meppi

I'm speechless!!!!!!!!! A poster on a message board said that????!8!!!?8?8, What's the world coming too? Seriously, all I can say is the following:

Looks like I can't do anything right around here these days...

Hehe, you're just about getting as bad as I am at buying too many games. I have still a couple underway including Smash Bros, but it's taken ages to arrive. Hopefully I'll finally have it tomorrow as next week I'll have to work again. Also got one more GBA game in this week. Namely Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Didn't buy it mind. I got it for free from Nintendo thanks to their European Club Nintendo point system. It's my 5th or 6th present from them. Last time I got a silver GameBoy Micro.

Be sure to give Picross a bit time Philly, especially if it's your first. Picross DS was my first version as well and I bought it because of the huge amount of praise it was getting from long time Picross fans. But when I first tried it out, it seemed very boring to me and not interesting at all. The problem is that the 5x5 puzzles are basically just crap. Necessary crap, but still crap. What I mean by this is that you need a bit of time to get your head around the concept and develop a strategy of yourself. And you'll also need to learn how to see the puzzles. By which I mean, at first you'll start out at whatever line you think. But after a bit of time you'll start to understand that the lines at the side can be the most helpful as you can deduct much more information about the crossing lines out of those ones. Sounds complicated but it isn't really. A good trick to start of with is if you have a line of 10 and you need to x out 7 connecting blocks, that you start counting from one side up to 7, then remember that spot and count from the other side as well. Again remember this spot, and now you can fill in those blocks inbetween those 2 spots since you know that there have to be blocks there. Like this: ---xxxx--- This might sound alien to you right now, but you'll soon get the hang of it. Just don't make the same mistake I did at the start. After playing a dozen puzzles I put the game away because I couldn't see the fun in it, only to give it another try a couple of months later and became so addicted to it that I bought the Japanese GB and Super Famicom games as well. And now the Japanese DS game also. Best advise I can give you: Stick with it. You'll thank me in the end.

I'm on my way to finish the last 2 puzzle pack on Picross DS. (Took me long enough ) So I was left with the dilemma of erasing all my data, creating 100 random puzzles and start from scratch or get the Japanese copy, download 10 classic official Nintendo packs and start the rest also from scratch. Well, the last option just won out. I came across a play-asia deal where I could buy a new Japanese copy for only €12, including shipping. No need to say, many sleepless nights will follow. If there are more people on here the have become utterly addicted to Picross DS and would like to create and swap good self made puzzles, let me know.

Urge to buy a PS3 rising.................. well, not really.

Ain't that the truth. I used to do this quite a bit when I was younger. Remember selling my MD for a SNES. Sold my Game Gear, Nes (which I don't even remember why or how :-/), Game Boy as well. All at different time periods though. At the time it seems to be the reasonable and smart thing to do, but you always regret it in the end, even if it takes you 5 years to get to that point. From the 32 Bit generation on I never sold anything. Still have my original yellow (well, it's more brown now actually) SNES from 16 years ago. The only system I did sell was my XBox. Bought it for Sega games (especially Jet Set Radio Future and Panzer Dragoon Orta), but it had been sitting in it's box, unplayed for about a year. And at the moment the news came out that Outrun 2 would not be coming to the system after all, so I traded it in for a whole bunch of PS2 games. Well, we all know what happened... Thanks to the great people at Sumo, we did get Outrun 2 as well as it's sequel. So I got one again. One more thing. Not that I'm the best to give any advice. mind. But don't be discouraged when your kids seem to hate your classic games and only want to play the latest Need For Speed generic sequel. Give it a bit of time, they might come around later. I've witnessed this before. You can always try with a retro gaming evening or something. Also if they are too small to be playing games right now, it might also be a good idea to get them playing 8-Bit games at first. You never know.

WaveRace64. Still one of the most unique and best racing games ever made. You might want to look for an import copy of Bangaio as well, pretty different from the DC version and I actually like it a bit more. Many will say Ocarina of Time, and they'd be right, but I'm a bit partial to Majora's Mask. Unbelievable atmosphere and very unique Zelda game. Might not hold up that well today, especially the Battle mode, but Mario Kart 64. Whenever I play Mario Kart online on Wii, I always find myself packing N64 Mario Circuit and N64 Bowsers Castle. How I wish all the old tracks were in there. I'd probably never play another game. GoldenEye. Many say it doesn't hold up since there have been so many console FPS games that blow it out of the sky. Those people are completely wrong though. (second choice Perfect Dark) Tetrisphere. A much forgotten about puzzle game that is absolutely fantastic. Love the multiplayer mode as well. Highly recommended! 1080° Snowboarding, along with Steep Slope Sliders on Saturn still my favorite snowboarding games. There are naturally many more, but I'll leave some room for other people to join in.

Great idea! Best is to just make your own list without looking at someone else's first. That way you won't get influenced. 1: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2: Zelda: A Link to the Past 3: Super Mario Kart 4: Super Metroid 5: F-Zero 6: Super Mario World 7: Castlevania 4 8: Super Aleste/ Space Megaforce 9: Umihara Kawase 10: Super Probotector/Contra 3

This was recently posted on another forum I read regularly. It's a bi-weekly webcast that goes back into the history of videogames and creates a show that revolves around a certain theme. There's a Shigeru Miyamoto special, one on the Dreamcast, Sony vs. Nintendo, The fall of Atari, Nintendo vs. Sega, Nintendo vs. Atari, Commodore 64, Colecovision, Rise of Nintendo, the Death of Arcades and so on. I love these kinds of features about the past of gaming, and sadly enough there aren't too many of these out there. So I though some of you might be as happy as I am to find them. You can stream them from the site directly, or you can download them in various formats to your computer. There's even an option to subscribe to them via iTunes. All is free of course. http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/play-value

What better way to light up another boring day then by watching the Angry Videogame Nerd review a Rocky 1 spoof movie no-one has ever seen.

As I said, couldn't have done it without your input.

That's what I've been asking for. Give me idea's and I'll try to work something out. Anyway, I'm glad you really like it so much as I'm a bit Photoshopped out right now.

I voted a month later, seeing as I will be getting it for the Wii whenever that is. And it still has to be released in Europe first, so add another year or so. Looks great though. Heard something about a DS version as well, but that's supposed to be a very different game.

I again updated the latest page with several new covers included. There were 3 EGM, 2 GamePro and 3 Nintendo Power covers on the previous one. So I looked for covers from some other mags and scanned a few new ones as well. I have tried to pick the most vibrant and nice looking covers for each mag while still trying to keep a nice variation of subjects going. People that want to use bigger or smaller sizes for the thank you page can look here: 1280 1440 1600

And while I'm having fun in Photoshop. Making the new logo look a bit closer to the original Super Mario World one. Although I thought it might be cool to make the letters have a cloth texture so that it feels a bit like Yoshi's Story. Oh and just for fun, a little throwback to GoldenEye 007. And these 2 are cropped and resized (height of 84) to be used as banners:

2 and a half hours later...............

All that a system needs is one or 2 totally amazing games to not be worthless to me. Jaguar has Tempest 2000 Virtual Boy has Galactic Pinball, Wario Land, Vertical Force and Mario's Tennis MegaCD has the Lunar's, Sonic CD, Final Fight CD, Shining Force CD and several other RPGs 32X had a very good version of Virtua Racing. As for the others, I haven't hear about a couple of them so it's hard to to pick the worst one. Possibly the Philips CD-i.

This one better?

Well, I loved to watch NBA when Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley were still playing but that's pretty much it. The MJ retired and came back as a Wizard and it just wasn't the same anymore. Stopped following NBA after that.

If you ever come across a copy of Guru Logic Champ, pick it up without a shadow of a doubt. It's an incredible puzzle game. Not in the regular sense with block dropping, line clearing gameplay. But much more in the Picross, having to clear one more level before going to bed even though its half past 3 in the morning and you have to get up at 8 for work sense.

Back once again. Started playing Journey of Dreams and got a couple levels further in Will's story before I remembered I still had the Nightopia Dream Pack for the Japanese PS2, which I still hadn't unpacked. JoD is fun and all, but it's just not the same, and the levels feel much slower than the original probably due to them being quite a bit larger and mostly by having the spheres and rings too much spread out. But NiGHTS is a game that gets better the more you repeat it, so it might still get better once I know the levels like the back of my hand. Moving onto the Japanese PS2 port/remake of NiGHST into Dreams. There's both a Saturn port as well as a full blown remake in there which keeps the original gameplay and levels and all in tact, but used lovely high-res graphics. The thing that excited me the most about this port+remake was the thought of having a slowdown free NiD. As you might know, NiGHTS on Saturn runs very smoothly and without any noticeable slowdown whatsoever. That is until you start breeding families of Pians. And should these Pians gather up in packs larger than 10 you will start to see some slowdown. You can always eliminate a couple of Pians, but I never had the stomach for that. Well, the god news is that in the PS2 version there doesn't seem to be any immediate slowdown. But, and there's a big but, at least for me. There seems to be something that feels "off" about the game. I couldn't put my finger on it first. I thought it looked like it was running a tiny bit too fast, even during the loading screens. And this is using unmodified Japanese PS2 hardware along with a genuine Japanese version of the game. So I popped in my Japanese Saturn copy to see if this was in fact the case or if I was simply losing my mind. Lo and behold, the game does indeed seem to run a tiny bit too fast, but what's more problematic is that it controls very twitchy compared to the Saturn original with the 3D pad. At first I thought it might be due to the difference in controllers, but that's not it. There seems to be something has gone wrong with the port, even though a casual NiGHTS fan might think it's pretty much spot on. Sadly it's not. Don't get me wrong, it's an incredible port, and possible as close to the original as we're ever going to see without having a 100% perfect working Saturn emulator. Like I said, a casual NiGHTS fan might not even notice it and might think I'm full of it. But someone who has been routinely playing NiGHTS for more than 10 years now, will start noticing things which don't work the way they used to. Enemies behaving a slight it differently and Nightopians acting differently as well. To give an example, in the second course of Spring Valley where the wind blows you up the mountain. on 2'20" here: Normally if you don't fight the wind you will be blown almost straight into the rings at the top of the mountain. Well now in the remake as well as the Saturn port on the PS2 the wind doesn't carry you far enough up the mountain to throw you into the rings. Instead you get thrown just beneath them if you don't compensate for the lack of wind. I know this seems like nitpicking but it's just an example of how highlevel play is changed in the PS2 version, which probably will annoy longtime fans. Now the worst part is this. Due to the twitchy feel of NiGHTS on PS2, not even the silky smooth framerate can help me from getting motion sick just like I sometimes get from an FPS in the wrong circumstances. On Saturn, you get the feeling of actually gliding on the air beneath you when you come out of a paraloop and boost away horizontally. In the PS2 versions you instantly change direction, making the camera twitch along with the action ever so slightly and therefor making it seem like the screen is constantly jolting up and down, left and right when you're performing acrobatic moves. And so my head starts to spin as well and my stomach starts to feel queazy. So if there's a hardcore NiGHTS fan reading this and wondering if he should hunt down the PS2 version to get the ultimate NiGHTS experience, I would say, simply stick with your Saturn and a copy of the game. You can't go wrong with the original, or with Christmas NiGHTS either, which is even a bit smoother. The PS2 one is a great port, but it does have it's flaws sadly enough.

Ah I see now. I don't follow sports besides the WWE, but they just had a draft as well. Can we start voting already of do we have to wait for others to say they're in?

Now this might be because I'm not that long out of bed, but I'm a bit confused... it all sound a bit (over)complicated to me At first I thought this might be some kind of arcade highscore competition where we would pick a game and we would play a week or so until we have a winner and then one of the other players gets to choose another game for the next week. But that's not it, is it? More like an expanded Alone on an island fantasy gamepick?

Without a doubt one of my favourite games ever. I still remember the first evening I played the original. Me and a friend had gone to this little shop which sold lots of import games, but also regular ones. They only had one copy of NiGHTS left since they were expecting a new pack to come out in 2-3 weeks where the game along with the 3D controller would be sold for only €50. (the regular price of games ware then still €60-70 over here) He decided to get the regular game and I would wait for the new pack with the controller. We came home and popped in the game, without knowing what to expect. He started flying around aimlessly trying to figure out what he should be doing. After a half an hour or so of going back and forth, I picked up the instruction booklet and read more or less how the game should be played. Things started going much smoother after that. Once the game clicked with me (and him as well), I remember saying that this game was either made by a genius or by a madman. I just instantly fell in love with it. After getting my own copy I started noticing the various ways you could tackle the game and all the various hidden details. Endless links, Score multipliers, hidden bonuses, the NiGHTopians, Nightmarens and Mepians and how they all were connected together. There might not be such a thing as a perfect game, but for me this is indeed one of those. I love everything about it, simple as that. A while later I got Christmas NiGHTS as a gift from the same shopkeeper. Can't believe Sega gave this away as a Christmas freebie. They days I spent on Frozen Bell trying to beat my Link Attack score... I was so happy when the rumors finally became reality and Sega announced the sequel for Wii. The only problem is that they had now way of ever competing with the marvel they had created 10 years ago. Is Journey into Dreams a good game? Sure. Better than the original? Not even close. The biggest problem I found with the Wii game is that they felt the need to add so much content to the game that in fact it takes away from the purity of the game. Half of those new objectives could have easily been dropped from the game as well as the extended story elements, and I believe we would have gotten a much more balanced end result. Also I don't like the way they changed the score based gameplay. They way you are forced to play every lap just once and then move onto the next one. I know you can avoid catching the bird, but it doesn't help your score or anything. And since the blue spheres don't reappear for the next lap, you have to make sure you need to get it perfect on your first run instead of being able to link several laps together before moving on to the next course. This is actually the thing that bothers me the most about Journey of Dreams. I may seem very harsh on the sequel, but that's because I love the original so much and Sega messed around to much with the basics of the game for my taste. It certainly is a great game, and would it be the first NiGHTS, I'm sure I would have much less critique on it. But like I said, that's because I simply adore the original. Thinking about it, I never got around to finishing it so I could start playing all the good stages when I wanted. I think I'm of to Nightopia again.