Crazy Taxi: A Dreamcast Review

Just two more games to review. This week, its the Dreamcast classic Crazy Taxi. This game was adapted from a popular arcade game of the day. In it, you are a taxi driver. You pick up fairs, deliver them to there destination and get paid. What makes the game memorable is the absolutely bat shit insane car physics. Your taxi is not of this earth. It weaves and accelerates with no regard for your safety or the cars structural stability. And boy, its fun.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: A Dreamcast Review

Oh yes, Ebay is great. I am expecting a delivery of Crazy Taxi sometime this week. That will be next weeks review. Now all I need is Shenmue, Sonic Adventure and Powerstone. But this week, we are taking a look at one of the cornerstones of late 90's games: Skateboarding sims.

There was a weird "XTREME" craze in the late 90's. Suddenly, extreme sports were reaaaaaally popular, catapulting sports like skateboarding motorcross to new heights of popularity. Oh sure they had fans before, but now they just were every where and were marketed to kids like crazy. And at the head of the campaign was sports master Tony Hawk. This guy oozed cool to us young kids growing up and seeking an identity. Not only did he seem like the only cool adult out there, but he also made a living skate boarding. As far as we were concerned, he WAS the dream life.

coooooooooool

SPORTS GAMES!!!!! A Dreamcast Review

Well, its finally time. I have run out of easy reviews. Honestly, I kinda free-wheeled on all my previous dreamcast reviews. I had played plenty of the games when I got them, so I had little reason to go back and play them for the review; I knew how I felt about the games. Now, I am going to review that two sports games that came bundled with the console when I bought it: NFL 2K, and F355 Challenge.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2: Review

I have been loving me shadowrun returns. I would be posting about that and uploading videos if my connection didn't suck at uploading.

So, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. One of the premier tournament fighters of all time. The Dreamcast port of the arcade game was literally perfect in terms of fighting mechanics and was still played in tournaments, on the Dreamcast, up until the release of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. I got it for cheap since the release of the sequel drove down the price on ebay. And I unfortunately have to deliver some bad news: MVC2 isn't all that good of a game.

Armada: Review

Well, know its time to review Asteroids... I mean Armada. Actually, one of my favorite games was Asteroids on the Playstation, so the similarities are actually quite welcome for me. Now I have tried this with a friend, so my rating will be based on its muliplayer as well as its single player.

Armada Glados and the SUMMER SALE

I think its kind of funny that it is so hard to emulate the dreamcast games now. When the Dreamast was new, the CD format and modem connection made the Dreamcast games some of the easiest to pirate. Now, you have to ebay, like I just did.

Armada for the Dreamcast. I have a friend who currently owns a Dreamcast with 3 controllers, so I have been struggling to find a Dreamcast game that supports 4 players so me and my buds can rock it old school. My search led me to ARMADA. Its a spaceship based RPG that is actually a lot of fun. The controls take some getting used to but it allows a lot of exploration and has some nice sound effects. I'll review it as well, and I have decided that my Dreamcast reviews will come out once a week on Mondays.

Of course, now that I spent money on Armada, I find that there is an free alpha of Armada online available through steam greenlight. I don't regret getting the game, but this happens to me a lot. Currently, the Steam Summer sale is draining wallets all over the world. Now I own most of the computer games I could want right now, but I am still managing to get burned.

damn you and your deals

Going into the summer sale, I thought about what games I might want. When I narrowed it down, it was essentially Bioshock Infinite and Mark of the Ninja. Bioshock never went below 30 bucks, more than I was willing to pay, but Ninja has been sitting solidly at $7.49. I bought it last night and what do I see this morning? Its on extra sale for 3 something. I don't think a 3 buck loss is much, but its still annoying. I also bought Dark Souls recently. That was before the sale started, but recently enough that the discount kind of annoyed me.

Speaking of Valve, the Portal series is awesome. GlaDOS is in my opinion one of the best video game villains ever. Someday, I may devote a post to her and the question of her soul. But for now, lets talk about the Companion cube. Everyone fell in love with this thing. Hell, I made one and carried it in a parade. But its probably filled with bodies of test subjects. For a complete discussion of this, watch the Game Theory video by Matthew Patrick.

Did you watch it? Good, because I am going to assume you did.

So, I had heard most of this theory before, but Matt consolidated the info well and I hadn't heard the bit about material emancipation grills. As I was in the shower this morning, it suddenly hit me. There was another piece of the puzzle: Schrodinger's Cat. The cat experiment is a bit of a theme in the game. Rat man draws it on a few walls and in the portal comic GlaDOS requests neuro toxin for "Schrodinger's Cat" experiment. Now obviously she was alluding to her plans to gas the whole facility, with the facility being the cat's box. But it could also refer to the Companion cube. After GlaDOS is finished with a subject, she jams them in a box and we have a very convenient Schrodinger's Cat experiment that has practical use in test chambers. It would give another reason for the hearts, she needed some way of differentiating from regular cubes and the cat experiment cubes.

Honestly, I totally believe valve thought about Portal themes this hard. They are just that kind of company.

Skies of Arcadia: Review

Skies of Arcadia is a very excellent RPG. I've said it before, but RPGs usually aren't my thing. This game is very much in the style of Final Fantasy 7, which I haven't played. It has you wander around a 3-D environment, solve some puzzles and have flashy turn based combat out of random encounters. I can't say it did anything all that unique for the genre, but it was an immensely interesting world that I was pleased to explore.

Jet Grind Radio- A Review

For the first of my Dreamcast reviews, I will review the game that led to me getting a Dreamcast. There was quite a bit of buzz around the internet about how much fun Jet Grind Radio was. I was right in the middle of my "emulate all the games I missed phase" and went straight to my usual sources. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast emulator did not work since it hadn't been updated in over 4 years. So I ventured into ebay and came out with a Dreamcast. This was back in 2011, so I was rather surprised when Jet Grind Radio HD was released on Steam this year. But I don't regret getting a whole system just to play one game. Its been a very fun experience and I have a very strong attachment to the console now. So without further ado, lets review the game that started it all (for me).

This is hands down the best video I have ever seen of the game.

Dreamcast Update

Some time ago, I posted about acquiring a copy of "Jet Grind Radio" for the Dreamcast. At the time, I knew someone that was willing to lend me a Dreamcast but that plan fell through. Tired of waiting, I once more delved into Ebay. After weeks of fishing, I hooked me a functioning Dreamcast with 2 controllers and couple of sports games bundled in. Got it for cheap too; the description mentioned a cigarette odor which apparently repelled some bidders.

It doesn't really smell though