good platforms (they contributed to the Dreamcast's demise and to this day don't even publish many of their games on PC) 4. Shutting down online services for games less than two years after the game came out and not even letting users run their own servers at their own expense. EA is a pioneer towards wanting games to be priced as services rather than as something you own. 5. Ruining online balance of sports games by allowing people to buy statistics boosts with real money. 6. Charging full price for each new year's sports games when the short development time leads to only marginal improvement if not deprovement.