Cross posted from my blog.

I knew for a long time that this is something I'd be able to do, to an extent. I just wasn't sure about being able to use the PS3 controller to do it.

What you see above is my setup for playing SNES emulators on my 42" TV from across the room with my PS3 controller. Here's how it works:

• My PS3 controller is connected to my MacBook Pro, using the driver I downloaded here.

• Since I use Macs, it's very easy for me to screen share from my MacBook Pro (sitting in bed across the room) to my iMac (which outputs video to my 42" LCD as a secondary display).

• I screen share to my iMac and run the emulator in full-screen mode on the secondary display (my TV).

• Since the PS3 controller driver won't work across screen sharing, I use Gamepad Companion to re-map the button presses on the controller to keyboard inputs, which I then map accordingly in the emulator's preferences on my iMac.

• So, when I press buttons on my PS3 controller, they get sent to my MacBook Pro and are recognized by the driver mentioned above. Gamepad Companion remaps those button presses into keyboard strokes which are sent to my iMac wirelessly via screen sharing, and the iMac feeds those keyboard strokes into the emulator, whose keyboard preferences are mapped to match the button presses the iMac is telling it (which are, in turn, coming from my PS3 controller on my MacBook Pro). The emulator runs on my TV (as a second display for the iMac) and the button presses on my PS3 controller control the game displayed on my TV.

• In short, I sit in bed with my PS3 controller, and play Super Nintendo games on my TV across the room.

I'm not sure I can explain it any more in-detail than that, but I hope I made it simple enough for everyone to understand. The only issues I ran into involved the PS3 controller driver and Gamepad Companion (I had to restart the computer and turn off / on Gamepad Companion).

I've been having a blast playing A Link to the Past on my big-ass TV, and using the PS3 controller is pretty close to a SNES controller. It's bringing back a lot of memories. Once I get through LttP, I'm going to tackle Earthbound, since I never did finish that game way back when.

If anyone has questions regarding my setup, or has suggestions for simplifying it, let me know!

A while back, we were told that an arcade version of Guitar Hero was to be released sometime in the near future. To say I was excited about this news is like saying Activision is thinking of ramping up production on the GH franchise.

To get this out of the way: I'm a sucker for music games, Guitar Hero included. As much as I've grown to loathe the series, I can't help but buy each iteration that comes out – just to see whether it's going to be even worse (or have harder solos) than the last one. It's this masochistic curiosity that attracted me to Guitar Hero: Arcade, when my friend told me it had arrived at the arcade he works at.

In theory, things seem like they'd be great. At last, a public outlet for all the practice I've put into this damned game! I'll get some friends together, we'll get a roll of quarters, and spend a few hours at the arcade. Just like the good old days, right?

I went to The Orleans casino today to get a feel for the game that I'd surely be sinking my moderately difficultly-earned dollars into for the foreseeable future, and to get a few pictures of the cabinet. After getting change, I meandered over to the machine and gave it a quick once-over. Looks good enough, pretty slick LCD in a Bemani-style cabinet. Aesthetically, it's like a modern-day Guitar Freaks machine.

There's a coin-slot / dollar slot, one "start" button for each player, and two familiar-looking guitars hanging on the front of the machine. Hanging the guitar around my neck, I was once again reminded of Guitar Freaks. This time, though, it was more of a kinetic nostalgia. These controllers are heavy. It feels like they put Guitar Hero buttons on a Guitar Freaks controller. Given that Konami had a hand in making this arcade port happen, though, that's not entirely surprising.

Unfortunately, the differences in the controller don't end there. The buttons are spaced further apart than they are on modern home-version controllers, and harder to press. At best, the buttons reminded me of a cheap third-party Guitar Hero II controller. The strum bar is solid, but doesn't click as much as the home-version guitars do. These aren't huge differences if you don't play on Expert, and they may change after the game gets broken in a bit.

After putting in my dollar and hitting start, I was greeted by a difficulty selection screen that looked a lot like the one present in Guitar Hero III. Then I was taken to a song selection screen that looked a lot like the one from Guitar Hero III. It's at this point that I started to suspect that I had just put a dollar in a machine to play Guitar Hero III.

Scrolling through the song list, I noticed a few selections with an interesting note next to them. It read: "PREMIUM SONG (Insert 4 more coins to play)". Okay so wait. I just put a dollar into this machine, which I am strongly suspecting is a port of a two-year-old game, but with a worse controller, and to play the "good" songs I need to put in another dollar? I chalked it up to "Eh, Activision," and kept looking.

I scrolled through the 25-or-so song setlist and found "The Metal" by Tenacious D. I like that song, and I can tear it up, so I chose to start with that one as a warm-up. The Guitar Hero III interface came up and and I was on my way. Then I discovered the machine wasn't calibrated right.

Two minutes and four stars later, I was feeling pretty disappointed in my one-dollar investment. "Oh well," I thought. "That was just a warm-up. I'll kill the next one." It had me put my initials in for the high-scores list on "The Metal," and then took me back to the attract screen – "Insert Coins" message flashing and all.

OKAY SO WAIT. I just dropped a dollar to play a port of a two-year-old game (with a worse controller), with a third the song list of said two-year-old game (many of which you need to pay another dollar to play), and had to compensate for poor timing judgment on the machine... And that's it? I get one song?

It's at this point that I was feeling reassured of at least one thing: That I was playing a Guitar Hero game. Activision, being the ever-brilliant minds they are, saw an opportunity to cash in, and they jumped on it. Sadly, this game is going to make them millions, despite the complete lack of effort or interest they put into developing it.

I know that some of these issues can be solved by the arcade operator (calibration, amount of money you pay for a game, etc), but that doesn't excuse the game's inherent faults. A poorly-designed controller paired with a one-song-per-game system, and topped off with the fact that this game came out two years ago means that anyone who willingly plays this game more than a couple times is either new to rhythm games, has money to burn, or is likely drunk.

Guitar Hero: Arcade is the absolute epitome of a cash-in. And it's people like me, who insist on feeding more and more money to this ever-growing mass of repetition and creative stagnation, who will ensure that we'll see a sequel or four in the coming years.

I had the privilege of attending Capcom's Street Fighter IV launch party Thursday night, and though you've already seen Mr. Chester's notes on the event, allow me to share my perspective.

I was invited to the event as a VIP guest (thanks Jeff), but apparently there were two levels of VIP, one that lets you skip the line to get in, and another that actually lets you into the VIP lounge upstairs. I wasn't important enough to get upstairs, but being able to skip the monstrous line was a nice advantage.

Once inside, it was clear that this event was created and run by and for true fans of the Street Fighter series. Giant papercraft SF characters hung from the ceiling (my friend Steve and I are the only ones who I think noticed that they seemed to have folded Ken into Chun-Li's intended position, and vice-versa), custom-painted arcade cabinets featuring the various SF games over the years were tucked into corners, miscellaneous random SF-related merchandise was on display right next to the viewing room for the SF anime movies, and – of course – Street Fighter IV was on hand in great quantities for anybody to play.

Fortunately, I got into the event a little before the general masses did, so I got in a few games of SFIV before having to wait in line ten minutes between rounds. I did alright, but was decimated by Jeff Rubenstein (he's got a pretty mean Guile), who was in turn decimated by Nick Chester. One day, Cammy and I will rule the world. Just not today.

There was a company called Coveroo doing free laser-etchings on phones if you had time to wait in line and fill out a little paperwork; Cammy is now a permanent part of my iPhone 3G. I recommend checking them out if you're into personalizing your equipment.

There were also many musical and celebrity guests at the show, including DJ Q-Bert and a good portion of the cast of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Michael Clarke Duncan said that the movie's gonna be "the best," so I guess it'll be awesome!

Of course, I brought my camera with me and got some pictures of all of this. Here are a few of them, but you can find the rest on my Flickr page. Enjoy!

I've been playing the Virtual Console on my Wii a lot lately. A few nights ago I got to
thinking: I always have one favorite game on any given console, and it's usually by a long
shot. It seems that everybody has their own defining games for each system, the game
that they will play without fail each time they go and hook up the old machine for another
game.

What I'm wondering, Destructoid, is what these games are for each of you. Everyone who
reads this, which games defined each generation of gaming for you? It can be anything,
from the obvious Mario or Sonic to the obscure crap nobody's ever heard of. Here, I'll start:

NES : Punch-Out!!
Genesis: Sonic 3 and Knuckles

SNES: Zelda: A Link to the Past
Game Boy Color: Tetris DX

N64: Star Fox 64
PlayStation: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Dreamcast: Crazy Taxi
PS2: The Beatmania IIDX series

I left a few consoles out, because they didn't really have any games that had that big an
impact on me. Great systems either way, but the games I listed above are some of my
absolute favorites, and I'd go back and play each of them again any day. As a matter of
fact, I've played through four of them in recent history.

Which games define these generations for you?

With Smash Bros Brawl coming out soon (and having been playing the shit out of it for the last
couple weeks), I decided to make myself a custom GameCube (read: Wii) controller.

I went to GameStop and spent fifteen bucks on a used black controller, then went to AutoZone
and got some blue spray paint and sandpaper. Then I called my friend, who owns a triwing
screwdriver, and asked if I could come over for arts and crafts time.

Here are the results of my project. I think I'm going to paint the Wii logo where the
GameCube logo was before, since that's all it's going to be used for anyway.

This is more of an update to my previous post.

Defeated, I called EA support once more, since I crave sympathy when something goes this
horribly wrong with a product I spent my well-earned dollars on.

The kindly gentleman on the other end of the call walked me through a process that I'm
probably more familiar with than he is, and I begrudgingly handed over my credit card
number so that he could put another $125 hold on my card (just to make sure I return
the bad set, of course).

I knew that they weren't going to offer me any compensation for my grief. I mean, this is
Electronic Arts we're dealing with here. That isn't what prompted this post.

What prompted this post is that this motherfucker, after offering me my one option
regarding repair of my third broken set of drums, ended the call by saying "And you
rock on!" I could just feel him giving a thumbs up and winking at me when he said it, and
this pushed me over the edge.

I said "Bye," threw my phone at my bed, cursed EA's name (again), and sat down here to
retaliate the only way I can. By writing a god damned entry on a blog six people will see.

I just wish Alex Rigopoulos would fly in, punch EA in the face, and give me a magical set of
drums that would accept my attacks, rather than sitting there with its arms crossed,
refusing to play the notes I tell it to. Harmonix are my heroes in the video game industry,
I've loved them since FreQuency, but EA is making this experience so bad for me that I'm
actually losing respect for all companies behind this game.

:(

OH BY THE WAY, he tried to blame UPS for all my drums being broken. "UPS is for some
reason really rough with our boxes, I don't know why. That could be what's causing all your
drums to break though."

ASSHOLE.