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Alright everyone, welcome to week 2. We had 2 hours of good clean fun last week. So we're gonna do it again tonight at 10PM EST.
What do you have to do? Join us! Multi player challenges and stupidity await us tonight. Just look for CronosBlade and send me a friend invite, or use your friend of friend ability to find me off of someone, and prepare to cause some havok tonight.
Our current roster is:
CronosBlade
Hitogoroshi
Bloodylip
BigPopaGamer
A special invite is open to our original gang of street miscreants in the hopes they may join us.
And as always, people are free to drop in and out if needed, there's always fun to be had. So come, join us, and prepare to freeburn the city and smash your friends. read more
Picked one up over at Best Buy for $39.99. As soon as I got home (and got the obligatory cut on my hand from the clamshell packaging). I sat down to put it through its paces. I'll break down my thoughts on each individual game below.
Initial Impressions - As you can see above, the pad is beefy, but not uncomfortable. The D-Pad is squishy and the buttons are very nice. You have a switch underneath that allows you to set whether the D-pad is acting as the left stick, right stick, or D-Pad of a 360 controller. After over an hour of gaming, my thumb was not bleeding red or seriously hurting, which is a good sign.
So onto the games:
Street Fighter HD Remix - Immediately from the start, I feel like I have a problem jumping. It looks like Ryu is taking a step backwards and then jumping. In training mode, I test it out and sure enough, I've got to put a little more effort into a diagonal to get a jump out. I was initially disappointed, but then had an idea. I set the switch to act as the Left Stick, and maybe I'm crazy but I feel like I got better response in that setting. The other thing to get used to is that since the D-Pad itself is bigger, I had to adjust mentally to making sure I was performing motions correctly. So, let's talk some specific examples:
Ryu/Ken - No issues from the 1P side doing any move. On the other side, I have difficulty getting things out 100%. Again, a switch mentally in how my thumb is on the pad and it being bigger. 5 minutes later, issue resolved.
Guile/Vega - YAY! I'm able to charge without accidentally jumping. Again, due to diagonals, I whiff supers a few times, but after 5 minutes I'm pulling them off repeatedly.
Zangief - Holy crap, I just pulled off a standing SPD. This pad gets points for that alone. And I get it off 8/10 on the first try with no retraining. This was the classic command, not the remix command.
I go into arcade mode, and the pad never causes me grief to where I feel like I'm fighting it for control.
Pac Man CE No issues with turning and getting Pac Man to go where I want him to. In fact I set a new high score for myself in the process.
Streets of Rage 2 At this point, I'm comfortable with the way the pad acts and have no issues moving diagonally onscreen. Specials (f,f) are coming out easily.
Poker Smash, Puzzle Quest, basically all puzzle games Again, no issue of getting the cursor to go where I want.
So to sum up, the pad is lightyears ahead of using a 360 controller, but may not meet everyone's expectations. If you do jump in and get one, you may need some time in training mode to get yourself used to it before actually running out into the wild. For anything else though, the pad is awesome, and with Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection dropping today, should be getting plenty of use tonight.
That's right ladies and gents. With the recent price drop and the influx of new fresh meat, I figured we should get a nice weekly run going. For those of you who weren't involved with the original FNF runs of Paradise,. it was epic loud fun for over 4 hours at a time. So we're gonna recapture that loving feeling tonight at 10PM EST.
What do you have to do? Join us! Multi player challenges and stupidity await us tonight. Just look for CronosBlade and send me a friend invite, or use your friend of friend ability to find me off of someone, and prepare to cause some havok tonight.
Our current roster is:
CronosBlade
Hitogoroshi (maaaybe)
Bloodylip
A special invite is open to our original gang of street miscreants in the hopes they may join us.
And as always, people are free to drop in and out if needed, there's always fun to be had. So come, join us, and prepare to freeburn the city and smash your friends. read more
I figured I’d just make my way through the games I picked up with my Saturn which if you didn’t read about that, you can read up here in my blog. The next game let’s talk about is Street Fighter Alpha, or as my copy says, Street Fighter Zero.
I remember when this game came out in the Arcades. It was in 1995, I had just graduated high school, and I was spending a majority of my summer in an arcade with my best friends who were all fighting game fanatics. Imagine to our surprise as we walked in one day and there in the corner was this new shiny game. We walked up to it in awe and watched the (at the time) epic attract screen of Ryu and Ken throwing fireballs at each other. What kind of game was awaiting us? I played my very first match of Street Fighter Alpha against my best friend, and as is customary on every new SF game, the first fight was Ryu vs Ken.
In the time line, Alpha happens before Street Fighter II. Everyone here is younger, as seen in the art for the game.
The rundown of the cast is:
Street Fighter – Adon, Birdie
Street Fighter II – Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Sagat
Final Fight – Guy and Sodom
New Characters – Charlie (I prefer Nash) and Rose
Hidden Characters – Akuma, Bison, and Dan
The cast certainly caught me off guard. We had 4 returning characters. Charlie in terms of storyline is Guile’s friend and the reason Guile is after Bison in SF II, but plays like Guile. I was a huge fan of Final Fight, so there was indeed a really cool moment seeing Guy in a fighting game. Adon and Birdie were brought in, with Birdie getting an overhaul in terms of looks.
While some characters looked younger, others had some massive changes as well. Sagat for example is BUFF. Not the lean version that we see in SF II, he’s built like a truck. Bison got the same treatment, as his design makes him look very huge.
Now before I move on, I’ve got to discuss Dan. For anyone who’s not in on the joke, SNK has a fighting series named Art of Fighting and the main character is Ryo Sakazaki, who happens to look like a combination of Ryu and Ken. He also fights in a similar style with a dragon punch and a one handed fireball. Capcom of course decided to respond, and thus Dan was born. Dan throws one handed fireballs and looks like a cross between Ryo and Robert, the two main characters of the Art of Fighting Series. He’s typically more comedic in nature than the rest of the cast. His taunts are the stuff of legend (including a Super Taunt in later games!).
But back to Alpha. We had just been introduced to the idea of super meters and super moves in Capcom fighting games a year earlier with the introduction of Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Alpha took this new idea and dramatically changed it. First, characters had more than just the one super seen in Turbo. Charlie actually has 3. Secondly, you could build up to 3 levels of super meter and choose to unleash specific levels of power. This was controlled by the number of buttons pressed. For example Ryu’s Shinkū Hadōken power was controlled by pressing one, two, or all three punches together during the motion. Each level did more damage and added more hits in the combo.
Another new feature was the Alpha counter. By making a joystick motion of B,DB,D + a button, a player could block an incoming hit and immediately do a canned counter attack. This takes 1 level of super meter, but really added strategy to the game and allowed players being pressured to create an opening to get a breather or go on offense themselves.
Alpha was also the first time air blocking was allowed. Again, adding a new dynamic to the fighting game genre, players could jump and air block a fireball rather than land on it and take damage.
One of the best known strategies in SF II was corner trapping an opponent. Alpha gave us a new mechanism to get out of the corner with rolls. Doing the alpha counter command as you hit the ground caused you player to roll forward. For example, a player being corner trapped could roll and even end up behind the opponent, reversing the corner trap.
Finally we have tech hits, which is escaping from a throw. You still take damage, but definitely not as much as if the throw had been completed.
The player goes through 7 stages, with the final stage being a boss specific to the character. Ryu faced off with Sagat for example. Over half the cast faced Bison however.
Now, the three hidden characters were not the only surprises, oh no. One of the biggest and coolest surprises ever was a hidden 2 player mode. To get to it, both players had to input specific commands on the character select screen. What happened next is a recreation of the final fight from the Street Fighter animated movie. Yes, it is Ryu and Ken vs Bison. Now keep in mind Dramatic Battle became a full fleged mode in Alpha 3, but at the time this was just awesome.
So how will it be remembered? Well in truth is it’s overshadowed by Alpha 2 and Alpha 3. However this game, much like the Darkstalkers series brought about change in other Capcom Fighting games. Playing this now, it feels very barebones compared to a lot of the games that came after it. But in reality, those games owe quite a lot to Alpha as it started a lot of the gameplay changes that became common in the genre.
Of course, those of you who want to play this now, you can get it off PSN for $5.99 or can find the Alpha Anthology for PS2 for less than $30. read more
1)I was engaged once before I met and married my wife.
2) During the 2004 Elections, my boss and I were traveling for business. in Tennessee. We crashed both the Republican and Democratic Parties in two different hotels by switching the buttons we were wearing. I was so drunk that I barely made it the next morning to lead the training classes.
3) I have a framed and signed photo of me and Lou Ferigno together.
4) For my job I stayed two weeks straight in New Orleans 2 months after Hurricane Katrina hit. It's an experience and a sight I will never forget, sadly.
5) My wife and I met online, she's from New York, I'm Texan. Here we are almost 7 years later.
6) I've made mentions to people before, but I was a Gamefaqs moderator for over 7 years. I don't know how I survived that place, but I ended up here.
7) Along with Item 6, I also used to write FAQs. I've got one of the largest Phantasy Star Online FAQs for the Dreamcast. I also co-wrote one of the biggest Gran Turismo 3 FAQs as well. If you find these, you'll find my original online name. (I became CronosBlade when I left GFaqs).
8) My favorite movies are mob movies. I can quote Casino and GoodFellas line for line.
9) Anyone remember when Blockbuster ran a video game contest? The contest was a timed run on Sonic 1 and two other games, with high scores advancing,I made it to the regional finals in San Antonio at Sea World before losing by 1 point in NBA Jam (when my player missed a layup with 4 seconds in the game).
10) I am almost legally blind in one eye. read more
So being the fighting game fanatic that I am, I recently bought a Dreamcast (since mine is no longer with us RIP) and in the same vintage game store, found a Japanese Sega Saturn. If you aren’t aware, a ton of Capcom and SNK heavy hitters exist in Japan only format for the Saturn. Sure, some of them got US releases on the Playstation (and even US Saturn), but you wouldn’t want to touch those versions.
See, the Playstation versions suffered from multiple issues. Cut frames of animation plagued all of them. The Vs games didn’t have true tag team play because the PS1 couldn’t handle 4 characters in memory. Also, the load times were atrocious.
Now on the Saturn side of things, to help with the animation, Sega released RAM cartridges that plug into the cartridge slot of the Saturn. The most frequently seen one is the 4MB variety, as seen below.
There are two other RAM carts as well. One is specific to King of Fighters 95 as the 1MB RAM cart actually has the sprites and animation on it. The other is a standard 1MB RAM cart (below) that is used for almost all other SNK fighters. And that is where this gets tricky. For example, King of Fighters 97 will accept the 4MB RAM, but it seems to be the only SNK fighter that does. Likewise, Marvel Super Heroes will accept the 1MB cart, but oddly has some slowdown when using the 4MB cart.
Now the reason I went with the Japanese Saturn was my desire to play the import fighters. Sure I could get a ST-Key cart(region code bypassing) but that would then require me to swap the ST-Key and the RAM cart on the fly, and I’d rather not.
So in the same shop I nabbed the Saturn in, I grabbed X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes, Street Fighter Zero and Zero 2, and the true object of this long winded article, Vampire Savior.
Vampire Savior is the third game in the Darkstalkers series. The series as a whole never seems to have gotten much love. The path in the series is Darkstalkers, Nightwarriors(aka Vampire Hunter) and Vampire Savior. There are also some arcade specific games as well such as Vampire Hunter 2 (which just added in the missing original cast members) and Vampire Savior 2 (which added 3 more characters for a total of 18). The screenshot below is from the arcade Vampire Savior so it's short the added 3.
The Saturn version is essentially Vampire Savior 2 with the full cast of 18 plus a few other hidden secrets. The gameplay of the series was always slightly different than the other Capcom fighters. For example, Street Fighter 3’s EX special moves (the ability to enhance a normal special by using some super meter) was first seen in the Darkstalkers series.
The characters in the series are based in fairy tale, legends, and horror. Demitri for example is a vampire and Talbain is a wolfman. Victor is essentially Frankenstein, and even Sasquatch joins the fight. The cast is varied and all different, though I must admit BB Hood is probably the best character ever. Imagine Little Red Riding Hood whose family was murdered and so she becomes a monster hunter, equipped with missles, machine guns, and mines.
Vampire Savior eschews the standard round format for a more Killer Instinct style of rounds. Each player has two life bars. When a player is knocked down, the other player’s life meter remains the same. You win by essentially knocking the other player out twice before it’s done to you. Along with this was health regeneration (as seen in the Vs series of games). When you take damage, a reddish area remains that if you avoid taking damage can be healed over time.
Vampire Savior also allowed your super bar to store up to 5 bars. Along with this were some new abilities. The aforementioned ES moves (as called in this series) here use one full meter to use. EX supers are the super moves, with some supers taking 2 or 3 bars to activate. Finally quite a few supers in the game are of the Raging Demon variety (jab jab forward short fierce) which makes the game not so noob friendly. Even now I usually have to resort to FAQs to remember how to make Dimitri turn the opponent into a female (video below!)
Another feature in the game is pursuit attacks. When you knock the enemy down, you can input a command to jump on your opponent before they get up. The player on the ground has options such as sliding/rolling to the left or right to try to avoid this. Normally pursuit attacks are seen in 3D fighters (originally started in Virtua Fighter) but seeing this in a 2D fighter meant that you weren’t even safe on the ground.
Finally the Dark Force feature was included. By pressing a punch and kick of the same strength, the combatants are taken to the activating player’s “dimension”. The player then got some sort of advantage that lasts for a specific period of time. Some of these enhancements were flight, copies of the character that could attack from behind, an extra ally in battle (a bat, a cat) or in the case of Victor (the series’ Zangief) every punch became a grab.
The game has the player go through 7 stages. Each player has a sub boss fight before facing their specific boss (though over half the cast face the default boss, Jedah who is also playable).
So what has become of the series whose last arcade release was seen 12 years ago? Well with the exception of the well known and well drawn Morrigan, the rest of the cast has been left in the dust. Sure there were cameos of them in the backgrounds of Capcom VS games over the last decade, and Felicia is also playable in Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but none other than Morrigan have actually been playable (though Dimitri is playable in SNK vs Capcom Chaos from SNK).
Unfortunately, the Darkstalkers series never really achieved high levels of popularity in the US, and with the cast forgotten, my hopes of ever seeing part 4 will never happen. Funny enough Darkstalker did get an anime though and tons of cosplayers for specific characters. Oh and the millions of pictures of Morrigan and Lillith…..together…if you know what I mean.
I don't mean my penis, I mean my wife, my significant other, my soul mate,
So to give you a bit of a background, video games are what brought me and my wife together. Her favorite games traditionally have been RPGs and such. We met because of these and here we are 7 years later, married 5 and have a beautiful 2 year old daughter. My wife is not a hardcore gamer, but isn't a casual one either.
Now as times have changed and our lives have gotten busier, she doesn't invest time into those 20-40 hour games anymore (bar a new Final Fantasy). But when a co-op game comes calling, she's ready to go. We played through every co-op game available in the PS2/XBox/GC era, and have made it through most of the current gen games that support it.
To be honest, it hasn't always worked out. She's not big on Gears of War for example. But there are three games that looking through everything we've played stand out as the three games that she has enjoyed the most.
Serious Sam - XBox One thing I've realized is that my wife doesn't want story in a co-op game. She obviously is fond of story in her RPGs, but when we're playing games she wants more activity than cutscene. She wasn't a big FPS fan at all. This game was the one that changed her mind forever.
So we system linked two XBox systems and each of us had our own TV in seperate rooms. The screaming, laughing and fun filled many a night for months. Her names for the enemies always made me laugh (one of which she called Hoppies, which became her name for the Flood in the next game) She was timid at first about her playing skills at FPS games, but she realized that I didn't care what her playing level was, it was just FUN. I know she's hooked when I'll ask her what she wants to do that night and the answer comes back as "Games!".
Halo 1/2/3 - XBox/XBox 360 I'll keep this as a single game for this post's sake. She always felt that this was too heavy in story, but the main draw here was multiplayer. My old roomates and friends would come over, and we'd hook up system link into multiple rooms, and there was my wife in the middle of the fight with other people laughing and cussing people when the warthog ran her over. Again, even though she wasn't the best, she didn't care because she knew that either I always had her back, or I was shooting her in the back (I did get punched in the shoulder multiple times for teamkilling/teabagging her just for fun). To this day my friends are amazed that my wife enjoys playing games, let alone has gotten pretty good at them.
Left4Dead - XBox 360 The pinnacle in my wife's eyes. A co-op mode with no story, constantly changing game dynamics and the fact that no game is ever the same. Going by my 360's blog, I've played the game for 35 days. I'd say 30 of those days included playing time with the wife in this game. As I said earlier when she's hooked that's all she wants to do. And that is no different here. Now I've mentioned this in IRC before, but she wants to move to advanced and expert modes. And while we've done all four campaigns with 2 bots, you realize that the AI doesn't always work out the way you expect and we lost many times where 2 other humans would have helped us win.
So now we're on the edge of the next big jump. Getting her to go online. She's teased with the idea a few times (she's becoming interested in Versus after seeing me play with other Dtoiders) but she'd really want to do the campaigns. In a way we're back at square one as she's unsure of her abilities and afraid of being ridiculed for it online. But as I did when we started this, I'll be there with her every step of the way.
One thing they say is that in a good marriage, sharing interests make a healthy relationship and I have to agree. It's another facet to our relationship and it always makes sure that we spend time together. I know gamer girls are more and more common nowadays, but I feel that I really won out with a woman who understands and loves my hobby. read more
$5.99. If you never experienced one of the best PS1 era RPGs, this is your chance. Consider that this and it's sequel Suikoden II are high priced to get a physical copy of.
Nevermind the fact that the game itself sucks (I at least got a small laugh out of the original Blitz) but Blitz the League II did something I've never seen before.
Hold on to yourself, cause you might wince in pain...
Update- For all who read earlier I left off one big negative. No Online Vs. :(
So Namco Bandai's Naruto fighter is out. I was highly impressed by the demo so I went ahead and picked it up. While I haven't gone far enough in to give a full proper review, I will give the positive and negatives:
Positives
Graphics - Honestly one of the best uses of cel shading I think I've ever seen. Added in the fully 3D fighting enviroments and special effects, and it is very impressive indeed
Fighting system - This is as fluid and as close to a cartoon as you will see. Yes, the gameplay is no where near complex as even Smash Bros (LOLOL), but it makes up for it in pure fun. Fighting on water, jumping and dashing, throwing stars and a host of other items make setting traps fun (Throw out timed bombs, then combo your opponent into them.
While Rise of a Ninja's fighting system was 2D with shifting, UNS is a fully 3D fighting enviroment.
Each player gets 2 assist characters, and like MvsC2, you can pick the specific type of assist the characters do before battle starts. You'll also get a chance to unlock different special and super moves for characters using in game money.
A grand example of crazyness: My wife starts a combo on me, I was able to substitute (effectively a dodge) and appear behind her. 7 hit ground combo into a special attack then adding in Sakura's assist = 24 hits.
The super attacks are flashy and insane. See below for an example video of a fight and the super that ends it.
Each super has a minigame to add more power to it (mashing buttons, or hitting the right button etc etc).
Finally, when a character has taken too much damage each character has a signature rage attack. Naruto for example calls on the Nine Tailed Fox for more power. While the rage attack allows you try to turn the battle, note your opponent can easily try to play keep away from you and that you can suffer negatives when Rage subsides such as lower defense or loss of all chakra power.
Negatives
Ultimate Mission Mode - A failure compared to Naruto Rise of a Ninja on 360 and probably against Broken Bond coming soon. While all 3 games have a fully realized town that can be explored, there are some major differences
Rise of a Ninja's town was more alive. NPCs made comments as you run past and generally feels more complete. UNS does not.
The camera and it's control is not good in town. If you "roadie run" in Rise of a Ninja, the camera could keep up going around corners and had no problem showing where you were going. In UNS, you can easily get behind buildings without the camera catching up. You'll need to manually reset the camera (R3) a lot because manually turning the camera is SLOW and there is no option to speed up the camera turn speed. When both games have collection items and money scattered high up on buildings and in corners, camera is important and UNS camera fails and frustrates.
Furthermore, missions are handled in a way that it really takes you out of the experience. In order to unlock more missions (both side and story) you need to beat previous missions and complete tasks in town. However, most missions are started by going into the menu and choosing it at which point you get a screen of dialogue without voiceover as to the story that is occurring before being dropped right into the battle or mission. RoaN had fully voiced cutscenes and whether for good or bad, you had to make your own way to the mission area.
Fighting system wise, be warned that like most games based on anime, every character plays the same. Meaning there are no differences in controls for each character. Triangle then Circle will always do a special move etc etc. Furthermore each character can only have 1 special move and 1 super move set. As I said earlier you can unlock more moves, but when you go into battle you can only set 1 of each.
To summarize, if you want exploration/story/cutscenes, RoaN and the upcoming Broken Bond are what you desire. If you care more about the fighting system and are willing to put up with a flawed main story mode, UNS is for you. read more
Just a guy who loves to talk video games a lot. I try to be funny and fail a lot, but I swear I'm worth having around.
I'm an older gamer (read:30) and I like to look back on all the good (and bad) that I played through in the before time.
I don't game as much thanks to my 2yr old daughter, but I do keep up on the latest things. As far as she's concerned, well she likes to hit the buttons a lot, which means she could win a few rounds of DOA.
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
