I just found out that Japanese PS1 games are being released in the US on PSN! From what I've seen, here’s a list of games they’ve released thus far.
Shienryu Tall Unlimited Outlaws of the Lost Dynasty Magical Drop F Cho Aniki GaiaSeed
Odd that this PS1 import stuff is happening now because a few weeks back I purchased Sony’s Summer 2000 edition of the Playstation Underground Jampack demo disc from eBay. On this disc contains a Japanese import demo of a game titled Ore no Ryouri. That import demo was pretty rad and completely took me by surprise of how fun and unique the gameplay was. You see, I originally bought that demo disc back in 2000 because there were a lot of demos for games I really liked at that time on that edition of Jampack. It was a great disc of demos, but about a month after I got it, a friend of mine borrowed a bunch of my demo discs, including that one, and somehow “lost” all of them (jerk). Well, ten years later, I accidentally came across a gameplay video of Ore no Ryouri a few weeks back on youtube and I had the itch to play that game again and that’s why I grabbed the demo disc on eBay when I saw it.
I’m hoping that game gets released on the PSN.
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So yeah, I’m pretty impressed with Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night for the iOS. I’ve been playing it on the iPhone and it is now my favorite game for the platform. Stealing the crown away from Memory Matrix.
You see, I’ve always been a fan of Super puzzle Fighter II Turbo and it has always been a dream of mine to play it on my cell phone. It’s gameplay is simple and is great for quick five minute plays. My dream came true a few years ago when the cell phone version of it was released, which I purchased and ran it from my Motorola Razr. I got my wish, but in the end, it just didn’t feel right plaining it on a T9 interface. The buttons were too small for me to play a game like Puzzle Fighter and that pretty much killed the experience for me. Be careful what you wish for, I guess. But now I can play a game similar to that type of puzzle play, but it’s now integrated into the world of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
I first saw Castlevania Puzzle a week ago while looking over the most recent EGM magazine. The article mentioned that it was pretty good and was already released for purchase. The one image of the puzzle battle gameplay immediately sold me. It’s great to see Konami release this game rather than just porting over Symphony of the Night onto the iOS platform and having you play it with those weird onscreen d-pads and buttons. They rebuilt the entire game and stuffed it into a genre that works well for short burst plays and was designed to be played on a touch screen.
Castlevania Puzzle includes two modes. A story mode and an arcade mode. The story mode encapsulates a story, items and equipment collecting, spells, and a leveling up system. You know, the typical RPG stuff. The arcade mode is for quick puzzle battles. The game’s description mentions the story mode has over twenty hours of gameplay. So far, I’ve put in a little over three hours worth of gaming. Which was accumulated by short 15 - 20 minute increments.
I also appreciate their attention to details which was sprinkled throughout the game. Backgrounds, music, sprite animations, gameplay difficulty, the ability to adjust the touch sensitivity, and the ability to play your own music makes this a well rounded game. I would recommend this to anyone who has an iOS device!
I’m back with a load of new games to show off for the console I absolutely love. For the last few months, I’ve been mostly buying Dreamcast games that came with, or are compatible with a peripheral which makes the game more fun and enjoyable. I will list those ones first.
First up is Samba De Amigo. Yep, Samba-De-Freakin’-Amigo! Complete with maracas and game! The box set was a must have for my Dreamcast gaming library. I never had the opportunity to play it back in the day, and my only memory of it was a review for it in a video game magazine. The table of contents section of this magazine had a dude (the reviewer) holding the maracas in hand while wearing a humongous sombrero and striking with the most ridiculous pose you have ever seen. The game seemed like a lot of fun, and after playing with it, it totally is!
The box set I got was the complete package which came with: the original box, the floor mat, maracas, sensor board, instructions, and the game itself (back when this came out, the maracas were sold separately from the game). I will admit I lost a few bids on eBay before I won this one, but I’m kind of glad I lost those ones, because biddings got way out of hand and the bidding war got incredibly high. Going into the 90s and over the hundred dollar range. The price I payed for mine was well below that, spank you very much.
Here is part of the instruction manual for the controller setup. It uses sensors to detect how far up the maracas are from the base board. I have heard that this sensor is more accurate than the sensors used for the Wii version of Samba De Amigo. If so, then I am glad I got the better version of the game. Speaking of which, the game itself is great! The combination of the music, the crazy stuff happening on the screen, and the ability to physically shake a pair of maracas at different heights and speeds make it a very enjoyable gaming experience.
Next on the list is Typing of the Dead with a Dreamcast Sega Net keyboard. This game is basically the game The House of the Dead 2, but modified to be used with a keyboard instead of a controller. The user types out words and phrases to kill monsters instead of just pressing a button on the controller to fire a gun. I haven’t gotten too far with this game and I have heard it’s much funner with a second player. This is the reason why I purchased a second Dreamcast keyboard. I’m hoping to play this one soon. Quite a clever way of Sega to recycle a game and utilize a peripheral like the keyboard, and at the same time being successful at making it a unique and fun gameplay experience.
Here’s the rad pack I found. Three fishing games and the Dreamcast fishing controller. All at near mint and complete conditions at an incredibly low price. The three included games were: Sega Bass Fishing, Sega Marine Fishing, and Sega Bass Fishing 2. Sounds weird, but for me, Sega Bass Fishing was an extremely fun game to play back in the arcades. And I didn’t even like fishing! At all! The neat thing about the arcade game was that it was played with a fishing rod like controller that was attached to the arcade cabinet via a cable. When reeling in a fish, a device in the cabinet would tug on the cable, hard, making the fishing rod feel as though the fish was pulling the controller, and you forward. The Dreamcast fishing controller is the closest I can get to copying the arcade experience. I’ve played Sega Bass Fishing and Sega Marine Fishing, but I have not played Sega Bass Fishing 2. So far, I really like Sega Marine Fishing. The mini games, item collecting, and free fishing mode (no time limit) makes this game the better of the two.
The final three games I got were: Space Channel 5, Bangai-O, and Propeller Arena. Space Channel 5 has the ugliest looking cut scenes -- and by that I mean cheap looking CG animation coupled with heavy video compression. But the gameplay is where it excels at. I also like how the background is actually a video, creating a pseudo polygonal background and mimicking the angles of the camera when it swings around the actual polygonal characters. It’s hard to explain. Check youtube to see what I’m trying to describe.
Unfortunately I currently can’t play Bangai-O because the game is not VGA compatible. My Dreamcast is currently connected to my HDTV via a VGA adapter. This will soon be corrected when I get a VGA/S-Video adapter. I really want to play this game because of of the crazy combat system that gives the player the ability to shoot off hundreds of missiles at once in all directions! And finally there’s Propeller Arena. All I’m going to say about this game is that it’s really, really, really fun.
And there you have it! All of the Dreamcast games I got since my last blog post regarding it. I bought more games and stuff for other retro consoles too and will show those very soon.
While playing through the third level in Trash Panic, something struck a memory and caused me to ponder if the vocalist of the track during the third level is the same as the vocalist for the New York stage of Capcom vs. SNK 2?
While on eBay a few months ago searching for Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast, I came across the Crazy Taxi action figure. WHAT! There was a toy for this game! Well, I could not have passed this little gem up, so I snatched it for a cool seven bucks.
Apparently GamePro, back in 2002, teamed up with JoyRide Studios to create a series of action figures and collectables that evolved around some of Sega’s franchises. And one of those said franchises was Crazy Taxi! And let me tell you, this is one rad collectable. The box Everything about it is highly detailed and contains a few items that make it worthwhile. First would be the package it came in. Just look at it! There’s so much great content featured on it that I had to take some pictures to show it off. On the front, you can see that there are four primary items: Axel (the driver), Biff and Buzz (Axel’s customers), and Axel’s taxi cab. On the back of the box, it displays all of the other collectables for the Sega series. Another neat thing about the box is that it opens up on the side to reveal a review of the game from GemePro! Note that the review is for the PS2 version.
Now, on to the main item. First off, the cab itself. Highly detailed and seems to capture the model from the game very well. From the grill, to the taillights, to the license plate that notes Axel’s license plate number, 1NOM155, this model of the game’s car is top notch and couldn’t be any better. The three figures that come with the cab are detachable and can be placed on different seats. Each of the figures has a small stump on the bottom of one of the shoes that fit into a matching hole on the floor of the car, so they stay in place when in the car. The figures are also detailed and match the designs from the game perfectly.
Also included is a mail-in subscription form for the magazine and a card that gives some cheats for the PS2 version of the game. So yeah, all-in-all, this was an awesome collectable that I felt needed to be shown off to the GB community. Below is a galley of images I took of it. Click here for a direct link to the gallery if you want to see the high quality images.
Gallery
BONUS: By the way, have any of you seen that Hyundai commercial that shows a kid playing Crazy Taxi? It’s pretty funny. I’ve only seen it once a few months ago on TV, but recently found it on YouTube. Check it out below!
Well, here it is, my Dreamcast collection. It’s a small, yet awesome one! This is about a year-and-a-halfs worth of collecting. I’ll update every so often with new games that have been added to the list.
I’ve been bitten by the Sega bug. Yup this is odd, because for just about 10 years, I pretty much have not been paying attention to Sega and what they have been doing. However, lately within the last few months, Sega has been doing some stuff that’s been catching my attention -- from both the publishing and developing sides.
You see, back in the early 90s, I jumped the Nintendo ship and joined team Sega. I received a Genesis, instead of a Super Nintendo, and enjoyed what Sega was pushing out during that console generation. My brother also got a Game Gear and we had fun with that as well. However, Sega got weird for a while with the Sega CD, 32X, and the Nomad (the portable Genesis). I was a dumb poor kid at the time and could not afford any of those consoles. When it came to moving to the next gen of consoles, my friend -- who was a Nintendo kid -- received an N64 and was having a blast with it. So, that meant I, the Sega kid, needed to move on with the Saturn. However, that console just wasn’t clicking with me. The games did not seem much fun like the games during the Genesis era, plus the way they were marketing it wasn’t making me want to go out and get one.
Playstation? My friend took me to his older brother’s room and showed me the Playstation (which at the time, I thought the name Playstation was a toy from the infant toy company Playskool. I know, I’m ashamed to admit that). And after playing Generation X and Tekken, I was sold. And ever since, I’ve been a Playstation fan.
When the Dreamcast came out, I was skeptical and poopooed it, saying that it’s only a way to play arcade games at home. Boy was I wrong! My brother got one for Christmas and I feel in love with it! Every game I played on it was entertaining and some had very strong replay values. It was a shame that it had such a short life span.
I don’t know, but I guess after looking at some Sega fanatic blogs and seeing some familiar franchise characters as of late, I’ve seemed to get a massive appreciation from what Sega has done, and from a retrospective look at the company, I’ve been getting the itch to look towards Sega’s direction again.
So, to get this itch scratched, look forward to seeing some Sega related stuff from me!
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Sorry to disappoint, but there is no video game related stuff in this post. Instead, take this tasty comedy burrito covered in delicious music sauce. I thought this segment from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was pretty funny and decided to post it here.
During this past week I’ve heard the franchise Golgo 13 mentioned twice. Before this week, I’ve never heard of this series. Apparently it deals with following the world’s greatest assassin. That sounds awesome! After doing some brief investigating, I’m now interested in reading the manga.
Has anyone read it before? If so, what do you think about it, or just the franchise in general?
(I know, this is something that would be better asked at animevice.com, but I don’t have an account there...yet)
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