As of this video review, I am deadline-free for the first time since at least October. Though one could say that all of 2014 was nothing but one big long deadline. I made a conscious decision to produce more video reviews, which takes an excruciatingly long time to do thanks to my aged PC. It started with my video review for Sonic Lost World , after which I dove immediately in to doing a Game o...
By far one of my most popular videos on my Youtube channel is a montage about glitches in Sonic 2006 . With the release of Sonic Boom, a lot of people have been wondering if I was going to a video for that. I've ended up committing to three (!) Sonic Boom videos, the first one being embedded above there. I also have plans to do a video review, as well as a second montage video -- I ended up wit...
I've written on this blog before on my tendency, in my younger years, to generate videogame hoaxes . Famously, I got Kotaku to post about something I'd made, and spent the better part of 8 years banned from their commenting system, possibly as a result. I've struggled over the years to figure out what inside of me liked making things with the explicit intent of fooling people, and why I've pres...
So, I dunno! I bought a domain and figured I need to throw something up on there. It used to just point to my Youtube channel, but instead I just used tumblr because it's easy to do stuff with and I don't have to pay for it. It has an archive of all my video reviews and I'll be posting other junk there too (blogs about games, etc.) Might do a backlog feature or something. Also has outtakes from...
Since video embeds still aren't in user reviews, here's my Mario Kart 8 review in blog form! In my completely objective, unbiased opinion, it is the best Mario Kart 8 video review you'll find on the internet! As always, it's surprising how long these take me I ran a poll on Twitter and Tumblr under the guise this would only take me a week to put together, and it ended up taking over a month! An...
There was a time where GiantBomb let you embed Youtube videos in to user reviews, but that time has seemingly passed. Despite responses from both Jeff and Rorie implying that removing video embeds from reviews was not intended, it would appear things are officially falling on deaf ears now . Or everybody's just too busy. Whatever! Either way, here's this. For those of you following my (much mor...
Whoa-ho nelly, here's a big one. Normally these are blogs, but this year I decided to go the extra mile and make a video. That video turned out to be 23 minutes long , and took me close to a month to put together . I would definitely say it is worth watching, if only for the sake of my own sanity. PLEASE WATCH IT OR I WILL CRY AND NOBODY WANTS THAT I've lamented the loss of the days when GiantB...
You may remember some months ago I highlighted the release of The Unleashed Project. If you've forgotten, The Unleashed Project is a mod that ports all of Sonic Unleashed's daytime levels (aka: part of the game that's worth playing) to the PC version of Sonic Generations. If you don't already have it, you can get it from here . There was one glaring problem with the mod, though: as somebody who...
If you’re deep enough in to video games to read NeoGAF even passively, you know that there has been beef brewing between Video game Press and the consumer. The reasons for this reach far and wide, but the general consensus from my perspective seems to be that a lot of people in the videogame press have been doing it for so long they’ve sort of forgotten what it’s like to be a consumer, especial...
To catch you up: Nintendo is now sending out copyright claimant forms for anybody posting footage of their games on Youtube. This does not mean Nintendo is issuing takedown notices, Nintendo is just acknowledging that they, in fact, own the game footage that people are uploading to the site. What this means to you is that you’ll get a notice under your copyright section where Youtube will tell...
What this basically means is that there’s no way to chat (even though you can have a USB keyboard hooked up to your Xbox, which I do), and not even any way to see chat - in particular, watching PJ practice for the Super GnG World Record was sort of weird because he answers questions from the chat while he plays so you’re kind of missing half the conversation in that regard. There’s absolutely n...
Above is a conversation between Adam Orth, a "creative director" at Microsoft, and Manveer Heir , one of Bioware 's Senior Game Designers. Today, Kotaku reported that two sources in the game industry reaffirmed that yes, Microsoft's next console will require an always-on internet connection. If more than a few minutes pass without a connection, it will immediately block the user from doing anyt...
So back in February, a friend of mine contacted me about an iOS game he was creating. He wanted to pay me to make him some arcade-style minigames as side-content. In addition, I get to keep the rights to all of these games just in case I want to do something with them on my own one day. My deadline for these three games is the middle of May. What you see above is what I've managed to come up wi...
In a long list of things I wish Sega had done, more Sonic Generations DLC is pretty high up on that list. That was a game absolutely full to the brim with DLC possibilities, and outside of a decidedly throwaway pinball table, we got nothing. In a way, it doesn’t make any sense – after producing both DLC for Sonic 06 and Sonic Unleashed , bonus downloadable stages for Sonic Generations seemed li...
If it wasn’t obvious by the fact this game has TWO subtitles (the full name is “ CASTLEVANIA: LORDS OF SHADOW: MIRROR OF FATE ”), Konami is being very, very careful not to attach Mercury Steam ’s Castlevania games to the rest of the franchise canon, and with games like Mirror of Fate, I don’t blame them. Mirror of Fate wants to be a “ Metroidvania ” like the now-legendary Castlevania: Symphony...
So I've been writing reviews for TSSZ News for like, what, five years now? That's kind of a long time. I've done kind of a good job re-posting my reviews from there over at Giantbomb here eventually - usually they go up on TSSZ exclusively for a couple weeks or maybe a month and then I copy them over here. I basically got my job at TSSZ by posting reviews at sites like Giantbomb, so I figure I...
It would seem like 2012 has been a rough year for a lot of people. There have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs (and for some of us, more downs than ups), so I am more than a little eager to get 2012 out of my life and move on to whatever's next. Thankfully, because of some of what's happened in 2012, I've ended up playing - and more importantly finishing - way more video games than I probab...
New video review , y’all! This is something I’ve actually mulled over doing literally for years, and never have gotten around to it. Basically, I pick a selection of free (or at least cheap) horror games you can play for Halloween and talk about them. I can't post it as a formal review here on GiantBomb for obvious reasons. The idea started as a blog series I wanted to write three or four years...
I had intended to tell you guys before it actually happened but when it comes to promoting my own livestreams , I make the really bad habit of forgetting where all to promote it. I tried posting it on places like Reddit, but it was my first and so far only post there, so it dropped like a rock and did not get a single upvote. It probably didn't help that I inexplicably chose the one day where i...
It was more than a week ago that I left off with Black Mesa Source; I had a Jet Set Radio HD review to write , and I'm the kind of person whom, when there is work to be done, it's kind of all I can focus on. I more or less refused to let myself play anything other than Jet Set Radio HD until I was finished with my review, so with that finally out of the way, I started two things: preparing for...
"Just one of those days, I guess." So, after five or six years, Black Mesa: Source is finally released. It's not the entire game, mind you, but it's everything up to the part nobody actually likes to play (the alien world, Xen). So while it's not everything, it might as well be everything, and even if you're playing the numbers game, we're looking at probably close to 95% of the game. So, how i...
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath was, if you asked the right people, the "secret best" Xbox game. In the day when first person shooters were Halo , Half-Life , and Call of Duty clones, Stranger etched out his own unique gameplay, with an eclectic mixture of platforming, shooting, and exploration, all set in the backdrop of an alien wild west. It had the unfortunate luck of hitting right before being...
So the SSX 2012 demo dropped today. It's pretty cool, I guess. You can see me running through the demo for my first time in the video above (or if that doesn't work for some reason, click here ), and at the end I play a little bit of SSX3 (and fail pretty bad at it - I was pretty rusty, and the controls for SSX 2012 were throwing me off a bit on top of that). Tricks are way easier to pull off t...
Ladies and gentlemen, I will just not shut the hell up about the Xbox 360 dashboard. There was an update yesterday morning, and I feel like I have to say something about it, given that my previous statements on the subject were, to quote, " this is bad enough that it almost seems like you're deliberately sabotaging yourselves, Microsoft. " Somebody out there was listening. To me specifically? P...
Believe it or not, you're looking at almost $200+ worth of PC hardware (the pen doesn't count) So I just had a near death experience. There were two major things on my list of "PC hardware I need to replace": My mouse, and my headset. I had bought a super cheap replacement mouse almost a year ago, figuring it didn't really matter if I only spent $10 or $15 on a mouse, because I didn't need extr...
( This could probably go on Tested, but nobody would read it if I posted it over there because I have zero followers on Tested. ) So I complained a lot about the new Xbox Dashboard update . I felt it emphasized advertising space too much over genuine features, and actively obscured certain functions, with a plethora of too many and often unorganized sub-categories. Some of you out there felt I...
Game of the Year articles are always tough for me to write. With my rapidly growing backlog crushing down upon me, I find that I do not play very many games in the year of their release. This becomes a problem at the end of the year when everybody's gathering together their "Best of 200X" lists, because hey, news flash: I only just finished Bayonetta last month . So, as some people tend to do,...
I've hardly been a critic of the previous iterations of the Xbox Dashboard. Sure, there have been some small complaints here or there, but never have I felt genuine offended by the way things were laid out. That all changed with the release of the 2011 Xbox Dashboard. While on the surface it's generally pretty usable, there are a lot of things about it that feel like they were constructed by un...
There was a post on NeoGAF recently about "that game" from your childhood. We all had "that game", the one that basically turned gaming from a casual hobby in to something we dedicated a significant portion of our free time to. The response I wrote on there was actually fairly long and involved, so I figured I'd transfer it over to here because it'd probably make a good blog. If you've known me...
Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, have you ever wanted to listen to me speak in to a microphone? I'll be you have, and today you're in luck because I've appeared on one of these new-fangled "pod casts". The "pod cast" in question is the Nitrobeard Beardcast , a podcast run by some cool dudes I know. Actually, this can be considered my illustrious return to the podcasting arena....
A brief recap: June 2010, I found out I won a contest for about $2000 worth of Xbox Live Gold and Microsoft Points (a "lifetime", in their words). It took me six or seven months, but I sold most of it off and ended up buying a handful of new goodies with it, most importantly some new PC hardware that finally put me in the same generational ballpark as everyone else. I can now comfortably run Cr...
It used to be that I was the kind of person who only updated his PC hardware once every six or seven years. That meant I was often two whole generations behind on game hardware - sometimes more. That's changed lately, as I've found myself upgrading my hardware every couple of years or less - going from seriously old and busted to pretty average hardware. This has, among other things, afforded m...
Ever since reading Sega-16's interview with Tom Kalinske, I have been shown a side of Sega I never knew existed - one that I've found continually fascinating. Unfortunately, Sega-16 has completely redesigned their site and never bothered to re-publish these fantastic articles, so the best I can give you is a Google Cache link . That doesn't really matter, though, as I've stumbled upon something...
NeoGAF has a habit of taking gaming news way more seriously than most other places would, and half the fun of an event like E3 is observing all of the arguments and meltdowns that follow as the big three run through their press conferences. Thus, when arguments quickly sparked in to flamewars about how powerful Nintendo's new console is (or isn't), how many jaggies were in that HD Zelda screens...
There may be grumpy old men who hate April Fools day for all of the attempted trickery that goes around. But honestly, as far as the internet is concerned recent April Fools Days have started to resemble something similar to Halloween - everybody figuratively dons their own silly masks to both entertain and occasionally frighten (but never for very long). The only truly mean part of April Fools...
I knew I was in for a particularly craptastic treat when I saw a game based on Battle: Los Angeles had gone up on Xbox Live this morning. When a licensed videogame isn't even high enough quality to see a disc-based retail release, it's a good idea to avoid it at all costs. I, on the other hand, having a morbid fascination with train wrecks, immediately set upon downloading the game and giving i...
Four years ago I lost the source code to this in a HDD crash. A little over a week ago, I recovered it. I've spent this last week fixing up the game to get it in to a functional state so I could release it. There's a ton more information about the game in its readme.html file . I highly suggest you read it. You may be asking yourself, "Why did you make a Sonic fangame based off of the worst Son...
I've talked about SurveySavvy before. I guess there's a lot of services like this out there now, but to my knowledge, SurveySavvy was one of the first - basically, you sign up to do consumer opinion surveys and they reward you with cash. You fill out a bunch of information when you sign up - your likes, dislikes, income, age, so on and so forth, and they use that profile to send you what basica...
Behold, my haul of hauls You may remember that back in June, I was contacted about winning one of those Xbox "Download & Win" Sweepstakes. You know the type - you see it on the dashboard from time to time, where an advertising something wants you to download a set of gamerpics with their branding and that counts as your entry. I won "a lifetime supply" of Xbox Live Gold and 32,000 Microsoft poi...
Jeeze, what happened here? For those of you who know me, I don't buy videogames that often. The number of videogames I wanted to beat - let alone just play - was pretty simple: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ( on Dungeon 8 ) Mass Effect ( Just left the Citadel ) Bully ( Played one time ) Shadow Complex ( About halfway ) Braid ( Going back for puzzle pieces ) Shadow of the Colossus ( Col...
I don't have long to write this as I'm about to head off to a family get-together, so it'll be brief. Sonic Riders (GC) Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition Batman: Arkham Asylum (gonna have to return one of these...) Import Japanese Sonic Jam Import Japanese NiGHTS: Into Dreams (Saturn) Import Japanese NiGHTS: Into Dreams (PS2) Official Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog 2 S...
Every year or so, GAF has a "Replay the Half-Life Series " thread. Last year, I played through Half-Life 2 and most of Episode 1 . I don't really like Episode 1, but that's another blog post entirely, but needless to say I never made it to Episode 2 . This year, I booted up Half-Life 1 . I've been holding off replaying it in anticipation for Black Mesa Source , but since it looks like Black Mes...
So Quake Arena Arcade finally came out on Xbox Live this week. If you weren't aware, Quake Arena Arcade is the XBLA port of Quake 3 Team Arena , and it was quietly announced in 2007. It's languished in development limbo since then, occasionally making playable appearances at locations like PAX. I believe at one point, John Carmack even admitted it had been flat out canceled . It's a serviceable...
The internet is wild, an untamed wilderness. There are those who seek to tame it - and sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the Internet ends up biting back. There was a time where anybody and everybody could sign up for an account on Live365 free of charge and start their own internet radio station. For as long as I can remember, I've always been weirdly fascinated by broadcasting. The creati...
Finished this one up last night but was way too tired to write a blog about it. If you’re starting out with memories of the Sonic Rush games fresh in mind, Sonic Colors will be immediately disorienting. The game is built upon on the Sonic Rush engine, and though the basics of control remain somewhat familiar, nearly every aspect of how the player interacts with the world has changed. All of the...
So earlier tonight, there was a pricing error on the Games for Windows Live Marketplace. Somebody forgot to carry a zero and Age of Empires III was listed for the low low price of $0.10. Given that I really like Age of Empires, I jumped on the chance. Amusingly enough, since I didn't have a credit card on file, it let me buy the game using Microsoft Points . Sure, 10msp is more money than $0.10...
I've been posting reviews here day-and-date with TSSZ, but this is a fairly important review to me, so it's going to be up on TSSZ exclusively for a while. I hope you understand. You can click here to read it, and here's a sampler to whet your appetite: In theory, using proven concepts should make Sonic the Hedgehog 4 a game that would be difficult to screw up. Unfortunately, it’s lacking in on...
So like two months ago I said I was going to write more blogs. And I didn't. You can blame twitter for that, I guess. It makes it a lot harder to care about writing a blog when I get all of my thoughts out in 140 characters or less, and qualitative discussion about videogames is better served with reviews . I don't even remember what I wanted to write more blogs about - I guess at one point I w...
Hey duders. Have several blogs churning in the ol' noggin that I want to write, but I figured this could be its own separate thing. You may remember back in late May/early June where I was told that I won some stuff ? Well it finally came today. Yep. My "lifetime" of Xbox Live Gold and 32,000 Microsoft points arrived in a big box... full of smaller boxes, containing 30 individually packaged 12-...
So I just downloaded and played the Crackdown 2 demo for the first time. The video you see above was actually me livestreaming the game over at my uStream channel , and it's about 30 minutes long. After having played it once... eh. I don't know that it's as fun as the original Crackdown was. Okay, sure, it still has that awesome power-up system, and yeah, there are plenty of orbs to collect, bu...
So with Screened.com going up, I registered over there. If you want to follow me, be my guest . I'm really glad Screened opened, incidentally. I've tried editing IMDB in the past, but their editing guidelines are a little too strict; despite perfectly following their obtuse submission rules, a vast majority of the content I tried to add to IMDB was never approved. Meanwhile, Screened lets me go...
As somebody who only owned Halo 3 for the first time as of three weeks ago, but has been playing multiplayer shooters on the PC for nearly a decade... Reach makes me want to never touch Xbox Live ever again. I don't care about all the little technical discussions people are having about grenades being overpowered or how much this is like Shadowrun (though, for the record, I enjoyed the Shadowru...
Let's get this out of the way first: Sands of Destruction review . I am not terribly proud of the conditions the review was written under, but I committed to writing it four months ago and that's how it's gonna be. As always, a sample: Mechanically, Sands of Destruction is both very similar and very different to the standard structure of a Japanese Role-Playing Game. Dungeons are littered with...
It is 5:26am. There are birds chirping. Ryan, Dave, Vinny and Josh just signed off of the live stream. As of writing this, Original Xbox Live is still... well, live . I only owned one Xbox 1 game that has Xbox Live, and that was Forza Motorsport . For most of the night, despite only having played the game three times in my entire life, I played Forza. And only Forza. For probably close to 5 hou...
If you haven't been paying attention, I posted a new video review at TSSZ . I've mirrored it here on GiantBomb . It was for the Xbox 360 version of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. I have to say that I really liked the game. It's got some kinks to work out, but there's a solid foundation to be had. I should review the DLC like I did with Sonic Unleashed, but $7 for one track and one extra vehicle...
So my DS Lite's hinge is finally showing signs of falling apart. I always figured I was immune, but just tonight, I snapped it closed and noticed it was awfully loose feeling. Part of the hinge on the right is starting to detach. Apparently it's about $50 to get it repaired at Nintendo, but I am desperately trying to save for a new video card. On top of that, my Playstation 2 is also on the ver...
So I've been against Xbox Live Gold for a really long time. Not against it as a concept, mind you, but against it as a product. A monetized service . In my opinion, Xbox Live Gold is a ripoff, and that those who choose to defend the service are being tricked and hypnotized by a very carefully executed marketing effort and brand management team. There was a very strong sentiment at first that Xb...
Wow, that took a lot longer than I expected. It was over a month ago that I mentioned I was writing a review for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks . As it turns out, the last couple of dungeons and the final boss encounter turned out to be a bit tougher to crack than I expected and on top of that was struck with a little sickness known in some circles as "being lazy" for a week and a half. The...
So Sega announced Sonic the Hedgehog 4 . For a 50 second teaser that only shows 4 seconds of gameplay tops, it speaks volumes about what could be going on behind the scenes with the game. Like what? The Game Is Already "Done" Before Sega took them down, there were images on the site ( Sonicthehedgehog4.com ) that declared that the game would be released July, 2010. They have been since replaced...
I have a lot of text files on my HDD. Game ideas, dreams I've had, forum posts I want to make, emails I've written and want to save, emails I've yet to write, game reviews, etc. This is one I apparently wrote (or at least saved to my HDD) in February of 2008. That makes it about two years old. I believe it was originally a forum post that I made and liked, so I saved it to my HDD. It is, joking...
Another review is in the can! This time, for Phantasy Star Zero on the Nintendo DS. As always, a sampling: Phantasy Star Zero , as the name implies, is set up as a prequel of sorts to Phantasy Star Online – though the story of the two games never actually connect to one another, and only share vaguely similar themes. Regardless, Zero uses this as a jumping-off point, tinting the entire game wit...
Been browsing Amazon a lot recently, for obvious reasons . Even though I ended up spending pretty much all of the money on my Mom in Christmas presents for her, I've still continued to look around (and add stuff to my wish list , because they run a wish list sweepstakes every Christmas) and I am constantly shocked at just how much money certain Amazon-affiliated retailers are trying to charge f...
It's "portable". I used to own a Virtual Boy. True story. My local Albertsons (supermarket chain, for those who don't know) was holding a drawing for a Virtual Boy sometime in September. I wanted one simply on the virtue that it was a new videogame thing , and I liked videogames. Being about 14 years old with nothing better to do, I'd swing by the store on my mile-long walk home from school and...
So those of you who keep tabs on my Youtube channel may have noticed I uploaded some video of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat over the weekend - the Gamecube version. It's in my top ten favorite games of all time; the physical sensation of hitting the drums combined with the flow and rhythm of the game - both musically and interactively - really appeals to me in a big way. Whenever I play Jungle Beat,...
Shout out goes to Gump for pointing me to this (because Gametrailers certainly didn't tell me - at least, not yet) but the winners for that Gametrailers contest have finally been announced , almost a week after the original date of announcement. As I feared , I did not win - but the good news is that it would seem I lost only by small margin, and the guy who beat me most definitely deserves the...
'Sup. I probably should have posted about this earlier, but I forgot. New text review! Mario & Sonic Winter Olympics for the DS . Hoo-yah. If you want a little sampler, have at it: But the real meat of Mario & Sonic , one would think, is the all-new “Adventure Tours” mode, replacing “Mission Mode” from the original Mario & Sonic game. Adventure Tours is a full-fledged story mode for the game, t...
So Gametrailers is having a video contest. Or, should I say, was having a video contest, because the deadline for entries is in about three hours. The contest itself was to make a scary, game-related halloween video. A few years back, I won $1000 (in Gamestop gift cards) for a video I did, and loving Halloween, I decided I'd give it a shot again. The prize this time is $500 on Amazon, which obv...
Just heading to bed (yes, at 6am). I've fired up The Graveyard Shift's live audio stream if you want to give it a listen - hit up: http://www.graveyardshift.tk/ or http://blazemp3.sepwich.com/graveyard/ Got 27 hours of Halloween music and stuff queued up, should be a good time. Remember: You can also listen on your PS3 or your Wii! If you're hearing a weird bumper about SAGE or whatever, that s...
So yeah. Here's that thing I mentioned in my last blog post. Sort of a minigame-fangame thing that's kind of like Pac-man and kind of not. If you want to download it, hit up this link right here . Everything about this game is pretty simple - if you've ever played Pac-Man, that's more or less what's going on here, though there are a few key twists. It'll probably be more fun if you figure those...
Remember that Halloween game I mentioned in my last blog post? Well, finally, here's a screenshot of it. What was initially going to be a very quick, very simple "weekend project" has had a number of setbacks. Most of the kinks have been finally worked out so expect this little guy to be done by Monday at the latest, I hope. But don't expect much. I know some of you out there in internet-land k...
So Halloween's here. If you've been following me long enough, you know that it's close to my favorite holiday. For the last two years I've done The Graveyard Shift , an internet... thingy. The first year it started out strictly as an audio-based webcast, live, all day on October 31st. The first year was a rousing success - I averaged a good 60 listeners or so. The second year, last year, is whe...
So I'm hot off trying the demo for Need for Speed: Shift . I came away a little more impressed with the "you feel like you are driving" stuff than I figured I would. GRiD does a great job of that already, with smart camera movement that really gives you the feeling of bouncing around a vehicle as you take turns at 50mph - but Shift takes the next step. Unfortunately, that's about all that impre...
It occurred to me that maybe I should post about this here because some of you might not notice otherwise, but I just completed my next video review. I chose Shenmue . It was actually supposed to go up on September 9th, but the 150gb of video (about 4 hours worth) took several days to process , and it took me several more days to stitch it all together in to a coherent video. I've also posted t...
Pretty much since I bought my Easycap 2.0 , something has been bothering me. Get in Line The more video savvy folks on GiantBomb may know what the image to the left is. It's the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts demo, straight off my capture device. Standard-Definition video is interlaced - which is a fancy term meaning that the lines of pixels that make up an image are divided in to two groups: "Eve...
(Did the video get cut off? Click here ) Every now and then I pull out my copies of Rollcage for the PC and Rollcage 2 for the Playstation. Though everybody always associates developer Psygnosis with Wipeout as far as racing games are concerned, I was always more partial to Rollcage. The controls are not nearly as floaty as you get in Wipeout (seeing as all the cars in Rollcage have, y'know, wh...
The last four weeks or so have been quite the whirlwind. For all six of you who care out there, the Sonic Amateur Games Expo came and went, and with it, I had to sift through and write 22 reviews . That has proven to be sort of mentally draining (it was last year, too) so I haven't really gotten a chance to do anything for my monthly update for my own game , either. I'm currently trying to pull...
Been meaning to post about this one for a while now. Some of you may remember all of that game footage that was floating around out there of that Wii emulator that was running games in HD resolutions . I may be a little bit late to the party, but there's a Dreamcast emulator that can do the same thing - except it has a nifty feature that can actually display Dreamcast games in wide screen, even...
Been a while since I blogged, so I will throw you a bone. I did up this video comparing all three versions of Turtles in Time (Arcade, SNES, XBLA) and I guess I got featured for it on Gametrailers and everything. There's a version on my Youtube channel if that matters, too. I guess there's another comparison video floating around out there, maybe an official one or something - I didn't know it...
So at this point I am pretty sure that the people who are on the approval committee for Xbox Community Games are trolls. Last time I checked, I found a game that was basically a re-skinned XNA coding example . That means they took pre-existing code written by developers at Microsoft (designed to help fledgling coders understand how to do certain things), changed some textures, and tried to sell...
* Now talking in #allthecoolkids * Topic is 'WELCOME TO SHENANIGANZA 09: LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR | I cant believe keith ledger won the oscar for best supporting actor, I saw the black night and he was the worst riddler I ever seen, jack nicklaus was way better and he is a golf legend | Sonic is officially legal, today ;) Go get him, ladies! | ' * ChanServ sets mode: +o BlazeHedgehog blaze...
Today is the 18th Anniversary of the release of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis. It also marks 8 years since Sonic Adventure 2 . Saying that makes me feel really, really old, because Sonic Adventure 2 doesn't feel like it came out that long ago. But yeah. Sonic's 18 years old! It kind of snuck up on me, I guess. Sonic fans usually quietly celebrate this day, but I had completely spaced...
I swear I'd lose my head if it wasn't screwed on. Wow, I've never played a Bonk game before. So I decided to try Super Bonk. This game is like a fever dream. There's this candy. If I eat one candy, I grow very large. If I eat the other candy, I grow very small. If I press the Y button while small, tiny Bonk will yell "RAGE!" at enemies (the letters of "RAGE!" can also be stood on, as if i was a...
A friend of mine loves my Sonic Unleashed videos but doesn't like the game itself. He kinda-sorta issued a challenge to me to try and make Sonic 2006 look good. This is the end result. I honestly didn't expect anything that happened, but let's just put it this way: re-adjusting to playing a bad game like Sonic 2006 after six months of playing Sonic Unleashed is extremely difficult. Speaking of...
PC Box Art I'm pretty floored at the announcement of Left4Dead 2. And the weird thing is, I seem to be in the minority. Outside of a few of my friends, most people seem to be cheering at the prospect of Left4Dead 2. I, personally, don't get it. The original Left4Dead came out seven months ago at full price . Despite being in development for two or three years, it contained barely two hours wort...
Youtube recommends you videos based on what you've recently watched and what is in your favorites list. It recommended a video to me just now where the title was completely in Japanese except for two words: "Big Rigs". Surprisingly? The video turned out to be Alex Navarro's (legendary) Big Rigs Gamespot Review . I just find it to be really weird and kind of awesome that a bunch of Japanese peop...
More Sonic Unleashed DLC, more Sonic Unleashed DLC reviews . It's a really big DLC pack this time, and it's an equally big review to go with it - it's actually a little more in-depth than most of my reviews, so maybe it's worth a read. This has been kind of a ridiculously busy week/month. Plumbing problems, computer problems, producing a video review, reviewing a new Sonic Unleashed DLC pack......
Last time on Dragon Ball Z : Ashuku, my cousin, gives me a bunch of spare computer parts. We put it all together but we end up messing my current HDD up trying to re-install Windows on it and doing it wrong. I eventually get a new HDD. Computer works fine for a while until summer rolls in and on a particularly hot day it bluescreens. From here on out, the PC continues to blue screen whenever th...
Figured I'd be nice and topical if I reviewed the PS1 Klonoa and the PS2 Klonoa, together, in one review. In actuality, this one was actually kind of a pain in the butt to produce. I had all kinds of trouble writing it, capturing video for it, voicing the dialog, and editing the video! It took me probably around a week and a half to put this video together, when it took me around three days to...
So, hey, there was new Sonic Unleashed DLC, and since part of my job description for where I work entails writing a review of the DLC, I have done so . Sampler: It was sort of weird, when you think about it. I’m the kind of guy who defaults all his games to “easy mode”, and yet, here I was , starting to really enjoy the Sonic Unleashed DLC in spite of the fact it was basically a glorified “Hard...
So I've had this problem with my computer, right. When it gets hot it starts making this high-pitched whistling sound and if it keeps up it'll eventually shit the bed. I've spent probably around $200 trying to fix it, replacing each component inside of my system one at a time, over the span of a little over a year. New DVD burner, New PSU, New RAM, new video card, and finally new motherboard. I...
Well, I had wanted to embed the version I uploaded to Gametrailers, but Gametrailers is really starting to suck these days. It used to be you could get "points" to spend in their goofy store, and you got points for using site or people watching your videos. They changed all that around now and half the site is currently broken and there's no economy for these points or anything so basically, it...
GiantBomb edited my QOTW submission a bit for time (which I kind of expected), so I figured maybe some of you guys out there in videoland might like to see the long version as I talked a bit more about my memorabilia and where both pieces came from.
( Thanks to Luchadeer eating the last one, I guess I have to re-write all of this... ) So after I basically got hired to write reviews for TSSZnews.com , I told you guys I'd give you a heads up for every review I wrote for them. I guess these count - I've been tasked with doing write-ups for the Sonic Unleashed DLC packs that have been coming out every two weeks. It started with me just doing t...
March 18, 2009: The First Flowers of Spring! March 26, 2009: BLIZZARD! Oh, Colorado
Bought some new video cables to capture video with today. The difference is pretty striking! Composite (RCA): S-Video: I'd say that now, more than ever, the $15 I spent on my Easycap was well worth it. Of course, to record in that resolution I have to deal with a little bit of ghosting, but for the level of clarity I get, I'd say it's a decent trade-off. Recorded some video of the recently-rele...
( Also on Youtube ) My first try at a video review. Because of this, I decided to stick with something familiar (a game I had already written a different review for in text form) in order to test the waters.
So I just finished up the campaign part of the Halo Wars demo. I thought about capturing some video of it for this blog, but I'm sure you could just go find some Halo Wars footage and see for yourself. Especially considering the demo is like 30 minutes long and Youtube has that whole 10 minute limit. So, Halo Wars. After watching one of the recent Video Documentaries , me and Ashuku agreed that...
This was my first time trying something like this. If and when I do another one of these videos, I will see about getting the audio to mix better. So I dunno what to think about the RE5 demo. I guess there's a lot of negativity out there currently with regards to it. Me? I'm sort of indifferent. I still haven't finished Resident Evil 4 yet for whatever reason, and the RE5 demo doesn't leave a v...
I liked the Tony Hawk games back in the day - but after Tony Hawk 2, I did not get a chance to play a skateboarding game again until Tony Hawk's Project 8. Project 8 was a lesson in frustration for me - As I saw it, the game more or less expected you to be a Tony Hawk master, and playing the game was, right from the start, an up-hill battle. The level of skill the game expected you to have and...
Just playing with some new toys (Sony Vegas 9 and my EasyCap).
Not the greatest video quality, but for only $15... Almost no lag, too, which is great.
Pour one out for my homie, Scary Larry. Oh hey, Gamepro picked up that Sega Blog story I wrote. Sure, they are the bottom rung on the "big professional videogame media" ladder, but at least its ON the ladder, right? Man, thinking about Gamepro reminds me it was them who got me in to reading videogame magazines way back in the day. They had a huge, two-part Sonic the Hedgehog 3 strategy guide a...
A few hours ago I completed an article for the website I work for entitled " The Blog Sega Doesn’t Want You to Read ". A teaser: Maybe you’ve heard of this story before, and maybe you haven’t: Back in 2006, an anonymous Blogger by the name of “jpeg” appeared, claiming to be somebody within the game industry. He made various posts about both his personal life and his job (like any normal Blogger...
So, it's 2009. The older you get, it seems, the faster time flies. Does that mean I'm having fun? I suppose if I have to ask that question, I already know the answer... honestly, though, I don't even know what I'm talking about right now. The weirdest part? Next year is 2010. It kills me to say that. 20 10 . 2010 is one of those dates that was always referenced as the far flung future where eve...
So, thanks to Ashuku , I scored a free copy of Two Worlds on the PC. Two Worlds being a terrible Oblivion ripoff. But, believe it or not, I had fun with the Two Worlds Xbox 360 demo - mainly just because it was really easy to goof around. Walk in and try to kill an entire town. Battle against grizzly bears and ghosts. The full version is no different. Man, hell of a quest that was. I didn't eve...
And, at a little over 2000 words, my review for our site is done . It's a little bit heftier than I'd like, but I wasn't consciously trying to be verbose or anything. I checked other review lengths, and while most of them were in the 1000-1500 words range, there were a couple at 2000, so I think I'm in the clear. A sample of the review: Or was this simply my bias towards the Sonic franchise spe...
I just beat the 360 version of Sonic Unleashed. That was... pretty alright. Without spoiling the review I'm writing for our site, the game can be summed up in one phrase: "It's a good game, but... " It's not perfect, but this is probably most progressive foot the franchise has put forward since the original Sonic Adventure, and is one of the most fun 3D Sonic games since Sonic Adventure 2. And,...
They just tried to deliver my Xbox 360's coffin. They knocked once and then left. I didn't even have time to get to the door; by the time I was there, dude was already two blocks down the street. Keep in mind that I was only two rooms away, and the minute I heard the knock, I bolted to the door as quickly as I could. What the hell. It's not like I was slow about it. It probably took me ten seco...
Warning : I am about to seriously nerd out here. You may remember back in March I blogged about the leaked Sonic Unleashed screenshots. A lot has happened since then. The Werehog was revealed to almost universal "blech!" and a slow but steady stream of videos has come out of the game, each one usually focusing on a new level in the game - so far we've gotten official videos of Mazuri (Africa),...
Whew. This one was kind of a toughie to write. Initially it was a lot longer, too - I ended up rewriting it a couple of times and managed to trim out four paragraphs worth of unnecessary text. Oh well. Another review in the can! On to the next one, I suppose.
It started out kind of lame, but eventually I really began to like the game. And then.... that... that ending . Really, really stupid. That's all I'll say. Expect my review in the next few days.
Hooray. I think I've got this ready and working. Happy Halloween, kids. (If you don't understand, you can click those)
This is a really cool idea for a game. Unfortunately, I say this because it's also an idea I had three years ago and never acted on - except my idea was for a platformer. Platformer games are pretty much a dead genre at this point, with only Super Mario Galaxy and Ratchet & Clank Future existing as stand-out entries in the genre. Sonic games, as far as I'm concerned, don't count. My concept wou...
Here's another review for you. http://www.tssznews.com/2008/09/21/review-slew-shadow-the-hedgehog/ I debated on writing this because most people already know it was a bad game, but I managed to sneak in my own flavor to make it worth reading.
Mmm... liquid cherry blood candy.
I never actually expected to get anything out of it, but some awesome guy out there by the name of Logan actually sent me some money to repair my Xbox. I kind of sort of know Logan from a community we're a part of, but I never thought we knew each other well enough for an exchange like this - which just makes him all the more awesome for it, if you ask me. Big thumbs up to him. Problem is, I lo...
Wow, that was a big letdown. I just played the demo. Controls are way too slippery and the trick variety leaves a lot to be desired. Your bike just doesn't feel very nimble. And I was so excited, too.
Happy Birthday, Dreamcast ol' girl. Quoth the Youtube: Whew. "I know, I'll just do a short video for the Dreamcast's anniversary, it won't take long." Ten hours later, here we are. A special thanks to the nullDC emulator, which allowed me to record all this Dreamcast footage. I didn't get all the games I wanted in here, but I got all I had time for. I had planned on SA1 and House of the Dead 2,...
So remember how I said I didn't want to even think about reviews for a while? I lied. Sort of. I started writing a blog about my experience with playing American McGee's Grimm , but about halfway through writing the blog, it dawned on me that it sounded an awful lot like a review. So, uh, that's basically what it ended up becoming . I didn't plan on writing a review for it, and to tell you the...
I was going to say, "this has been a long week", when, in fact, it has been a long month. It seems like whenever I breathe a sigh of relief something new crops up . It started with two or three days of hardcore, deep cleaning on the house. You know, that sort of yearly clean everybody calls spring cleaning? Around here, it's summer cleaning. You wake up, start cleaning, and 24 hours later you p...
Sonic: The Fated Hour got featured on the front-page rotator on Moddb and as a result it is the #1 game on the site right now. :D
Yup. If you've been waiting for the demo, it's here . Make sure to drop by the Sagexpo.org booths page to give me a thumbs up if you like it.
Nothing, probably. I need to buy a new motherboard soon, I need to keep working on my game so I don't miss my new deadline (the 16th), I need to get ready for SAGE as I am supposed to be covering the event for the website I work for . Not to mention Microsoft wants to talk to me about my "Xbox Experience" (which reminds me, I need to respond to that email after I write this blog). And then ther...
Those Digital TV converter boxes suck. I got one last night because the TV in my room still uses antenna. It's like, okay, every channel is crystal clear. That's cool. There are channels I can now watch that I could not watch before because the picture was too fuzzy. Like, now, I guess I could watch Saturday Morning Cartoons on KidsWB or whatever if I the mood struck me. But... if you've ever h...
So I bought another new Power Supply for my PC hoping that would fix the BSOD problem. If the sound coming from my case is any indication, it did not. That most likely narrows the cause of BSODing down to the Motherboard itself, which comes with a massive string of its own problems - after all, the last time I changed motherboards (a little under a year ago, might I remind the viewers at home),...
This is sort of a bummer: Your submission to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has been rejected. Moderator Comment: Please work with the existing article When I wrote the volume of information I gave for the game, there was no existing article to speak of. And Sonic 2 was one of the first full-length articles I wrote for GB, meaning I do not have it saved to a text file (everything from Sonic 3 onwards , h...
Woo, I am writing full pages for various games around the GB database. I've written entire, top-to-bottom pages for Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 today. They're pending approval. Tomorrow, I plan on giving Sonic & Knuckles the same treatment and possibly even Sonic Adventure and/or Sonic Adventure 2. Depends on how much time I have. Gotta go pick up the car from the repair place tomorrow, which...
Hello, internet. Most of you crazy cats know me as BlazeHedgehog, a name I adopted when I was like 15 years old and never bothered to replace. I feel like I have to say that now because I am 25 now and being called BlazeHedgehog feels a bit silly, but none-the-less, it is my identity on this series of tubes. My real name is Ryan - I'll leave my last name a mystery though no doubt some of you we...