goatdan

I'm really glad that Turok is back. The franchise seems to have fallen out of favor just because Evolution kinda sucked (although I heard the GameCube version is the best, and a really good play) but Turok and Turok 2 were two of the more impressive titles for their time with the N64. I also really liked Turok Rage Wars, and I heard Turok 3 was good, although far too short. The concept is wonderful. If Disney can treat it well, it would make an awesome game. I'm just super happy EA didn't end up with it.

*final bump* Just a little over two hours left now! If you want to take advantage, now is the time!

Perfect Dark sucks, I think. In fact, out of the 20 or so games I purchased after picking up a Game Boy Color, the only color game that I was really impressed with was Metal Gear Solid. Get Metal Gear Solid. Other than that, I thought everything else was pretty putrid. Again though -- opinions. You may like things I don't

*bump* Only 24 hours left on this sale! Lots of stuff has been sold already. Thanks to everyone who has ordered... enjoy your stuff!

Yup. If a game says that it is $10.00, when you type in MOVING at the end, it should show that you received a discount of $2.00. It works for everything in the store -- if you order $200.00 worth of stuff, your discount will be $40.00

Thanks for the positive words, guys I think Feet of Fury is a must-own too, but then again I'm biased Have any of you guys tried it in the Typing of Fury mode? Personally, I really like that one, but I haven't heard many others who have tried it. If you're shopping at the GOAT Store, make sure to use the coupon code "MOVING" this weekend. You'll get 20% off (and help us move by making less stuff for us to haul!)

I'll say this much about their quality -- I was so amazingly disappointed by them that I thought two things: 1) Why in the world would anyone want to play a game like this? 2) Why in the world is the game so popular? Luckily, I found an arcade game shortly thereafter and then I understood why they were so popular.

Thanks for everyone on the good words about Feet of Fury I have a three different Feet of Fury set ups, and believe it or not the cheap soft mats are by FAR my favorite. We spent $250 on two hard mats for the release of Feet of Fury, and within a few hours of opening the packages, they were developing cracks. By the end of a day of use, both are really quite broken to the point that I don't know if I should keep them or just throw them out. The soft pads I thought I would have a horrible time sliding around with. I have one made for a Playstation and two of those that we sold (the "Playstation Mat" conversion things from Asia) and both of those are hundreds of times better. I haven't had a problem with them not registering stuff, they have barely slid at all and they look nice. I would recommend finding those if you can. They were only $20.00 through us I believe, and I know they were even cheaper from Asia (although they made up for it with shipping ). Personally, unless you're playing Feet of Fury, I would skip the dancing games on the Dreamcast. I bought a copy of both Dance Dance Revolution games for the Dreamcast before we released Feet of Fury, and I was disappointed in both of them to the point that I really haven't played them since. You can pick up the Xbox versions for $20.00 apeice (the second one at Wal*Mart online) and they are MUCH better.

If you (or anyone else) need to wait a little bit to get paid, place your order now and don't pay immediately. Just put a message in the order section and we can wait a few weeks for you to pay Thanks for everyone who has ordered so far! If you have anything that you're interested, I'd suggest ordering ASAP as we're going to make this same announcement at other places soon and on our Web site, and most of our stuff we only have one in stock. Thanks!

The GOAT Store, LLC ( http://www.goatstore.com/ ) is moving its headquarters within the month, and we would like your help! How can you help? By helping us clear out some inventory space so that we can send you the games instead of having to move them ourselves! To help you help us, until May 10th we are offering 20% off every item that is in stock! To take advantage of this offer, just head to the GOAT Store Web site and at check out put in the discount code of MOVING. After the move, expect a lot of neat stuff from the GOAT Store Web site including an all-new collectables section, expansion of the Affiliate program and much, much more!

I'm going to agree with the poster right above me on this one. I picked up F-Zero as my second GameCube game after the pack-in Mario Kart. It is as close to perfection as I have ever found in a racing game. Just because a game is very difficult doesn't mean it is bad. It just means it is challenging. For good updates, although a little old, I need to add Tempest 2000 for the Jag and Tempest 3000 for the NUON.

Here are just some quick suggestions that are some of my favorites and the average price you can find them for: Jet Set Radio Future / Sega GT: The old pack in can be found at EB I think it is for about $4.00. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Fills Star Wars and RPG requirement - $20.00 new anywhere. OutRun 2: Incredible, and can be had for $20.00. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: For only $20.00, great action / adventure. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy: You can find this one for under $10.00 used, and it is well worth it. Another great action / adventure game. Headhunter: Redemption: Sadly, not as incredible as the first Headhunter, but still worth the price of admission ($20.00). Great 3rd person game. Morrowind: I personally don't like it, but if you are into RPGs you will. I got the non-GOTY editon for my friend for his birthday for $5.00 from GameStop used (as one of a few gifts ) and he has said it was awesome. I tried it and didn't have the same feeling, but if you like RPGs you probably will. If you're even curious about a sports title or two, I'd suggest any of the 2K5 series of games. I don't care for sports titles, but for $20.00 I have picked up baseball, basketball and football and I really love them. These are the first sports games since Tecmo Bowl that I've been into! I can't stop playing stupid MLB 2K5. I'm about 50 games into an 81 game season... That's it for now. Good luck with it! It (just like anything, really) is a fun system with a lot of quality titles!

I could have sworn that I replied to this, but unless I'm missing my own posts, I don't see it. I wanted to say that I think the real reason VR hasn't caught on is that companies aren't willing to open themselves up to the litigation that VR could cause. If someone was stupid enough to get up and walk around with the VR helmet on and fall down the stairs or something, the company that made it could be sued. Atari had talked about how many things they were trying to build into the Jag VR for just that problem. The Jaguar VR would have been a great addiiton to the industry, and even if it wasn't a success would have proven that VR could be done. I have played with one of the Jag VR protos, and I can completely see why EGM thought it was a Virtuality arcade machine cleverly disguised. The cost seemed too incredible to be true (and even when I saw it in 2002, I thought that $250 at that time would've been cheap!) and Atari was essentially so buried by everything else that it didn't matter. Without any one company ready to jump into VR like Atari was (and Atari was ready to because it could have been a niche market for the Jaguar that Sega and Nintendo couldn't have done with the SNES or Genesis)... anyway, without a company willing to take the chance, there isn't a market that is there to make products for. If the Jag VR came out and sold 50,000 units on a failing console, I can pretty much guarantee someone would see that and realize that 50,000 units on a console that is circling the drain is probably worth half a million on a real console.

The thing that will suck for sure is that EB and GameStop used to compete against each other in the way of purchasing and selling used games. They would both be trying to pay more for games and sell them cheaper than the other. Combining both will diminish the need for that competition. The other thing that will suck is that GameStop is very big into this idea that they will not carry any NES, SNES, Genesis or Dreamcast items, while EB still does. In fact, the EB closest to me has people working there who really liked the Dreamcast, so they tend to have at least 100 games in stock at any given time. If GameStop comes in and purchases all of them, there will be no reason for GameStop to start carrying this stuff again. Since I really enjoy the EBs that are around town and especially the specials that they run, I for one will really miss the competition they had and the deals that I got because of it.

Have you played the Jaguar version first? If not, it is a solid purchase. If you have, it is a pretty significant step down. They changed the AI driod so it is completely useless until you get a second power up (meaning you literally have to avoid the "Yes! Yes! Yes!" power up upon level completion), they changed the way the Pulsars behave and the toughness of the spikers. It is still a good game, but compared to the Jaguar original, it just isn't the same. I'd suggest taking a look for a different Saturn goodie, something like Nights, Sega Rally, Fighting Vipers, Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Virtua Cop 2, Virtua Fighter 2, Fighters Megamix, WipeOut or some other great Saturn game first if you're just looking for something to play.

I guess you're just lucky then. I treat my controllers very well, and I have managed to have four of five first party ones that I have owned become totally useless. Compared to my other consoles, I have all of my original 2600, NES, SNES, 3DO, Saturn, Jaguar, Dreamcast, Playstation, GameCube and Xbox controllers working. I have put in five times as much use on the 2600, NES, SNES and Dreamcast as what I did on the N64. I chalk it up to the controllers not being built very sturdy. Oh -- and I never, ever played a Mario Party game on it. They all died from Diddy Kong Racing, Conker's Bad Fur Day, GoldenEye and Robotron 64 -- nothing that requires any harsh joystick action. I don't know what it is called, but I really like the gray one in this picture: http://www.goatstore.com/info.php?id=241399 I actually haven't used it to play games with (my N64 has been on loan to my brother-in-law ever since I got sick of paying for more controllers about three years ago...) but I know that when I get my N64 back, I'm going to pick up some of those. Same basic button configuration, metal joystick. Personally, I hope that they make a joystick mod in the future that will allow you to drop a new, better designed stick into those slots. If that's done, I'll definitely stick with the original.

The N64 controllers will be the 5200 controllers of the future. They were nice, but they just break constantly. Finding an N64 controller without a demolished analog stick is not the easiest thing to do, and even if you clean them out they still don't spring back correctly. The N64 is the about the only console that I think I like the third party controllers MORE than the specific ones just for that reason.

I finally found Tempest X3 for the Playstation again... I'd just like to add this into this conversation, if anyone thinks this has better sound effects than the Jaguar version, I'd like to ask what you're thinking. The music is CD, but the sound is absolutely horrible. And I can't ever get the stupid AI droid to go to any part of the web but the same one I'm shooting down. It's totally useless. Playing this again just reaffirms for me how totally superior the Jaguar is in every possible way...

I didn't get a bag of chips with mine... But Protector SE fixes all of the balance problems that the first Protector had and the game is definitely a blast. Easily one of my top Jaguar releases. As for Defender 2000, I have played Classic mode literally for hours upon hours. 2000 mode? I haven't gotten too far. You have to play it the same way you have to play Defender to be really good -- IE watch the radar and not the screen -- but it just seems to be a lot less fun because when you get down to one last guy, you still really can't use the screen, while in Classic you can. Protector is like a hyper original Defender. D2K is like a total upgrade. Protector is often seen like more of an updated Defender than D2K because Tempest was more or less an updated -- but not total upgrade of Tempest. I wish that Protector had slightly better graphics though, but as for gameplay it doesn't get much tighter... and really, that's what matters... isn't it?

I know someone that returned his first one for dead pixels. Basically, if you return it to a store and tell them that it is a problem, they should take it back. If a store sends back units, Sony can't ignore them. Try to go that route if possible. I returned my Sony LCD computer monitor to a store when I bought it, and they were happy to give me a new one. At work (where I have dealt with about 250 high-quality LCD monitors in the last year), about 10% probably have one or two dead pixels. When I see them, I send them back... but most users never notice or care about them. It happens...

@ Atarifever and Figgler -- two of the funniest posts I've read recently... I've made this argument elsewhere for both the DS and the PSP, and I'll make it again here -- Dead pixels are just a way of life with LCD technology. I'm not saying you should accept that, but that's just the fact. The problem is that each LCD is basically a different peice of the puzzle. When you are making a screen with the resolution of the PSP, you have 100,000 individual pixels to contend with. If 20 are dead, you have a failure rate of 0.02% of the pixels overall. For any other electronic product, a failure rate of 0.02% of items would be considered a HUGE success, but because with LCD monitors it is all in one screen, it's a failure. So burnt LCDs is something that is just a way of life. If consumers demand that the technology needs to get so good that there aren't any dead pixels, expect to pay two to three times what we do for things as it is now. I'm fine with it. That having been said, I'm not fine with dead pixels. As anyone who knows me knows, I'm overly critical of them and will immediately replace LCD items if I find them to be broken. And that should be what you can do with the PSP too. The difference between Sony and Nintendo is that Sony claims in their manuals that dead pixels are normal, which does in fact mean that stores can refuse to accept returns for them. Nintendo, on the other hand, set things up to make it super easy to return them. Because of this, the perception that Sony won't deal with the problems may not be entirely true, but it still looks bad and Sony's statements that dead pixels are not signs of a malfunction is simply a lie. A dead pixel is a pixel that is either continually firing or not firing at all. If you got a car that continually had its motor running at a high speed or not running at all, you would have gotten a car with a malfunction. Sony doesn't want to acknowledge that, apparently. The other problem is Sony's return policy -- if I had dead pixels, I send my unit back to Sony and wait for 4-6 weeks for a new one to arrive. Nintendo's warranty work for the DS was if you got one with a dead screen, they sent you a new one and when you got it, you sent back the original. You had to give them a credit card to put on file so if you kept both, they could charge you, but it means that you always had a DS around to play. The Sony stance is an ugly one from the PR side. Sony's reputation is not suffering because of stores trying to push their own warranty policies, because according to the manual, "Red, blue, or green spots (bright spots) or black spots (dark spots) may appear in certain locations on the LCD screen. The appearance of such spots is a normal occurrence associated with LCD screens and not a sign of malfunction." If it is not a sign of malfunction, then Sony's warranty does not cover "pixel damage" and it is Sony's own fault.

Just an idea... Before you do that, really make sure you want to. At one point, I decided that I was giving up on the Dreamcast. I sold about 25 games for it and felt pretty good. Then, about a year later I ended up having to search everywhere and pay a lot more for some of the games I sold. I now have a full Dreamcast collection and am looking at working on a PAL set. Only sell the stuff you'll be sure you want to part with. I haven't taken my Jaguar out for over a year, but I just purchased a house and I can't wait to set it up now that I have space again so I can pull out some games and play again!

Hey, We're still not sure if it will happen. We're seriously considering September right now...

Honestly, if they do I think that they would have to be willing to give them out for free. There are too many products that are shareware of freeware that would be nearly impossible to actually keep a hold on. For instance, recently the Stinkoman game came out at Homestarrunner.com. If they had to get a rating for it, the rating either better be free or it wouldn't come out, which would hurt their business. Hopefully, I'm right about that... Well, here is the quick reasoning behind not doing this: KallistiOS actually has had some major work put into the online aspects of it, and I have been assured that online homebrew games could work. The problem is that testing and implementation would take a long, long time and that the features would probably not be used too much. Sure, it might be nice to call your friend to play Joust over the lines, but how many people actually know friends in the area they could do that with? Here is another breakdown. Lets say that we sell 1500 copies of the game over a period of a year. Like I've mentioned, over half of what we sell is to the Asian market. And let's say that 1/3rd of what is left is sold to the European market... In other words, we sell 500 games in the US. Out of those, they sell over a year. Half of the people probably wouldn't try the online mode, knocking it down to 250 people that would. Of those 250 people, lets say that they all sign on two times for two hours. The likelyhood of you finding anyone else online at any given time is just above 0.1% of the time. So actually finding someone would be a total crapshoot. What we've done with Maqiupai and what will be done with at least GOAT Games is made a code where, when you get a high score you go to the site and enter it to compete with people all over the world. Here's one example: http://goatstore.com/maqiupai/view_board.php?board=1 You still get to compete, and the likelyhood that you will have lots of challenges is much higher. Hope that makes sense. For Zoop: I would suggest trying to find a current developer and working with them first. Usually, developers are doing their own thing, and won't change for someone else's idea suddenly. If you can help them develop graphics for something else though, you can get them to listen to your ideas for a game. Feet of Fury has one... somewhere. I think at http://www.feetoffury.com/ Inhabitants has one, but it is PC only currently. Both S+F and JMD (the creators of the new two) are working on demos for the others. The other problem is hosting though... but yes, that is something we are looking into Actually, we did -- but this obviously raises another point. People aren't finding the Maqiupai Web site... Here is the link: http://www.goatstore.com/maqiupai/ So the question then becomes how we can better promote developments? Should that be a whole different site? This is something I'm _really_ at a loss for, and if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. By your comments Eric, it sounds like you looked for info but couldn't find it, so obviously we are failing to do stuff in the best way possible... Actually, we are working that into the affiliate program now. We just completed a contest for banner design, and I have to get those up as soon as life lets up a bit... But you're right on with that one. I totally agree. Thanks What should we do to make you figure it out? I agree with this problem, as I noted above, but I am completely unsure about the best way to go forward on it. New site? GOAT Store Publishing section of the GOAT Store with big ol' links? What do you think? Thanks again everyone! This is really helping!

The ESRB Ratings are a *totally* voluntary program that any professional publisher can take part in. Basically, you apply to them as a professional publisher, and if they accept your application, you can send them games to rate for a fee. We have had our application accepted as a publisher, so now I have all of the information on sending them a game. If we do, great. We get an ESRB rating (and the right to promote it with such a rating.) It is a *little* tougher than that, but not too much. I was really impressed actually -- while the cost of an ESRB rating is a little expensive for one of our games to make it worthwhile, it isn't that bad... they easily could have said $10,000 for one, and most companies would still do it. Now that is an idea. I will probably try to figure something with that more out... Well, you'll get to see more of this when you get them but... FoF also has a typing mode and a few other things. I would tend to agree with your statement, but I think it has some things that really set it apart. And if you have played DDR on the Dreamcast, I think that it is much better than those botched ports. It's not. It is really hard to explain how it is different without seeing it in action. So, I'd suggest seeing a demo in action here: http://sfsoftware.zophar.net/games.htm It isn't perfect and isn't half as good as the final game, but it kinda shows what you're after... Actually, looking at it that demo really isn't as great as I thought... but if you stick with it you'll see what's going on. It also isn't. It is geared to be an arcade style game, instead of "just" a Shanghai game. One of the things I was worried about when we committed to publish it is that I went to Target that day and bought a Shanghai game for $5.00 that had more boards and various features. After that point, Maqiupai was retooled to be _very_ different than it. And, at least in my opinion, it worked out very well. Well... sorta. The developers are also at my whim as to what I will publish. Maqiupai went through a TON of changes in development because of what I outlined above. Inhabitants was halted for a couple problems I found. And if I don't think a game will sell enough to break even, I don't even bother thinking about publishing it. A good idea, I'll have to see if it is possible to implement it. Maqiupai has a high score thing, but I'm not convinced that it is 100% secure, and if we're offering a big prize it really has to be. We did just recently open an affiliate program, and I have to start pushing that more because I think it is a great deal for them personally, and would do great things for us... speaking of which, if anyone is interested I can give you those details Thanks again everyone. Great comments so far!