#it's like a month away from the game's first anniversary. and it's E3! E3 is the perfect time to announce things like that!

[bryan360]

My reactions through my Nintendo E3 2021’s highlight picks

Hey guys! You know me from what been checking on E3 announcement last week. I even did my other posts to mention it of 🐰Mario + Rabbits sequel game and 🏁🏎Forza Horizon 5 as my interests picks.

June. 13th, 2021 - Link Here

June. 14th, 2021 - Link Here #2

Now it's finally time that I can talk through Nintendo E3 2021's announcement of games and content; after reveals back in June 15th that I should've bring this sooner, but due to working on my other tasks that I'm gonna save it til today. Hoping that I had time for free time to explain of what I feel for Nintendo E3 2021 Direct reveal for this month of June; especially which one that I finding most interested so I could added through my wishlist on eShop app. So today, here's my interesting picks for Nintendo E3 reveal this year; whether you agreed or disagree of how it goes when you suggest other was. I know if everyone so close to look forward the Switch Pro reveal, but it seems that it didn't happen anytime soon. Anyways, now get into my picks that I screenshot and edited through last week's Nintendo Direct I've managed.

First top left - ✊😈Kazuya Mishima joining Super Smash Bros Ultimate

First off, I knew that there will be at least one Super Smash Bros DLC Fighter reveal; before saving the last one for coming months this year soon. What's really unexpected to see though is a second Bandai Namco fighter after 👻PAC-MAN, but sadly its not Lloyd that if everyone hoping he would've upgraded from a Mii Costume to a true fighter yet. (Like we ever getting another sword fighter once again. 😒) No, it was actually ✊😈Kazuya Mishima from the Tekken series. My reaction was caught my attention since it started when he carrying Ganondorf to the lava pit and so does other fighters that is really dark. Except for Kirby that thankfully knows how to get away, but still. If I remember his origin through reading wiki site though, at time he used to be good until his father Heihachi sees him as his weakness. Later when Heihachi kills one of the family members that Kazuya been fond of and being thrown by his father in the cliff until he eventually climbs back up when his devil gene activates. Ever since then, Kazuya is now antagonist for the recent Tekken games so far and seeing him to match fight against Smash was an unexpected sight. I remember the time after hearing Masahiro Sakurai's interview where he consider Heihachi to be playable for Smash 4, but pass over due to implement his moveset to be difficult. But here we are seeing for Kazuya instead that it really sure takes time to deliver. After his moveset through his reveal could be challenging to work it out on command. Let's just wait to figure out once Sakurai will finally bring us his next presentation next week, but for now knowing this Tekken fighter joining Smash was a unique idea that Sakurai managed to work it out.

Second top right - 🌟Mario Party Super Stars

How about that when where seeing the next Mario Party game brings us? Despite the recent 2018 Super Mario Party, this will be the twelfth installment to be heading Nintendo Switch this year's 🎃October 2021; this time having 100 remastered minigames like I've seen them before on previous Mario Party games. My reaction was good to see how it continues on, but sure miss that time I remember from my childhood for the original first Mario Party game on the N64 console. So what's get me attention is the recognized boards such as 👑🎂Peach's Birthday Cake makes a comeback! It looks the way that I remember from playing the N64 game when the layouts off frosting goodness and the song to match as well. It was really something when it comes from Nintendo and their past N64 games I have memories fond of. 🙂👍🏼

I give this Nintendo a good move when trying to bring back Mario Party again as a E3 reveal, but maybe just maybe if it will be this good from previous Mario Party games in terms of selling copies. Who knows? *Shrug*

Third middle left - Metroid Dread

However, if you really looking forward a new Nintendo game coming to October 2021 early is a most recognized franchise making a return....meanwhile Metroid Prime 4 is still in development. At least knowing this game can take us time before the fourth prime game can be finished, but man that everyone went crazy after the reveal of Metroid Dread! It the return of 2D Metroid game in action after the success of Samus Return for 3DS back in September 2017. My reaction was surprised and impressive for the looks and feels about this game's tone; especially the haunting part where the robot named "EMMI" (but don't be confused with the word Emmy as an Emmy Award like if would funny. 😅) trying to catch up with Samus and it's game over....😵 I think I could add this into my wishlist and it would be the first time I'll be owning this Metroid game for my Switch system. Fact: Metroid Dread was originally plan as a Nintendo DS title way back in mid 2000s, but sadly being cancelled due to technical limitations.

Fourth middle right - 💣WarioWare Get It Together

I was hoping if Warioware could come back for the lastest Switch system and they finally called. However, this game will take a different approach than doing minigames of yourself, but with your characters do it for you. For this latest Warioware game of picking noses, it'll be having one of the characters such as Wario, Mona, Jimmy T, 9-Volt, and others to do on all minigames with their strengths and skills they can managed. My reaction was pretty good knowing that Nintendo is making this a unique idea than doing a same microgame gameplay style from previous ones, but in a fun way. Cross my fingers if I'll be saving this as a digital download version. Like that time I actually got "Warioware Touched!" for my 2DS/3DS handheld system back in April 2016, but sadly lost it of deletion unfortunately....😧 Link Here #3

Fifth middle bottom - Game & Watch The Legend of Zelda

And finally is something that we're hoping to expect during almost halftime of their E3 direct reveal. Knowing this year is The Legend of Zelda 35th Anniversary, you probably hoping they can bring something to celebrate one of the most recognized series run. While it was shocking to know they won't be having plans to do; even for me that I finding baffling for Nintendo would do this. At least they wanted to make up for it by having to released the HD remastered version of Skyward Sword coming next month and giving us a second look for the upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel until it'll be released next year....eventually. What's my pick though is the Game & Watch version for The Legend of Zelda; the same thing of what it made for Super Mario and during its 35th Anniversary run last year. For this next one will have 3 related Zelda games: 1987 original, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and a special Game and Watch version of Vermin, but playing as Link as he trying to clobbered the octoroks instead of moles. Looks like it'll be a different take from what the Super Mario version have, but hoping it won't be the limited edition once maybe I could get one of those a try. So for my reaction was pretty alright. 🙂👍🏼

Overall:

Man that is the list for my interests picks I gotten, but after watching Nintendo E3 Direct for this year sure worth it at the end. It was very impressive direct despite of absent games not being showed like Bayonette 3 or Metroid Prime 4, but with other announcements such as Metroid Dread and Mario Party Super Stars does give us something for the win.

What did you think about this list of my interesting picks for Nintendo E3, though? Give yourself some likes and reblogs for this post I bring. Anyways, I'm just gonna check on my P-Pal's secret art trade part for me that I should've done it early. Sorry about making this post that I took hours to finished, @murumokirby360

#screenshots #edited #youtube #video #e3 2021 #nintendo #nintendo e3 2021 #kazuya #kazuya mishima #tekken #super smash bros ultimate #mario party superstars #metroid dread #warioware get it together #the legend of zelda #game and watch #june 2021 #june 24th 2021

[daleisgreat]

15 Years of Xbox 360: Flashback Special!

I am usually timely with these, but the holidays has resulted in this 15th Anniversary of the North American launch of the Xbox 360 Flashback Special to be about a month late. The 360 was one of the first major consoles to have a near simultaneous global launch in the three major market territories. With the United States and Canada launching first on November 22, 2005, followed by Europe on December 2nd and finally Japan on December 10th with most other smaller markets over the following year. The 360 had an extraordinarily long life cycle, with it being eight years until Microsoft launched its successor, the Xbox One. I had major highs and lows with the 360 so get ready to take in my journey with the system. Like with past system specials here, I recorded podcasts based on RPG games and comic book games that released on the 360, PS3 and Wii and have embedded them at the bottom of this entry for supplementary material if you crave even more 360 games to learn about. Be forewarned, this is my lengthiest Flashback Special yet, so I have implemented bookmarks for ease of navigation you can click or press on below! With that out of the way, the last special I did here was on the PS2, and I want to begin the 360 Flashback Special the same way by expanding upon its unavoidable….. CHAPTERS Part 1 – The Hype Part 2 – The Launch Part 3 - Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements Part 4 - Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles Part 5 - An Awesome Debut Year of Games Part 6 - Upgrade to HD Part 7 - Three Red Lights Part 8 - Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Part 9 - Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Part 10 - For the Love of Online Co-op Part 11 - Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs Part 12 - Becoming a Pinball Wizard Part 13 - Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre Part 14 - The Fad that was Plastic Instruments Part 15 - Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Part 16 - Wanna Wrassle? Part 17 - Sports-ball Forever! Part 18 - No Russian, No Cauldron Part 19 – Dubious Honors Part 20 - Lightning Round Quick Hits Part 21 - ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) Part 22 – You’re Still Here!? Well then…. (STINGER!!!) The Hype Microsoft garnered a lot of attention by pulling the plug on its original Xbox early because of the PS2 being an unstoppable global force, and was determined to launch its system a year before the PS3. The Dreamcast had huge success in North America for its first year by launching ahead of the PS2 a year early, so I could see where they were coming from. I covered E3 2005 for the long defunct gaming site, VGpub. I recall getting a closed door tour with a few other gaming press members for the Xbox 360 and was shuffled around to a few isolated booths that showed off the 360’s “blade” dashboard interface and went over some of the functions of the system. I recall being shown Kameo running side-by-side an unreleased build on the original Xbox to demonstrate the 360’s horsepower. 360 had a couple games playable on the show floor that year with Top Spin 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. From my brief time with those two games what I took away the most was the much-improved controller being lighter, slightly more ergonomic, and the much appreciated inclusion of the shoulderbumper buttons to replace the peculiar white and black buttons from its predecessor. Of the several games I was shown and/or played from E3 2005, the one that impressed me the most was Saints Row. I walked out of that demonstration thinking it looked like the first viable open world contender to Grand Theft Auto after countless watered down GTA-clones were flooding the market. Sure enough, Saints Row did not disappoint the following year and would have three more successful sequels over the years.

Back when cable TV mattered before the dawn of streaming, this MTV reveal event delivered on building anticipation for the 360.

Microsoft’s E3 press conference, which happened in tandem with a much publicized MTV reveal event of the 360 filled with all kinds of celebrities made it impossible to avoid the 360 launch hype building up to its November launch. Then there was Microsoft’s truly extraordinary “Zero Hour” launch event in the Mojave desert to give people the opportunity to travel all the way there just to buy an Xbox. Then there was the Mountain Dew contest where they were giving away 360s every so minutes and you increased your chances to win by entering more codes on their website, and yes, I must have entered at least a 100 codes from weeks of gathering bottle caps from co-workers to no avail. All this blitz of marketing engagement made it impossible to not pay attention to the 360’s launch. I was a huge fan of the original Perfect Dark on N64, and thus was eagerly stoked for the prequel, Perfect Dark Zero which made it a day one buy for me. Amped 3 wound up as the second game I pre-ordered for launch day, and it was a solid snowboarding game, which got a significant boost from its irreverent narrative that pushed me through playing it. The Launch With my pair of launch games pre-ordered I went on to count down the days until the 360’s launch. I thought I had my launch system guaranteed on November 22nd, but last second shenanigans prevented me from buying it at the final hour, yet I was able to procure dibs on the first batch of second wave systems that hit retail three weeks later. Launch window systems came with a couple limited pack-ins in the form of a DVD remote control (yay?) and the downloadable XBLA puzzler game, Hexic HD. Hexic HD was a perfectly fine hexagonal based puzzler from Alexey Pajitnov, the same designer who invented Tetris, but I mostly played Perfect Dark Zero in those opening months of the 360. I only got about halfway through the campaign, but I played a ton of deathmatch with friends and/or solo against bots. Like the previous game, PDZ had a plethora of multiplayer options and maps and tided me by splendidly during the first months of the 360’s lifecycle.

Perfect Dark Zero and Amped 3 were my first two 360 games and both held me over nicely during those initial launch window months! Over the next few weeks I played a fair amount of launch games my friends brought over and picked up/rented a couple more. Top Spin 2 I played far more than I thought I would and wound up finishing its lengthy career mode. Call of Duty 2 was a local multiplayer hit that friends repeatedly brought over. A few years later I eventually picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted and got immersed working my way through its “blacklist” of rival racers to vanquish. Launch title Condemned: Criminal Origins I did not start playing until recent years, and I am kicking myself for not starting it sooner as it is a trip of a suspense/thriller first person game consisting of intense hand-to-hand and melee weapon combat over traditional firearms FPS weaponry. The game is still fun to this day and I have made it a ritual to play it on Halloween for the past three or four years. Reinventing Dashboards with Blades & Achievements

Also worth highlighting here during the launch was familiarizing myself with the much-loved “blade” dashboard in the launch window. The four blades were filled with many options to separate game, videos, photos and music media. I made heavy use of custom soundtracks on the original Xbox, and loved how the 360 had support for it built into the user interface so they could be dropped into any game. Dashboard and online features on the original Xbox like friends list, voice chat, game invites and more carried over on the 360 and later evolved into so much more through system updates that introduced must-have features like Party Chat that made it so several users can voice chat together regardless of what game any of them are playing. It made catching up with family and friends on weekend game nights more manageable. The biggest hit of the UI during that launch window was Microsoft debuting achievements that were mandatory for all games. These became an instant sensation among any ardent game player when accomplishing the criteria for an achievement and hearing the endorphin-rush of a sound effect and accompanying on screen graphic that indicated you unlocked another achievement. Most of the launch window games had straightforward achievements like finishing campaign missions or getting X amount of wins in sports and racing games, but they eventually evolved and encouraged users to play games in new ways I never thought of (Crackdown was a great early example of this with its achievement design). Also the way the Blades made it easy and irresistible to compare what achievements you accomplished in a game against other people on your friends list that it only upped the friendly competition between friends to see who could unlock more achievements. It is gratifying to see Microsoft allowed each Gamertag’s linked Gamerscore to carryover from 360 to Xbox One and now Series S|X. While achievements are still around today, and I occasionally dive into going out of my way to unlock some if I am enjoying my time with a game, they do not compare to the early years of the 360 where achievement-mania was running wild. Revolutionizing Downloadable Games on Consoles

This was also the first time a major console had an online digital store implemented at launch. The original Xbox had a scaled-down store they experimented with late in its lifecycle with about a dozen smaller classic arcade hits and smaller sized web browser-esque “flash” games of its era that could be purchased, and the 360 expanded on this bigtime. Initially, the 360 digital game marketplace known as “Xbox Live Arcade” launched with games maxing out at 50meg download limits so the game could fit on a memory card, so all of the first year or so worth of XBLA games were mostly re-releases of smaller-sized arcade classics like Smash TV, Contra and Gauntlet along with similar simple browser-based flash game of its era like Bankshot Billiards 2. Over the 360’s lifecycle though they kept increasing the game size limits to the point where disc-based games were coming out digitally and were multiple gigs in size as memory card and hard drive storage options increased. During the first few months of the 360 after launch developers were not flocking to releasing XBLA games because they were unsure if they were going to take off like digital games were slowly starting to on PC at that point. The launch dozen or so XBLA games were met with success, but developers were not anticipating it so in those early months only one or two new XBLA games hit a month. The big breakout XBLA success was a straightforward adaptation of the card game, Uno that launched in May 2006. I can attest for many sessions of simple, pick up and play rounds of Uno while catching up with friends over voice chat online. Microsoft eventually patched in support for the 360’s first webcam, the “Vision” camera, which lead to some peculiar matchups with strangers online who wanted to make sure to demonstrate all their adult substances they were consuming that evening. Later throughout 2006 and 2007 XBLA grew to releasing a game every Tuesday, and Microsoft enforced every XBLA game have a demo/trial so it was an eager experience to see what game would be hitting that Tuesday, because most of the time Microsoft did not announce the game until maybe a day before at that time.

It took over 20 years, but it was worth it to relive the iconic X-Men arcade game with online co-op, and EA did a bang-up job bringing back NFL Blitz for two of my most played XBLA titles! There are so many success stories of XBLA games to go on about, but I want to highlight a few of my favorites. Seeing the re-release of many classic arcade, 8 and 16-bit titles with enhanced graphics and online support was a big win for XBLA in this department. I remember interviews with the XBLA executives from this time answering fans demands and going through the legal hoopla with Konami to bring back arcade favorite beat-em-ups like TMNT, X-Men and The Simpsons, and all with online play! This treatment went doubly so for fighting games. It started with Street Fighter II: Turbo receiving the XBLA treatment, and within years Capcom, SNK, Namco and other studios were porting over their greatest hits onto XBLA like the first two Marvel vs. Capcom and Soul Calibur titles, many King of Fighters re-releases. My personal favorite is the remake, Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix that saw all new gorgeous artwork and a new officially endorsed ReMix soundtrack from the fantastic ocremix.org community.

Non-fighting game wise I was surprised by EA Sports’ revival of NFL Blitz. It is one of the few games I somehow got addicted to online, and become somewhat legitimately good at too and was able to genuinely earn the 10 straight online wins achievement against random ranked opponents! Renegade Ops is an addicting twin-stick shooter in an mini-open world unleashing destruction as pint-sized vehicles with a gruff CO barking orders from the chaotic minds from the team that also made Just Cause. Valiant Hearts I originally played on 360, and loved the passion they showed on their unique adventure/action take on a World War I game. I 1000% related to Double Fine’s take on being a wide-eyed kid caught up in the whimsical spirit of Halloween in both of its RPG-lite Costume Quest titles. Fans of past Sega consoles like the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast were well treated, and new fans emerged after a plethora of XBLA re-releases of titles like Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, both Sonic Adventure games, Daytona USA, Ikaruga, Virtua Fighter 2, Nights, Jet Set Radio, Sega Bass Fishing, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Rez and others saw new life in XBLA form. The Genesis saw packs of three games re-released in bundles themed around best-sellers in the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe 16-bit entries. Although I would recommend skipping the XBLA Genesis packs in favor of the 360 disc release of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection that has 40 Genesis games and bonus unlockable Arcade and Master System titles. Sega obviously treated its back catalog well on the 360, and I put in many hours revisiting these past favorites. I bought into the hype for Shadow Complex, and it became the first “MetroidVania” I ever finished. Hydro Thunder Hurricane perfectly captured the nature of the 1999 arcade boat racer, while successfully evolving its gameplay into the HD era. Adorable puzzle-platformer Ra-Skulls brought back pleasant memories of Mr. Driller! Twisted Pixel’s Comic Jumper made smart use of implementing FMV-video into its charming superhero platform-action title. Despite its stomach-turning title, Deathspank is a lighthearted action-RPG I saw through to the end with a twist ending I did not see coming. That same developer, Hothead Games, released the first two turn-based RPG Penny Arcade games I ate up that perfectly encapsulated the popular web comic in videogame form.

Two of my best-of-class XBLA recommendations are Trials HD and its sequel, Trials Evolution. It is an exemplary example of the adage, “easy to learn, tough to master.” Its quirky, bouncy motorbike and instant reloading spawns made it easy to succumb to endlessly retrying its inventive stages after each wipeout. It also had innovative use of implementing Friends List leaderboards with their ghost times appearing as you play, just teasing you more and more upon each crash when coming close to usurping their times! The sequel added online multiplayer that clicked and made perfect use of Trials unique gameplay. Microsoft I recall got a lot of flak for their curating policies for XBLA at the time because they would only allow one game to release each Tuesday, and there were many indie developers lashing out for being on the short end of the stick for not getting their game slotted for release on XBLA. Eventually Microsoft upped it two XBLA games a week, with usually a more anticipated game hitting on Tuesday and a lesser known title from a smaller studio hitting on Friday. Looking back on this the obvious downside is the lack of quantity of XBLA titles with only one or two releasing a week, but the curation process lead to the hit-to-miss ratio of them being significantly in favor of the hit range. Sure there were some stinkers that creeped in their like the disappointing Turtles in Time Re-Shelled remake, but the good outweighs the bad greatly in the XBLA market, especially compared today to the ridiculous amounts of low-rent DIY shovelware hitting every week on all consoles with there being seemingly no restrictions for any developer to get their game on a current console, for better or worse.

The digital store also made game demos more easily accessible instead of the traditional demo disc, and downloading demos in the early years of the 360 was kind of a big deal, especially when they had major opening acts of action and intriguing narratives like the Prey and Just Cause demos that made a huge impression on me and triggered me to rush out and buy them. This also worked against games, with the most egregious case being EA Sport’s planned reboot of its basketball series with NBA Elite ‘11’s demo being so plagued with bugs and glitches, that EA infamously flatout cancelled the game days before its street date release and forced retailers to return their copies of the game. That last minute recall tempted overzealous retail employees to snatch up precious copies to make it one of the rarest physical releases on the 360, with copies going on eBay for many thousands of dollars. An Awesome Debut Year of Games

I have no idea if it was happenstance, or intentionally planned, but it worked out pleasantly in the 360’s favor in its first year of next-gen exclusivity they had one or two AAA exclusive games launching per month. Noticing multiple users on my friends list playing the latest AAA game, and with the dawn of podcasts in 2005 featuring their affable hosts discussing the latest games in exhausting detail on launch week is what I feel created the horribly named sensation, “Fear of Missing Out.” I ate up gaming podcasts upon discovering them in 2005 with 1up Yours, The Hotspot, Broadcast Gamer and Team Fremont Live being early favorites of mine and influencing my gaming purchases with their genuine positivity on the latest games that made it difficult to ignore their top picks. They, along with traditional print and online gaming press made it easier to keep up with the latest must-have game of the month for the 360’s first year. A month after launch Dead or Alive 4 snuck in at the end of 2005. It was the first fighting game on the system, and with it having a Spartan character from Halo’s universe as a guest fighter, and an innovative-for-the-time pre-fight lobby system lead to me spending many hours in it online and offline. I was terrible at it, but still had countless hours of fun, even while legitimately earning the dubious zero point achievement for 25 straight online losses.

Oblivion’s Adoring Fan I loved seeing respawn every couple of in-game days to tag along on my adventures before quickly getting slaughtered, and Test Drive Unlimited was an unprecedented always-online open world racing title that laid the foundation for Forza Horizon and The Crew! A couple months later, the first big RPG hit on 360 with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was a huge improvement from Morrowind, and this Western open-world RPG was publisher Bethesda’s first mainstream console hit. It took me well over a hundred hours to finish that I spread out over the course of five years (just in time for Skyrim!). I had to resort to abusing the hell out of the dupe glitch for infinite invisibility potions to get past those dastardly Oblivion Gates, but it was an immensely gratifying experience to complete and fully 1000 gamerscore Oblivion! Pro tip, make sure to avoid a near freak-out experience like I had and have a bow in your inventory on the final Thieves Guild mission where you steal an actual Elder’s Scroll!

The string of big-release games kept rolling through 2006. Test Drive Unlimited broke new ground for the racing genre with its always connected open world! Before From Software had blockbuster success with their string of Souls games, they were known at this time for their niche mech games, and had their most success yet with the release of Chromehounds in 2006. The online-focused mech game was more accessible from their previous feature-extensive Armored Core titles. A pair of popular third-person Tom Clancy games hit in 2006 with the first Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Rainbow Six: Vegas titles. I rented both of these and was terrible at them online, but I do recall having fun as the decoy in Vegas to draw out enemy fire so my friends could pick off my assailants! My anticipation for Saints Row paid off, and it wound up being an awesome GTA-clone done right that year! The first Gears of War was the big 2006 holiday release from Epic Games, riding the success of several hit Unreal FPS games, but long before their current Fortnite fame. It lived up to the hype and delivered with its unapologetic brand of in-your-face gore, and smooth drop-in/drop-out online campaign play. It became one of my favorite franchises on the 360, and I would up playing through the campaign of every single game released to this day! The final big 2006 release I want to highlight is Dead Rising’s brand of campy, zombie mayhem from Capcom that became a huge new IP for Capcom and also the catalyst for many 360 owners to… Upgrade to HD Up through most of 2006 was when I used a traditional CRT (AKA “Tube TV”) as my main gaming television. HDTVs were first noticeable on the market during the PS2/Xbox/GCN era, and a fair number of games supported HD resolutions (especially on Xbox), but HD graphics were never a marquee bullet point of that gen. That all changed with Dead Rising. For the first several months I remained content with the CRT visuals of launch window 360 games, then when playing the Dead Rising demo, I could not help but notice the game’s text was rather tiny and kind of difficult to read. Upon listening to podcasts I learned I was not alone on this and it turned out the game’s text was optimized and quite readable for HD resolutions. Many more games would soon follow this trend in the following months. I noticed this even more when a friend brought over a smaller HDTV and we put them side-by-side running Rainbow Six: Vegas and I saw for myself the difference in the legibility of the in-game text. So yeah, the core graphics for all games where shinier and crisper in HD, but my primary reason for upgrading at the end of 2006 was just to read the damn text. History is repeating itself in recent years with text starting to look smaller and requiring more eye-squinting again to read in games like Wreckfest and MLB: The Show for me, when I later learned that is so because the visuals are optimized for 4KTVs (which I finally upgraded to several weeks ago).

Did you experience the ‘Look and Sound of Perfect’ with 360’s HD-DVD player, along with its killer app of a film in Tokyo Drift? HD movies also arrived to the 360 in 2006 with the release of the ill-fated HD-DVD add-on. Sony getting the better end of the stick in exclusivity deals with studios lead to it losing the physical HD format war against BluRay, and movies stopped releasing on HD-DVD by the end of 2008. I almost impulse-bought the add-on upon seeing it on the clearance rack for $50, but thankfully I held off. By that time however HD streaming was starting to take off with TV shows and movies available to rent and purchase from 360’s online marketplace, and the 360 nabbing a year exclusive on being the first non-PC device to offer streaming Netflix. Streaming movies and TV shows exploded in popularity and before I knew it, almost anytime I logged on nearly half of my Friends list was making use of one of many streaming apps that would become available on the 360. A couple years before the 360 got to this level of success, it had a couple major hurdles to overcome, especially the right-of-passage a vast majority of early 360 owners fatefully dubbed…. Three Red Lights There have been a fair number of platforms that have been notorious over the years for noteworthy faulty hardware ratios like the first three original PlayStations and the problematic powering on trickery required to boot NES games, but those all pale in comparison to the atrocity of the launch year 360 units. Within a few months after launch more frequent whispers started to become prominent of knowing someone who had a 360 that failed on them with the telltale indicator being three flashing red lights on the system. Users would then have to call Microsoft to set them up with a shipping container to mail to Microsoft to repair and mail back. I was the first among my local friends and peers to get the three lights of doom, and I have painful memories of it because my system was lost in UPS transit for three months before I finally got it back after visiting the local UPS center’s lost and found.

360 #2 only lasted several months before red-lighting in 2007, and the third met its expiration date in 2011. I will refrain from going into the nuts and bolts of the architecture problems, but in layman’s terms Microsoft was in such a rush to get that year head start on Sony, that a high amount of faulty chips made their way to manufacturing and resulted in the system’s high failure rate. To Microsoft’s credit, they gave all launch year 360 owners an extended three year warranty to get their system replaced free of charge, which I took advantage of twice. The third one died after the extended warranty, but by that point Microsoft had a slim version of the console on the market releasing alongside Gears of War 3 that I snatched up, and **fingers crossed** have had no issues yet with. Being the first to be hit with the three red lights amidst my immediate local circle of friends and co-workers made it interesting. Over the next year every couple of months another friend would call or text me, and/or another co-worker would catch up with me at work and relay to me their troubles of their 360 bricking and I would be their unofficial tech support on how to get ahold of Microsoft to the point where I still remember the phone number to this day (1-800-4MY-XBOX) to get set up with the replacement system. I wound up buying a hard drive transfer cable to transfer data to new hard drives when switching systems and I recall at least a handful of people borrowing it from me when they switched systems due to switching systems and/or upgrading hard drives. In a bizarre twist, I will put a curse on Hollywood Video for my first two 360s red-ringing! The first time it happened I was playing a rented copy of Chromehounds. The Hollywood Video curse struck again in 2007 when renting Shadowrun caused my 360 to crash!!! As ubiquitous as the three red rings became, Microsoft wanted to ensure a 360 makeover image with a marketing assault for the 2010 launch of… Kinect + Avatars = Wii’s Userbase Nintendo’s Wii launched Holiday 2006, and the motion-based console was an initial sales juggernaut, and it took over two years before it was commonly available on store shelves. Both Sony and Microsoft initially had meek responses to it with Sony essentially patching in motion controls in time for the PS3’s launch with the Six Axis controller that was not that well received or regarded for its precision, and the 360 had the aforementioned Vision Camera, which was essentially Microsoft’s take on an Eye Toy that only saw a handful of games support it for motion controls. Holiday 2010 saw both companies with a meaningful response with PlayStation Move on PS3, and Kinect on 360.

Microsoft pulled the same marketing strategies as Nintendo did years earlier intentionally marketing the Kinect towards families and advertising it heavily on daytime television. Most of Microsoft’s Kinect games were more-or-less their takes on the hit Wii versions. This is when Microsoft implement cartoony characters that could be implemented across games called “Avatars.” They were especially prominent in Kinect games, and one cool side effect for them was the many digital clothing items for them that could be either bought off the Avatar Marketplace, or unlocked for free by playing through games. I am especially proud of my You Don’t Know Jack dummy, and goofy oversized head ornament I unlocked from finishing Comic Jumper. A fair amount of late gen 360 titles supported Avatars in-game, which made for some interesting sights like having your Avatar onstage in Guitar Hero 5 jamming out next to Kurt Cobain. Microsoft’s gamel paid off, and for two-to-three years, the Microsoft moved millions of units of that camera. It is safe to sumrise that the 1-2-3 punch of Kinect, Move and smartphones all combined to steal the “casual gamer” userbase that the Wii was known for and the Wii’s console sales in America plummeted from 2011 onwards. The Kinect boosted 360 console sales so much from the Holiday 2010 period until the Xbox One and PS4 launches in Holiday 2013 that in that three year timeframe Microsoft sold the most systems in America for all but a handful of months. By the Holiday 2013 launch of the Xbox One/PS4, the 360 overcame the Wii’s sizable lead to become the best-selling console of the Wii/360/PS3 generation in America.

Only Kinect game I ever played was the river-rafting follies seen in Kinect Adventures, but surprise hit games like the Gunstringer seen above tempted me to almost get a Kinect on multiple occasions. I never bought a Kinect, but did play Kinect Adventures at a friend’s….yes, it was that damn river raft mini-game. I paid attention to the games releasing for it and supporting the peripheral, and a few looked like genuinely entertaining games and went on to have critical acclaim. Many traditional games added optional “Better with Kinect” features like zoom-in art gallery halls, or audio play-calling in sports games. Even though the ardent game player in me despised the change in direction Microsoft took with the Kinect, I cannot deny there were still several games I wanted to try on it after seeing the positive reactions for Harmonix’s trilogy of Dance Central games, Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer and even the limited on-rail experience that is Fable: The Journey. Backwards Compatibility & Indie Games…..not those Indie Games Hitting around the same time as Kinect was Microsoft patching in a new division of purchasable digital games initially called Community Games, but later rebranded Indie Games. Microsoft made its XNA development tools easily available for almost any level of experienced developer. This lead to a deluge of DIY games that looked like they were made as a semester long development school project flooding the Indie Games channel. Some developers embraced the campy nature of the amateur works that dominated the 360 Indie Games scene, with Silver Dollar Games especially unleashing a plethora of their…brand…of games like Try Not to Fart and the ironically titled, Why Did I Buy This?

The 360 Indie Games scene left a lot to be desired as seen above with the quality of games from infamous companies like Silver Dollar Games There were a few gems in the rough to be discovered in the Indie Games channel, and like XBLA games, Microsoft enforced a free trial on all games so you knew what you were getting yourself in for before throwing down some hard earned Microsoft Points, which are like regular points, but fun! There are two DLC Quest games that are fun quirky $1 platformers riffing on how gratuitous in-game DLC would become. Tribute Games gained notoriety on here with their adorable Breakout homage, Wizorb. Finally, I was a huge fan of Zeboyd Games that earned their reputation for their 360 Indie Games and I played through and devoured all four of their humorous takes on throwback pixel RPGs (Breath of Death VII, Cthulu Saves the World, Penny Arcade’s Rain Slick 3 & 4) that released as Indie Games. Zeboyd earned their development stripes on the 360 Indie Games platform, and I am happy with their continued success today! For every one of these hits that broke through however, there were at least a few dozen forgettable releases overshadowing them. Indie Games was Microsoft’s answer for their curation policy to XBLA, but as you can see it only went so far.

Zeboyd’s four 360 Indie Games are excellent retro-style RPGs well worth your time and can be found on Steam today to experience these gems! Microsoft had similar lukewarm success with their backwards compatibility efforts on the 360. There was a huge demand leading to the 360’s launch to be fully compatible with all original Xbox games. Microsoft only originally promised that the first two Halo games would be back-compat on 360, but after enough user outcry, Microsoft released several updates over the 360’s lifespan patching in support for what ended up being a little under half of the original Xbox’s library being supported on the 360, but the software-based emulation had a list of issues and bugs that accompanied each compatibility update. Aside from a fair amount of both Halo games, I played through Fable and Spider-Man 2 via 360 back-compat, and ran into intermittent bouts of slowdown with the former, and random little portions of graphic flickering with the latter. Still enjoyed my time with both, but not without these added issues. Speaking of Halo…. For the Love of Online Co-op

The 360 featured countless games that supported online co-op which made playing the latest big AAA title all that more fun. This primarily effected first and third-person shooters with the big example for this being the Halo titles on the 360 (3, 4, Reach, ODST, Halo Anniversary Remake). I played through all five of those games in online co-op and enjoyed them all tremendously. I will give props to Halo 3 and 4 having my favorite narratives, and I loved the final level of Halo 3 being an homage to the last level of the first game where you drive a warthog through a lengthy labyrinth of enemies and terrain to navigate before a time limit expires and everything explodes, MacGrueber-style! Halo 3 brought in four player online co-op, which I experiment with friends online by trying out the “Skull” modifiers which only upped the difficulty and lead to us finishing a good chunk of the game on the highest difficulty. Halo 4 I continue to this day to reference an ill-fated moment I had when playing with my friend Derek, where I was controlling the Scorpion tank whilst marching it up a lengthy incline, and he was walking alongside me and I misinterpreted the level’s geometry where I did not see a turn and nonchalantly drove the Scorpion tank off the edge of a level and plummeted it down to its awaiting death to the erupting laughter from Derek on the headset.

While I had a lot of fun with the Halo titles online, there were plenty of other worthy options, with the first Crackdown standing out among them. Getting lost in that open world with a friend and wreaking havoc with powered-up heroes whose jumping abilities had seemingly no limits was a blast, so was coming up with random challenges for each other like making a competition to see who could race up to the top of the mammoth Agent’s tower first. Saints Row 2 is another open world game that had online co-op, and made discovering some of the game’s secrets I had no idea about like its hidden mall worth going out of the way to show to friends. Dead Island’s online co-op stood out to me with its in-depth crafting system and emphasis on melee combat ala Condemned. The four Gears of War titles on the 360 all feature first-class online co-op. Gears of War 3 I have classic memories of bringing over to a friend’s the night it launched and we set up our TVs next to each other and played through the entire journey over two days. The survival-based Horde modes from the Gears titles created a new sensation for online co-op, and I played many hours of it online in the first three Gears. I even became invested into the “deep” lore of the Gears franchise to the point that I read a couple of the novels. Gears of War: Judgment switched developer to People Can Fly who tried to freshen up the controls and gameplay a bit. They also focused the narrative on Baird and Cole’s origins which did not go over well with the fanbase, and while it was the least popular of the four on the 360 I will still give Microsoft props for trying something different with it.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance’s final boss battle with Galactus was made to experienced and conquered with someone in co-op, and while the Army of Two games weren’t perfect, I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having some fun times with all the games in online co-op If it was not for online co-op I would have not broken my curse to finally finish the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I started and never finished that campaign on five, yes five, separate occasions with different sets of friends each time and stopped because we either lost interest and/or ran into logistic issues setting up times for everyone to meet together. A former co-worker Sean reached out to me to play with him online and I reluctantly agreed and started it the sixth time, but sure enough we stuck with it and completed it, and it was worth all the starts and stops because it remains years later one of my all-time favorite comic book games. That Galactus boss fight is a final boss fight that I will never forget and a truly epic final encounter to close the game! The second Ultimate Alliance game also featured online co-op and I finished that game on a much timelier basis because a lot of my co-workers also picked it up and we met up regularly for a couple weeks to finish it twice because it focused on the popular Civil War Marvel event that had two separate storylines. It had a more polished presentation, but the first Ultimate Alliance I easily rank as the superior game!

Some rapid-fire quick online co-op memories to wrap this segment up on: The first Kane & Lynch game was an interesting experience in co-op because I played it on this insanely huge HD projector. The first two Borderlands games were both huge hits with my friends and peers that won us all over with its loot-driven FPS gameplay. Credit to Derek for having patience with my crazy work hours and sticking with me for the better part of a year to pick away at and eventually finish Borderlands 2! To a lesser extent, another fun FPS co-op focused title were the Army of Two trilogy of titles. The games all had noticeable control issues, but the teamwork focused gameplay worked for us, and the franchise had a certain charisma to it with their many unlockable masks and charming fist bump animations to equip. Real time strategy games have historically been troublesome to pull off on consoles, but Ensemble Studios found the magic formula to make it work with Halo Wars, and somehow made online co-op viable with it too, and it was another game I found myself teaming up with Sean in a very enjoyable campaign that also featured some of the best CG cutscenes that remain stunning to this day. Finally, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand has likely the most ridiculous storyline of all these co-op titles where you play as 50 Cent himself to track down a prized skull across the middle east that made it a zany quest to just shake my head and go with to see where it took me next, and also for my friend Matt and I to jam out to its hip-hop flavored soundtrack to throughout. Bringing on J-RPGs and Doubling Down on Western RPGs In the console space, before this generation, role-playing games were dominant on the first two Nintendo and Sony platforms. That surprisingly changed this generation. Microsoft made pitches to Japanese developers in the early years of the 360 to release their games exclusively, or at least timed exclusively on the system. This lead to Square-Enix releasing exclusives like Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant on the 360, and porting its MMO, Final Fantasy XI onto the 360 in 2006 and making it cross-platform-online compatible with the PS2 and PC versions which meant it was the first game to share online user bases between consoles from different manufacturers. It took a little over a decade for this to happen again, so this was kind of a big deal. I still recall Square stunning gaming fans with their E3 announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would release day and date with the PS3 version (along with XIII’s two sequels later on), so it was surprising during this time to see Square open up its publishing portfolio on other platforms.

As twisted as its plot may be, I still got a lot out of Eternal Sonata with its highly entertaining battles. Blue Dragon was another early J-RPG that drew a lot of attention that Microsoft was serious about RPGs this gen. Other Japanese developers also released RPGs in the early 360 years with Blue Dragon, Enchanted Arms, Resonance of Fate, Eternal Sonata and Lost Odyssey all appearing. I purchased nearly all these games, but only one I played through of these was the bizarre Eternal Sonata, which is a traditional J-RPG set in the mind of dying legendary composer Federic Chopin. Its plot is as out there as its premise, and I will never forget its equally bizarre post-credits stinger, but I loved its engaging battle system that kept me glued in all the way through. I was also taking a music history class in college at the time, so the brief Chopin historical fact interludes between acts also did a lot for me. While Japanese RPGs took off on the 360, so did…. …. “Western RPGs” from companies on this side of the global hemisphere. Bethesda and BioWare are the two most prominent developers responsible for this slate of RPGs this generation after lighting the fire on the original Xbox. I already discussed my love for Oblivion, and Bethesda capitalized on that success with another blockbuster in the form of Fallout 3. Take the medieval fantasy world of Elder Scrolls and apply a retro-50s post-apocalypse skin to it and you have the formula for another Bethesda best-seller I once again put in over 100 hours in completing the main campaign and all of its DLC expansions. After that I needed a break from Bethesda’s games and have yet to play New Vegas. I did start up the Oblivion sequel, Skyrim and briefly made some headway into that, but got sidetracked by other holiday tent pole releases at that time and it regrettably succumbed to becoming lost in my backlog. I eventually picked up the remaster on Xbox One, and one day I will restart and finish that game!

Giant Bomb’s videos of their complete play-throughs of the Mass Effect trilogy is some of their best work that should not be missed! A series that did not get lost in my backlog was BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy. The first game I initially got into as an awesome modern-day take on Star Trek, with an engrossing cast of crew mates on the Normandy. The first Mass Effect was a little rough around the edges, so I eventually fell off halfway through, but picked it up a couple years later and plowed right through it. The same thing happened with Mass Effect 2, but the advantage to finishing it in 2014 was that all the bonus story DLC add-ons were released and combined for a gratifying experience all together. ME2 delivered on hyping up being careful with pivotal story decisions that would have consequences in the infamous final “suicide mission” in the game. My initial run through of it saw three of my crew members not survive it through, and it gutted me so much I restarted that final mission and had to compromise with only two crew members passing away. Immediately after finishing ME2 I jumped right into ME3 and this time saw it all the way through within a couple months, luckily by this point the extended ending and all the story DLCs also just finished releasing and I was stunned with what Bioware held out of the core game and I can feel for players who initially played it and missed out on having a central character like Javic locked away behind DLC and missing out on essential storyline DLCs that dealt heavily with the origins of the Protheans and Reapers. The way I played it felt like a complete experience with all the DLC, but without it I sympathize for the critics who stated it felt unfinished upon first release.

There is also the fantastic “Citadel” DLC I want to give props to which is its own standalone swashbuckling adventure full of lighthearted campy jokes, and concludes with throwing a the party of all parties for all your friends! For people who have not played the initial Mass Effect trilogy, at least give a couple episodes of Giant Bomb’s Mass Alex play-through videos of all three games in their entirety a shot. I am almost wrapped up with them as of this writing, and it has been wonderful experiencing that trilogy all over again this way. Like Gears, I became so absorbed into the Mass Effect lore, that I have bought and read all of the novels, and almost all of them are good, even the Andromeda-based ones! I know the first Fable has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism over the years for not delivering on all of its promises, but that does not take away from the final product on original Xbox still being a astounding action-RPG! I treasured my time with it, and the “Lost Chapters” expansion, and late in the 360’s life in 2014 it got the remastered treatment to bring the entire trilogy (and the spin-off Kinect game, The Journey) all on 360. Fable II from what I gathered has been the highpoint of the series from everyone I have talked to. I have only played through the prologue, and failed at getting back to it while covering other games in the gaming press at the time amidst another busy holiday release season. Fable III sounds like it did not win everyone over with its major storyline hook it marketed of overthrowing a corrupt sibling at the throne, and sadly the Kinect game, The Journey was the last major single player installment of the series as of this writing. Becoming a Pinball Wizard I have played various videogame pinball titles over the years, but for whatever reason the 360/PS3 gen is when it got ahold of me and never let go. It started with Crave’s Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. Each real life table replica had their own set of goals to accomplish in order to unlock an achievement for each table, so I kept plugging away, and little-by-little I found hooked into addicting tables like Gorgar, Medieval Madness and No Good Gophers especially being my favorite. Later on Crave released an XBLA pay-per-table platform with tables from multiple companies called The Pinball Arcade. Every several months a new batch of tables were released and I found myself immediately downloading them and studying the in-game instructions for each table to thoroughly learn all of its intricacies and the addicting nature of filtered online Friends-list leaderboards had me plugged in to top the scoreboard for each table.

Well over 100 hours I invested into Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX on the 360. Two of my favorite tables are pictured above with No Good Gophers on the left, and Mars on the right. The same exact thing happened with Zen Studio’s XBLA title, Pinball FX. Their tables were not based on real tables, and as they gradually released more tables for download, they embraced their interactive nature and featured more computer animated toys that flew off of and around the table, and more dynamic special effects on the playfield that simply are not possible on real life tables. Despite them being not lifelike, and featuring more exaggerated pinball physics, I still embraced them when I was in the mood to switch up from the real tables in Pinball Arcade. Zen released a sequel a few years later in Pinball FX2 that had more dynamic community and hub-based features and integrated online friends leaderboards into actual gameplay with in-game pop-ups when your score was approaching a friend’s high-score which only intensified every attempt and kept me coming back more frequently. Some of my favorite tables from the first two PBFX games are the spooky mystery pin Paranormal, the Monty Python-influenced Epic Quest (with RPG stats and leveling that carries over in each attempt!) and the outer space themed Mars. Pinball FX3 on Xbox One/PS4 added even more community based features that keep me playing it weekly to this day, but that is a story for another time! Racing Away to One of the Best Eras for the Genre I believe Microsoft somehow found a way to publish one marquee AAA racing game each year for almost the entire 360 lifespan. They originally rotated between Bizarre Creation’s Project Gotham games, and Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport series each year. I never got into either of those series that much. Forza is the more serious sim, and I have tried out a couple installments over the years, but the intense sim mechanics are just not for me. If I would have put more time into PGR I feel I would have really got into that series, and I have some fleeting memories of getting into the second game for a brief moment on the original Xbox.

While I did not get reeled into Forza Motorsport, I fell hook, line and sinker into PGR’s replacement, Forza Horizon from the developer, Playground. It lightened up the sim-based controls and offered up enough assist options to procure that comfortable blend of sim and arcade racing. I also wound up in favor of its open world hub nature to either drive around to new races and take in the country side, or hang around the game’s central music festival. The first Horizon had such a fitting licensed soundtrack of rock and electronica-based songs that I sought out the entire soundtrack and it is its own separate running playlist for me. Since I did not upgrade into the Xbox One/PS4 gen until 2016, that meant I picked up Forza Horizon 2 on the 360 instead, and thankfully it was not all that downgraded from its Xbox One version. Both games I wound up completing all the races, challenges and finding all the hidden barnyard cars. Yes, I even played through all of the Fast and Furious licensed expansion for Forza Horizon 2 where Ludacris himself as Tej provided voiceovers to set up each race. Before Forza Horizon, another game attempted the same thing a couple years earlier with Test Drive Unlimited. It featured a sorta-GPS replication of the entirety of Oahu as its open world hub and I absolutely ate it up and was white-knuckling the final race which was a one-on-one endurance race against the top ranked AI around the entire outer highway of the island. The sequel was fun too and added another island, but I think one Alex Navarro’s reaction to the opening cutscene in his Quick Look video will be my main takeaway of it. I have mentioned in previous console flashbacks how I love demo-derby racing games, and on 360 Flatout: Ultimate Carnage was king! It is a fantastic follow-up to the PS2/Xbox games, and my brother and I played it online regularly for years, I can go on about it forever, but instead I will embed below a special three-part video where my brother and I raved about why it was one of our favorites….

Many years ago my brother and I made this three-part YouTube series on our fandom for Flatout: Ultimate Carnage The summer of 2010 saw two new arcade racing games debut that both should have been successful new IPs with sequels to this day, but since the two released within a month of each other they presumably took up each other’s player base and both Activision and THQ did not pick them up for sequels. Activision invested in Bizarre for an all new racing IP in Blur, which is essentially conflating the power-ups of Mario Kart with underground street racing, and it was indeed as awesome as that pitch sounds. I played hours of it in the main career mode and online as well. On the other end THQ invested in Black Rock Studios with their innovative racer, Split/Second, a reality show-based driving game where studio directors would triggers obstacles and destructible environments to activate and provided an all-new gripping racing experience. It too was also a riot to endure and 100% finish, but it sadly never received a sequel either.

I loved the Burnout series the previous gen, and EA delivered with an upgraded port of Burnout Revenge that remains my favorite entry in the series to this day. I got into its open world follow-up, Burnout Paradise and developer Criterion were aces with their long-term support of free updates that kept me coming back to it. EA’s other flagship racing series, Need for Speed had a few entries I put serious time into. The 360 launch title, Most Wanted had an intriguing concept of working your way up the “Blacklist” of the most wanted street racers to compete against. When Criterion did an all new reboot of Most Wanted several years later, it combined that concept with the blazing fast gameplay from the Burnout series to my approval. Finally, I will give head-nods of recommendation to both of Sega’s Sonic kart-racers on the 360. They are the top Mario Kart-clones out there, and ooze with Sega fan service. The second game, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed successfully innovated with evolving stages that switched up from racing in karts, then into mini-bi-planes and then onto water-based hovercraft. I completed the careers for both games and put in a fair amount of online play with both entries too. The Fad that was the Plastic Instruments My gut told me the original PS2 Guitar Hero was going to be big within minutes of trying out the original demo in the fabled Kentia Hall at E3 2005. Adored the first game, but the second game was when it went mainstream, and was thrilled with the second game’s HD 360 release in 2007. 2005-2009 was the apex of the genre for my friends and me. There were countless nights of my friends and family passing the guitar around trying to best each other’s scores, and when 360 introduced online leaderboards for each song it upped the competition level even higher. Local city clubs and bars did Guitar Hero tournament nights and my favorite memory from these was on a Guitar Hero III tourney night when it was my turn to go up on stage to pick a random song out of a hat I was the lucky soul to draw one of the hardest songs in the game in the form of Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” I suffered on stage, and barely managed to finish, yet it remains a memory I shall cherish! In fall of 2007, Harmonix splintered away from Red Octane and teamed up with MTV Games to unleash the revolutionary Rock Band that brought in drums and karaoke to the fold for four player co-op play!

I will forever love the countless Rock Band nights I had in the first two Rock Band games that hit in 2007 & 2008, especially the nights I played with my old podcast co-hosts Chris and Scott. I downloaded well over a hundred extra DLC songs over a few years for it, and we would routinely meet up one or two nights a month for Rock Band nights for two years. Almost always, our last song to finish off a session was the final song in the first Rock Band’s career mode that was filled with many wrist-suffering solos, yes I am talking about Outlaws’ “Green Grass and High Tides”. Our Rock Band addiction culminated with the “Bladder of Steel” achievement which we procured when playing every song straight without a fail over the course of several hours! I was almost always the drummer on Rock Band nights. At first no one else wanted to do them, but eventually I got into them and kind of became somewhat decent at it on medium difficulty. One night at an Alice Cooper concert I became entranced at watching the drummer wail away all night that I convinced myself after the show to lay down a $200 pre-order for the premium ION Drum Set for Rock Band….though after a few months something about that bulky set did not gel with me and I did not prefer the way the drumsticks clanked off the pads and I never developed a rhythm for them and eventually gave them away to free up space.

The forgotten gem Rock Band title no one talks about, LEGO Rock Band! Behold one of its awesome boss stages with the Ghostbusters theme song! The plastic instrument genre quickly became oversaturated with numerous entries a year from Activision and EA. At first it was kind of interesting to dive into some of the band focused entries of the series like how Harmonix did a wonderful tribute to The Beatles with reliving their career and its groovy “Dreamscape” stages in The Beatles: Rock Band. The Metallica nut in me feasted on forcing carpal tunnel upon myself with the painfully intricate, yet entrancing solos from almost every track in Guitar Hero: Metallica. By the time Green Day: Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Van Halen rolled around though and other offshoots that I completely skipped like Band Hero and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, it was clear the writing was on the wall for the genre. I did manage to sneak in some last doses of fun with a couple other off-the-beaten-path entries though before this genre faded away from its zenith.

The head-bopping mash-ups of DJ Hero with its uniquely intuitive turntable controller and feeding my karaoke addiction with Lips were breaths of fresh air for the genre late in the 360’s life.

Microsoft’s karaoke series on 360, Lips, supplied a fair amount of fun with its unique glow-in-the-dark microphones and four volumes of songs released before Microsoft eventually morphed it into a karaoke pay-per-song app late in the 360’s lifecycle. My buddy Matt introduced me to LEGO Rock Band, which Matt got for free with any Black Friday purchase one year at Kohl’s and we were both nearly burnt out on the genre by this point, but thought we would at least give this graphically unique version a shot. The adorably twee nature of the LEGO visuals with its complementing soundtrack were irresistible, and it instantly won us over. We stuck with it all the way through, and were fans of its music video-esque “boss” levels, with the Ghostbusters theme song stage being one we replayed far too frequently. Another refreshing take on the genre was through DJ Hero and its sequel, DJ Hero II. I loved that turntable controller, and it flawlessly placed me into the DJ world with its mash-up stylings soundtrack and fitting club visuals. Both games were unsung heroes of the genre when they released because they both came out a year or two removed from the apex of the genre’s success, but the DJ & LEGO games brought in some much needed fresh air in that scene. Non-Kinect Casual/Family Game Hits and the Failure that was NXE Now while I almost entirely avoided the Kinect, there still remained deluge of non-Kinect casual party games that were a hit with the family on holidays and friends on game nights. The two Microsoft published Scene It games that came bundled with their user-friendly big button wireless controllers were family favorites for a few years and successful adaptations of the hit movie trivia DVD-board game. A guilty pleasure of mine is legacy licensed trivia/board games/game shows on consoles, and the 360 had plenty of them with solid editions of Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Apples to Apples, Risk and Family Feud 2012. Doritos Crash Course seemed initially like a forgettable promotional game that was free on XBLA that only offered avatars racing each other on a variety of obstacle courses, but somehow its simple gameplay was addicting and far more entertaining than it had any right to be at family and friend gatherings.

You Don’t Know Jack was a fun revival of the hit PC irreverent trivia series that was dormant for nearly a decade before THQ brought it back on consoles in 2011. Friends and I played through every episode on the disc and its DLC packs, and I revisited it for several years because of one dumb habit where the adorably jerk-of-a-host, Cookie Masterson, would have a unique greeting to open the game if you played on a holiday. The success from this You Don’t Know Jack revival got the developers at then-Jellyvision to revitalize the brand and include a bunch of other party games in the popular yearly Jackbox games that are still going strong as of this writing. I also wanted to squeeze into this chapter of the flashback Microsoft’s polarizing decision to appeal the UI of the 360 to a more family/casual audience and changed the fan favorite “blades” UI into the detested “New Xbox Experience” (NXE) in 2008. Microsoft was trying to synergize with the equally detested UI of its latest PC operating system, Vista. Tablets were starting to become trendy at this point, and Microsoft was resilient on forcing a tablet-esque UI across all its devices and the results were a total system failure. I was among the many who made their outcry heard over how ugly the many rows of diagonally aligned boxes filled with ads were a visual nightmare on the eyes. I was use to some minor ad implementation in the Blades UI before promoting other 360 games available, but the NXE mixed in all sorts of commercials, movie trailers and other assorted promotions that hit the same wrong nerves as those eye-blasting web browser ads.

Microsoft eventually updated and tweaked the NXE into a much more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly UI that remains on the 360 boot-up today. With the 360 user base understandably a modicum from what it was in its prime today, it is refreshing to see Microsoft lay off as of this writing with a complete absence of ads on the UI. I will also use this space to shout out the premium theme backgrounds that I have used for many years being the pumpkin patch and winter wonder land themes that are always a delight to see when I boot up the 360. Yes, the Xbox Live 360 servers are surprisingly still online in 2020, 15 years after the 360 launch. Most 360 online multiplayer supported games support peer-to-peer multiplayer so as long as Microsoft keeps the lights on, you will still be able to play 360 games online. Microsoft only kept the original Xbox Live servers up for seven and a half years, so to see them more than double that for 360’s servers as of today is…astonishing. Worth noting is some games like Chromehounds, Final Fantasy XI and all EA-published games utilized their own private servers which the publishers have shutdown long ago, so those games are unplayable online, but a vast majority still support the option. Wanna Wrassle? For several years on the 360, one of my yearly holiday season traditions was to buy the latest WWE Smackdown vs. RAW game and complete the career/season story mode and unlock all of the hidden wrestlers and features over the course of a few months. I did this from WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2007 through 2011. For one of the yearly installments I was so close to unlocking all the achievements to get 1000 gamerscore, but the last one I needed required a grind to complete the main single player career mode five times. I decided at the time this was a perfect opportunity to catch up on past seasons of 24 and brought a second, smaller TV next to my living room TV and absentmindedly button mashed my way through those extra career mode playthroughs, and it took almost the entirety of the second season of 24 to accomplish that feat and earn that final achievement. No regrets!

WWE's yearly Smackdown vs. RAW games featured zombies in their storylines, while All-Stars shifted the gameplay to more arcadey fun for all! The story modes in those yearly WWE games were worth playing through because the writers in some cases got creative and did things that were not possible on TV like having the Undertaker cast mind control spells for example. They added and experimented with a plethora of new modes and options, with the WWE Universe mode being a prime example of going all out creating dream cards and custom storylines. The creation options became incredibly in-depth each year too, in the later installments the developers added a Create-a-Storyline feature that had a surprising level of customization full of custom text entries for dialogue and branching cutscenes. One infamous online community, Video Game Championship Wrestling, became famous for its machinima they created with this system that contained intricate storylines with created wrestlers in its league consisting of video game character icons, developers, comic book & anime characters, fabled movie legends and yes even sprinkling in a few wrestlers. I dabbled in creating a couple simple storylines, but it was too much for me to invest into, but thankfully users could upload and download storylines from the community which added seemingly infinite replay value.

You have not lived until you witnessed an episode of the acclaimed wrestling videogame machinima that is Video Game Championship Wrestling. Will it be Gabe Newell or Dr. Wily who will emerge here as VGCW champion? WWE released a couple spinoff games that were not as feature-dense, and contained more accessible, arcade-like controls. They were on the right path with Legends of Wrestlemania, which highlighted the 80s success of the then-WWF, but absolutely nailed it with WWE All-Stars which featured a hybrid of past legends and current stars, and all of them were intentionally designed to look like roided-out action figures capable of larger-than-life moves like hurling opponents 30 feet into the air in addition to juggling, fighting game-like air combos. This all combined for fun multiplayer sessions with friends and family members who usually are not fans of wrestling games, but genuinely got into the gameplay to my surprise. I rampaged through everything All-Stars had to offer within a couple months after the latest Smackdown vs. RAW game, and was kind of burnt out on wrestling games after this for a while and skipped all future WWE games for several years starting when they changed the branding with WWE ‘12.

TNA iMpact! was from the same people who made All-Stars and had super-fun Ultimate X match as seen above! FirePro Wrestling on the other hand features only controllable Avatars and none of the trademark legacy 2D gameplay the brand is usually known for. There were a few other non-WWE games I tried out before I took a 360 wrestling game sabbatical. Rumble Roses XX was the first 360 wrestling game and the second all-women wrestler game in America after its PS2 predecessor. Never put as much time into it as I meant to, so I cannot leave any lasting impressions on it other than it gave Dead or Alive a lot of competition with its variety of costumes. I did put a lot of time into TNA iMpact! however, which was the game the All-Stars developers worked on before. At the time it hit, I was into the TNA promotion, and the game was a pretty good representation of that product with a fun Ultimate X mode, and a story mode circled around a fictional costumed wrestler named Suicide who went on to become an actual wrestler in the promotion in 2008, and the character has remained there off-and-on to this day. Lucha Libre AAA Heroes del Ring introduced the high-flying luchadores from Mexico with their own exclusive game and featured some familiar past WCW/WWE/TNA stars, but had problematic controls to prevent it from having any lasting appeal. I never played the Kinect motion-based wrestling game, Hulk Hogan’s Main Event, but I have seen clips online to witness it in its near-broken state that lives up to one of my favorite reviews on Game Informer where it became one of their worst rated games ever. There are a couple of low budget Avatar Wrestling games on the Indie Games channel on 360 that are basic affairs, but there is one Avatar-based grappler that somehow got a full fledge XBLA release with the much-respected, best-in-class FirePro Wrestling branding. Those games have been a decades-long line of some of the best 2D wrestling games of all time, and somehow Microsoft was able to secure that branding for an admittedly decent and accessible Avatar wrestling game, but a game that should in no way be worthy of that elite branding. That would be like Phillips securing the Zelda and Mario licenses for their own low-rent made games on their CDi system….oh wait. Sports-ball Forever! Time to highlight some of my favorite go-to sports games on the system. Starting off with football, there I got use to buying Madden every two or three years. I only rented the 360 launch title, Madden NFL 06, which wounded up being one of the worst debut Madden titles on a console ever. This is because of EA’s overblown “Target Gameplay” video they debuted at a previous E3 where the final game, while still graphically a leap above Xbox/PS2, was far from what they teased. To make it worse, that was the same year they debuted the doomed “vision cone” gameplay feature in the earlier PS2/Xbox versions that went over so poorly that they had to disable it as a default option for the 360 version and hide it in the options. This was also the first lead Madden game to remove John Madden himself (and co-commentator Al Michaels) from commentary in favor of a nameless afterthought of a radio-style announcer. Madden NFL ‘06 is easily the all-time worst lead-platform version of Madden!

This video encapsulates why Madden 06 was an atrocity of a debut on the platform…at least it had easy achievements.

EA stepped it up with later entries, with Madden ‘10 remaining a favorite of mine for the brand this gen. I still recall that edition was when EA initially introduced their cash cow microtransaction-focused “Ultimate Team” feature as a free DLC a few months after its release. How foolish I seem now for at first dismissing it as an interesting curiosity I could not bother to invest a dime into ever, but only to see it blow up in DLC sales for EA and become integrated across all of EA’s sports titles and other publisher’s sports games within a few years. I only picked up one college EA effort this gen via NCAA Football ‘12 which was technically free with a six-month subscription to Sports Illustrated, but I got the most out of that game, and was huge into its “Road to Glory” mode. Road to Glory had my created player play out his final year of high school, and then go through a full college season. EA were absolute pros at this point with their college game, perfectly capturing the college game pageantry by jam-packing the it full of college anthems, cheerleaders, mascots and first-class commentary from the old College Gameday crew of Kirk Herbstreit and Brad Nessler. EA was also surprisingly generous with a community create-a-school option where users could create and upload teams and stadiums, and sure enough someone created my middle-of-nowhere Midwest FCS school and high school teams. It remains a heartbreaker (for good reason though) that EA pulled out of college sports games after the NCAA student athlete class action lawsuit, with NCAA Football ‘14 being their final installment. I do not feel that much love for EA though because of how they squashed 2K’s attempt at returning to football videogames with All-Pro Football 2K8. 2K signed on a couple hundred retired legends for their game, and players could pick a handful of legends to be the standout stars on their otherwise auto-generated teams. It was a fun, different approach, which EA quickly put the kibosh on by signing many of those legends away to appear in throwaway historical features in future Madden games. As I mentioned earlier though, EA did win back some favor with me by resurrecting the Blitz franchise with their excellent XBLA version of NFL Blitz.

There were a few other non-NFL games on the 360 I gave an honest try to, with Midway releasing an unlicensed, M-rated version of Blitz before they went bankrupt with Blitz: The League II. It showcases M-rated behind-the-scenes drama storylines, and more brutal and violent hits that bestow it the M-rating, and if you can handle that, then it is worth checking out. Finally, Backbreaker was an ahead-of-its-time pigskin game that debuted an all new physics engine that EA would eventually incorporate into Madden games. While the tech was not quite all the way there, the thing I associate most with that game is it playing P.O.D.’s “Here Comes the Boom” on every…single…kickoff. It was a huge detraction in my review, and I was surprised to see a few weeks later an email from my editor at the time passing along a note from the developers to revisit the game after an update addressing reviewer feedback, which did address a multitude of things, but at the top of the list was reducing the amount of times P.O.D.’s jam played to only twice a game, thank god! On the basketball side of things, I remained a huge fan of the NBA 2K series. The 360 carried over the awesome 24/7 mode I adored from PS2/Xbox era, which was an in-depth career mode for a single created baller, doing a global tour of the street hoops circuit. The 2K games struck gold in NBA 2K11 when Michael Jordan graced the cover and the game added a new historical Jordan mode where he relived his most monumental games with historically accurate rosters, and vintage 90s telecast presentation and commentary. The Jordan mode was a success, and integration of NBA legends became a big selling point on the 2K games going forward with future installments having a theme around the Jordan/Magic/Bird NBA breakout success of the 80s and the iconic ’92 Olympic Dream Team.

EA had a downward spiral with their sim hoops games, and I only tried out a couple demos of the earlier NBA Live titles this gen that did not win me over, including the attempted re-branding of the series with NBA Elite ‘11. That doomed demo was so glitch-laden that it got EA to cancel and recall the game from retailers mere days before its street date, and took them three years to launch another proper console NBA sim. I did love EA’s re-launch of NBA Jam however, along with the XBLA sequel, On Fire Edition. They hit all the right notes on re-introducing the classic arcade gameplay to a new generation. No idea why they have not done another NBA Jam since however, but at least On Fire Edition is back-compat on Xbox One and Series S|X. The PS3 consumed the bulk of my baseball playing time with their awesome MLB: The Show games of that era. However, I do have one chuckle-worthy memory of staying up late playing a lot of 2K’s arcade take on baseball, The Bigs, at a friend’s place one night. We played several games and I recall being impressed at how fast each game breezed by. I skipped all hockey sims this generation too, with the only time I digitally hit the ice this gen being EA’s killer NHL game on XBLA, 3-on-3 NHL Arcade, which delivered the hat trick of arcade fun gameplay, creative power-ups and intuitive controls.

For alternative and single player sports games, I already raved about Top Spin 2 during the 360 launch window. I could never get into EA’s thumb-stick controls for its Fight Night games, but I did enjoy 2K’s Don King’s Prize Fighter, which came from the same team that made the Rocky games on the previous gen I preferred more. Of all the MMA games, I briefly got into THQ’s UFC 2010, but the game always became a chore when gameplay transitioned into ground submissions. I enjoyed Tony Hawk’s Project 8 when it launched, but that series also had a fall from grace with several failed experimental games once EA stepped up the competition with Skate. One of the greatest mysteries in gaming history to me will always be Skate 3’s staying power in sales seeing it on sale for so many years that eventually EA repackaged the game in an Xbox One case with a sticker on it saying it is playable on both the 360 and through back-compat on Xbox One because there were no longer any other 360 retail games on store shelves. I tried a few times to get into Skate, but like the Fight Night games, the thumb-stick focused controls never gelled with me and I could never adapt. No Russian, No Cauldron

For several years straight, from the 360 launch in 2005 through 2012 I played every yearly installment from Activision’s flagship brand, Call of Duty. The first couple of years it was not that much though. Call of Duty 2 I only played several times in local couch multiplayer battles when friends brought over a copy. I always regretted never renting or buying it cheap to play through the single player campaign which I heard is excellent. Ditto that for the original CoD which eventually got a re-release on XBLA as Call of Duty Classic. However, I played through the entire campaigns for the next six games. CoD3 I rented from GameFly and breezed through in a weekend in split-screen co-op with my brother and did not think much of it at the time, but came to learn later that when playing in co-op it removes a few levels that proved to be too daunting to be handled in split screen. Then in 2007 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare released and first person shooters as we knew it changed. 13 years later it still has two of the most powerful moments in a FPS campaign in the form of the nuclear blast and its immediate fallout in the failed helicopter escape, and THE sniping level of all sniping levels in the flashback mission which immerses the player so well into the sniper role at its apex moment, that few other games since have managed to achieve. It overall was an incredibly gratifying campaign, which was equaled with a revolutionary online multiplayer experience that popularized persistent online multiplayer unlocks with a seemingly endless barrage of weapon and character customization unlocks to keep players reeled in. I was never “hooked” into the multiplayer on a regular basis, but starting with CoD4 and for the next few games I would occasionally pop on and play with colleagues who did play all the time, and had a blast catching up while apologizing for not carrying my own with my less-than-ideal kill/death/ratio.

World at War was an interesting revisit back to World War II and I enjoyed Keifer Sutherland’s voiceover talents as a superior barking orders at me throughout. It also debuted its survival variant in Zombies mode that was a hit that year and frequently played with co-workers on game nights. While that mode would become a bigger focus and more expanded with each successive CoD game, for whatever reason it never became as popular or played as much then as in World at War. 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 somehow met the high bar for the quality of campaign that the first game set, and its “No Russian” level I will never forget and I was bug-eyed throughout it as I never experienced anything like it before or since while my character attempted to keep his cover. As good as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles were, Treyarch stepped it up with 2010’s Black Ops and its Vietnam War setting. It remains my favorite single player campaign from this stretch of CoD games. The meaning of the “numbers” touched on throughout the campaign had a meaningful payoff, and I loved how Treyarch sprinkled in their own unique gameplay intricacies like “diving to prone” and my love for the RC Car killstreak bonus in multiplayer. No matter how much of a weak link I was for my coworkers in online multiplayer, as long as I got just one set of three kills straight to get that fun RC Car perk, then I considered that a successful multiplayer session! Infinity Ward had a satisfying conclusion to the Modern Warfare trilogy with MW3 in 2011, but 2012’s Black Ops II was surprisingly underwhelming to me. It felt like they tried to do too much with the campaign, and sprinkled in optional bonus missions I felt obligated to do, but broke up the narrative for me. Of course, it could have been CoD burnout by this point, and I have never played another CoD game since. If I were to play the campaign of just one CoD game after this from 2013 on, what would you recommend?

For five years I anticipated the low budget FPS efforts from Cauldron that had me reliving past historical battles and as a DC Secret Service agent seen above. Interestingly, while Treyarch and Infinity Ward took turns each year this gen delivering Activision’s big holiday FPS hit, quietly another studio, Cauldron, yearly released five budget-tiered FPS titles under the Activision Value banner. These little publicized releases always caught my eye, and I had no idea if it was the case, but Cauldron’s games felt like where Activision would send freshly recruited developers to get their feet wet before getting promoted to the CoD teams. Three of Cauldron’s five games were History Channel licensed games themed around recreating and reliving both sides of war in two installments based around the Civil War, and another in the Japanese theater of World War II. The history nut in me appreciated the History Channel-produced intro video for each level, and it was a budget-friendly alternative come down FPS game to breeze through in a weekend after the latest blockbuster CoD game. Cauldron also did a DC-terrorist themed FPS in Secret Service, and Jurassic Park-inspired FPS titled, Jurassic: The Hunted. I imagine all of these play horribly outdated now, but I still will appreciate them for what they brought to the plate. Dubious Honors

Hulk Hogan’s Main Event and NBA Elite 11 top the dubious honors list for reasons I already ranted on above, but wanted to make sure to at least notate here. Moving on to other bad games, here are a handful that I was not a fan of: Rogue Warrior was a super-short and barebones functioning FPS published from Bethesda, but bizarrely got AAA buzz and marketing. It did have a catchy closing credits song though. Turning Point was an FPS from Codemasters with an interesting concept of a post-WWII shooter if the Nazis won the war, but poorly executed and reason why Codemasters has primarily stuck with racing games since (although they did attempt one more FPS with Bodycount which I did not play, but understand is just as atrocious). One game that went on to have a misrepresented history I reviewed at the time was Bullet Witch. It was a middle-tier single player action game published by Atari, and while it had some problems I made sure to point out in my six out of ten review, I received serious flak from a few friends for overrating the game. While I addressed the game’s issues and marked it down appropriately so, I did have a fair amount of fun with the boss battles and messing around with some of the more powerful spells. Over the years I have seen many bill this game with the label that it is among the worst on the 360 with the same kind of tone and vitriol as ET received on the 2600. Even Mr. Microsoft Larry Hyrb poked fun at the game in an online video long ago. Again it is not a great game by any means, but it is far better than what a lot of people make it out to be.

An XBLA game that got one of their marketed themed event releases (‘Summer of Arcade’, ‘Fall Feast,’ etc.) was TMNT: Out of the Shadows. It looked to be a cannot-miss 3D brawler TMNT game, and with that level of hype how could it go wrong? Very much so in fact, and with some of the worst camera controls in gaming I could not put it down fast enough. Another painfully disappointing TMNT game was the aforementioned XBLA remake of Turtles in Time. It played well enough like the original, but the redone visuals did not capture the spirit of the affable 80s/90s cartoon like the original did, and it stripped out the SNES bonus levels and had poorly substituted voiceovers. Stay away! There were a couple of semi-decent 360/PS3 era Turtles games. Nickelodeon TMNT was a perfectly serviceable brawler that did a better job of bringing back the good memories of the arcade classics than Re-Shelled did. Ubisoft released a single player platformer/action game to coincide with the 2007 CG film, TMNT. It too was pretty straightforward, and not earth-shattering, but at least hit some TMNT fan service marks good enough to be a worthwhile entry. Danger of the Ooze is one that slipped through the cracks that I rarely hear talked about likely because it released late in the 360/PS3 lifecycle in 2014. This should be played by any Turtles fan because this is the standout Turtles game this gen from the platforming masters at Wayforward with their take on a pretty fun MetroidVania-style game the TMNT license seemed destined for all this time. Lightning Round Quick Hits

Microsoft did not release 360’s successor, the Xbox One until 2013, so with eight years between the 360 and Xbox One, a boatload of games hit that system and I played far too many of them which is why this is going on far longer than it should have. There remains a hearty amount of AAA, mid-tier, XBLA and other noteworthy games that I want to give their due, so bear with me as I attempt to rapid fire through these… -I got wrapped in too many open world games this gen, and I want to first give props to RockStar Games for managing to finish two of their behemoths in the form of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. GTAIV is the only GTA I finished the storyline for, and Niko Belic will be one of my favorite protagonists. The cell phone activities were initially a chore to retain friendship ratings, but eventually I came around to bowling, cab rides, comedy clubs and rounds of pool. RDR was the ultimate Wild West open world game. Neversoft’s 360 launch title, Gun, was in my backlog still and I blitzed through that in the weeks leading up to RDR’s launch because I just knew it would blow it away. Gun was a decent effort from Neverseft, but quickly became obsolete when starting up RDR, which did not disappoint, and delivered a remarkably atmospheric experience for its time in 2010. I loved getting lost on adventures out in the wild, and that original score is masterful and could not be have been better crafted. That final several hours of gameplay based around the family ranch is an incredibly bold choice of gameplay that will always have a special place with me. Kudos to RockStar with their spooky-themed story expansion, Undead Nightmare, which is a hell of a side story to RDR that is well worth your time all these years later!

GTA IV put a lot of attention on its mini-games that were entertaining shoulder content, and Red Dead Redemption introduced a drop-dead gorgeous wild-west open world I would crave getting lost in and exploring for adventures. -Another one of my top 10 favorites on the 360 released on the same day as RDR, and I am talking about sci-fi third person thriller that is Alan Wake. I got completely absorbed into Alan’s quest to find his wife, and Remedy had a five star presentation to keep me on my seat. Some people criticized its style of combat, but it worked for me, and I believe it will go down as the only game where its deadliest weapon in its arsenal is a flare gun! Easily the spookiest T-rated game I have played. Do not skip out on the DLC episodes that put a nice bow on the story, and the XBLA sort-of time loop sequel, American Nightmare

-Two open world games that I shamefully have resting in my backlog to this day are GTAV and Bully. I picked up both on 360, and eventually picked up the Xbox One version of GTAV. You know what open world games I did play through though? The first two Just Cause titles. This satirical take on the James Bond-super agent was right up my alley, and Rico’s unique gadgetry like hookshots, parachutes, and wide variety of instant vehicle drops innovated in new ways to traverse its gigantic open world. The chaos and destruction those games both were capable of raised the bar with how creative one could be to lay waste to their surroundings. -I already commented above how the first Saints Row lived up to its potential from its E3 demonstration I saw a year before its release. The sequels surprisingly kept getting better and better. The first two games were essentially damn good GTA-clones, but with both games having more zany activities and side missions than in GTA. Saints Row the Third upped the outrageous quotient for its plot and side missions, and was groundbreaking for how far it pushed the boundaries with its whacked out style of storytelling.

-It did not feel right to include it with the racing games above, but another recommended open world title from this era is Driver: San Francisco. Ubisoft and Reflections nailed making an open world driving game without races being the focal point. The spirit-car-swapping feature against all odds is cleverly explained, and actually works! -Despite its popularity I could never get into the Assassin’s Creed games which debuted in this generation. A friend borrowed me the first game and at first I was into its setting and gameplay, but that first game was notoriously rough around the edges and I believe I got hung up on a glitch that prevented me from making progress roughly halfway through, and I have inadvertently been done with the series since. I picked up a few other entries over the years and have been wanting to at least try them, especially hearing how the latest ones keep getting better and better. One day! -I finished my first Resident Evil game on the 360 with Resident Evil 5. That game also featured online co-op, but I ventured fourth and played it solo and still had an impeccable time with it. It put more of an emphasis on action to the dismay of critics, but having not played too much of prior entries that did not bother me, and there were still plenty of intense thrills had throughout.

This is easily my favorite arcade stick ever, and the exquisite 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot made its tall asking price worth it! -This generation saw collector’s editions become out of control, with games packed with all kinds of statures, Master Chief helmets, night-vision cameras and other gadgets for well over $100. The only one of these I invested in was 2011’s Mortal Kombat. I originally was not too hyped for that game because I had my fill of the series at that point after the three good entries on PS2/Xbox, and felt the series had nothing else to offer. My brother however is a big MK-fan and told me how he ordered the $200 edition that came with premium arcade-replica fighter stick. I went to his place to drop something off one day when he wasn’t home, and he told me had the game and stick hooked up and to give it a try while I was there. Within minutes of starting the story mode and realizing how they were reimagining the original trilogy and how they switched up the gameplay for that generation, I became immediately entranced with it and could not think of any other way to play it without that stick and could not rush home fast enough to pluck down a $200 order. I made sure to get a lot of use out of that stick, and is was absolutely worth it!

-Sniper: Ghost Warrior is an unorthodox FPS focused entirely on sniping, and for being a low-budget game at the time I had way more fun than I should have with it. Also loved how it did a 180 from games like CoD, where instead of one sniping mission to mix up the campaign gameplay, here there is one run ‘n gun mission for a break from all that sniping throughout the campaign! I am glad this game had a ton of success and City Interactive has released a few sequels that I hope to emerge from my backlog of doom. -I already elucidated on my Borderland 2 experience earlier. The first Borderlands was a surprise out of nowhere hit that I loved my first few days with it and could not get enough plowing through the campaign online with friends. Unfortunately I went on vacation a few days after it released for a week, and when I got back, sure enough, most of my friends were many levels higher than me and already vanquished the game, so I soldiered on the final third of the game on my own. It was a challenge and a half to beat the final gi-normous tentacle-laden boss, but I managed to squeak by it after gradually picking away from it behind a boulder for nearly an hour!

-I had a unique experience with the Portal games. The first one I initially played for about 15 minutes, quickly became frustrated with the teleporting mechanics and had to step away from it. A couple years later, an old co-worker Rick was one of many by that point stating why those games were some of the best games out there. I told him my case, and he offered to come over and bestow his Portal wisdom upon me. Many thanks to Rick, who did not straight-up spoil and told me what to do to get past Portal’s many puzzle rooms, but instead kind of nudged me into gradually easing into a feel for the core mechanics of the game and it helped greatly! I would not have been able to get into it without him. He had a surprise for me when he left, and left me his copy of Portal 2 to borrow and told me not to give it back to him until I finished it. I knew he was moving in a couple months at that point, and that compelled me to put all my attention into the Portal games. I am glad I did because both games are spectacular, especially the sequel which had a noticeably bigger budget to go all out with a AAA experience and narrative that came together to be one of my favorite games of that generation. -Bulletstorm was another innovative FPS with its implementation of a whip, and combining it with melee strikes and gunplay for a refreshing take on FPSs. It kind of came and went though, and I rarely hear people talk about it anymore, except for briefly last year when it got a re-release on Xbox One/PS4, with an extra DLC to have Duke Nukem replace the original protagonist’s voiceovers for the game. I will also associate the original Bulletstorm release for having one of the worst box arts of all time. It is just a no-frills footprint. If you played Bulletstorm before, sure, it will kind of make sense since kicking is a core melee attack, but if you were a potential consumer browsing games and had no clue about Bulletstorm then I would not blame you for not giving that cover more than half a second’s worth of thought.

-The trilogy of BioShock titles were all high ranking in my top 10 game of the year lists for their appropriate years. The first game immersed me into its aquatic utopia gone haywire, and it stood out from standard FPSs of the time with its heavy emphasis on its narrative and hunting down those audio tapes to get every nook and cranny of the story. Its “twist” was something else for its time, and remains one of my favorites to this day. The sequel had a lot of polarization because it was from a different studio, but I felt they mixed it up by playing as a Big Daddy for the whole game and I could not get enough of freezing Splicers and then doing a drill rush attack that shattered them into pieces. BioShock Infinite was an astounding way to wrap the trilogy with its mesmerizing city-in-the-sky setting, and one of my favorite storylines from this gen. Its two storyline DLC episodes that released around a year later are worth checking out if you missed out, especially the second episode that changed the gameplay into more stealth-based by playing as Elizabeth. It felt like a whole new game, and developer Irrational absolutely perfected the change-up! -Spec Ops: The Line will not light the world on fire for its stick-to-fundamentals third person action gameplay, but what appears to start off as just another rah-rah military shooter, eventually morphs into a far deeper and complex plot than what I thought it was going to be. A book eventually came out thoroughly breaking down its exposition because it stormed up that much of a discussion around it.

-Shmup fans had several worthy entries to play on the 360. Raiden IV and Deathsmiles were landmark new entries for the genre in their time. On XBLA, there were re-releases of a pair of renowned shmups from Treasure: Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. A pair of original shooters also stood out among the XBLA crop with the free of charge student developed game, Aegis Wing and also the beloved Sine Mora that captured the pilot play-by-play stylings of Star Fox and successfully merging it into a shmup. There were also a fair amount of Japan-exclusive shmups for the 360, most notably from respected shooter developer, Cave. Many of them are region-free and can be played on American 360s, so please keep that in mind! -I already told some tales above about my favorite comic book games, and embedded below is a video where I and my friend Matt painstakingly dissect a ton of comic book games that hit the 360. Highlights include the shockingly good movie licensed games, X-Men Origins: Wolverine & Captain America. Not-so-good highlights include the movie licensed Watchmen, Fantastic Four and Hellraiser games. Matt also had a lot more hands on time with the acclaimed Batman: Arkham and Spider-Man games on 360, and I have always respected his expertise in the genre so please give his takes a listen below! -The Telltale adventure/choose-your-own path story-driven games originally started off on PC, but became more and more popular with their console releases. I was 100% into the first two seasons of their Walking Dead games like everyone else. Loved the first one more, but my favorite Telltale episodic game is still Back to the Future. The Wolf Among Us was a fascinating twist on a mature dystopian fairy tale world. I was not impressed by their take on Game of Thrones, but I surprisingly enjoyed all eight episodes of Minecraft. I originally got that for my nephew who was huge into Minecraft at the time to play with, but he was not all that into this genre and I found myself getting into it instead. Telltale was pumping out so many of these episodic series that I could not keep up, and still one day want to go back and play through both Batman seasons they released, and their Borderlands series too which I hear is their best work.

Back to the Future remains my favorite Telltale episodic game, but the event-like nature of the first season of Walking Dead was an undeniable zeitgeist while it transpired. -The LEGO co-op games we know today based off nearly every license imaginable became ubiquitous this gen. Only one I put serious time into and was able to finish was LEGO Marvel Superheroes. This one is special to me because it was the first game that I got my nephew Carter really into right when he was old enough to start grasping modern controller-based games. Had to help him out in quite a few parts, but we got threw it, and now several years later his gaming skills have greatly improved, and I will gladly give him a humble brag on his conquest of finishing the tough-as-nails Cuphead.

-I subscribed to the Official Xbox Magazine for several years, until around 2009-ish, and I was surprised that they stuck with including demo discs for another year or two after that since downloading demos quickly made the discs obsolete. OXM did attempt a few exclusive disc goodies though, and one I always came back to was their own take on an episodic game called OXM Universe that lasted for about a couple years. The disc itself awarded up to 1000 “OXM” points based on checking out all the demos and videos on the disc. Those points could be used in the space ship station game, OXM Universe, which was entirely menu-driven to build space station tech and explore a galaxy. It did lead up to a decent conclusion if you stuck with it all the way to the demo disc that came with issue 100 and upon completing all the final tasks you are rewarded with a lengthy video filled with OXM staff past and present thanking everyone. THAT IS MIGHTY COOL OF THEM TO GO TO ALL THAT WORK FOR A DEMO DISC EXTRA!!! -I think one thing we take for granted in today’s console space is the ridiculous amount of weekly sales and specials on digital games across all platforms. It was not always that way. In the early years of the 360 digital marketplace, for a couple years all that was available was one weekly game on sale and one piece of DLC on sale each week and that was it for a couple years. Luckily, Steam was catching fire with their acclaimed Fall and Winter sales with their monster savings, and that eventually rubbed off on 360 and PS3 and by the end of those system’s lifecycles both started offering a surplus of weekly deals and flash sales. -Digital game preservation is something that is brought up more and more lately, and one thing that periodically ruminates in my mind is how the 360 handles patches/updates. For the longest time, most games had limits of 4mb patches until the later years in the system’s life where they started to change into the larger file sizes we associate with them today. However, the 360 has a nasty habit of auto-purging a game’s update on the 360 after several different games get played on the 360. So if you were to revisit an older comfort food game many years down the line long after the 360 online servers got shut down, any updates for that game were likely auto-deleted and cannot be re-downloaded. This could be huge for a lot of games whose patches likely helped patch out game breaking bugs and other issues that can no longer be downloaded whenever the 360 servers go offline. Just food for thought.

-Final random item I want to bring up is something you saw in the header image to this special. Yes, that is a leaning gallery of 360 faceplates! Remember those? They were kind of a thing for the first couple years of the 360 when Microsoft was flexing the customization options of the 360 so anyone can snap on or off a variety of 360 faceplates to make their system stand out in their own way. I never bought a single faceplate, and only procured them if they were pre-order bonuses, or part of some promotional giveaway. The only highlight of this was how I got my Madden NFL 08 faceplate, and that was when I participated in my Gamestop’s yearly Madden tournament where no more than four people showed up for the few years I participated. The year I won, was when I got the Madden NFL 08 faceplate, which sure as hell beats my Madden NFL 07 plastic beverage cup from the previous tourney! It will forever remain in my drawer with my faceplates for Full Auto, Eternal Sonata and Deathsmiles. It is not like there is some uber-popular YouTuber who has a unique fandom for that particular version of Madden who could benefit from it in any certain way. To the drawer the faceplate remains! ”It’s an Ocean” (THE END!!!) OMG, this took me a whole month to gradually pick away at. I did not come close at all to releasing this in time for the 360’s 15th anniversary of its launch. I feel that I could have made this into a mini-eBook and charged six cents for this!!! As you can tell from my many memories I have shared thus far, the 360 is a platform I hold in high regard. I waited three years to upgrade to the Xbox One and PS4 in 2016, so from late 2005 until late 2016, the 360 was one of my primary go to consoles. Which is why I had so many memories, good and bad, to get out of my system. If you want to catch up on one of about a dozen other flashback specials I have crafted like this (which are thankfully significantly shorter) over the years check out the links below. In the meantime, I will close this off with two embedded videos of episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted circled around the 360. They are the final installments of our history of comic book games and RPG games series. Both episodes focus on the games that hit for those genres up until the point the episode was recorded for 360, PS3 and Wii. Many thanks once again if you have stuck with me for these near-18,000 words of garbled memories of mine, I sincerely appreciate it and I will see you all next time if I can somehow muster enough energy after this beast of an entry for yet another anniversary flashback special!

Listen to us break down almost all the RPGs that his this gen released through 2008

And here we dissect all the comic book games released on these platforms through April of 2011 My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary NES 35th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary PS2 20th Anniversary PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

If you made it this far and have yet to experience the THING that is Rogue Warrior’s end credits theme song, then I dare you to click it above and not have Mickey Rourke’s lyrical lashings remain forever stuck in your head!

Enjoy this montage of the many creative demises of the worst sidekick in the history of videogames! You’re Still Here!? Well Then, Let Me Tell You Another Story About the Shephard….Not That Shepard

It is not my tale to tell of “another story about the Shephard.” Hopefully, EA and BioWare will right that ship as they teased at the recent Game Awards a few weeks ago. I am talking about the other Shepard on Xbox 360, that being Lost: Via Domus’s Jack Shephard. Jack and most (not all) of the cast from the first season of Lost are in that game, but are not playable. Instead, a new offscreen Oceanic survivor is introduced as the playable character, Elliot. The game was an average licensed adventure-lite game affair (find out all about by click or pressing here for my original review), but at the time when it released Lost was in its fourth of six TV seasons, and I was eating up every bit of fan service that game offered. It did have a couple minor things never seen in the TV show like the Dharma magnet, and I loved its ending which got my mind reeling with it possibly tying into new fan theories from the latest episodes of the show at the time. One in particular being my favorite episode of the series, “The Constant.” Not a great game, but loved how it treated the license. That said, this hit a few years before Telltale hit big with its Walking Dead games, and I can only imagine if they were the ones to give their episodic adventure game treatment to Lost instead. Now that is another story about the Shepard I would be all-in for day one!

#videogames #xbox #xbox 360 #gears of war #halo #borderlands #sniper #firepro #tna impact

[cd-i]

Writing out some stuff about games right now and why I dislike picking favourites out of anything BUT I will talk about why some stuff stands out to me more than others

The main reason why I think the final fantasy franchise as important to me is because my mother was engaged to this guy and he passed away just a few months before I was born. Like the anniversary of his passing was just days apart from the ff7r release too :( my mum has so many memories of him playing those games and how proud he was for being able to afford the consoles to play them all

So growing up with final fantasy knowing that as a child was heavy. Like my mum has never really shown interest in video games n still doesn't know much of ff but when I was watching the e3 stream and the ff7r trailer started and aerith was the first thing to show up on the screen my mum said "final fantasy!!" So I jus :') kgejjfrlhseu

#aerith's theme makes me think of him

[lemon-3ds]

Bro I can't wait until Tuesday!! That's too long... :(

#that's three days away!!! #nintendo is presenting on Tuesday. #nintendo is gonna announce tok dlc. i am sure of it. it is the perfect time to announce it after all. #it's like a month away from the game's first anniversary. and it's E3! E3 is the perfect time to announce things like that! #too bad if we do get tok dlc it probably will just add new locations and collectibles... #i still do have my hopes up for Olly-centric DLC though. he's written very badly. it would do him good. #an individual known as lemon does the act of expressing her feelings with words

[sage-nebula]

what did you think of e3? any standouts?

The only presentation I actually watched was Nintendo's (although I heard about Bamco showing only one game and have not stopped laughing since, smh Bamco), and to be honest I was underwhelmed. Nintendo at least showed a lot of games (especially compared to Bamco, who followed them oh my god), but most of them are ones I'm just passively interested in, if not disinterested. Like for instance, I am actually interested in Metroid Dread and will probably pick that up when it comes out, but it's not one I'm super excited for. Super Monkey Ball Bananarama (is that what it's called?) looks okay, but not something I'd pick up at launch. And the Zelda segment . . . oh my god don't get me started.

First of all, while I know there are small children who might not have experienced Skyward Sword, I would say most of the audience already knows all the answers to the questions posed during the explanation of Skyward Sword, because it's a game that has been out for ten years and the story isn't changing a bit. Small children probably aren't even watching E3, so for Nintendo to act like the information about Skyward Sword was anything new was kind of embarrassing.

Aonuma once again said that Age of Calamity precedes the events of Breath of the Wild when it absolutely does not, so I guess he's just really stuck on lying when it comes to that game. Doesn't surprise me when he kept promoting A Link Between Worlds as if it was the first ever direct sequel to A Link to the Past when A Link to the Past had three sequels already (Link's Awakening, Oracle of Seasons, and Oracle of Ages), but it still makes me mad.

Despite Mario getting a massive anniversary campaign for its 35th anniversary, it was confirmed that Zelda is getting nothing beyond the same game we got for the 25th and a little Game & Watch gimmick with ports of games we can already play if we have Nintendo Switch Online (or have the updated remake). To say I'm salty about it is an understatement.

The only good thing to come from the Zelda segment was the glimpse of Breath of the Wild 2, and while it is nice to see it, it really didn't tell us anything new about the game except that we'll get to explore some sky areas (fingers crossed there's actually stuff to explore up there, unlike in Skyward Sword) and that there are some new powerups. Oh, and that Zelda is likely damseled, despite her being the first princess in the series to be the one to lock Ganon in the castle in the first game. (Because seriously guys, Zelda was not trapped in there with Ganon. He was trapped in there with her. It was kind of the whole point.) I'm also not thrilled with the implication that this story is taking steps back from Breath of the Wild . . . Zelda being damseled, Ganon having human form again, possible lengthy dungeons . . . please don't go backward, Nintendo. Go forward. The entire reason I wanted a Breath of the Wild sequel was because it broke away from a stale formula. Please let my worries be baseless here.

All in all, it was very okay, and pretty underwhelming. We didn't even get an update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and honestly that's perhaps what hurt the most, even more than the lack of Zelda 35th fanfare . . . it seems like ACNH really is in its final build despite missing so much content that was present in past titles and there being nothing to do anymore (at least for people like me who've completed the museum and everything), and it's just so disappointing. In fact, going back to the Zelda 35th, they couldn't even give us Zelda items like they did for Mario? They couldn't even do that bare minimum? Smh.

On the plus side, this is not the last Direct that Nintendo will ever have, and I expect another one in a few months anyway. Here's hoping that one will be more exciting, and that we'll have an ACNH 2.0 update on our way soon. Please, Nintendo. This game really needs it. Please.

#the disrespect to Zelda really is insane tho #they rely on Zelda to carry their console releases at launch & this is the thanks this series gets? absurd #(no really: both Twilight Princess & Breath of the Wild were delayed to be launch titles for Wii & Switch respectively) #(both Wii & Switch sold like gangbusters at launch as a result) #(Wii U did not have a Zelda title at launch & its launch was feeble) #(coincidence? maybe. but I don't think it is & I think Nintendo knows it) #(and yet they're still this disrespectful S. M. H.)

[busines303-blog]

The Elder Scrolls 6: release date, news and rumors

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The Elder Scrolls 6: release date, news and rumors

Bethesda granted the wishes of Elder Scrolls fans everywhere when studio boss Todd Howard corroborated at E3 2018 that the developer is working on the highly-anticipated The Elder Scrolls 6.

Although we only got a glimpse at a short teaser trailer, rumors immediately started about where the latest Elder Scrolls title will be set, when it will release and when we will hear more.

So we& apos; ve gathered and assessed all the news and rumors about The Elder Scrolls 6 in this handy guide. Here& apos; s everything you need to know.

[ Update: The Redfall trademark dispute, which had the potential to effect the developed for The Elder Scrolls 6, has now come to an end. Read on to find out more .]

Cut to the chase What is it? The highly foreseen sequel to the Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimWhen can I play it? Not soonWhat can I play it on? PC is a safe bet, as well as the latest console generations Elder Scrolls 6 release date- when can I play it?

We might as well get the bad news out of the way first – you’re not likely to be playing The Elder Scrolls 6 any time soon. The good news, however, is that it’s been confirmed you will be able to…eventually.

The game was confirmed during Bethesda& apos; s E3 2018 meeting but nothing more than a logo was given. We don& apos; t even have a subtitle or a release year. Todd Howard said that the game will be coming after Starfield, the company& apos; s next big IP. That entails Elder Scrolls 6 could be years away.

In addition, Youtuber SkullziTV( via GamesRadar) has been looking into the challenges Bethesda& apos; s mother company ZeniMax faces with regards to the Redfall trademark it has applied for. According to SkullziTV, if the two parties don& apos; t come to an agreement, we won& apos; t be seeing any mentions of Redfall( aka the rumored name of the upcoming Elder Scrolls game) until at the least 2021.

Elder Scrolls 6 trailer- when can I watch it?

The only footage we have of Elder Scrolls 6 is a very short clip of video games& apos; s logo. Other than that, you might be waiting a while to see more.

Here& apos; s the announcement trailer :P TAGEND

iframe> Elder Scrolls 6 rumors

The trademark dispute has been resolved

ZeniMax Media& apos; s dispute with Bookbreeze over the trademark of Redfall has now been resolved. Bethesda& apos; s mother company had attempted to trademark the name back in 2018 leading fans to believe that The Elder Scrolls 6 could finally have a name. Redfall is also, however, the name of a science fiction series published by Bookbreeze so the claim was naturally contested in February 2019.

The resolution is reported( via Gamasutra) as being amicable and “mutually beneficial” for both parties but it remains confidential. If Redfall is to be a focus for The Elder Scrolls 6, which isn& apos; t confirmed, progress can now continue to the relief of anxious fans.

It may be called the Elder Scrolls 6: Redfall

Bethesda may have trademarked the name for the Elder Scrolls 6. According to a report by Newsweek, ZeniMax Media( Bethesda& apos; s mother company) filed a new trademark for& apos; Redfall& apos; which the company stated was for a& apos; computer game software for use with computers and video game consoles& apos ;.

It& apos; s nothing solid, but there& apos; s a slim chance the new Elder Scrolls will be called Elder Scrolls 6: Redfall. Redditors are theorizing the name is linked to the Redfall location in Tamriel or to the Redguard race in Elder Scrolls, however Bethesda has not confirmed or denied anything.

Elder Scrolls 6 news

Elder Scrolls 6 likely won& apos; t be appearing at E3

Although Elder Scrolls 6 was a big highlight of E3 2018, it won’t be making any kind of appearance at Bethesda’s E3 2019 conference. During a PAX East Panel celebrating the 25 th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls franchise, when asked about Elder Scrolls 6 and some of the new tech being used in its development, Todd Howard said that Bethesda& apos; s highly foreseen titles Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield( which is slated for release first) are “going to be a long time! It’s not something we’re going to be talking about, either of those games, at E3 this year, and so patience, please “.

Of course, talking about the game in any detail and proving another taunt trailer to round down the present( maybe one confirming that pesky name) are different things and we& apos; re sure fans will hold onto some hope of another nod , no matter how small, during the conference this year.

Photogrammetry technology will be used

In that 25 th anniversary panel which dashed the E3 dreamings of so many, Bethesda did at the very least dedicate fans a glimpse of some of the technology that will be used in the development of The Elder Scrolls 6. We got a peek at the use of photogrammetry which involves scanning real-life objects and environments to bring them into the game in detailed 3D. The technology will make its first outing in Starfield before the latest iteration is used for Elder Scrolls.

iframe>

Skyrim Grandma will be making an appearance

Speaking of photogrammetry, beloved YouTube star and Skyrim player Shirley Curry, known as Skyrim Grandma by her fans, has announced on Twitter that she’ll be making an appearance in the Elder Scrolls 6. In the above 25 th Anniversary video we even got a glimpse of what could well be her character being created using the latest photogrammetry technology.

Redfall trademark dispute

While fans wait with bated breath for more news on The Elder Scrolls 6, a legal battle between Bethesda& apos; s parent company ZeniMaz Media and BookBreeze.com has potentially been putting a spanner in the works. But an agreement might be on the horizon.

This legal battle has been going on for a while, with Bookbreeze.com( aka author Jay Falconer) disputing ZeniMax filing a new trademark for& apos; Redfall& apos ;, which the company stated was for “computer game software for use with computers and video game consoles”.

In other words, it& apos; s possible that this could be the name of the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6 game- due to the Redfall location in Tamriel, or the Redguard race in Elder Scrolls.

However Falconer claims that he has already developed a brand under the Redfall name and, according to a blog post, is disputing ZeniMax& apos; s filing “to protect what I feel is my ownership of the brand, and to protect my right to sell books( publish, ebook, and audiobook) and the movie/ cinema rights”.

“I want all of you to know I& apos; m not trying to stop the game nor am I trying to get any money from video games. I want nothing from the game at all, ” Falconer wrote. “I’m only trying to protect my ability to keep selling my books. This is simply a dispute over a trademark name. Nothing more. It’s not a cash grab- I want nothing from them and it should in no way hold up any game.

“With that said, we can avoid the USPTO all together and find a no-cost resolution once all parties hold discussions. We only need to have that dialogue. I’m ready and willing and open to whatever resolution attains sense.”

However, as spotted by our sister site GamesRadar, an agreement may be in the works. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Redfall trademark application documents state that ZeniMax has requested the dates to be pushed back a month as the” parties are engaged in settlement discussions “.

According to GamesRadar& apos; s research, those settlement discussions are likely being used to avoid a long trademark dispute, which would prevent us hearing any more information about The Elder Scrolls 6& apos; s official title until 2021.

According to GamesRadar, settlement discussions could mean one of three things :P TAGEND Both parties agree to enter into a coexistence agreement, which allows them both to use the Redfall name( ZeniMax would have to pay out to Falconer ). ZeniMax withdraws the application but enters into a license agreement( paying a fee) to Falconer.ZeniMax pays a one-off sum for Falconer to withdraw his opposition.

Bethesda& apos; s E3 2019 showcase dated and confirmed

Bethesda& apos; s E3 2019 showcase kicks off at 5.30 pm PDT on Sunday 9 June, with the horror shooter Doom Eternal confirmed to appear. Having been taunted at last year& apos; s show, could we also ensure The Elder Scrolls VI make an appearance? There& apos; s a fair chance, especially if this year& apos; s E3 coincides with the reveal of the PS5 and Xbox Two– we& apos ;d be shocked if the Skyrim follow-up wasn& apos; t being aimed at next-gen consoles.

Elder Scrolls VI goes official

Bethesda is a busy studio: not only is it working on a brand new IP, Starfield, it& apos; s also continuing to develop for Elder Scrolls Online and it& apos; s taking on the long commitment of Fallout 76. And that& apos; s only in its main RPG franchises. It& apos; s still got plenty going on elsewhere with mobile games, Dishonored, Prey and others.

Thanks to Todd Howard, we know Bethesda is working on two huge new titles simultaneously, though their developments are staggered.

We now know that one of them is the Elder Scrolls 6.

Having returned to Skyrim after some time away, Howard compared it to seeing an old friend from high school, adding that the time away had given him the chance to see Skyrim as a gamer for the first time.

This, to us, would be the perfect time to start applying this new perspective to the next title in the series.

At the very least we can say we know it won’t merely be called Elder Scrolls 6. There’s going to be a colon and another word to round the title off if previous releases are anything to go by.

Where will Elder Scrolls 6 be set?

We’re also willing to bet that like all the other games in the series it’s going to be set in the continent of Tamriel, the map of which is below.

Previous games have taken us to Highrock, Hammerfell, Morrowind, Cyrodil, and Skyrim. Valenwood, Elsweyr and Black Marsh are the biggest places left to explore. Though there’s still much of Morrowind left to explore, we imagine much of that will be covered in the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online title.

So, Valenwood, Elsweyr or Black Marsh. Which seems most likely? Rumors online are heavily pointing towards Black Marsh, the home of the world’s reptilian Argonian race.

There isn’t actually any solid reason for this rumor, but its swampy marshlands and network of islands would make for an interesting geographic alter for the series, though it’s a geography that would leave itself open to comparison with the Witcher 3. It’s probably the region of Tamriel that we know the least about so Bethesda would have plenty of room to be creative.

That said, Elsweyr would also be an interesting geography change with its dry plains and harsh badlands that the Khajit call home.

It would certainly be nice to find out more about the culture of either the Khajit or the Argonians so both of these extremely different settings have an understandable appeal to fans.

There is, however, weight to a rumor that Elder Scrolls 6 could be set in Valenwood. Valenwood is the home of the Bosmer and it’s an area of Tamriel that Bethesda hasn’t explored much.

The rumor that the game will be set here is based on a reported internal Bethesda memo from all the way back in 2014. In this memoranda, Bethesda employees were reportedly wanted against use the terms Fallout: Nuka World, Elder Scrolls VI or Project Greenheart.

Though it was initially believed to be a fake, Fallout: Nuka World ended up being a big DLC release for Fallout 4 which dedicates slightly more weight to rumor that Project Greenheart is in fact the codename for the next Elder Scrolls title. The fact that Greenheart is a city in the verdant region of Valenwood constructs this even more interesting.

Forest and jungle decideds are hard to get right in games and it’d be really interesting to see Bethesda get creative with the part of Tamriel that’s said to have rejected civilization and espoused the wilderness.

It& apos; s hard to tell from the short E3 clip we have of video games but our first impression is that the game world seems a lot more like Valenwood or Elsweyr than Black Marsh.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Todd Howard corroborated the team has settled on the place – but he won& apos; t tell us where yet.

What features can we expect?

Homebuilding

A feature that we’re somewhat certain will be included in the game to some degree is home building or township creation. Skyrim introduced the idea of designing and maintaining a homestead with its Hearthfire DLC, which Fallout 4 expanded upon with the introduction of its settlement mechanic and the Elder Scrolls online built upon again with its Homestead DLC. This leadings neatly into a further expansion of such features in the next Elder Scrolls title as it felt not-quite-finished in Fallout.

It would be a feature that would actually fit in particularly well with the rumored Valenwood setting, if it involved the player adapting to the wilderness in the way the resident Bosmer have with their treetop cities. In a similar way the player utilized debris and junk to craft their settlement in Fallout, they could use their natural environment to do so in Elder Scrolls in a nice contrast.

A whole new story

In a recent interview with Gamespot, Todd Howard said that Bethesda is looking into how exactly it tells narratives in its games.

Howard noted that Skyrim and Fallout 4 take slightly different approaches to tales, with Skyrim leaving things more open to the player’s vision and Fallout guiding them more securely through a story

Now he says the studio are looking how to” tell a better story in an open world .” He said ” each of our games we& apos; ve had successes and failings and if you ask us internally, we have new ideas that we want to explore in the future because we feel like we haven& apos; t really cracked it yet the route we think it could be .”

Being aware of the differences between Skyrim and Fallout’s approaches to storytelling and the fact that both have positives and negatives suggests that the next Elder Scrolls title could strike some kind of balance between giving the player completely free reign and telling a story around their character.

It’s hard to deny that The Witcher 3 has had a massive impact on what players expect in terms of including an engaging tale in an open world game.

Though we don’t in any way want Bethesda to only churn out a Witcher copy( we’re not sure it’d be possible anyway) it does put a certain amount of pressure on Bethesda when it comes to achieving high-quality environmental and quest-based story tell.

Something we don’t expect to see, though, is multiplayer. Skyrim certainly doesn’t suffer from a lack of multiplayer and it wouldn’t really make all that much sense to incorporate any online multiplayer gameplay with the Elder Scrolls Online still rolling along.

Virtual reality

It& apos; s not a certainty by any means but the fact that Bethesda released a full VR experience for Skyrim entails it& apos; s not out of the question.

What would we like to see?

Well, something we’d like to see and fully expect to see is improved graphics and reduced bugginess. The remastered version of Skyrim indicated just how far things have come visually since the game’s first release we are therefore fully expect any title following on from it is a matter of that standard if not much higher, depending on how far away the game is.

There’s actually a fairly good chance that the game could be created using an entirely new game engine- after it generated an entirely new engine for Skyrim we don’t think it’s unlikely Bethesda will do the same for Elder Scrolls 6 and any Fallout sequels.

The Bethesda game studio in Montreal is currently looking to hire an engine programmer so it’s well worth watching this space.

( Image credits: Bethesda)

Prepare for Elder Scrolls 6 with the best graphics card of 2019

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We keep in mind the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on - CNET

Disney World thing, seeing the last gasps of 1990s interactive games, and there it was. That Sonic Experience demo with the whale chase-- incredible to enjoy and dreadful to play.I wouldn't spend any quality time with the Dreamcast up until at least a year later on, however seeing that display was impressive for the time. At that point I still simply had a Genesis, so even a short glance of Sonic looking halfway-decent in 3D was a discovery. And no, Sonic 3D Blast does not count. Though I never purchased one myself, a buddy did, and it ended up being the go-to console for sleepovers and lost Saturdays. The mix of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power

Stone, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 which dreadful Chao Garden function from Sonic Experience 2 was more than enough to keep us playing that Dreamcast until long after it had actually died and everyone else carried on. Plus, its huge controllers were still better than the dreadful DualShock 2 on the PlayStation 2. That's simply a fact. Now playing: See this: Remembering the Sega Dreamcast at 20 Scott Stein I had every Sega system that was ever made. Yes, even the 32X. I was a Sega kid-- the Master System with Superscope 3D glasses was

my present after getting appendicitis. While the Genesis was my preferred, the Dreamcast is a place of special memories I

was residing in

LA, working as a script reader and story editor, and playing amazing NFL 2K video games to get in touch with my inactive sensations about the New york city Jets. That NFL 2K game stunned me ... it was the first TV-real sports game I 'd ever seen. Crazy Taxi was my LA commuting treatment. I loved the weirdness of Chu Rocket. And much more, I was obsessed with Seafarer. My very first E3 I ever attended had the Dreamcast, and I saw the Leonard Nimoy-voiced fish-man in all its Lynchian scary. Seaman was so ahead of its time: It had a microphone I might talk to Seaman with. It resembled if Alexa were a depressed cannibal fish. In my dusty little Sherman Oaks house, Seamanwas my

mystic surrealist fish tank. In addition to the Museum of Jurassic Innovation in Culver City, it was part of my cabinet of curiosities that made me imagine how weird art might be. Area Channel 5, the remarkably real-feeling Shenmue, and yes, I owned Typing of the Dead. It was a great system of video gaming oddities.The Dreamcast was little and magnificently developed, had arcade-perfect games, and was my first real online gaming system.

May it rest in peace in my mom's basement.Rez Infinite is a modernized variation of the Dreamcast classic. Other than the graphics, very little else was changed. Dan Ackerman The Dreamcast was

the first console launch I ever covered as a beginner "video games journalist" at the long-forgotten (however pioneering!) games-and-culture site UGO.com. My colleagues and I all spent for launch day bundles, and Soul Calibur was everybody's instant favorite.We all wound up playing a great deal of meeting room Soul Calibur with UGO's most well-known staff member, previous kid star Gary Coleman. Gary was a total fiend for Soul Calibur, and frequently held court in our Park Opportunity office, taking on all challengers and giving unlimited foul-mouthed garbage talk. He was really pretty excellent, and probably had an 8 out of 10 win ratio.Other early Dreamcast highlights for me consisted of Power Stone, Shenmue, a Local Evil knockoff

called Blue Stinger( I bet I'm the just one considering that a shoutout), and bizarre fish simulator Seaman. When my now-wife utilized the Dreamcast microphone accessory to inform Seaman she was going to consume him, he replied," Or maybe I'm going to eat you." If that's not next-gen, I don't know what is.I've come back to the Dreamcast a couple of times because its 2001 discontinuation, discussing it on my old talking head video game web series Play Worth( circa 2006), and taking a deeper dive for the Dreamcast's 10th anniversary, which I blogged about here. Would I buy a brand-new

" Dreamcast Classic "micro console? Definitely. Would I plug it in more than as soon as or twice? Probably not.Tim Stevens My Dreamcast memories are a little different than the majority of. Like Scott I was a Sega kid and, like Scott, I too owned( and still own) every Sega system. But my memories of the Dreamcast weren't a lot about video gaming as they were about coding. Lots and lots and great deals of coding.I was in college studying computer science and

composing when the Dreamcast dropped, and my dream was to combine those passions and get a gig in the videogame market after graduation. It was time to select a senior thesis, therefore I blindly emailed some folks at Sega to see if there was any way I might get consent to write a simple game for their hot new console.Amazingly, I got an action. As it turns out I would not be allowed to

develop anything for the Dreamcast-- the advancement hardware alone cost thousands of dollars and I was lucky if I might manage pizza on Friday night-- but I was admitted to the Visual Memory Unit designer package. The VMU, you might keep in mind, was the small, Game Boy-looking thing that slotted into the controller. It had a small, gray and black LCD, a four-way D-pad and a number of buttons.Games for the VMU were written in assembler, an arcane language I 'd never ever been exposed to in my research studies. If that weren't daunting enough, the

only documentation for the VMU package remained in Japanese, another language I didn't speak. In spite of all that I figured it out over the list below few months, then labored and labored and toiled to compose what would be the first-- and to my understanding only-- multiplayer VMU video game. You could, you see, connect two of the mini handhelds together at the top thanks to a cunning, reversible connector. I composed a Pong-like video game played vertically, with the ball taking a trip from one screen to the next, back and forth. Establishing that game, plus another simple, Simon-like video game, consumed my senior year at school. The resulting code, when printed out for my final thesis discussion,

filled a binder as big as a phone book. Along the method I learned enough about the game development market to recognize it wasn't for me, however that project, just me and my text editor toiling for months, is still the programming task I look back upon a lot of fondly. The recently remastered version of Shenmue. Jeff Bakalar I was 17 when the Dreamcast released and was working for a dotcom start-up run by 3 21-year-olds. I remember the day it went on sale

, among the partners bought it for same-day shipment

from a service called UrbanFetch.It showed up and we didn't do any work for the rest of the day. It was just nonstop Ready 2 Rumble. I recall being instantly pleased with how crisp the visuals were. It was a level of fidelity I hadn't ever seen before. Whatever appeared so fast, so innovative

, so futuristic. The Dreamcast showed up in between the other console cycles, so it seemed like we were getting a really early glance into what the remainder of the competitors would quickly be providing. I didn't end up owning my own

Dreamcast till college, however I ultimately fell for Sonic Adventure, problems and all. I played many of the Burial place Raider and Local Evil video games on the Dreamcast too. The Dreamcast will always have a place in my heart for its ridiculous memory card adapters, its primarily horrible controller and the outrageous speed at which its disc reader would spin and change, like some type of dot-matrix printer that went off the rails.Jason Parker I never ever actually owned a Dreamcast, but for a duration in my life, I could not

get enough of one video game: Fighting Vipers 2. It was while I remained in college and among my good friends had a Dreamcast, so when we were not out in the evening or studying, we 'd invest hours fighting match after match.The funny thing is, it wasn't called Fighting Vipers 2 as far as I knew at that time.

My buddy had a

bootlegged copy on a disc and whatever composed on the sleeve remained in Japanese, as was all the on-screen text in the game. I even had to count on him to launch video games because I couldn't navigate the menus. At the time, he discussed the video game wasn't offered in the States, however it didn't officially pertained to Dreamcast till 2001 and never in the United States. Now playing: Enjoy this: Our most cherished video game memories. 8:00 Once he started a match, it was button-mashing paradise. I remember being blown away at the crisp 3D graphics and cool-looking fighters at that time. But the best mechanic of all, and most likely the greatest factor I loved the game, was that you might kick your challenger through the wall of the arena at the end of the match. Possibly that sounds ridiculous, but fighting games in between good friends can get tense. When you can send your pal through the wall at the end of a long fight it's an exclamation point like no other. We

'd get significant about it too, shouting" Boooooooom!" as we 'd blast the other person about 50 lawns beyond the cage. No, I didn't own a Dreamcast, due to the fact that I was a poor college student, however I still have

fond memories of stomping out my good friend in Great Buddy 2Battling" You're going through the wall! "Jet Set Radio on the PC, running at 2,560 x1,440 pixels with mostly the very same possessions as the original, still looks terrific. Sean Keane The Dreamcast was the most amazing console I never owned. Games like Homeowner Evil: Code Veronica,

Sonic Adventure and the mighty Shenmue, and functions like online video gaming and the VMU made me want one terribly, however I simply couldn't manage it as a 12-year-old. Code Veronica looked unbelievable

at the time of its release-- replacing fixed prerendered environments with completely 3D ones and bringing n't rather satisfied ... but it's fine. I'm fine.Sonic Experience appeared like an extraordinary growth of Sega's mascot into 3D, even if it's misery to play today. That whale chase looked fantastic

at the time and it seemed the obvious advance for Sonic after Mario's wonderful transition into 3D. Shenmue was the big one however-- a remarkable life simulator with an abundant open world that was extraordinary. Seeing Ryo Hazuki wandering around Yokosuka, Japan, as he tries to unravel the secret of his daddy's murder was remarkable, and something I just got to experience fully through the current remaster. Eric Franklin I bought the original Japanese Dreamcast from

" http://www.ncsx.com/" target =" _ blank" data-component=" externalLink" rel=" noopener" > NCSX back in November 1998 and got 2 video games: Pen Trilcelon and Virtua Fighter 3tb. While Pen Pen was and still is dreadful, VF3 was anything however! Why did I pay a premium to have this system imported? I was a Sega fanboy and the Dreamcast was where I might continue playing Sega video games beyond the defunct Sega Saturn. But as much as I enjoyed playing the Dreamcast, recalling now, it's clear to me what it truly represented for me: A last possibility at console success for Sega. I got a Sega Master System in 1987 and from then through the end of the Dreamcast's life I was not just bought playing Sega video games, however also extremely invested-- emotionally, to be sure-- in Sega's success as a console designer. It's most likely unusual for people to comprehend

that, however here's the way I saw it: The more effective Sega's consoles were, the more terrific Sega games the company would make. I not only wished to play those video games, however to likewise have other people discover how excellent they were. To see in them what I saw in them: Games with great graphics and simple gameplay that belied a depth you had to reveal. You could play Crazy Taxi like a normal individual,

sure. But if you didn't use the Crazy Dash and the Crazy Stop, which allowed you to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second and quickly stop, then you weren't playing it right. That desire and require for the Dreamcast to be successful was genuine.

Even at the time I knew that if the Dreamcast didn't offer a particular variety of systems, Sega would likely leave the hardware company, which the business eventually did. And the anticipation of each brand-new big release was addictive for me. It was less about how much

I would like Shenmue and more about whether it would push enough mainstream audience buttons to make people purchase a Dreamcast over a PS2. It's ridiculous to think of now, however that was me. I think I simply required something to distract me from my genuine life at the time. For a couple of strong years, it was the

Dreamcast. Presents for the player who has

everything: Please that hard-to-shop-for PC player in your life. CNET's Vacation Present Guide: The very best tech gifts for 2018.

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We remember the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/we-remember-the-sega-dreamcast-20-years-on/

We remember the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on

The Dreamcast itself was pretty compact, but that controller! What a chunker.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

The Sega Dreamcast launched in Japan 20 years ago on Nov. 27, 1998. The system enjoyed a brief but memorable time in the limelight with some truly fantastic games and a few features that would inspire future consoles — it was the first console with built-in internet. 

But ultimately a lack of third-party support, a somewhat underpowered architecture and the fact that the rival PlayStation 2 could play DVDs as well as games would mean a premature demise. None of that will stop us from remembering it fondly — or wishing for a Dreamcast Classic.

Morgan Little

I was in fifth grade, visiting a DisneyQuest while doing the whole Disney World thing, seeing the last gasps of 1990s interactive arcades, and there it was. That Sonic Adventure demo with the whale chase — amazing to watch and awful to play.

I wouldn’t spend any quality time with the Dreamcast until at least a year later, but seeing that showcase was astounding for the time. At that point I still just had a Genesis, so even a brief glimpse of Sonic looking halfway-decent in 3D was a revelation. And no, Sonic 3D Blast doesn’t count.

Though I never bought one myself, a good friend did, and it became the go-to console for sleepovers and wasted Saturdays. The mix of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power Stone, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and that terrible Chao Garden feature from Sonic Adventure 2 was more than enough to keep us playing that Dreamcast until long after it had died and everyone else moved on. Plus, its giant controllers were still better than the awful DualShock 2 on the PlayStation 2. That’s just a fact.

Now playing: Watch this: Remembering the Sega Dreamcast at 20

5:49

Scott Stein

I had every Sega system that was ever made. Yes, even the 32X. I was a Sega kid — the Master System with Superscope 3D glasses was my gift after getting appendicitis. While the Genesis was my favorite, the Dreamcast is a place of special memories. I was living in LA, working as a script reader and story editor, and playing amazing NFL 2K games to connect with my dormant feelings about the New York Jets. That NFL 2K game stunned me… it was the first TV-real sports game I’d ever seen. Crazy Taxi was my LA commuting therapy. I loved the weirdness of Chu Chu Rocket. And even more, I was obsessed with Seaman.

My first E3 I ever attended had the Dreamcast, and I saw the Leonard Nimoy-voiced fish-man in all its Lynchian horror. Seaman was so ahead of its time: It had a microphone I could speak to Seaman with. It was like if Alexa were a depressed cannibal fish. In my dusty little Sherman Oaks apartment, Seaman was my mystic surrealist aquarium. Along with the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, it was part of my cabinet of curiosities that made me dream of how strange art could be. Space Channel 5, the insanely real-feeling Shenmue, and yes, I owned Typing of the Dead. It was a great system of gaming oddities.

The Dreamcast was small and beautifully designed, had arcade-perfect games, and was my first real online gaming system. May it rest in peace in my mom’s basement.

Rez Infinite is a modernized version of the Dreamcast classic. Other than the graphics, not much else was changed. 

GameSpot

Dan Ackerman

The Dreamcast was the first console launch I ever covered as a novice “games journalist” at the long-forgotten (but pioneering!) games-and-culture website UGO.com. My colleagues and I all shelled out for launch day bundles, and Soul Calibur was everyone’s instant favorite.

We all ended up playing a lot of conference room Soul Calibur with UGO’s most famous employee, former child star Gary Coleman. Gary was a total fiend for Soul Calibur, and regularly held court in our Park Avenue office, taking on all challengers and dispensing endless foul-mouthed trash talk. He was actually pretty good, and probably had an 8 out of 10 win ratio.

Other early Dreamcast highlights for me included Power Stone, Shenmue, a Resident Evil knockoff called Blue Stinger (I bet I’m the only one giving that a shoutout), and bizarre fish simulator Seaman. When my now-wife used the Dreamcast microphone attachment to tell Seaman she was going to eat him, he replied, “Or maybe I’m going to eat you.” If that’s not next-gen, I don’t know what is.

I’ve come back to the Dreamcast a few times since its 2001 discontinuation, talking about it on my old talking head video game web series Play Value (circa 2006), and taking a deeper dive for the Dreamcast’s 10th anniversary, which I wrote about here.

Would I buy a new “Dreamcast Classic” micro console? Definitely. Would I plug it in more than once or twice? Probably not.

Tim Stevens

My Dreamcast memories are a little different than most. Like Scott I was a Sega kid and, like Scott, I too owned (and still own) every Sega system. But my memories of the Dreamcast weren’t so much about gaming as they were about coding. Lots and lots and lots of coding.

I was in college studying computer science and writing when the Dreamcast dropped, and my dream was to combine those passions and get a gig in the videogame industry after graduation. It was time to pick a senior thesis, and so I blindly emailed some folks at Sega to see if there was any way I could get permission to write a simple game for their hot new console.

Amazingly, I got a response. As it turns out I would not be allowed to develop anything for the Dreamcast — the development hardware alone cost thousands of dollars and I was lucky if I could afford pizza on Friday night — but I was given access to the Visual Memory Unit developer kit. The VMU, you may remember, was the tiny, Game Boy-looking thing that slotted into the controller. It had a tiny, gray and black LCD, a four-way D-pad and a couple of buttons.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Games for the VMU were written in assembler, an arcane language I’d never been exposed to in my studies. If that weren’t daunting enough, the only documentation for the VMU kit was in Japanese, another language I didn’t speak. Despite all that I figured it out over the following few months, then toiled and toiled and toiled to write what would be the first — and to my knowledge only — multiplayer VMU game. You could, you see, connect two of the mini handhelds together at the top thanks to a cunning, reversible connector. So, I wrote a Pong-like game played vertically, with the ball traveling from one screen to the next, back and forth.

Developing that game, plus another simple, Simon-like game, consumed my senior year at school. The resulting code, when printed out for my final thesis presentation, filled a binder as big as a phone book. Along the way I learned enough about the game development industry to realize it wasn’t for me, but that project, just me and my text editor toiling for months, is still the programming project I look back upon most fondly.

The recently remastered version of Shenmue. 

GameSpot

Jeff Bakalar

I was 17 when the Dreamcast launched and was working for a dotcom start-up run by three 21-year-olds. I remember the day it went on sale, one of the partners ordered it for same-day delivery from a service called UrbanFetch.

It arrived and we didn’t do any work for the rest of the day. It was just nonstop Ready 2 Rumble. I recall being instantly impressed with how crisp the visuals were. It was a level of fidelity I hadn’t ever seen before.

Everything seemed so fast, so advanced, so futuristic. The Dreamcast arrived in between the other console cycles, so it felt like we were getting a very early glimpse into what the rest of the competition would soon be offering.

I didn’t wind up owning my own Dreamcast until college, but I eventually fell in love with Sonic Adventure, problems and all. I played most of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil games on the Dreamcast too.

The Dreamcast will always have a place in my heart for its ridiculous memory card adapters, its mostly awful controller and the insane speed at which its disc reader would spin and adjust, like some kind of dot-matrix printer that went off the rails.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Jason Parker

I never actually owned a Dreamcast, but for a period in my life, I could not get enough of one game: Fighting Vipers 2. It was while I was in college and one of my friends had a Dreamcast, so when we were not out at night or studying, we’d spend hours fighting match after match.

The funny thing is, it wasn’t called Fighting Vipers 2 as far as I knew back then. My friend had a bootlegged copy on a disc and everything written on the sleeve was in Japanese, as was all the on-screen text in the game. I even had to rely on him to start up games because I couldn’t navigate the menus. At the time, he explained the game wasn’t available in the States, but it didn’t officially come to Dreamcast until 2001 and never in the US.

Now playing: Watch this: Our most cherished video game memories

8:00

But once he started a match, it was button-mashing heaven. I remember being blown away at the crisp 3D graphics and cool-looking fighters at that time. But the best mechanic of all, and probably the biggest reason I loved the game, was that you could kick your opponent through the wall of the arena at the end of the match.

Maybe that sounds silly, but fighting games between friends can get tense. When you can send your buddy through the wall at the end of a long fight it’s an exclamation point like no other. We’d get dramatic about it too, yelling “Boooooooom!” as we’d blast the other guy about 50 yards outside of the cage.

So, no, I didn’t own a Dreamcast, because I was a poor college student, but I still have fond memories of stomping out my good friend in Fighting Vipers 2. “You’re going through the wall!”

Jet Set Radio on the PC, running at 2,560×1,440 pixels with largely the same assets as the original, still looks great. 

Screenshot by Eric Franklin/CNET

Sean Keane

The Dreamcast was the most incredible console I never owned. Games like Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Sonic Adventure and the mighty Shenmue, and features like online gaming and the VMU made me want one badly, but I just couldn’t afford it as a 12-year-old.

Code Veronica looked incredible at the time of its release — replacing static prerendered environments with fully 3D ones and bringing in some sweet sweeping shots to showcase them. The blur effect as resurrected (and newly superpowered) villain Albert Wesker darted around made my jaw drop (this was shortly after The Matrix had blown my mind at the cinema).

It got an expanded rerelease — Code Veronica X — on the PS2 in 2001, but the original version hasn’t come out on any other systems. So my Resident Evil completionist urges aren’t quite satisfied… but it’s fine. I’m fine.

Sonic Adventure seemed like an incredible expansion of Sega’s mascot into 3D, even if it’s agony to play today. That whale chase looked amazing at the time and it seemed the obvious step forward for Sonic after Mario’s glorious transition into 3D.

Shenmue was the big one though — a glorious life simulator with a rich open world that was unprecedented. Seeing Ryo Hazuki wandering around Yokosuka, Japan, as he tries to unravel the mystery of his father’s murder was fascinating, and something I only got to experience fully through the recent remaster.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Eric Franklin

I bought the original Japanese Dreamcast from NCSX back in November 1998 and got two games: Pen Pen Trilcelon and Virtua Fighter 3tb. While Pen Pen was and still is terrible, VF3 was anything but!

Why did I pay a premium to have this system imported? I was a Sega fanboy and the Dreamcast was where I could continue playing Sega games beyond the defunct Sega Saturn.

But as much as I loved playing the Dreamcast, looking back now, it’s clear to me what it really represented for me: A last chance at console success for Sega. I got a Sega Master System in 1987 and from then through the end of the Dreamcast’s life I was not only invested in playing Sega games, but also hugely invested — emotionally, to be sure — in Sega’s success as a console developer.

It’s probably strange for people to understand that, but here’s the way I saw it: The more successful Sega’s consoles were, the more great Sega games the company would make. I not only wanted to play those games, but to also have other people discover how great they were. To see in them what I saw in them: Games with great graphics and simple gameplay that belied a depth you had to uncover.

You could play Crazy Taxi like a normal person, sure. But if you didn’t use the Crazy Dash and the Crazy Stop, which allowed you to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second and instantly stop, then you weren’t playing it right.

That want and need for the Dreamcast to be successful was real. Even at the time I knew that if the Dreamcast didn’t sell a certain number of systems, Sega would likely leave the hardware business, which the company eventually did.

And the anticipation of each new big release was addicting for me. It was less about how much I would like Shenmue and more about whether it would push enough mainstream audience buttons to make people buy a Dreamcast over a PS2. It’s silly to think about now, but that was me.

I guess I just needed something to distract me from my real life at the time. For a few solid years, it was the Dreamcast.

Gifts for the gamer who has everything: Please that hard-to-shop-for PC gamer in your life.

CNET’s Holiday Gift Guide: The best tech gifts for 2018.

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So E3 is going to be upon us sooner rather than later and I thought I’d place my predictions down in advance.

Xbox: So Xbox is in a strange position. All future first party titles are going to be on game pass for $10 a month. This includes Sea of Thieves which has been our for a couple of months, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, and Forza’s next entry. Because of this I think at most we will get one other first party release at most coming this year. Other titles like Halo 6 might be shown, but only one unannounced unknown first party game revealed this year at E3 will be released by the end of 2018.

Now what could it be? Well maybe this is just the hopeless dreams of a fanboy, but Banjo Kazooie turns 20 two weeks after E3 wraps up. Dropping a from-the-ground-up remaster akin to Shadow of Colossus or the N.sane trilogy would be incredible. Only other thing I could see is the rumored Perfect Dark reboot. Whatever open world game Playground Games is working on I doubt will release this console generation.

On the topic of Banjo turning 20 I can see Rare celebrating with some new content for Sea of Thieves. An Island in the style of Treasure Trove Cove or Hammerhead beach, some new voyages themed to the franchise, but more importantly some cosmetic items. If not themed to the franchise itself they could totally pull from the concept art for Project Dream and give us some Edison and Captain Blackeye. I also think other themed islands are a potential down the line. Viva Piñata makes perfect sense and I’m sure there are other possibilities for more islands inspired by other properties.

Game-pass and Xbox Live Gold I think will become one. Now this isn’t an original idea. Pulled it from Kinda Funny’s Gamescast, but it’s an idea so crazy I think it’s possible. I think the most likely scenario is a 50% discount on Game-pass with a Gold subscription, but that’s mostly because otherwise it’d be doubling the yearly price of Xbox Live Gold. This would mean for $120 a year you’ve got online access on top of a massive library of games including all of the major future Xbox One exclusives.

PlayStation: So Sony has stated what most of the conference will be. The conference itself will be a deep dive into Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, and The Last of Us Part II. Obviously we will get gameplay for all four and if The Last of Us Part II is having multiplayer again it will be announced here with a beta this summer. Spider-man will get its last pre-order bonus costume unveiled and whatever is shown will allow the reveal of the collector’s edition’s statue.

Just because the main conference is pretty much confirmed to be just these four games doesn’t mean they won’t reveal anything in the pre-show. Dreams will have a firm date for a beta some time before The Last of Us has its multiplayer beta. If Microsoft doesn’t buy them on to their stage, we will see our first look at Spyro 2 in the Reignited Trilogy during the preshow as well.

Nintendo: Some Zelda Collection for Ocarina’s 20th anniversary. Be it ports of the 3DS remakes of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask up scaled or something more, we will see some celebration of Ocarina of Time this year. I think odds are also likely we will see some Joy-cons for this collection, most likely Ocarina of Time Blue and maybe an Amiibo series for Ocarina with all 7 Sages, another Young Link and Adult Link, and Zelda and Ganondorf. Maybe even another jumbo Amiibo in the Giant Goron or Beast Gannon. I have no idea what they’d all unlock, but people would collect them for damn sure.

We will get at least one Smash character reveals during the Nintendo Direct, and probably one at the Round Table if they’re doing another along with one during the tournament Nintendo will be holding. We will see the new Mario and Zelda stages along with Battlefield for this game. I have a feeling the tournament reveal will be the Arms representative. The reveal in the direct will be third party along with whatever super out there reveal they’ve got planned. If one of these reveal opportunities is missed it’ll be during the tournament.

While the Virtual Console name seems like it’s going away, its equivalent will get announced here and it’ll lead into Smash somehow. GameCube support will be announced for the service/line along with a GameCube style Pro Controller and a set of Joy-cons. If this special Joy-con set is made, I expect ones themed to NES and SNES as well. N64 is possible, but I think it’s less likely. Maybe a special Pro Controller down the line, but that design doesn’t fit the Joy-con design as easily.

So how do you lead in from GameCube support to Smash? Show what looks like Melee footage complete with wave dashing Fox and Marth on Hyrule Temple. Then something out of place for Melee shows up: ideally this is a new character or a returning character. Ideally a Snake or a Wolf or something else with GameCube ties. The new Smash Bros, hopefully named by now, will allow you to not just customize the rules, but physics and such so that you can play like Melee, Brawl, 3DS/WiiU, and 64. Maybe this extends to character models, maybe not, but this would be huge since it would mean online Melee. Oh and a Pre-order bonus would be a code redeemable for Melee on this Virtual Console replacement which will be a launch title for this new service planned to launch in November.

I’m guessing that the character reveals will include one predictable, one unlikely, and at least one third party character. Any and all ports to the Switch I can see slyly leading into a character reveal. I believe that Doom Marine has a real shot, but if they’re coming to Smash, Crash Bandicoot and Banjo & Kazooie will close out the Smash reveals and maybe the conference. Nintendo will recreate the original Smash TV spot from the 90s but instead of Mario starting the Brawl Crash will show up with the megaphone and start the fight. Phil Spencer will point up and Banjo will crash land on top of them all. If Crash isn’t there Banjo will still fall from the sky on top of them.

Whatever Pokémon for Switch ends up being it will be there and there will be connectivity with Pokémon Go. This connectivity will be cosmetic in nature for the most part with occasional event Pokémon. These events won’t be Legendary Pokémon but instead Pokémon with special moves. These will be tied to the Pokémon Go Community Days. The cosmetics will be tied to each games medal system, which will be in the new game.

The Yoshi game will get a title and release date that will be no later than August.

Bethesda: Whether or not it comes out this year or not, Bethesda Studio’s will reveal Starfield. It will be a cross between Destiny and your traditional Fallout or Elder Scrolls title. There will be a mobile tie in and it will launch on at least one Smart Phone Operating System that night and a companion App will launch closer to the game’s release. Expect another recap on what’s going on with Elder Scrolls Online since that’s almost tradition at this point. Some other Switch Port will be announced, probably a Fallout game. If Bethesda is getting a representative in Smash it isn’t entirely impossible for it to happen here, but it’s more likely to be held for the Nintendo Direct.

Ubisoft: If Starlink: Battle for Atlas still exists, they are dropping the Toy’s to Life angle. While the model shown in the reveal trailer will be available via a collector’s edition and maybe even be customizable as was shown, you will instead be buying ship upgrades exclusively through an online shop making the game a Games as a Service title. Just Dance 2019 will be unveiled and it will have both songs from Super Mario Odyssey in the Nintendo versions. Speaking of Nintendo, a massive amount of ports will come to the Switch including the entire Ubiarts lineup (Valiant Hearts and Child of Light), Watch_Dogs 2, maybe 1 as well, and Far Cry 3 Classic. As for new games I’d expect Watch_Dogs 3 that will be a games as a service title. If Beyond Good & Evil 2 is there then they will need to announce a beta or something with plans to run it this year, I don’t expect they’ll hit this year.

EA: Who gives a fuck really? Battlefield will get a new entry. Maybe some Battlefront updates. They need to show something Star Wars that isn’t Battlefront but that’s probably not going to happen. Expect half an hour of sports half an hour of shooty-shooty bang-bang.

Square Enix: I didn’t expect to have to predict this line-up. We will see Shadow of the Tomb Raider here, and it’ll be different footage than what was shown at the Microsoft conference. We will see a chunk of gameplay that the press already saw. The original reboot will be making its way to the Nintendo Switch in July with Rise coming in August. They’ll say that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is in development for the Switch as well but it will not be day-in-date.

Dontnod will reveal the first look at Life is Strange 2. It will be set at Blackwell Academy, but in the distant past. The power will be the ability to read minds. My guess is the late game reveal will be the ability to reshape memories themselves, but obviously they won’t reveal that here. The game will be out later either late this year or early next year. In the meantime the original will be coming to the Nintendo Switch and all current gen versions of the game will be updated with the mobile versions photo mode.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will seem to close the show. The Frozen world will be revealed along with a release date if it hasn’t yet been revealed already. If it’s going to happen at all, the Xbox versions of the various collections will be announced here and they will be out this summer before the release of Kingdom Hearts 3. It will be the one crazy title to try and go toe to toe with Red Dead Redemption in October.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will not close the show however. We will see a cinematic trailer for the Avengers game. No gameplay will be shown on stage, but an alpha build will be shown behind closed doors.

#video games #word of the bird #e3 2018 #prediction

[daleisgreat]

25 Years of Sega Saturn & Virtual Boy - Flashback Special!

After the deluge of wrestling-themed entries for WrestleMania month this past 30 days, I have been pining to do another videogame anniversary special. Looking up which platforms have major milestone anniversaries this year, I noted six that stuck out. Four of the platforms (NES, Xbox 360, PSone, PS2) I have an extensive history with and they will get their own respective flashback treatment from me when their anniversaries draw nearer later this year. The other two platforms have all had lackluster or outright abysmal degrees of retail success and both I have only had limited histories with and never played on a consistent basis. Nevertheless, the time I did have with them I considered unique and I do have some fond memories of my experiences with each platform. So let us get on with this flashback special as I celebrate the 25th anniversaries of two consoles that each hit in 1995: Sega’s Saturn and Nintendo’s Virtual Boy.

I want to begin with the platform I have played the least of these two, the Saturn. Yes, I played my Virtual Boy and its daunting 14 game library more than the Saturn. In 1995 I was still lagging a generation behind on the latest consoles. All my family had was an NES at this point and I recently got a GameBoy for Christmas of 1993 so in 1995 I was getting a lot of mileage out of my GameBoy and my parents were still hitting up garage sales for bargain price NES game for me. By the time the Saturn and PSone hit in mid-1995, I was a year away from getting a SNES which I desired more so the Saturn and PSone were not even close to making my wish list. I read about them looming in magazines like Game Players and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but truth be told I was not all that excited for the future of disc-based platforms and the advent of polygonal graphics that were about to come into fruition with 32-bit consoles. As a naïve 12-year old, the first major 3D polygonal games that hit on SNES and Genesis in the early 90s like Star Fox and Virtua Racer looked butt-ugly to me, and from trying out demo kiosks of PSone and Saturn at stores the impatient kid I was back then was furious at this newfound ‘feature’ of the latest systems having loading times. Combine that with my family having no desire to chunk down several hundred dollars for another gaming system and I was left with no cravings for the Saturn and PSone when they both hit in 1995. I had no clue of Sega’s surprise Saturn launch announced at the first E3 in May of 1995. For the unfamiliar, it was when going into that E3 it was known that both the Saturn and PSone were slated to launch within days of each other in September of 1995, but at Sega’s press conference they said right then and there the Saturn is out right now at a handful of select retailers. In 1995 the Internet was only around for a few years and not even the slightest bit ubiquitous. Computers were still a couple years away from coming down to more reasonable family friendly prices, so at this time I got all my gaming news from my monthly subscription to Game Players.

Here is the podcast special on the Saturn I originally recorded way back in 2008. Check it out if you want to know even more about the history of the Saturn and its games. I wound up largely ignoring both the Saturn and PSone for the first few years they were out, maybe occasionally trying out an occasional store kiosk demo and that was about it. I remember the magazines at the time putting a lot of hype into Sega’s arcade ports, and console exclusives like Panzer Dragoon getting cover stories of having mind-shattering graphics, but I was not buying it at the time and stubbornly remained loyal to my 2D sprites. For the Saturn, I finally got my first real experience with it in April of 1997. I remember shortly before this time the Saturn was being pushed aggressively on TV with a special 1996 holiday bundle packaging it with Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Cop for $199. I had no idea at the time why this ridiculous deal happened was because Sega was getting killed in sales at this point in the PSone/Saturn/N64 era and they were desperately trying to play catch-up with a hell of a value considering several months earlier in 1996 it was clinging onto its dooming launch price of $399.

Flash forward a few months later in April of 1997 and my hometown got hit with a huge flood that forced a mandatory evacuation of the entire town for a couple weeks until the waters receded. For a couple days our family stayed at a nearby air base hangar. I believe we were planning on hunkering down there for several days until a couple days in my uncle from St. Paul surprised us and showed up and ‘volunteered’ on taking us in and refused to leave without us coming with him. My siblings and I were delighted to get out of the crowded hangar and spend time with our cousins for what ended up being a week before we were able to get back home. My cousin Royce, who was within a year of my age at the time wound up getting that Saturn three game bundle for Christmas a few months earlier and we played those three games along with the demo disc that came with the system almost every day. We must have played through Virtua Cop at least a few times, and I remember finding it a big step up from previous light gun games I was accustomed to. Daytona USA at the time did not really click with me, and while I was impressed with the graphics at the time I did not come around to checkpoint-racing games yet and was more turned off by their enforced time limits back then. On the demo disc our family got a lot of fun competing against each other in the home run derby mode available in World Series Baseball. The standout game of the pack was easily Virtua Fighter 2. It blew me away and for me it was the first game that proved not only for fighting games, but for games all together that 3D polygonal graphics and gameplay could be viable and damn fun. I knew I was a couple years late to the party by this point, but by 1997 polygonal graphics were no longer the crude, non-textured blocks and rectangles on the SNES and Genesis, but actually had some depth and style to them. I loved Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat at this point, but Virtua Fighter 2 proved to me that 3D fighters could coexist with 2D ones.

That week with my cousin was my proper introduction to the 32/64-bit era. It would be over a decade though before I got more serious hand-on time with the Saturn. Not many friends of mine had the Saturn back home, or if they did we rarely busted it out. My friend and former podcast co-host, Matt has a mammoth collection, and I only recall us turning to the system once or twice all these years to play the charming platformer SCUD. Another friend and podcast co-host of mine, Chris also has a Saturn in his equally mammoth game collection, and until 2008 I only recall us powering it on a couple of times to play the fun co-op action platformer, Three Dirty Dwarves, which had a nonsensical, grungy vibe to its destruction. In 2008, we were a couple years into doing our videogame podcast and we loved doing console retrospectives, so we decided it was time to do one on the Saturn. I just uploaded it to YouTube and integrated it into this article for your listening pleasure! Chris knew about my limited Saturn hands-on time at this point so we decided to spend literally a whole afternoon, about four to five hours of ‘research’ playing a good chunk of his Saturn collection. About 10-15 minutes for each game for a quick refresher for what each game brought to the table. There was one though we played for about two hours straight. That was the rare Panzer Dragoon Saga Chris had a copy of. I knew about it being a collectible at this point and heard the acclaim for it being an ahead of its time RPG and professed to Chris to hope to spend a little more time with it to see what the hype was all about. I remember digging its rail-shooter action the first two games established while simultaneously mixing in RPG style mechanics and exploration. I think we both got wrapped up in it, and stuck with it a bit longer than anticipated. Suffice it to say, those opening hours stood out to me all these years later and I can see why Panzer Dragoon Saga became a hot commodity.

Jeremy Parish did an excellent line of videos with deep dives on every individual Virtual Boy game released, including Japanese exclusives. Here is his take on the Wario's exclusive Virtual Boy game as of yet to be re-released, Wario Land. In my TurboGrafX-16 flashback, I wrote about how I procured the system at a gaming community meet-up event. At that same event there were several gaming systems hooked up for play throughout the night, and one of them was the Saturn. One of the highlights of that night was someone bringing enough multi-taps and controllers that we were able to get plenty of rounds of eight player Saturn Bomberman in. I am a fan of classic multiplayer Bomberman, but never played more than four players before, and was surprised to see the Saturn pull off an eight player version with a micro-sized map and characters in order to fit everyone on screen. It was a Bomberman experience that nothing will likely ever stack up to. I dug up a photo from the event of all of us gathered around the TV so you call can see the tech in action!

Sadly, I never got anymore hands on time with the Saturn after this. It is one of the few major consoles that I do not own. For years I remember seeing the system for sale at our local retro games shop for around $30, but I always hesitated on it. The games I enjoyed on there Sega released better sequels on other systems, and I later got to check out some of its top ranked games like the Capcom fighting games, Guardian Heroes, Nights Into Dreams... and acclaimed shmups like Radiant Silvergun on enhanced re-releases on the Xbox 360 and PS3. There remains games exclusive to the Saturn that I always wanted to try like Die Hard Arcade, World Series Baseball ‘98, Fighters MegaMix, Burning Rangers and Shining Force III, but with retro game prices continuously going up, the time to start a Saturn collection has come and gone in my book unless I happen to stumble upon a steal of a deal. I do have one Saturn game in my collection however, and I will give props to Matt once again who gifted me his extra copy of Bug!. While Sega pulled the plug early in America on the Saturn, it comparatively fared much better than Nintendo with the Virtual Boy. It launched in America in August of 1995, and sold so poor right out of the gate that Nintendo could not have abandoned the platform any faster. Its last game, 3D Tetris, hit North America in March of 1996, only seven months after it launched and with a total of a meager 14 games officially releasing stateside. I remember seeing the hype leading up to the Virtual Boy’s launch in the magazines, and like with the initial wave of polygonal graphics, I was not sold on the concept of virtual reality. However, a couple months after that same flood hit in 1997 our local Wal-Mart had unsold Virtual Boy inventory it was desperate to get rid of by selling the system itself for $20, and games for $5 each. This was one of the first times as a kid I recall my dad abstaining from his garage sales-only videogame rule and realized the steal the system was going for. We walked out of that Wal-Mart with the system and the copy of Mario’s Tennis it came bundled with, along with copies of Golf, Mario Clash and Nester’s Funky Bowling.

I was in the midst of spending summers on a farm at this point in my childhood for several years, and that was the summer of Virtual Boy with my siblings. I played the crap out of all four of those games. I abided by the recommended break alerts that popped up every 15-30 minutes seriously because I recall the gaming mags at the time reporting on the Virtual Boy causing eye strain after consistent use. Even with all that heavy duty play of the Virtual Boy that summer, somehow I am the only one in my family that does not have glasses. All four games we had were solid, but not mind blowing. Mario Clash I thought was a nice, fully-featured take on the classic original Mario Bros. arcade game that fleshed out that style of gameplay with about 100 stages and got so difficult early on I did not come close to finishing it. Golf was a good simulation of the sport, but it only had one course so I did not revisit it that often. I remember enjoying Mario’s Tennis a lot, but this being the debut version of that game it was more of a tennis sim with Mario characters, and had less of the wacky mini-games and power-up attacks associated with the franchise today. My siblings and I played a ton of competitive Nester’s Funky Bowling. There was not anything that funky about it other than the occasional cheerful animation from Nester and his twin sister Hester whenever you scored a strike or spare, but it was a functional enough bowling game that we had plenty of fierce rounds of over that summer. After that summer we and I got our fill of those four games and the Virtual Boy found itself in the closet for many years. Eventually I randomly dug it out and found the tripod busted, and the pack that hooked up to the back of the controller that contained the plug-in for the AC adaptor was missing. With no means of powering on the Virtual Boy, it sat in a bag forgotten in my closet for well over a decade. I will thank one Jeremy Parish for renewing my interest in Virtual Boy with his excellent line of Virtual Boy Works videos. For those that are unfamiliar with him, Parish is one of most credible members of the retro gaming press, with him hosting the renowned retro-game podcast, Retronauts since 2006 and going on to write countless books and producing chronological video series on nearly every 20th century Nintendo platform. He averages one video a week, which usually highlights one or two games and does a deep dive into its development history and then proceeds to review the game. A few years in he has already covered almost all the games released from the first years of the SNES and the first two years of NES and GameBoy.

Throughout 2019 Parish took a detour from those three systems to focus on going through the entire VirtualBoy library, including its several Japanese exclusives. His surprise love for the platform shined through his thorough coverage for each game. It is a well-produced series and fantastic history lesson for this blink-and-miss-it platform that I highly recommend checking out by click or pressing here, especially now to learn about the first major attempt at a virtual reality platform with VR now having a modicum of success with the PlayStation VR and the Oculus Rift having made legit waves these past few years. Virtual Boy Works inspired me to track down a few more Virtual Boy games to my collection which were surprisingly going for not that much on eBay. I wound up getting Galactic Pinball, TeleroBoxer, Virtual League Baseball, Vertical Force and Wario Land. I also tracked down a replacement AC Adaptor hub and tripod stand which resulted in my Virtual Boy powering on once again! I tested out all these games briefly. I love me some videogame pinball, and Galactic Pinball has some nifty 3D tricks up its sleeve. TeleroBoxer is like Punch-Out meets Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots or Real Steel for the younger readers who need a more contemporary reference. Vertical Force is a competent shmup, and I wish I put more than a few minutes into Wario Land because it is a legit top notch platformer and went down as one of the few highly rated games on the system. I swear to one day make it through Wario Land! Thank you for joining me on this two part 25th anniversary special for the Saturn and Virtual Boy! Got a favorite Virtual Boy or Saturn memory of your own? I would like to hear how it compares to my tale so shoot me a line on Twitter over @Gruel. If you enjoyed this journal-style flashback special, than I encourage you to check out the links below to the specials I wrote for the Dreamcast, GameBoy, Genesis, TurboGrafX-16 and yes, even the 32-X. Thank you all once again for indulging me!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

#videogames #saturn #virtual boy #virtua fighter #panzer dragoon #nester #wario land #three dirty dwarves #teleroboxer

[vrheadsets]

Oculus Touch: One Year On

Today sees the last of the major virtual reality (VR) anniversary celebrations take place in the form of Oculus’ motion controllers, Oculus Touch. And what a year it’s been, with prices slashed left and right, new bundles, and the expulsion of the Xbox One controller. With all this in mind VRFocus decided to cast its eye back over the last 12 months as well as ask a few developers what they thought.

When Oculus Rift arrived back in March 2016 it came bundled with a Microsoft Xbox One controller, pointing to a collaborative effort between the two companies which many thought (VRFocus included) would lead to Oculus’ headset providing VR support for the next Xbox (Xbox One X), which hasn’t happened.

The Xbox One controller was in fact a stop gap as Oculus prepared its own device, Oculus Touch, so it could better go head-to-head with HTC Vive which came supplied with its Lighthouse Base Stations and motion controllers right out the box. So at the beginning of December 2016, nine months after the launch of Oculus Rift, the headset finally got it own interactive controllers.

Just like the launch of the headset it wasn’t exactly plain sailing for Oculus Touch. Originally priced at $199 USD, the controllers had plenty of content available, whether it was new or previously released adding a controller update. The issue came when the company chose to half the price of the controllers three months after release – which naturally displeased early adoptors. This resulted in Oculus giving away $50 of store credit to appease consumers.

Then in July came the big deal, $399 for the Oculus Rift with Touch, massively undercutting PC rival HTC Vive, bringing the price more inline with PlayStation VR, the high-end market leader. Initially a summer promotion, this deal would not only go on to become permanent, it would also see the expulsion of the Xbox One controller in favour of Oculus Touch.

Whilst this was all happening over the first six months, Oculus looked to further improve Oculus Touch, namely its 360-degree tracking. At launch the controllers were really only designed for a two-sensor, front facing layout, giving a 180-degree area in front of you to work in. Inventive players found that you could use a two-sensor setup with them diagonally across from one another (a la HTC Vive) for a basic 360 experience. As Oculus worked out some of the roomscale tracking bugs it recommended that three sensors where used for the best tracking solution. Two sensors will still work – only two are supplied in the bundle – for roomscale, but VRFocus has found that extra one to be mighty useful.

And that’s a brief history of Oculus Touch since launch. This month will see even greater Oculus Home integration when Rift Core 2.0 arrives but what about those hard working developers creating amazing immersive content, what do they think of Oculus Touch? VRFocus spoke to a couple via email to find out:

Oculus Touch is one year old, what were your first reactions to the controller?

John Pearl, Design Director at Gunfire Games: “The controllers themselves were super comfortable and felt very natural in my hands, even in the early prototype phase. I think the first Oculus Touch game I played was an early build of Dead and Buried. It was such an amazing experience to see my hands represented in VR.  The tracking and the positioning relative to my actual hand locations felt so spot on it was kind shocking.

Chad Dezern, Studio Director of Insomniac Games: The controller instantly captured my imagination. I’ll never forget trying out the Toybox demo at E3 in 2015—it was amazing to look down at my hands, and watch my fingers and thumbs move along with button inputs I didn’t even realize I was making. Simple things—picking up a toy robot, stacking a block, bouncing a ball—felt weighty and natural, and the whole experience imprinted on my memory. Seriously, I had dreams about it. Shortly after that, several Insomniacs compared notes. We knew immediately that we wanted to make a game about casting spells with your bare hands. That’s how The Unspoken came about.

Has Oculus Touch changed the way you view VR and what experiences are possible?

Pearl: “When we made Chronos, it was built for a gamepad because that was the control option available at the Rift launch.  This meant it relied on a somewhat established, familiar control scheme. With Touch, it’s wide open, uncharted territory.  There are no rigid standards in place or years of focus testing and feedback dictating the optimal assignments of buttons.  It’s really a time for invention and discovery. It also allows for a deeper level of immersion. For example, a player needs to interact with a large switch to turn off the power to a generator.  In a traditional game, a B prompt would pop up and the character would play a canned animation to flip the switch. In VR you can allow the player to flip that switch. That might sound mundane, but the level of immersion that presents the player is profoundly deeper than traditional games. This really propagates into all player interactions, big and small.”

Dezern: “Yes. Touch removes the abstraction of the controller. The player feels a deeper connection to the experience, because mechanics are built around actions that are second nature. The headset surrounds the player with the world, and Touch provides an intuitive way to navigate it. That has influenced our game design process; we’re a lot more tuned in to the information that we’re pushing to the player second-to-second. We take great pains to respect the player’s focus.

“For The Unspoken, we used grounded interfaces to set up the player’s inventory; you pick up physical objects and slot them into the same space where you’ll pick them up later. So you’re teaching the player where to look in “real” space. That’s all in the service of making it feel special when you cast a spell; the physically accurate world grounds the magical world.”

What have you most enjoyed playing with Oculus Touch? (Other games, aspects of your own games, or both.)

Pearl: “I really enjoyed playing Robo Recall. The gunplay was really polished. I also enjoyed playing Dead and Buried in Co-Op horde mode after we had shipped it.  It was exciting to see people interacting in the world and figuring out things like enemy patterns and boss behaviors.  Lastly, playing From Other Suns with random people has been a lot of fun.  Working on the game, we developed a lot of optimal strategies for how to handle missions.  It’s really been awesome to see how different people handle the same events.”

Dezern: “It’s inspiring to see so many novel solutions in the Store, and so many fun experiences. I sculpted a robot with Medium, then scaled it up with both of my hands to make it 10-stories tall. I floated around in zero gravity in Lone Echo, then propelled myself forward with my android hands. And I dropped my army into position in Brass Tactics, then pushed myself across the table to watch it surround my enemy’s fortress. That’s just scratching the surface.

“For The Unspoken, it’s been a blast to watch our community grow so proficient at the game. Our high-level players have a fine-tuned sense of perception and timing that seems positively supernatural. Matches are fun to watch as a result; you feel the momentum shifts of competitive play, and the tension of high stakes.

“At the same time, I’m glad that–beginning December 14–new players can play through the full single-player mode in The Unspoken: Acolytes update to hone their skills, while they learn the secret history of spell-casting duels in Chicago!”

from VRFocus http://ift.tt/2BDyEHb

#VRFocus #vr #virtual reality #canada

[daleisgreat]

PSP 15th Anniversary & Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary - Flashback Specials!

A couple months ago in March, the PSP hit its milestone 15th anniversary of its North American launch, just a few months after its end of 2004 debut launch in Japan. It came and went without much hubbub in the gaming media however due to that hitting around the same time the COVID-19 outbreak started to make waves in America and that pandemic rightfully getting the bulk of the press attention. Writing about game platform anniversaries over the past several weeks has been helping me get through these wild times we are now in by reflecting on my memories of these platforms, so with that said, please join me in looking back at Sony’s debut handheld….and later on in this very same flashback special I will have a bonus addendum with my memories of the Neo-Geo since it recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

I remember when the PSP was surprisingly announced at Sony’s 2003 E3 press conference. I was there in Los Angeles covering my first E3 that year! The website I wrote for at the time, the long defunct vgpub.com, was a smaller gaming press outlet and only had one invite to the Sony press conference so our website founder, John attended the Sony conference while I and another staff writer slept in! I will never forget when John got back shortly after it ended and my colleague and I asked him if there were any big surprises (still a year or two away at this point with conferences being live streamed and with MySpace being the only major social media in 2003, there was a lack of live minute-by-minute news reporting and you would have to wait at least a couple hours until after the conferences ended to check gaming websites for news updates). John replied with an ‘oh yeah’ and proceed to hand us a little PR packet with a press release announcing the Playstation Portable (PSP) and how it would have near identical tech to the PS2 and be able to play movies with its UMD-discs. By mid-2003 the PS2 was a juggernaut around the globe and took up a little over half the market share in the home console gaming market against the Xbox and GameCube. With the PSP offering a big upgrade to the then-current GameBoy Advance out on the market and having near PS2 quality graphic capabilities, and with DVD movies being a huge factor into PS2 sales, it only seemed logical the PSP would be a sure-winner in the handheld gaming market. All three of us were buzzing about the news and how the PSP would be huge for handheld gaming and how Sony likely would take over. That did not quite happen however due to the surprise success of the Nintendo DS, but that did not stop the PSP to go on and be a viable gaming handheld alternative and have a fair amount of global success. I recall being incredibly stoked for the PSP launch, with a lot of hype going into its 20-plus launch game lineup.

I particularly remember being excited for Lumines, a new puzzler from Bandai that put a new twist on Tetris-style dropbox puzzle gameplay. It achieved this by making combo-clearing squares, instead of lines, and having a mesmerizing evolving soundtrack and graphic scheme whenever certain score targets were hit. Amazingly, the gameplay ranked right up there as top-in-class puzzler gameplay with Tetris. Combine that with its dazzling visuals and phenomenal soundtrack and it resulted in Lumines being the surprise killer-app of the PSP launch. Earlier this week I popped in Lumines Remastered on the PS4, and the gameplay is still as addicting as ever, and my anticipated quick five minute round for a refresher resulted in nearly playing an hour nonstop! From the other launch games I remember getting Untold Legends, Twisted Metal: Head-On and Tony Hawk’s Underground 2: Remix. Head-On was an all-new Twisted Metal game that was a good handheld version that also offered up online play, which was among one of the first of all handheld games to do so. I was a big fan of the hack ‘n slash action-RPGs on consoles during that era like Dark Alliance and Champions, and Untold Legends was a fun portable take on that which also offered up local wireless multiplayer. My friend, podcast co-host and also fellow VGpub staff writer Chris, along with my brother Joe, met up for a few memorable multiplayer sessions of Untold Legends.

All three of us played a whole heck of a lot of PSP in its initial weeks. At this time in early 2005, downloadable audio shows were kind of catching on but it was still a few months before Apple officially dubbed them as ‘podcasts’ on iTunes. I brought up the idea to Joe and Chris to get together to record an audio show for VGpub all about the PSP launch and our initial thoughts on the games available. We had no idea how to set it up on the technical side, so we winged it and Chris brought over one of those old-school stationary, coffee table tape recorders that are kind of stereotypical in psychiatrist or detective interview scenes in movies. We hooked an auxiliary cable from it to my PC and somehow produced a digital tin-can-and-string version of what would be the pilot of VGpub’s podcast. We sent the pilot to the VGpub editors to see what they thought, but we were dismayed when hearing back they thought it was too long at around 50 minutes in length. Bummed with that reception, we wound up not posting the PSP pilot show, but eventually gave podcasting another go when that scene took off several months later after it caught on with iTunes. We had a fun seven year run on the podcast, and when VGpub sunsetted a couple years after we started, we continued with the podcast on its own site for a few more years and as part of the launch posted the long lost pilot episode. And now in honor of the PSP’s 15th anniversary, I dug out that amazingly awful audio quality pilot from my hard drive archives and uploaded it to YouTube so now you all could relive our initial highs over the PSP’s launch. You can check it out by click or pressing here, or by checking out the embed below!

Behold our low-tech, amateur endeavor of the very first podcast I participated in that focused on the launch of the PSP. THUG 2: Remix was a nice port of the console version of that Tony Hawk game I played a lot of. It was shortly after playing this is when I realized I did not want to play PS2 ports on the PSP. While a lot of them packed in a lot of the same content as their PS2 counterparts, they suffered noticeably due to the PSP having one analog ‘nub,’ only one pair of shoulder buttons and having to dial back the graphics and/or features in order to get it running on the comparably lower-powered PSP. I realized this moreso over the next year picking up and trying out PSP versions of BurnOut, Virtua Tennis and Gun. Once again, nothing against the PSP versions since a lot of them played and looked fine on the PSP, and if I primarily was on the road or travelling I would have been thrilled with these versions. It was over this next year I realized I would rather play these PSP ports on the PS2 instead of dealing with those compromises.

Unfortunately in the early years of the PSP, it was dominated by PS2 ports and five star original titles like Lumines were few and far between. This culminated with barely getting any play out of the system and selling off my PSP a little over a year later in mid-2006. Things were looking dire for a little while for the PSP, but Sony and strong third party support from companies like Square-Enix, EA and Capcom continued to pump out games and eventually the PSP established a strong portfolio of original releases. Some of the original efforts from Sony were so strong that games like Twisted Metal: Head On, Syphon Filter and Motorstorm: Arctic Edge got remastered ports on the PS2 to keep up first party releases for the PS2 in its twilight years. I want to make sure to give a shoutout to other strong original PSP titles such as the Patapon series, WTF: Work Time Fun, both Phantasy Star Portable entries, all four SOCOM titles, Resistance: Retribution, both Pursuit Force games, Killzone: Liberation, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Final Fantasy: Crisis Core, both God of War titles, Mega Man: Powered Up and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. In 2012, I acquire PSP’s successor from Sony, the Vita. It featured digital backwards compatibility with a fair amount of the PSP’s library. I wound up acquiring about a dozen of the PSP games I always wanted to try this way that I missed out on after selling it. The Vita was also compatible with most of the PSone classics that were available on the PS3. This lead to me playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII a couple years ago in anticipation for the recently released and long coming FFVII Remake. This past week a fired up a few of them for a refresher on some of the PSP titles in preparation for this article. I had a lot of fun with the original Pursuit Force….at least the first couple missions anyways since that game had compatibility issues and frequently froze on the Vita.

I dusted off my Castlevania skills in my attempts at playing the remake of Rondo of Blood that is part of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles. It has a challenging but fair degree of difficulty in the few levels I progressed through. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops I dug a lot for its first couple bite sized missions that focused on the origins of Snake meeting Campbell. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker I consider to be the true, fully featured fifth installment of the series since it essentially has a full length story and slate of missions available. I did not play it on the PSP, but instead on the HD remaster collection that released a year later on the PS3 and loved grinding through its wide variety of missions that set the stage for The Phantom Pain. While it is not compatible with the PSP’s physical discs, the Vita is a good alternative to experience most of the PSP’s library through digital download for those still curious about the PSP’s games. On the UMD movie side of things, launch PSPs came bundled with a copy of Spider-Man 2 which I eventually watched on a plane trip. The quality of the UMD movies were undeniably good. Later on, I got sent a UMD to review of the fun underdog sports film, Dodgeball and those wound up being the only two UMDs I owned. For the first year or two of the PSP lifespan I remember game stores being flooded with physical UMDs, but a lot of them cost nearly as much as their DVD versions at the time and I am speculating that people anticipated they would only cost half or a third as much as DVDs kind of relative to how the portable-to-console game pricing goes, and when that proved not to be the case it lead to a quick exit for UMD movies on the PSP. I look back at the PSP and will fondly remember those awesome early months I had with it, and how it later redeemed itself by having a fleshed out lineup of original games. I want to also give the PSP props for becoming the only platform that easily surpassed portable efforts from other companies that tried to compete against Nintendo in the handheld gaming market like Atari, Tiger, Sega and SNK. I adhere caution when tracking down used PSPs due to reports of some PSPs being susceptible of having bulging battery packs over time. Sony released a few different revisions of the PSP, so I do not know if that is related to only the launch version, or for all versions of the PSP. This is why I recommend tracking down a Vita instead to get your PSP fix for those interested.

In the bonus addendum to this PSP anniversary flashback, I will touch on my brief memories with SNK’s Neo-Geo to commemorate its recent 30th anniversary of the original launch of the Japan arcade hardware. The arcade side of the Neo-Geo was dubbed the Multi-Video System (MVS) and it debuted in Japan in April of 1990, and following in American arcades a few months later in August. For those not in the know, the 24-bit arcade hardware had a home console version called the Neo-Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES) that launched in Japan later on in 1990 and in 1991 in America. The unique thing about the Neo-Geo is both the MVS and AES used the exact same technology so it was possible to have 100% faithful home ports. SNK wanted the home experience to as close as possible to the arcade that it bundled the system with two mammoth arcade sticks. I first remember seeing Neo-Geo games in MVS format at various arcades in the early to mid-90s. The MVS cabinet was unmistakable with it having the eye-grabbing Target-red color and the two-to-four mini-game marquees listed at the top of it. The big draw to arcade operators at time of the Neo-Geo MVS was that the games came on friendlier priced cartridges that could easily be swapped out like games in a console instead of ordering whole new arcade machines to replace them. I have seen the four-slot MVS plenty of times, but I mostly remember seeing the two-slot version more frequently in arcades over the years, and for the most part it was the same two games featured on them: Puzzle Bobble (AKA Bust-a-Move) and Metal Slug. These were the two game I primarily encountered on the MVS in my childhood arcade experiences. I was not all that great at Puzzle Bubble with its unique spin on puzzle games by shooting bubbles onto the playfield from the bottom of the screen. I did however love Metal Slug and its sequel that I also recall seeing originally on the MVS. Metal Slug was arcade bliss at the time, with charming cartoony soldiers oozing with detail and twee animations as they run ‘n gunned with an arsenal of over-the-top weaponry, villains and larger than life boss battles. Metal Slug is one of the few games where slowdown is a good thing in my opinion because it primarily happened when encountering daunting bosses and explosions that filled up the screen and it felt like the machine was doing all it could to keep the action moving.

Jason and John from the MetalJesus crew do a fine job here giving a 101 lesson on the Neo Geo hardware and have lots of footage here of some of the best games to hit Neo-Geo.

A few weeks ago I did a quick playthrough of Metal Slug X on Xbox One since it was on Game Pass, and everything that I fondly associated with those run ‘n gunners was still there, even the slowdown! Thankfully the AES and MVS games did not remain trapped on their original expensive hardware. By the mid-2000s, SNK regularly started to output various collections of games both digitally and physically. I highly recommend Metal Slug Anthology that hit PS2 and Wii, and later got digitally ported onto the PS4. A majority of the individual Neo-Geo games got ported over individually in recent years on PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Since all these marketplaces frequently run sales on their back catalog, you can now find a lot of these games well under their default price of $7.99 each. Over the last few years I checked out plenty of original Neo-Geo games this way. I tried out too many fighting games to count by doing this, but also finally got a chance to play SNK’s arcade sports offerings that got overlooked by their many fighting games. Three Count Bout is a graphically impressive wrestling title, but its button-mashing leniency takes a toll on thumbs. I loved Dunk Dream/Street Hoop, which is SNK’s take on NBA Jam, but with a hip-hop makeover and catchy rap-filled soundtrack. Neo-Geo Turf Masters is a fast-paced, fun golf title and until recently I had no idea that the Super Volleyball game I loved so much on Genesis had a beefed up version and a sequel featuring amped up robots and robotic attacks on the Neo-Geo. The Neo-Geo is renowned for its acclaimed catalog of fighting games with several entries each in hit series like Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury, World Heroes, Art of Fighting and its flagship fighter, The King of Fighters which saw annual entries on the platform for 10 years from 1994-2003. Of all these, the ones I frequented the most of were various re-releases were King of Fighters ‘97 and ’98. Its team based fighting style made it standout from the other fighting games, and it was only in recent years with some longer sessions with KoF ’98 that I finally started to come around on it. One of these days I want to give an honest effort at getting into Samurai Shodown. I remember the gaming mags were hyping up its debut entry at the time as a major breakthrough to fighting games with its gruesome swordplay it brought to the table. I eventually picked up its anthology disc on PS2 and dabbled with a couple entries, but never too seriously and need to correct that sooner than later. A random memory is attempting to play Samurai Shodown II at Arcade Infinity in Koreatown one evening in the afterhours of covering E3 in 2003. Shortly after starting it up, someone sat down and challenged me and proceeded to properly dominate me. Looking back, that may have something to do with why I never gave it that much of a shot.

I never had a chance to play the AES home system until well after its lifespan in the early 2010s at regional retro game conventions. That was because I did not see one in the wild until then. Unfortunately in 1990, the home console market was dominated by the NES while the Genesis was only a year old and just starting to break in, so while the MVS was a bargain for arcade operators, the AES arcade perfect tech was way ahead of the times and cost exponentially more compared to the NES and Genesis at the time. Reading copies of Game Players and Electronic Gaming Monthly back then I associated Neo-Geo AES games as being the games that literally cost $200-300 individually in the back of the magazine ads for mail service game catalogs. Occasionally there would be SNES/Genesis ports of the popular games like the original Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown, but obviously there quality was dialed back to run on the weaker machines and that was realistically all of what was available to a majority of the home console market until those anthology collections started to get released in the mid-2000s. I never owned an AES, but I was stunned by its lasting power with official games being released for it all the way until 2004. I only a saw a Neo-Geo AES for sale once at my local retro game shop all these years back around 2008 and I want to say it was going for about $200, and part of me wanted to get it for the standout collector’s item it would be, but another side of me knew the games went for insane amounts by that point and the games were already by then starting to get re-released on other consoles in more wallet-friendly anthology discs. If you have yet to dip into the Neo-Geo catalog, I would highly recommend either grabbing the digital copy of Metal Slug Anthology on PS4 for some awesome two player run ‘n gun couch co-op with a friend as the perfect way to start off. Otherwise, type in ‘ACA’ in the Xbox One/PS4/Switch digital marketplaces to see most of the Neo-Geo games released digitally under the ACA banner. While it was damn near impossible to afford to play the AES games at home during their initial release, I will close by giving major props to SNK for keeping their back catalog of Neo-Geo titles alive for current generations to discover on current platforms at consumer friendly prices! Thanks again for sticking with me in reliving my memories of the PSP and Neo-Geo with this two-for-one flashback anniversary special! Want more retro-game goodness? Then take a peek at my other flashback specials below!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks Dreamcast 20th Anniversary GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary PSone 25th Anniversary Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary

#videogames #psp #neogeo #snk #sony