So, if you imported Tatsunoko vs Capcom, or plan on importing, brace yourself for some squiggles. This is not the most import friendly title, menu screens, character names, all in squiggles. It's hard to find all the information your gonna need in one place, so here you go.

1 - ummm... this menu is not in english.

The Shoryuken wiki will break down the menus and their navigation, as well as break down the gameplay basics for ya. Good place to start.

2 - hat and cape man. hat and cape duck girl. lego. who the fuck are these people?

Tatsunoko character list with names and images.

3 - great! do you know Karas' moves?
Move's list from arcade cab.

There you go, all you need to get started.

impressions:

-visually, this game impresses.
-sound-wise.. umm.. it's a Vs. game. expect bad J-Pop.
-chun li is amazing.
-i haven't played enough, but the characters do feel a little unbalanced. but when you are familiar with someone, i guess they're easier to play as.
-yami is cheap as fuck.
-the controls are tight, i've been playing with a cube controller so far, even with the analogue stick, the game is pretty spot on.

so yeah, if you were looking forward to this game, you won't be dissapointed. if your on the fence about it, but like the vs. series, i recommend it. if your unsure about it, or not a big fan of fighters, you can pass on it and not feel too guilty. the game is great for multi.. even if your friends aren't as experienced in capcom fighters, the new button layout and fairly simple combat system makes it pretty pick up and play friendly, while still rewarding to those that want to go deeper into the combat system. thumbs up for sure.

this is quite the week! for $9.99 a piece you can pick up Super Stardust Portable and Everyday Shooter. This may be old hat to some of you folks with your big bad bluray boxes, but i ain't got one yet, and this was my first chance to get my grubby paws on these critically acclaimed titles. I've yet to pick up Everyday Shooter (i've seen it played, and it intrigues me, but i figure i'll space them out a bit, so i can actually get use out of my psp for more than a week or so).

Super Stardust portable makes me very happy. which is odd. considering the original required the use of 2 analogue sticks, and here i am playing it with a nub and some face buttons. which says tons about the developers who worked on this title. they nailed the controls. basically, you move the ship with the nub, and fire with the face buttons. holding a face button will fire a steady stream in that direction (holding 2 will fire horizontally), while quickly tapping the face button will produce the spread goodness you usually get from a little right stick waggle. sounds a little confusing. took a round or two to get used to, but it works and works well. another change from the ps3 version is that instead of flying around spherical planets (sweet!) your play field is your typical square, but the ends wrap, so if you fly as far up as you can, you come back through the bottom, but this is all seamless, so it kinda feels like flying around planets, i guess. either way, the game looks good, at times the tiny screen makes it hard to tell power-ups from other enemies, and enemy fire (there's a lot going on meng!) but its far from unplayable. there are 3 modes to choose from, arcade (fight through all the planets til ya die), planet something (try to get your high score on one planet), and then ummm.. impact mode, in which you cannot fire, and instead use your boost to attack enemies. simple gimmick, but lots of fun, as colliding with enemies prolongs your boost. when your done boosting, you have to avoid enemies for about 15 seconds (think pacifism in geo wars) until your boost is refilled, then the chaos picks back up. oh yeah, the planets are broken up into 4 waves, complete with boss battles. they're not too varried (i.e. boss one reappears as boss 3 only your fighting 2 of them, same for bosses 2 and 4), but they provide a good challenge.

for $10, do it. you won't regret it. i think there's global leaderboards as well. anyways, i'm happily impressed and surprised.

so its no secret. lots of us enjoy left 4 dead. valve fans, fps fans, and hardcore gamers have all been chomping at the bit to get their dose of co-op zombie shooting. they've got the press eating out of their hands, the fan's clamoring over the demo, and clearly developers are taking note. i don't think Horde is a happy coincidence. I don't think the tacked on OMG Zombies (or whatever its called) in World at War is a happy coincidence either. both of these games are AAA titles, and will fall into the hands of lots of casual and hardcore gamers alike. while L4D may review incredibly (which it looks like it will), as a casual gamer, what motivation do you have to purchase this game when you have a game like world at war with a similar mode tacked on? probably not much.

so while hype is a great way to get people talking about your name. keeping it on the tip of thier tongue. getting the pre-order money from the hardcore, in this case it may have backfired. anyone else notice this? you think console sales of L4D will suffer because of it? should developers shorten their hype-cycle? letting the cat out of the bag a year or two before release may prove to be deadly in this case, and while L4D may have the AI director, i don't think the casual gamers will take note.

Along with the always awesome DTOIDNY crew, i ventured into Brooklyn this weekend for Capcom's Fight Club event. Where we got our grubby little mits on the console builds of street fighter 4 (both ps3 and 360) as well as what was looking like a very close to final build of HD Remix.

Upon entering the charming bodega that was setup to host the fights, we were greeted by 2 360's running the HD remix. Each console equipped with Hori goodness as not to take away from the amazing. The game looks stunning. You've seen the stills, and the animation is just silky smooth. The pacing and controls stay true to the formula, and i think many street fighter fans are gonna be in heaven. I only played one match, and used balrog, but observed quite a few others, and all the characters are looking smooth. if you have had high hopes for this game, you will not be disappointed. we didn't get to experience the online play, but as with all fighting games, i think its safe to assume it'll be lousy, but who cares? fighters are meant to be enjoyed next to the sad sack you are pummeling.

onto street fighter 4. the basement of the bodega was illuminated by the lights of about 15 samsung LCD's cranking out the goodness. A good spread of 360's and ps3's lined the walls with various control options, so that you could get a feel for how the game's gonna play when you finally get it into your house. i only played the 360 versions (not intentionally, they just had the shortest lines). first with the dpad, which was kinda lousy, but i managed to take down a couple fights using akuma. there was no slowdown, and everything looked great. it was my first SF4 experience, and it was very natural. no real learning curve. the game handled like street fighter, the pacing and distance of the attacks will be familiar to any fighting vets. after that, i tried the game out with the Hori sticks, and it was much better. unfortunately, so was Devon Riley, who handed me my ass using Balrog. its ok, delicious cookies make the pain go away. i think capcom had the cookies b/c they knew there would be a lot of people crying in the corner. i watched a few rounds on the ps3, and i couldn't tell the difference, both builds were running with no slowdown, and all the gamers were satiated.

to me, i think the best thing about the whole experience was just being in a room with so many fighting game fans. it took me back to the days of going to video fantasy and waiting to get my rounds in. people discussing combos and focus moves, sharing tips, cheering on the fighters, talking trash, it rekindled a feeling that i had long forgotten. online gaming is no substitute for being in the presence of other entusiastic gamers.

i walked away itching for more. i can't wait to have this game in my home. capcom knows how to make a fighter, and they definitely didn't drop the ball on this one.

not all open source platforms become vaporware dammit! with the moderate success of the gamepark handhelds, it looks like a market is surfacing for the gamer whose not afraid to do it themselves. the next entry to the market may well be the proposed EVO Smart Console.

it's a linux based platform not unlike the successful handhelds, but this bad boy is designed to compete with traditional home consoles. it'll set you back about $600, but the mfg claims it'll be about $250 after rebates. you know, if the thing ever does actually come out.



here are some specs:
* Processor -- AMD Athlon 64x2 5600 clocked at 2.9GHz
* Graphics processor -- ATI HD 3200
* Memory -- 2GB DDR2
* Display -- supports 1080i and 1080p/HDCP resolution; ATI HD 3200 Chipset
* Video codecs -- H.564 VC1; MPEG2
* Video output -- DVI; HDMI
* Storage -- 120GB or 250GB hard drive, plus online cloud storage (10GB free)
* Peripherals -- CD/DVD ROM; biometric scanner
* Networking -- 2 x 10/100 Ethernet
* USB -- 2 x USB 2.0
* Dimensions -- 11.8 x 2.6 x 10,7 inches (300 x 65 x 273mm)
* Operating system -- Fedora 8 with option to convert to Linux-based

they plan on releasing a digital distribution platform so the DIY crowd can make some moolah peddling their wares. there's also talk of cloud storage, not sure if you'll be able to run games stored remotely, but you get 10G free with the option to upgrade. guess we're gonna have to wait a while for more concrete details, but i think its a novel idea and wish them the best of luck.

wanna buy? do so here.

Guess what console was the first to offer some form of DLC. The XBOX right? With the launch of the Xbox Live service, people where finally able to pay $5 and get some Pacmans. Wrong! How about the SNES back in 1995. Shenanigans you cry. I did too. But we're both wrong.



Behold the Satellaview, in all its glory. It was only released in Japan, but after first hearing about this elusive add-on, i had to go home and flip over my SNES. Guess what? There's a little connector on the bottom i never noticed. Not sure if it was intended for the Satellaview to grace our shores, but i don't remember any peripherals released here that used it.

So what was the Satellaview? It's actually named the BS-X, which stands for broadcast satellite transfer. it was basically a receiver that plugged into your snes and allowed you to pull content off a satellite broadcast and save it to the equivalent of a flash cart. When you purchased the receiver you also received an 8 megabit flashcard to store your titles. They ranged from remakes of classic games, down to new titles designed specifically for the service.

Another very cool feature was interactive layers added to games, such as streaming audio. The catch was, that at the time, you could not store the audio on the included cards, they would be broadcast similar to a standard radio show. So you'd have to game between certain hours of the day to have this functionality added. Really cool stuff. Way ahead of its time, and definitely not what you'd expect from a company that seems to have botched the online gameplay of today to a point that makes most gamers mutter words that start with F and end with K.



I could rewrite the wiki, but i'm not going to, i'll just link to it here. Just a little something i knew nothing about, hopefully you learned something today too :)