JimmydelaKopin

Of course, the scary thought is... ...that the character creation parts are the actual games and the rest is mindless eyecandy! Seriously, I have to say that I like the older games that give you set characters and don't let you make your own. Face it: given a choice, would anyone have played some of those weird characters? "Okay, you play a yellow ball...that wears make-up. And it eats! No? hold on... All right, you play an orange critter with a long snout and legs that hops around--and it cusses when it's caught! No, not real cuss words! Target audience and all. What? Okay, give me a moment... You play a fat little plumber in overalls who jumps around. I am being serious! All right... You play this yellow thing that looks like a staple that moves around the edge of a hole. I am not drunk! --Wait, I have a few more... You play the tongue of---I haven't even finished my description! ...okay, okay... You play a paint roller! No, it's a maze game. I am being quite serious! --I have a few more; hold on... You play a clown who's good at frisbee! ...That wasn't very flattering. Fine, I have one more... You play a chicken trying to cross the road. --Hey, put me down!" *pitchman tossed on backside out of office* "I guess some people don't like characters with a little character. Good thing I didn't tell him about the chef who walks on his food..."

My brother picked up this disc a few days ago. ...and as I play endless games of Tube It, Super Qix, and the incarnations of Space Invaders... ...it strikes me like a bolt from the blue how right I was before concerning modern games: too much emphasis on eye candy--and too little on gameplay. You'd think, what with the popularity of retro-gaming, that the big names in gamemaking today would figure out why their latest efforts consistently bomb so much. Then again...maybe they know it all too well. After all, didn't Sony at first prohibit retro discs on the PlayStation? (Okay, they had this bogus reason of "only games with finishes"...but, given the games they did approve for the PlayStation...and how awful most of them are compared to official Sony games...well, you make the connection. ) Hey, let them crank out endless EA games and DoA clones and the like. Ain't my money they're getting; ain't my money they're wasting.

Here's the deal: which best describes you: Tim Allen's character on his Tv show, or Richard Kern's character? In other words, can you be trusted with power tools? Seriously, finding a cab that is being unused but is still in relatively good condition might be more work than simply selling the boards and letting someone do that work. If you know of one that you can get fairly cheap, then go for it. Otherwise...go for the money. Of course, also riding on this question is which game in on those boards you wish to replace. Is it a too-common game? You might not be able to make all that much if you do decide to sell the boards then. In short, there's no easy answer. Depending on the game you're replacing in the cab, you might be better off finding a cheap cab or making one yourself, if you can't expect to make too much money off the boards.

Solar Fox for me. A game where I can't kill anything but I can be killed? A semi-nonviolent game that was very challenging when I was a kid. That and Word Zapper.

Swordquest would be good---if they made it into a variation of 976-EVIL ... Combat could be the next Rambo movie; after all the game and Rambo both look pretty old ... Kaboom would be made into a slapstick comedty about a wacky terrorist, no doubt ... Yar's Revenge wouldn't make it out of the starting block, given that the idea of one lone soldier destroying the enemy's megaweapon CAME FROM STAR WARS!!! ... So I voted "other". I'm going with Demons to Diamonds. I think it could be made into a pretty good kids' movie--or at least better than those Three Ninjas movies .... (By the by, I love Yar's Revenge and would love to see it as a movie...but, like Star Castle, it shares too many basic story elements with the original Star Wars. Lucas is cracking down on some of the parodies of his films; you think he'd seriously allow a legit movie that borrows so much from that box-office blockbuster?)

Add to my already-mentioned short list: Ninja Combat Karate Blazers Guardians of the Hood and my personal fave on the weirdness scale... Shogun Warriors! A fighting game where you can play as a kappa, a kabuki actor, a ninja, or even as a geisha! Now there's a game that should be ported to a console!

I am impressed! I thought the French government was trying to keep out other culture to promote its own homegrown creations. I guess they realized they don't have jack when it comes to videogames...

Ask me that in 20 years.

Rexreed, that's why they sell the bootlegs at Wal-Mart. I doubt this level of rage wouldn have happened if you bought either the Maxx10 or the KidConnection (in the red box generic toy aisle) plug0in controllers. The reason the bootlegs make money is not just because they're cheap, but also because the bootleggers only target good games for their thefts.

..couldn't those be considered Atari games?...perhaps for a Vol 2 for the Atari Anthology?...throw in the Star Wars games...hmmm, but then Paperboy and 720 don't fit...I always considered those Atari games too...what's the deal there? 966270[/snapback] Remember, Atari split into two companies following the crash. Atari Corp. was the company decimated by Tramiel, sold to JTK, then to Hasbro, and finally to Infogrames, which then renamed itself Atari. Atari Games was eventually acquired by Midway, renamed Midway Games West, and then absorbed into the parent company. Atari Corp. retained the rights to the arcade games Atari made before the split, so those games appear in present-day Atari's compilations. Atari Games made all the Atari-branded arcade games following the split, so those games appear in Midway's compilations. Road Runner and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as Paperboy and 720, were made by Atari Games. 966283[/snapback] If I remember correctly, the split was caused by an antitrust suit by the DoJ for similar reasons that one was filed against Microsoft.

What is this? No one playing the bootleg plug-in controller games? What's with all this honesty, people?

How about the Kentucky Fried Movie? It would have simple action sequences, like remembering all the safety devices in a car or knowing how to induce headaches in people... ...it would have the adult genre with Catholic High School girls in Trouble... ...and it would have the all-out important kick-ass action competitions with A fistful of Yen! This movie is begging for the videogame treatment!!!

You loved the Powerglove when you were an NES fan... You went ga-ga over the Activator when you had to have a Genesis... Now that you're in the Playstation2 camp...we have your new controller! The exciting new Chainsaw Controller!

Oh, come on! You gotta get the Pac-Man watch! Pac-Man on a tiny LCD screen using a tiny joystick? Classic! I remember the day someone brought one of thise to school. It was so cool! Pac-Man watch. If it's working, it's well worth it.

What about Haunted House on the hardest setting? My sister finished it--once. My brother and I could never get close to finishing it.

What about the wizard in Wizard of Wor? On the waves he appears, he is the last enemy, and he's the hardest character to defeat in the game.

I don't know how it is with any newer versions of those SSI games...but I do know they included manuals, codebreaker discs, hintbooks, and maps as their way of defeating piracy. Some game companies used anti-piracy software (for all the good it did; when the makers made anti-Happy software, pirates responded with Clone; when anti-Clone software came out, pirates responded with CloneII, etc.)... ...but others threw in all sorts of non-software materials that were required to play the game properly. SSI was one of those companies; Infocom was another. Doesn't do a whole lot of good to get an illegal copy of a game when you don't have the rest of the stuff you need to win at the game, after all.

Given that Activision bought out Imagic some time ago, I would go ask Activision about them. I would think they'd know a bit of the history of the stuff they own.

Hey, you know how big Hasbro is. If this guy sued Hasbro, he wouldn't see a dime until he's old enough to get a senior's discount at EuroDisney!

I always thought the ability to play game music from PS1 discs as CDs was a deliberate feature by the game designers. I know that the first 4 Twisted Metal games, the two Vigilante 8 games, Star Wars: Demolition, Rogue Trip, and Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey can be played as CDs. Heck, on TM 3&4 you can even play the sayings the characters utter when you're accessing their information in the game. (Personal favorite: Rob Zombie groaning "He writes the songs, he writes the songs" and laughing ) Heck, I use 'em as CDs as much as I use them as games. And you can play said CD-like games as CDs on the PS1. Just play a regular CD to get the machine into CD player mode, and swap out the CD for the CD-like game. ...just a hint to the noob who started the thread is all.

Now now now, JB...let's not pick on the noobs. The PS1 can play CDs and PS1 games; the PS2 can play CDs, DVDs, PS1 games, and PS2 games. The noob probably got them confused...or didn't realize just how old the PS1 is. Remember: we were all noobs at one time or another.

This is probably the last thing I'll have to say on this subject--stop it. I can hear you cheering. None of that. This latest Namco disc can rightly be called the "gold watch" disc. Supposedly Namco has been around for 50 something-or-others...but all we get are a handful of their highlights. It's like being with a copmpany for 50 years and getting only a gold watch for recognition...hence, this is the "gold watch" disc. Dammit, I wanted something better than a gold watch!!!

Sounds to me like MGA overproduced their handheld licenses. I'd wager my slew of Celebration Station tokens that the gameplay and graphics are the same as for the retro-cabinets and the flat cases MGA released for these same games. First the flat cases, then the retro cabinets, now the retro-sytle cabinets...what's next? The retro-tabletop?

Wow!!! I will definitely be getting a copy of that book! Man, I still have my old copies of EG, still like them, still have the issue with ol' GD answering FAQ's on a special place on my shelf. (It also contains a guide to Archon and a letter showing how much Rescue on Fractalus was pirated! ) Bill and the people of both EG and EF demonstrated that videogames are so full of fun that even journalism about them can be fun. Those were the best mags of that era, mainly because you could tell just by reading that they were having fun just making the mags. Now all I'll need are the memoirs of the Unknown Arcader. Any authors wearing purple sneakers out there?

My point is simple, awesomo3000. I happen to be a big Nintendo fan. I loved the old games in the arcade, loved the 'prting of them to the 7800 and even to the 2600. I love the SNES enough to get another one to go with my PS1(I save the Ps1 and my brother's PS2 for TM-type games and retro-discs and the SNES for fighting and puzzle games). I wanted an NES when it camer put mainly for its Pin-Bot emulator; that's my favorite pinball machine of all time! I remember the slew of games for it, and I remember having fun with the various Super Mario Bros. games in the arcade--and with the other vs. games (especially Dr. Mario). And when a friend of mine brought his GameCube to the local gaming shop for some rounds of Metroid Prime...that game is breathtaking! ...But, if I gushed like that, I would be accused, just like the others, of shilling for Nintendo. Thus, I took the original complaint--and turned up the amplifier on it to the highest setting possible. I became the anti-Mario...because I knew the only way to shut down this silly debate was to give the defenders something outrageous as a focus. Of course Mario is in Nintendo games. He's not the only character in Nintendo games...but so what if he is? All the games involving the character have one thing in common: they're fun! They'd be fun regardless who the protagonist is; the fact that the protagonist is a character that has such nostalgia value (let's just forget about the live-action TV show and movie, okay? ) adds to the enjoyment. The idea that Mario is as overexposed as Pac-Man was back in that character's heyday is ridiculous. He's simply in a lot of games. When he starts appearing in joke books, has his own top-40 song, and get's his own endless collection of puffy and non-puffy stickers...then he's overexposed. And not before that happens.