Areala

I wish I could get funny looks for having a Jaguar hooked up to my TV...alas, no Jaguar, and no copy of Aliens vs. Predator to play on it. :(

Was cleaning and ran across an issue of Game Buyer magazine that I didn't remember having, so I added minor update to the Wiki about how Ultra Game Players became Game Buyer briefly before finally being cancelled by Imagine back in 1998. Also, Akator has very graciously offered to cover shipping of a nice load of things to be scanned and uploaded to the site as donated by me. Akator, my brother has them now, and he said expect them to be shipped out within the next week or so after he gets paid. My apologies for scant work lately; we're in the process of trying to do a lot of cleaning in preparation for a move that may happen within the next year, and so most of my free time has been focused on that. In another month or so, though, I may have another box of goodies ready to be shipped to someone, either for sale on Chasethechuckwagon or else for scanning if they aren't already in our archives. We'll see what my frenzy uncovers next! *huggles* Areala

$10 might be higher, but the cheaper games have mostly been Sony imprints (Spyro, etc...) where there's no need to pay a secondary company money to publish them on the network. You'll note games like Rampage and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were more than $6 because of the requirement to pay Midway and Konami money to get the rights to distribute them via the PSN. Since Capcom is a third-party developer, it doesn't surprise me to see them releasing RE:DC for a bit more cash. And it's still a heck of a steal when you consider the pain of trying to find a used copy in decent enough shape to play for many parts of the world.

Mmmm...Lita... :-9 Sorry, what about cosplay?

The mind boggles. Truly. *huggles* Areala

That is, hands down, my favorite issue of PSM ever; sadly I don't own the issue any longer, but I LOVED Adam Warren's artwork whenever he contributed it to the magazine (Valkyrie Wylde...*purr*), and the article on how to improve RPGs was spot-on perfect.

So...in the fight between Lee Trevino and Golf, I assume that Golf won since it is still around and Mr. Trevino is not?

For an ad that's supposed to get you to want to play the game, it sure doesn't tell you much at all about what kind of game it is, does it?

No matter who they cast as the body, we all know that this will fail unless they get John St. John to voice the man himself. "Damn! Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride!" Best FPS opening ever.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/05/14/...ment-rent-free/ For this week only, Sony is giving away a free personal space to users of the North America Playstation Home app. All you need to do is log in to the game, go to the Mall area, and enter the Estates store where you can find the Chamber Apartment for a free download. It's really cool, with sort of a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings fantasy vibe to it. In addition, Sony posted a video showing some upcoming Home releases, and sneakily included a code redeemable for free downloadable Home swag: a Koi hat for boys and a Shark hat for girls. Those of you who don't want to strain your eyes making it out, just punch this in to the "Redeem Codes" area of the PSN Store and enjoy your two new Home headgears: MC56-BXBC-349K *huggles* Areala

I never understood this game. Ever. I rented it (without a manual, of course) and tried to figure out what the heck to do, and failed miserably. A friend who got it for his birthday was equally stumped despite having the instructions which were utterly no help at all. I just recently watched a Speedrun of it on YouTube and decided there was no way on Earth I'd have ever figured out how to get past the dragon, so I'm glad I never bought it.

This is one of my favorite co-op titles on the NES. My brother and I sunk HOURS into this game, and the first time we beat it at the hardest difficulty level we were so excited that we threw down our controllers and one of them (he claims it was mine, I swear it was his) hit the Reset button before we got to see the ending. So we had to go all the way back through it AGAIN on the hardest setting and beat the Shadow Master a second time so we could watch the real ending to the game. We felt like we were playing Ghosts 'n Goblins...

Not exactly related to the NES classic, but for this week only, the PSN is offering Bionic Commando: Rearmed for 50% off the normal price. At $10 this game was a bargain; at $5, it's an absolute steal and I urge anybody who loved the original to pick up Rearmed. It's SUPER awesome.

OK, trying something new. I figured since we just got SNES Buyer's Guide 1 scanned and uploaded, I'd make a section for it on the Wiki. Questions, comments, edits and corrections all gratefully welcome. I struck out on my own a bit, and there's all sorts of things I could have or should have done differently. Please feel free to make suggestions! Super NES Buyer's Guide Issue 1 *huggles* Areala

Bionic Commando frustrated me to no end, because I just could NOT get the hang of using the bionic arm to swing around instead of having a Jump button. But then, one day, I picked up the game again and suddenly everything just clicked. I played it through to completion in one sitting then sat back and congratulated myself for having mastered what started off as such a freakishly annoying control scheme and powering through the game to kill Hitl...er, I mean uh...MASTER-D. Man, Nintendo of American had some wonky censorship policies back in the day.

Another forgotten classic of the NES age, and one plagued by a sick difficulty level and fairly steep learning curve from what I remember. Also, because of the graphical limits of the NES, for the longest time I thought that the main character transformed into some sort of space puppy when he went to ride on his sled.

I remember renting this game when I was younger, but getting so seriously irritated with how difficult it was. That first stage was a killer! Needless to say, years later I wound up with it in my collection and I absolutely love it now.

Sorry to hear of your departure, but you'll receive no sympathy from me. I haven't donated a dime to Retromags or Phillyman, all I did was volunteer to work on the Wiki. That's right: I take magazines that I already own or ones that I've downloaded from the site, and I index them so people can look up and see where their favorite (or least favorite) games appeared in given publications. Seriously, it's about the easiest thing in the world to do: all you need is the ability to operate a keyboard and the willingness to spend a few minutes going through a magazine (something you probably already enjoy if you found this site) and typing up some sections and titles. Add to that the fact that the staff has bent over backwards to help me make the best of my contributions in terms of providing templates and offering suggestions for fixing up my first few pages when I was still taking baby steps, and this is by far the EASIEST way to get access to the full potential of a site like this that I've ever experienced, not to mention the most fun. There aren't any ratios to honour, no torrent seed percentages to sit at, and no outlay of cash required. Plus, by using the magazines that I've downloaded from the site to help improve the Wiki indexes, I feel like I'm at least paying back the community for giving me access to them in the first place. Hopefully, this makes it so that those who aren't sure about using one of their download slots on a certain magazine or who would prefer not to wait 15 minutes between Rapidshare downloads to get a new file are able to best decide where to focus their efforts. You've already registered an account here, which does away with the full-page ads. You've accumulated 4 posts; 21 more of which upgrades your access and lets you avoid the Rapidshare-only downloads on three issues per seven day period. With a little more work, you could easily clear the 1.8 gigabyte limit and enjoy giving back to the community, maybe inspiring others to do the same. Wouldn't THAT be pretty cool? I think so. It's a shame you'll be missing out. *huggles* Areala

Did a little bit of shopping today and picked up "Overblood" and "Nightmare Creatures" for the PS1. $3.00 each, couldn't go wrong: discs in beautiful shape, complete case, artwork and manuals. Areala was happy. ^_^

Well, I got my replacement PS3 today. When I went to set it up, though, it fully hit me just how much I had lost: that empty hard drive with no game data installs on it, no downloads, etc... I feel kind of the same way you feel after you move into a new house. It's a good feeling to be in the new space, but then you remember how many good memories you had at your old place and the daunting task of unpacking and setting up your life anew and it seems so overwhelming. Stupid, I know, since it's a video game system, but still...guess I just get teary-eyed over the dumbest things. In any case, it's back up and I'm back online now. All I need to do is convince myself that it's OK to start playing Fallout 3 for another 90+ hours again... *wince*

PSM Issue 42 indexed. I've been slacking off lately; my apologies. *huggles* Areala

Even if they didn't, I sure did. Yum yum! *huggles* Areala

Heh...see "Atari Jaguar".

People were amazingly ready for the Saturn; Sega had been hyping it for months prior to the release. What killed the Saturn was Sony's announcement that the Playstation would be priced $100 cheaper combined with the fact that it had arguably the weakest launch lineup of any system that generation outside of Japan and that its dual-CPU architecture made programming for it extremely difficult for third-party developers. It didn't help that Sega at the time was spouting such nonsense that 2D games were dead (when releasing a plethora of 2D fighters and platformers of their own) and that gamers weren't interested in RPGs (despite the fact that Final Fantasy VII became the best-selling RPG in history and guaranteed market dominance for Sony in 1997), and it also didn't help that they burned KB Toys with their early-release marketing stunt, which resulted in KB executives telling their store managers to not only ignore anything Sega sent them, but to actively remove anything Sega-related that was already in their stores to make room for Nintendo and Playstation-related items. Sega is, sadly, a textbook-style example of what goes wrong when people who have no idea what they are doing are put into positions of authority. Someone should seriously write an in-depth look at what happened to Sega between 1992 and 1998...I'd totally buy such a book. Maybe MIT will get around to Sega sooner or later with their new series that is looking at electronics.

Seems like they got all the important ones covered. It would have been nice to see mention in the Thrill Kill article though that the game basically was released with different artwork, music and FMVs as "Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style" which included all the same over-the-top-style blood, gore and fatalities that were what caused EA to kill "Thrill Kill" in the first place, but hey, nitpicking is nitpicking. *huggles* Areala