Let's see, how many Guitar Hero games are coming out this year again? I can't even keep track of the releases anymore. Last I checked, there was GH: Metallica, GH: On Tour 3 (I didn't even know that On Tour 2 was out yet!), GH: On LSD, GH: Jonas Brothers, DJ Hero, Didgeridoo Hero, Groupie Hero... Ugh, when does it stop?

With Rock Band, it's basically like iTunes, only it's a video game, and while it's not as profitable as Guitar Hero as a franchise (yet), consumers get a way better deal. They've got a gigantic catalog of songs that you can pick from, and all of the songs you download to your account can roll over from one game to the next, so you never have to re-buy a song. Best of all, you can even pay a $5 license fee to roll over all the songs from the disc into the next game!

With Guitar Hero though, Activision insists on doing their DLC half-assed, because they would rather release new content as an entire new game. All they have to do is throw in a "new" guitar, and they can sell it for $100. And unfortunately, all the little Jimmies out there who don't realize how crappy Guitar Hero is in comparison to Rock Band are going to put it on their wish lists instantly.

Worst of all though, they don't even have to come up with new content! They've realized that they can simply mix and match songs from the older games and sell them as "greatest hits" titles. I'd bet you a buck that next year, Activision is going to announce "Greatest Hits vol. 2" that has a bunch of tracks they didn't bother using this time around. It's like Activision believes they've stumbled upon a perpetual snowball of wealth, and they're going to keep rehashing it until people stop buying.

Essentially, Activision knows that Guitar Hero makes money, but they didn't learn their lesson from overmilking the Tony Hawk franchise. They are taking the old phrase "make hay while the sun is shining" a bit too close to heart, because they aren't even remotely concerned about what will happen when people get sick of Guitar Hero. If you told them that it's going to happen, they'd laugh at you, but that's because they're a bunch of idiots. It happened with Tony Hawk, and it WILL happen with Guitar Hero. It's only a matter of time.

Today, Kotaku posted a story about a home arcade cabinet Dream Arcades, and they called it an ideal solution for people looking to play Street Fighter IV "the authentic way."

http://kotaku.com/5151618/dream-arcades-offers-street-fighter-iv-arcade-solution

Well, there's certainly some truth in that, however I figured I'd share my 2¢ on the topic, since arcades are something I have a lot of passion for, and I also happen to own my own arcade cabinet, which I converted into a Mame (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) machine.

Since Kotaku's story was about Street Fighter 4, first of all I'd like to point out that Dream Arcades are OK, but they are more for retro 2D games (like the cab I made). I'm pretty sure they all use standard-definition CRT monitors, which make old games look gorgeous, however a new game like Street Fighter 4 or HD Remix begs for something a bit flashier. Dream Arcades are a great solution if you're looking to relive the glory days of the arcade at home, and you lack confidence with power tools, however I'm not quite sure I'd say they're ideal for bringing the modern arcade experience into the home rec room.

On the other hand, an HD arcade setup with a fancy flat panel monitor will make new games on PS3 and PC look amazing, but ****c games from the 80s and 90s will not look so hot. If you really are an arcade nut, having both setups would be the ideal, but that obviously is extremely expensive and takes up a lot of space. I spent about $800-1000 on my project (including the PC inside), but if I was going for an HD setup it would have easily run me into $2000 territory.

It's a shame that Capcom won't just give SF4 a proper US release. Even if they were just selling conversion kits, it would be a godsend to most arcade operators. SF2 made arcades the scene to be at in the 90s, and SF4 would have been a much needed shot in the arm for our ailing industry. Chances are, we're only going to get it here through gray market imports, which means it's going to be rare and extremely expensive. My local arcade's imported Tekken 6 machine costs $3.00 a play! It makes me wish I could build myself a sligh HD arcade machine to play these games on, but that's not happening since I have neither the money nor space. For now, I'll just have to content myself with my PS3 and my portable custom arcade stick.

Last generation, when I heard "RPG," it was synonymous with games like Final Fantasy. Ever since Final Fantasy VII, Japan pretty much ruled the RPG scene, but in the current generation, JRPGs seem to have been going into somewhat of a decline. Take a look at the scores that the heavy-hitter JRPGs on current-gen systems have gotten:

Blue Dragon - 6.0
Lost Odyssey - 7.5
Eternal Sonata - 8.5
Tales of Vesperia - 8.5
The Last Remnant - 6.5
Infinite Undiscovery - 6.5

Out of all of them, only 2 have broken the AA barrier. All of Square's games have been strictly B-grade in the 6.0 range. In fact, the highest scoring JRPG in the last few years was Persona 4, which got a 9.0, and that is a PS2 game! Japan's RPG kings have really dropped the ball this gen IMO. When you look at the RPGs that are actually recieving acclaim these days, they're all from American developers. Fallout 3 and Oblivion both managed to pick up game of the year awards, and Mass Effect, while AA game at Gamespot still did recieve a good amount of praise, and is considered to be one of the better RPG's of this generation. I loved both Oblivion and Fallout 3, and I hope to try Mass Effect at some point in the future, so for all intents and purposes, the WRPG developers have "stolen" me away from the JRPG market-- or more likely, the JRPG market handed me over.

So what happened that's causing JRPGs to dwindle this generation? Are the developers simply having trouble adapting to the new hardware, or is their creativity simply drying up? Whatever the case is, the Japanese RPG scene doesn't look very good this generation, and I really don't see any JRPGs on the horizon that I'm particularly excited about right now.

Seriously, has anyone noticed how many bald headed joes have been shoved at us as game protagonist in the last year or two? It seems like EVERY FREAKING GAME wants to get in on the shaved head game these days, from Mass Effect to Force Unleashed to Resistance to Infamous! And there's a ton mon beyond that that I didn't even bother mentioning, because there's too many!

Why the heck are we getting so many generic looking bald headed or buzzed meat heads as our main characters nowadays? Has character design gotten so bad lately that game developers are simply copying off each other's game covers instead of actually drawing a hair cut? I though this generation was supposed to herald in an unprecedented level of realism when it came to rendering hair, and what do our developers do with all this power? They give all the characters shaved heads. No wonder in THX the evil computers made everyone bald, because from the looks of it, we are already seeing that preference in our video games!

As some of you may know, on my way home from Christmas Break, someone dropped my PS3 onto the pavement, and when I came home to enjoy my new PS3 games, I was met with this horrible sight:

The Yellow light of death. As if it weren't bad enough that I had to pay $150 for Sony to replace my system, I also learned that Sony has no interest in transfering data when they echange systems, because they are lazy SOBs. Why it is Microsoft has no problem doing that, but Sony digs in their heels and refuses to, I have no idea. So I held on to my hard drive in hopes of findng a way to transfer it myself.

Unfortunately, after scouring every possible resource and using every trick in the book, I was unable to rescue the data from my deceased 20GB PS3 and transfer it to my new one. The best that I can do now is retrieve my trophy data and DLC through Playstation Network, but that's not really of much consolation since i had 2 years worth of game saves on there. I still don't understand why Sony doesn't transfer user data when they replace broken PS3s, and as you can imagine, I'm at least a little PO'd about having to give it all up. Thanks for nothing, Sony!

It's hardly going to be torture to play through my favorite PS3 games again, although I can't necessarily say the same about unlocking all of my data in Soul Calibur 4 again. Still, it's a shame that I had to lose everthing everythingl. And for what?

I still do not own a Wii, and I don't expect I will any time soon. The system was clearly made for people with different tastes and standards than my own, and since that's the case I really don't see any point in buying one when I already have a PS3, a laptop, and a large selection of legacy consoles to pick from. If I do pick up a Wii, it will probably be in a few years when people are starting to move on to other things, and they're availible for under $100 ($80 or less would probably be the sweet spot for me). There are a few games for it I'd like to get, like Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and Smash Bros. Brawl, but those three games are just plain not worth dropping $250 for the system to me, when money is tight and I could spend that $250 buying games and accessories for my PS3.

The Wii just doesn't really have enough content that's for me. It was designed and marketed to people who don't like video games, and the recent announcement of "kind code" only adds insult to injury. I really don't want to sit around for months at a time waiting for a worthwhile piece of software for the system, especially when it will often times result in a dumbed down version of a cherished franchise like Mario Kart, or potentially, the next Zelda (as if Twilight Princess hadn't cranked up the noob-friendly meter enough as it was).

I grew up with Nintendo, so I'll always have a soft spot for their legacy systems and games. However, Nintendo did not grow up with me, and it's because of that that I ended up leaving them for Sony about halfway through the last generation. I watched as Sony and Microsoft began making more and more games that were geared towards teens and adults and building on the ideas of online play, while Nintendo refused to make anything that a child couldn't play, and insisted that connecting a gameboy to a gamecube was somehow equivelent to having sixteen player multiplayer matches in your favorite game any time you wanted. And don't even get me started on Wii's "friend codes." Pretty much any time Nintendo puts the word "code" into the name of a feature, you know it's going to be bad news.

For now, I'm sticking with PS3, and if for some reason Sony and Microsoft decide to follow Nintendo into the swamp of casual drudgery next generation (God forbid), then I'll migrate to PC. I don't want to see hardcore gaming die out, but Nintendo has created a precedent that hardcore gamers are not as profitable as the people who don't like video games enough to take them seriously as a hobby, and that honestly scares me a lot.

Most of the successful arcades I've been to have either been in shopping malls, or part of a restaurant. Location is essential! The free-standing or hole-in-the-wall arcade really hasn't got a lot of potential these days, because most people aren't going to bother driving out to them. In Japan, where most people walk from place to place, it's easy to stop in an arcade on the way home from work or school, but not in the US.

Another thing is that a lot of arcades have poor game selections. Either they'll have a couple of stupid new gimmick games, or a few really old games. The ideal arcade should strive for the perfect balance of both modern and clas.sic games. The arcade that I frequent has most of their modern games on the first floor, and an entire basement full of older and clas.sic games that we all call "the graveyard." In it's heyday, it was the best of both, but unfortunately as of late they've had a really hard time keeping up with new releases.

Another problem is that a lot of Japanese publishers don't want to bother bringing their good games here. Take Capcom for example-- if any game could have shot some life into my favorite ailing arcade, it would have been a sequel to one of the biggest arcade hits of all time. But instead, Capcom simply skipped over US arcades, and now the arcades have to fight even harder to lure gamers in versus staying at home to play a console. On the flipside though, Konami and Activision are bringing the Guitar Hero franchise to arcades. I guess the idea is that people who love Guitar Hero at home would love to go to an arcade to show off their skills. Will it work? I hope so, but only time will tell.

And lastly, US arcades need to advertise. I once spent three hours in an arcade and only spent $5.00, and it was because they had great value on a lot of games I liked playing. Compare that to the $60 it costs to buy a new game, which often times only lasts 6-8 hours, and the arcade suddenly becomes a very appealing alternative. Also, how are people supposed to know what games an arcade has without going in? A well placed TV spot every now and thenwould certainly help, but that would only be possible for an arcade chain (which would actually be a very good business model, if all of the arcade operators in a certain region could come to an agreement on it).

Arcades don't have to die. Unfortunately, they are dying, and I haven't really seen much evidence of that trend reversing itself yet. The best that arcade aficionados like myself can do, for now, is continue to support our local arcades with our patronage, and collect whatever arcade related stuff we can to preserve (I actually own an arcade machine, but I'm certainly willing to collect more if and when I have the room for it).

With the release of Tom Clancy's HAWX looming on the horizon (much to my eager anticipation), I have been thinking a lot lately about what's become of the space combat sim genre. It seems like it hit it's peak in the late 90s / early 2000s with games like X-Wing Alliance, Freespace 2, and Freelancer, but now it's all but dried up. There were a few "eh, they're okay" attempts on the PS2 and Xbox like Star Wars Starfighter and Battlestar Galactica, but it seems like a good space shooter is hard to find these days-- or more specifically, the space shooters we all remember fondly and love, like Wing Commander and X-Wing. So where the heck are they?

EA has been sitting on one of my favorite game franchises for years (Wing Commander) and yet they've hardly done crap with it since the release of Wing Commander Prophecy. They did a crappy port of Prophecy on the GBA (that should tell you something about how long it's been since a proper Wing Commander game was released), and recently, the even crappier "Wing Commander Arena" for Xbox 360. Seriously, WTF was up with Arena? It had absolutely nothing to do with the real Wing Commander games at all! Did the useless tools who made it even PLAY a Wing Commander game, or did they just watch the crappy Freddy Prinze Jr. movie and call it a day? Nice try EA, but I'm offended that you'd even think such a horrid turd of a game would satasfy fans of the Wing Commander series. The Wing Commander was all about combining the thrills of between-mission cinematics with tight space combat simulation, and that's why no-one bought Wing Commander Arena-- it was just a cheesey Geometry Wars knockoff!

It's high time the space combat sim genre got a massive shot in the arm, and the two franchises I think would be best to do it with would be Wing Commander and X-Wing. Lucas Arts has already made it clear that they have little interest in reviving X-Wing, even though the original X-Wing team is quite enthusiastic about the possibility, so what about Wing Commander? Is EA just going to keep squatting on it in hopes that we forget it ever existed? I certainly hope not.

Footage of the original Wing Commander

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=GbzioZBTUIU

Footage of Wing Commander Prophecy (the last "proper" Wing Commander title)

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnAOYo6Jz4

When oh when is EA going to take a look at this overlooked, but cla.ssic franchise and give it a modern-day makeover?

Tonight, I finally beat Zelda TP, and to celebrate I decided to post my full review. I think the game was awesome, but I was kind of hoping for a little bit more out of it. Well, certainly not in terms of length though! I clocked in at 59.5 hours!

Happy New Year! And don't try to light your farts with fireworks. It's a BAD idea, no matter what your drunk friends might tell you.

Seriousely, who do they think they are kidding charging $10 extra for
multiplatform games on Xbox 360, even though all you get is slightly
better graphics? And remember all that BS EA told us about how "The $60
pricetag will help us give you more content and a more impressive game
experience"? Well then why is it that Madden '06 on Xbox 360 actually
has less
features than it's current-gen counterparts? 20% more expensive, 30%
less game. That apparently is going to be the motto for next gen games.
Sorry, but as cool as it is to see bump-mapped scales on a T-Rex in
King Kong, it is NOT worth paying another $10, and I know for a fact
that it did not cause the 360 version of KK to be 20% more expensive to
produce. Not to mention that awful 360 port of Activision's "Gun". Yuck.

And
we can't forget the new "Xbox Live Marketplace", where gamers plunk
down real-life cash for in-game content like new maps, character skins,
weapons, and vehicles. It's a golden gateway for developers and
publishers to sell you an incomplete game for $60, and then sell you
the rest of it over the course of a year for another $20 worth of
"marketplace items". You'll end up paying $80 when you should have only
had to pay $50, but that's not even the worst of it...

And now
there's this crap about in-game commercials and advertisements. This is
total BS if you ask me. So, it's not bad enought that my games are
already expensive, but I also have to put up with Mountain Dew
billboards in a World War 2 shooter? Many big publishers (and
apparently some developers like Spark) seem to think this is the
greatest idea since chocolate chip cookies. Sorry, but this is the
dumbest idea ever. It's like if we had to sit through commercial breaks
when we went to the theater or watched DVDs. We are already paying them, and we're paying them well.
The only reason they'd want commercials is to upscale their profits at
the expense of the customers. Well guess what, Spark? If you think that
I'm going to put up with advertisements in my games, I will happily
take my $50 somewhere else.

Publishers are getting way too greedy. I know for a fact
that they are lying when they say the money will go towards making the
games better, because games that use these money-mooching tactics feel
just as incomplete and un-polished as their predicessors that were
avalible for a $50 flat-fee. If they really did need the money to cover
additional expense, they would not have started charging $60 per-game
until after they had begun delivering the improvements. It's a
scam, and I personally hope that EA, Activision, and whoever else
indulges in these price-hiking schemes gets it in the @$$ from their
customers.