Summer Lovin'

My game collection has grown quite a bit since my last post here...

I had some gift certificates left-over from Christmas for a local video game chain, so I headed-out to see what I could find. I came away with two Saturn games (Daytona USA CCE and SCUD The Disposable Assassin), a Japanese-style Saturn controller (the black US ones that came with later Saturns; arguably the best controller ever!), and Swagman for PS2 (I'd always wanted that one). Daytona's a huge improvement over the original Saturn version, SCUD's kinda low-budget but a great property, and Swagman is a very pretty game with a cool concept that kinda falls short with it's routine gameplay.

Once I'd finished at that store, I headed out to the one where I'd picked up the 32X games the other day, since it wasn't too far away. There was a sign on top of the display case in which they keep the 32X games that said 50% of everything in this case... So I asked for everything in the case ;) Well, not everything, but they did have nearly every 32X game. Apparently some guy had come in a few days earlier and sold his collection, which included Spider-Man: Web Of Fire. Web of Fire is one of the rarest 32X games, and sells for over $100 US on eBay. This place was selling it for $80 CAN, and I missed it by only a few days.

Anyway, I bought all the 32X games I didn't have, save for some sports games (NFL Quarterback Club, RBI Baseball, and WWF Raw). This purchase included Brutal Unleashed (garbage, but hard to find), Cosmic Carnage (a competent fighter, but nothing special), NBA Jam T.E. (classic game, horrible music), Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (really good platformer), Shadow Squadron (sadly underrated 3D space-shooter), Space Harrier (classic arcade goodness), and Star Wars Arcade (meh, it's alright). I also picked up SEGA Rally, Virtua Fighter Remix, and Panzer Dragoon for Saturn, as well as Sonic 3 and Vectorman for Genesis (all in the same display case, so same sale price).

Finally, I had to make a late-night battery run (to get a 2032 lithium battery for a computer), so that meant Wal-Mart. Not only did I get the battery, but I also picked-up Crazy Taxi 3 ($9, fun game for 15 minutes at a time), Grabbed By The Ghoulies ($9, beautiful graphics, great control scheme, so far lots of fun), and Sonic Heroes ($18, entertaining enough, but Sonic Team still hasn't quite got it right) for XBOX.

I think I have a problem :)

Good Reads

I caught a link to this interview with Tom Kalinske, the former president of SEGA of America, at the Ars Technica journals. Some highlights include the story of SEGA's origins, how Sony got into the industry it would eventually come to dominate, how the Nintendo 64 was originally designed as a SEGA console (we got the Saturn instead), and insights into the internal rivalry between SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan.

Another article of interest is [H]ard|OCP's take on gaming performance from Intel's new Core 2 Duo CPUs. There are a lot of reviews making the rounds that paint this part as the new king of everything in computer land, and while it is a great-performing, energy-efficient, and reasonably-priced chip that certainly puts Intel back on top for the time being, that's not quite the whole story...

With a vengeance, children!

It all started about a week or so back, when I was at a Blockbuster to rent some movies. I saw a used copy of PaRappa The Rapper 2 for $10, and I had to make it mine. I played through it in one sitting that night, and that event coupled with my recent completion of Golden Sun: The Lost Age started a new era of video gaming for me. A few days after this Blockbuster visit, I finally got around to checking out a video game store near my buddy's house out in the West end in hopes of finding a copy of the original PaRappa. I left with Mortal Kombat II for my 32X, Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy IX for PSOne, and Killzone for PS2 (it was only $10 used, in great condition, and I'd been meaning to see what it was all about). After realizing that I needed a PSOne memory card to save my PSOne games, I headed back to the shop a few days later and left not only with the memory card, but with a copy of After Burner for 32X as well! Fast-forward a few days, and you'll find me at a friend's house with a few people playing Guitar Hero. Now, I've never been much of a fan of rhythm games, with the exception of PaRappa, Cool Cool Toon, and (to a lesser extent) Space Channel 5. I've given the likes of DDR, BeatMania, Amplitude, etc... a try, but they just didn't grab hold of me particularly tightly. Guitar Hero, though... Wow. Maybe it was nailing "No One Knows" and "Cowboys From Hell" in my first sitting, but something just clicked. I've got a birthday coming up pretty soon; you can guess what I want ;)

Some impressions: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is fantastic, and has been satisfying my portable needs more than adequately since completing Golden Sun 2. After Burner is as much fun as I remember, and owning one of the best home versions of Mortal Kombat II (my favourite game in the series) is a plus. Crash is still one of the best platformers there is; it's just too bad that Universal seems to have run the franchise into the ground. Then again, if that hadn't happened, then we may never have seen Jak & Daxter. Thanks, Naughty Dog! Killzone's kinda cool, but doesn't seem to be anything really special. Final Fantasy IX has renewed my faith in the series; VIII didn't really do it for me, and I've been hesitant to take the time with those games ever since.

I also picked up an old PS2 demo disc from a friend that had a demo for Primal on it. I remember seeing the commercials for this game years ago, and it really interested me. I didn't pick-up a PS2 until recently, so it'd kinda faded from my mind. Well, I played the demo, and it was thoroughly medicore (and clearly not the final product). Perhaps I'll pick it up if I see it on the cheap somewhere, simply because the premise (hot chick transforming into brutal beasts, trailed all the while by a well-spoken gargoyle) has so much promise.

I think I've covered just about everything... Ooh, I picked up an awesome little USB flash drive (1GB Kingmax Super Stick) for $25! This thing is literally about the size of my thumbnail!

Anyway, yeah, that'll do for now... 'til next time, kids.