For his 15th birthday in 2004, Mega Man (or Rockman, if you prefer) recieved the special treatment and had all 8 of his original games bundled up and re-released with some special extras on the Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. Fortunately (or unfortunately) each version has unique exclusives, making no version inferior to the others (that includes you, GameCube). If you're a hardcore Mega-Maniac and that still isn't enough, there's always Mega Man X Collection gathering up all the other titles.
Whatever you call him, the blue bomber always delivers the right technique, and should he defeat you... he will assimilate your specialty move into himself, further expanding his arsenal. Just look at the lineup of bosses little Rockman conquered in Mega Man 2, he means business.
There are few "Mega" things that can rock as hard as Rockman himself, but Sega knew how. Affectionately called the Mega Drive in Europe and Japan, this 16-bit system ushered Sega into the golden age of gaming in the early 90s; with an edge that showed even mighty Nintendo that the stakes were raised.
Finally, we acknowledge a collector with fairly even-spread numbers for most of his consoles. All games in silentscythe's collection are childhood favorites, and likely get some play every once in a while. A healthy helping of RPGs and adventure games always catches my eye, and are a welcome addition to any collection.
That's all for now. Check out chat tonight, and tune in to channel 3...
The One-Laptop-Per-Child program (see laptop.org) is a long running effort to make an internet-accessible computer available to the masses at an affordable sub-one-hundred-dollar price point. Decades in the making, this is one of the greatest humanitarian efforts towards improved education ever, and will certainly be used by children worldwide in the near future.
The program turned down the free and almighty ubiquitous Linux ALL HAIL! and other commercial software systems in favor of a proprietary one, yet they accepted a meaningful donation from one of the biggest companies in the video game industry. Electronic Arts is donating the original SimCity to the OLPC program. The "SimCity" and "Sims" franchises are the largest PC game franchises ever created. In education, it found use in over 10,000 classrooms and even some national tournaments.
Originally released in 1989, SimCity was originally a game where the user could control his own municipality. The unintended benefit to players was that they learned about real-world community services and how to properly manage resources. The appeal of the game was the complex balance of how to: manage taxes and the economy, design roadways, supply water and energy to business and residences, provide law enforcement and medical services, and be prepared for fires or natural disasters. Decades after initial release, the game is expected to be a welcome introduction to children getting acquainted with their new laptops.
Its late at night (on a weekday nonetheless) and a concerned mother pulls the "air card" (and soon hides it) to end her kid's Halo 3 online session, urging him to go to bed. Instead of being crafty and sneaking out to play later, he then proceeds to aggressively search the house for his missing wireless card, with his mother attempting to restrain him the entire time.
Push comes to shove... and well... this enraged kid punches his own mom.
He never found the missing wireless card, and locked himself away in his bedroom to continue playing the game. Meanwhile, his parents call over police. Sheriff's Deputy Sean Harnage and another Deputy respond to a call of an "out-of-control child" at about 11:30PM. The kid remains locked in his room while his parents urge him to come out and share words with the deputies. Profane words fly, and the parents use a key to let the officers into the locked room. Harnage catches a punch to the face while fighting to make the arrest.
End result: off to jail for battery in domestic violence, and battery against a law-enforcement officer.
I haven't seen or heard anything this disturbing since the . Shame on you mother-puncher. Shame.
So, you think Guitar Hero makes you a rockstar? Yet, your mighty axe resembles a children's toy. Maybe something can be done about it. Better yet, someone has done it already, right on time with the recent release of Guitar Hero III.
[brandon] decided to rebuild a Guitar Hero controller out of a real Gibson electric guitar. Best part is he managed to do it at a budget price. US$69 for the guitar (found at Target) plus $60 for the controller is less than $150... a budget price indeed. I suppose it's one way to "hack the Gibson" without becoming "zero cool".
The construction method is similar to most other case mods... pull out the electronic guts and give them a superior new home. Special features include using the guitar's volume tuning knob in replacement of the whammy bar, and the strum bar tucked neatly between the pickups.
The finished product can only be described as "very stylish, and competitive". Certainly it would draw a lot of attention at your student dorm's next Guitar Hero tournament (which replaced the former air guitar competitions).
The creator of this is also interested in doing a similar guitar mod for Rock Band in the future, with a few more ideas to apply. We can expect more to come.
Full building instructions can be found at: XYHD.TV
With a year of speculation and anticipation, a Wii version of this Dreamcast classic has made its rounds in the rumor mill, and last month's announcement in Nintendo Power only caused more head scratching. Now comes news straight from Sega themselves confirming that this title is indeed coming to Wii. Developed by Gearbox Software (makers of Brothers in Arms and the PC Half-Life expansions) this title will be Wii exlusive with a release date of Spring 2008.
Known as Mr. Modchips, Bristol resident Neil Stanley Higgs has amassed over £1 million since 2002 from his operations with http://www.mrmodchips.co.uk and http://www.mrmodchips.com. Higgs was found guilty last month for owning and selling a number modchips and chipped consoles... totaling 26 offenses altogether. These include discontinued 'Xecuter' Xbox modchips and the 'Viper' GC chip.
Yesterday the Mr. Modchip business headquarters (his parent's residence) was raided by police after the ELSPA determined that several of the items offered on his website were illegal. Michael Rawlinson, managing director of ELSPA, said:
Quote
This case today sets a major precedent which marks a milestone in the fight against piracy, protecting the games industry's investment in fantastic games. It sends a clear message to anyone tempted to become involved in 'chipping' consoles that this is a criminal offence and will be dealt in the strongest possible way. The modification of consoles is an activity that ELSPA's anti-piracy team is prioritising â€" it is encouraging to see the UK courts do the same.
In 1999 Capcom and SNK struck up a deal to license each other their intellectual properties to produce two fighting games each.
Capcom's first entry was Capcom vs. SNK for the Dreamcast. Drawing mainly from their own Street Fighter, and SNK's King of Fighters series, Capcom made a solid 2D fighter with balanced characters and challenging gameplay. Hypnotic menus draw you in from the start, and animated backgrounds keep you interested through while you fight. The "groove" system lets you pick how you get to activate power ups and special combos, and the flexible ratio system lets you add a few more characters to your team if they are all weak.
SNK's first attempt is widely overlooked as its release was only for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Unfortunately SNK's poor financial standing led to bakruptcy in 2001, followed by a buyout by Playmore that same year. The new SNK-Playmore followed up on their obligation with SVC Chaos. This title definitely puts a SNK twist in style, but still feels a bit forced with some unbalanced characters. The best part by far is how SNK draws characters from more series than Capcom, leading to higher variety of characters. Also, the artwork from the game is stunning. Game sprites and special attacks received a visual makeover, while the backgrounds are truly something to look at.
In 2005 Capcom celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Street Fighter series. The Street Fighter Anniversary Collection hosts a fair selection of SF games on the Xbox and PS2. Capcom also licenses a number of character-themed collectible control pads to Nubytech to mark the occasion. The Xbox recieved Akuma, Bison, and Guile while the PS2 recieved Akuma, Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li in addition to wireless control pads featuring Cammy, Evil Ryu, and Sagat. The premier item released with these was an arcade stick for both Xbox and PS2 that brought the arcade experience home. Sometimes the standard controller doesn't quite cut it for these arcade style games.
Slayer1 gets the spotlight this week as the featured collection. The size might be considered average, but a detailed view will show how it truly shines. Ratings for most titles, and a large number of micro-reviews in the comment section give just enough personal input on games to determine his taste in gaming.
[img width=250 align=right]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/hardware/J-027/bf/J-027-H-00020-A.jpg[/img]Nintendo Co., Ltd. is ending official repairs of the original "Family Computer" on October 31, 2007. Originally released in 1983, the Famicom was Nintendo's first venture into the home console gaming market. While many of us are surprised that they still support a system so long dead (the last game was Adventure Island 4, in 1994), all that can be said is that you can't expect them to support it forever. By comparison Sega of Japan quit servicing Dreamcast units last year, even though they continue to sell new Dreamcast games through Sega Direct. After ten years of discontinuation of a system, the semiconductors required for replacement parts become difficult to find and purchase in quantities that have a guaranteed availability.
The Famicom isn't alone. The Super Famicom, Nintendo64, Game Boy Pocket, and Game Boy Light are also slated to end repair service support in the near future.
It isn't all doom and gloom for gamers. The Wii Virtual Console service offers the same games on the Wii and should free up use on aging hardware for at least the more popular titles.
Capcom promised a "Megaton announcement" for October 17 and boy have they delivered with the announcement of Street Fighter IV. No Turbo HD Remix, no spinoff, just fresh fighting action. The release date is still undetermined and projected to be a year or two away. The only tease we have is a newwebsite, showing a tease of a trailer.
With the series sitting 10 years dormant, I'm hungry for something new. Keep it up Capcom! Also, Resident Evil 5 and RE: Umbrella Chronicles are looking good too.
Actually this is last Wednesday's news (2007.10.17), but outstanding news anyways.
30 years ago this month the first of the Atari VCS systems started rolling off the factory lines in time for the holiday shopping season. The Atari VCS turned out to be the first "popular" cartridge based game system that families could play in the comfort of their own homes. With a lifespan of 14 years and a library of nearly a thousand titles, surely there is something for everyone.
Reviving a dead feature, this is List 'em. I list my favorites and you list yours. Here's my top Atari 2600 games:
Asteroids - An arcade favorite that also hit it it big at home. The gameplay is simple; fly your spaceship in any direction trying to clear out the Asteroid field. Fly too fast and you crash, and shooting larger asteroids makes them break into multiple smaller ones. I think most people will find this one to be fun with an easy difficulty level.
Space Invaders - Fortunately in the 1980s there were two "baddies" in gaming, film, and comic books that were impossible to be politically incorrect as the arbiters of leading world faiths hadn't covered them... Aliens and Zombies. Well, here's another mindless alien blaster that needs little introduction. Move your ship along the base of the screen shooting vertically, and taking cover as needed behind destructible shields. The invading ships are arranged in a grid with the higher ones being worth more points for scoring. Occasionally, a bonus ship will chirp and fly across the top of the screen for big points and maybe extra life. The sprites are not the same as the arcade, but the spirit is there and it feels much alive. "INCREASE SPEED, DROP DOWN, AND REVERSE DIRECTION!" -Lrr (Futurama)
Pitfall! - Play as a jungle explorer, Pitfall Harry, in search of untold fortune. Obstacles along the way include scorpions, crocodiles, and quicksand, so you better be ready to jump into action or else you'll fall short. Activision (the first "third-party" developer) really nailed it with this one. Unfortunately the difficulty level eventually plateaus, and the only world records to be had are timed "perfect play" runs.
Adventure - Wander the world from a top-down viewpoint through mazes and castles. Find keys to unlock newer areas to explore and slay dragons that stand in the way of progress. This game was truly revolutionary in terms of mechanics and general scope and size. A similar but far more refined game titled The Legend of Zelda came out on the NES a few years later and blew the world away. To this date I still enjoy playing both games.
Missile Command - Move the cursor to trigger a mid-air explosion. Use this to destroy all incoming missiles heading towards your bases. This game gets to be tough after a while, with a fair, but gradually increasing difficulty with each wave.
Wow, five is too short for listing all the great games for such a classic system. There's always other goodies like Q*Bert, Pole Position, Breakout, , Yars' Revenge, Frogger, Combat, and multiplayer sports games like Basketball. Expect simple gameplay and don't forget the RF switch. Stay tuned on channel 3.
This week we're shifting gears and cutting into the fast lane.
OutRun 2019 takes the lead this week as our featured game. Easily one of the fastest racing games on the Sega Genesis, it still plays like the other games from the outrun series. Of course, with these fast speeds come big crashes. If you like any of the F-Zero or Burnout games, you'ld certainly get some fun out of this one.
The featured image this week is a real bargain bin gem, but don't let the cover fool you. R: Racing Evolution looks to be another Ridge Racer game as it was made by Namco and features a shiny car and young Japanese female on the cover. At least thats what I thought when I picked it up. It turns out to be a racing simulation (that isn't Ridge Racer) with more simplified tuning options and a storyline. This game features a lot of real cars with upgrade options where all can be obtained in a reasonable time period. Stock cars, F1, offroad circuit, and drag racing are all represented here. My favorite cars here are the DeLorean (yeah it was really intended to be a luxury sports car) and the Hummer. The Xbox version of this game has a special Hummer with an Xbox paint job, adding in a touch of humor due to its ridiculous size, unplayable slow acceleration and speed. This game is fun to play, and the variety of races keep it fresh. The other drivers taunts are a little corny though, so try and keep the lead so you don't have to hear them as much.
The Gran Turismo 3 PlayStation 2 console bundle closes the gap for hardware. The Gran Turismo series has always been the leading car simulation with high attention to detail and realism. GT3 also helped give the early PS2 the big push for which Sony was hoping, contributing to the largest juggernaut in gaming history. While there are millions and millions of PS2s out there, this bundle proves to have some collector's value as its the only real box variant or bundle for the early model PlayStation 2.
Speeding his way to higher collection numbers is Reps911. He claims to have rekindled his collection habit after meeting his (approving) significant other. Over the past couple years he's shown a fast accumulation of games and systems, and shows no signs of slowing down.
So next time you're rounding the channel circuit, don't forget to stop by channel 3.
This weeks features look back at the days of the DOS game.
No mouse, and only armed with your keyboard, you had more control over your environments. Text adventures gave little to no instruction to navigate, leaving it up to you to figure out where to go. With small and expensive hard drives, reliance on floppy disks was important. Interplay's 10 Year Anthology is a compilation of a number of these types of games, and is a good sample of what to expect of games from this era. The high difficulty of some of these games can be frustrating at times, but looking back at them allows you to appreciate the advances that have been made in Western RPGs and adventure storytelling.
The Amiga CD32 is the featured hardware for the week. It is known as the first 32-bit CD-Rom based console released in western countries. With the ability to add a mouse, keyboard, and floppy drive, the Amiga CD32 feels more similar to a personal computer than console. Unfortunately, it didn't last long as Commodore filed for bankruptcy nearly a year after release.
The featured collection for the week belongs to TheBoss. He has several sharp pictures of his PC and Amiga CD collections; which are certainly not the easiest to collect for.
The featured image for the week is from the fantasy adventure game, Loom. Back in the day Lucasfilm's game studio (later to become LucasArts) actually made some memorable adventure games. Loom is noteable as the world's first fully voiced adventure game, and a decent copies have been known to fetch a pretty penny in online auctions.
[img width=250 align=right]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/repository/125525993946e8d52450f76Xbox-mini.jpg[/img]In 2001, Microsoft took their first steps into console video gaming with the Xbox. Often criticized as being a PC in a box, the hardware's most noticeable feature is its large size and weight in comparison to consoles from previous generations.
In 2007, two years after Microsoft's cessation of Xbox production, a fellow named ghostravel took it into his own hands to remedy the size issue. A year of toil, and some specialty craftsmanship (laser-cut custom case, reworked power supply, etc.) have earned him impressiveresults.
What if business was run like commentary on internet news sites and blogs? Read the comments on any site like joystiq or Kotaku (especially Sony articles) and you'll notice that nothing worthwhile is said. See what familiar commenter types are represented.
WARNING: In addition to representing the boorish side of internet discussions, it also contains strong language. If such things are offensive to you, watch this mySims trailer instead.
Good evening ladies and gents and welcome to the weekly birding feature, last weeks travels overseas brought a lot of a lot of sightings including the Japanese Grosbeak. This particular finch is quite common in the region and a casual sit near any feeder should score you an easy sighting. Also called the Ikaruga by the locals, its black and white feathering inspired a team of four video game designers to name one of their games after it. I believe they're called Treasure and have made some solid hits before, but this one stands out with a new element of gameplay, the ability to change from black to white.
Well, enough of that games rubbish... now where were we. Right, now for this portion of this week's show we get an outside opinion on waterfowl, courtesy of fellow sportsman, Earl. It looks like we're going on a Duck Hunt!
Well good evening there, Earl. What are we tracking tonight? Ducks. Ain't it obvious? Say, wanna Bud? No, thank you. So, would you be kind enough to tell us about your firearm. dun' mind if I do. Now this 'ere is the N-E-S-oh-oh-five, or I like to call it the Zapper. My buddy, TH14Arsenal has got one too.
So, please do tell our viewers what techniques you use to find and make the kill on these particular waterfowl. Well, its pretty easy. You see my dog here, Caesar. He does it all for me. Now, this Zapper came with a robot, and some "ness" toy all my kids be playin with, but that robot did nothin' but spin tops and stack rings, so I'm stickin' with who I trust the most to git-er-done. ...Right, so you just sit back while the dog seeks the fowl, flushes them, and you just sit back and do... nothing. It sounds quite simple, really. grrr...
Calm down, he only gets ornery with strangers. Lets shoot some duckies to cheer him up.
woof woof woof
KA-PANG! KA-PANG!
Wow, nice shot. You got two of them. Nah, its easy. You try. If you insist.
woof woof woof
KA-PANG! KA-PANG! KA-PANG!
Three misses. That sucks man, your aims worse than all five of my sisters' grrr... Caesar don't like it when you miss the ducks.
grrr...
You better run, squirrel
Well, glad to have you all again this week. *gasp* And remember always tune in to Channel thr-DAAAAH
Dreamcast "new" releases... 2007
Triggerheart Exelica
Karous (last commercial release)
Last Hope 2008 Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles 2009
DUX Last Hope: Pink Bullets Rush Rush Rally Racing
Irides: Master of Blocks 2010 Fast Striker 2012 Gun-Lord 2013 Sturmwind
DUX 1.5 2014
Redux: Dark Matters
Neo XYX by NG.Dev Team 2015
Alice's Mom's Rescue
James & Watch 'Arm'
Elansar & Philia
The Ghost Blade
Pier Solar HD 2016
James & Watch: Tooth Cracker
Leona's Tricky Adventures
Orion's Puzzle Collection
Xia & The Goddesses of Magic 2017
Escape 2042 - The Truth Defenders
Rush Rush Rally Racing: Reloaded
Alice Dreams Tournament
Breakers
For his 15th birthday in 2004, Mega Man (or Rockman, if you prefer) recieved the special treatment and had all 8 of his original games bundled up and re-released with some special extras on the 
The One-Laptop-Per-Child program (see 
Its late at night (on a weekday nonetheless) and a concerned mother pulls the "air card" (and soon hides it) to end her kid's Halo 3 online session, urging him to go to bed. Instead of being crafty and sneaking out to play later, he then proceeds to aggressively search the house for his missing wireless card, with his mother attempting to restrain him the entire time.
So, you think Guitar Hero makes you a rockstar? Yet, your mighty axe resembles a children's toy. Maybe something can be done about it. Better yet, someone has done it already, right on time with the recent release of 
With a year of 
30 years ago this month the first of the Atari VCS systems started rolling off the factory lines in time for the holiday shopping season. The Atari VCS turned out to be the first "popular" cartridge based game system that families could play in the comfort of their own homes. With a lifespan of 14 years and a library of nearly a thousand titles, surely there is something for everyone.
This week we're shifting gears and cutting into the fast lane.
This weeks features look back at the days of the DOS game. 
it's thinking