Here is Simple 2000 Series volume 101: Oneechanpon 2. The game gets boring real quick. It's a budget game though, so what do you expect? I recorded the beginning of level 2. I didn't play it long enough to get to the boss fight. At the end of the first level you fight some kid with a sword, and then I unlocked a new character. I would assume you unlock something from the second boss as well.

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Here's some footage from Transformers Tataki for the PS2. I'm starting to love this game. At first I was put off by the bad voice acting and the clunky controls but I've gotten used to it and I love playing as my favorite G1 characters. Please note that I used the theme song from the movie for the opening sequence in the game, I think it sounds better then the weird Japanese music, which is like a remix of the TF movie theme. This is the 4th or 5th level.

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And for the hell of it the first 5 minutes or so of the original Transformers movie from 1986.

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Testing...

Here's a little taste until I get some video footage....

(Click on the thumbnails for a much larger pic)

I also received this little goodie. A month ago I pre-ordered the new Dream Theater CD at FYE. The first 500 copies receive a special autographed lithograph. Well I got the CD last month but I didn't get an autograph, until today that is. Instead of a lithograph I got an autograph of the insert included in the CD! It's got the liner notes, lyrics and everything. The best part is that it's a legitamite autograph and not some crappy stamped thing.

Last weekend I decided I should re-sign up with Gamefly. I had an account a couple years ago but I cancelled it cause I couldn't really afford it at the time and I was sick of waiting a week for games to arrive, since their only DC is in California (and its still the only one unfortunately). I went into a computer store that Sunday just to look around and I checked out their games section. There were a whole bunch of games I wanted to play, or at least try out, and I knew I would never be able to unless I went ahead and purchased the game or rented the game somehow. I decided to go the more affordable route and sign up with Gamefly again instead of risking the loss of money over a game that turns out to be garbage.

Now that I have a 360 I can rent a whole bunch of crappy games and play them just for points :), if I really wanted to that is. My first two games were Need for Speed Carbon and TMNT, both for the 360. I played NFS for 15 minutes or so and I decided I should just buy the game instead of using a Gamefly rental on it. I didn't really want to get into another racing game when I'm already knee deep in Forza 2. I have no idea why I even put NFS on my queue. I guess I needed validation that the game was good enough to purchase, and it is.

So then I put in TMNT, and man that game is a lot better then I thought it would be. The platforming sequences in the game are absolutely fantastic. The turtles feel like actual ninjas when they're running, swinging, climbing, and jumping all over the rooftops. The coolest thing about it is that the turtles are really fast. They are as fast as you'd think a ninja would be, yet they are graceful as well. I do not like platformers at all, and I don't play them but I enjoyed the platforming in TMNT quite a bit. The combat, on the other hand, is really bad. Basically you do the same 5 hit combo with just one button, over and over and over and over. The combat is very boring, the enemies are cheap and I found myself loathing the beginning of every fight and hoping to get back to the platforming right away. Sure there are some interesting co-op attacks you can do with the turtles but those take too long to pull off. You have to hold the x button down for a few seconds and then release it for the attack to work but by the time it's powered up you most likely will get hit by an enemy. The one cool thing about combat is the "rage" mode. Once you've defeated enough enemies and filled up a meter you unleash very powerful attacks that kill enemies in one hit and the game slows down to "bullet time." It's kinda neat and makes quick work of your enemies.

Even with the crappy combat system the game might be worth a purchase if it were longer. I finished the game, and got all 1,000 achievement points in about 5 hours tops. The game is extremely easy and way too short to warrant paying money for it. I had no desire to continue playing the game to unlock the bonus content after I got the achievements. That said, be sure to rent this game for easy points and an afternoon's worth of fun.

I got some more points in Forza 2 over the weekend as well. I got to level 50, finished a couple of race series, and got some achievements for purchasing all the cars in the UK, Spain and Sweden. I'm very close to the end of career mode now. I have about 5 endurance races to complete and 1 race in the professional series to complete. That is about 5 hours of gameply. With any luck I should be done with it by this weekend! I could go into arcade mode and get some points there but I have no desire to at this time.

In other news, I got my Japanese PS2 with SRWa3 and Simple 2000 series #101 on Saturday! Look for some pictures and video footage soon.

Here's the Top 5 of my Gamefly Queue:

Transformers - 360
Darkness - 360
Earth Defense Force - 360
Bullet Witch - 360
Spider-Man 3 - 360

So I mentioned to some friends of mine that there was an interview with Michael Bay in a magazine I read (I can't remember which mag for sure but I think it was Otaku USA) where he was asked a question about the designs for the Transformers in the new movie and why they are so different from the original characters from the 80s. I can't remember the exact question or his exact answer but it was something to the effect of "I'm not putting those things in my movie, they're lame!" Yes you heard it right, l-a-m-e, LAME. I don't remember the specifics but I know he said the original Transformers are lame.

I read this before the movie came out and it was just another reason for me to assume the movie was going to suck, and it did by the way, but now that I've seen the movie and I know it's garbage, this little interview with Entertainment Weekly comes out. The interviewer mentions that they watched the original 1986 movie before seeing Michael Bay's attempt at a film, then Mr. Bay says this, and I quote "Yeah, I saw 15 minutes of that movie and I wanted to put a gun to my head." What am I supposed to say to that? I'm completely speechless. I don't know if I should just ignore it, drive over to Mr Bay's home and smack him upside the head, or go to some Transformers forum andb*tch at all the losers who love the film and show them what Michael Bay thinks of the original TF that we all know and love. What do you guys think I should say to this? What would you do if someone said so many negative things about something that you love so much? I think it just makes the original Transformers that much more special. Nothing is going to be as good as, or better then the original Transformers, ever.

While we are on the subject of the new Transformers film. Here's a little review. I saw the movie on Wednesday July 4th at the 12:30 PM showing. The theater was not sold out and not really that packed either. One of the coolest things about my experience of the film is that the theater I went to gave out free Transformers comic books. Every issue was the same, it was a prequel comic to the movie. It's really short but it's cool because it's different then the 4 movie prequel comics that came out a few weeks ago.

Another neat thing is that it came with a "Robo Vision Decoder" that you are supposed to use when you buy the TF game and you can find secret codes in the game's packaging to unlock features in the game. That's cool and all but the best part is that the decoder is basically the same thing as the old tech spec decoders from the original toys in the 80s. A tech spec is a characters statistics in strength, rank, courage, skill, firepower, etc. There was a scale on the back of the box where you could find their stats but you couldn't see them without a decoder. Without it, they just looked like static on a television set. You simply place the decoder over the tech spec and you'd see a graph of all their stats. It's a really neat idea and I like how they are doing something similar for the game. Anyway, on to the movie review....

- First off, the movie is a bit long. It's around 2 hours and 20 minutes. It got a little boring in the middle before Optimus Prime showed up. Yes that's right, Prime doesn't show up until about half way through the movie. The first half of the movie is mainly about the human characters. They are the main characters in the film.

- On that note, my biggest problem, besides the fact I still hate the designs (they gave Optimus a mouth that makes him look like an ape) is that there was absolutely no character development of the Transformers themselves. The only real character development you really get is at the very beginning of the movie, then it's all about the puny humans and the Transformers just happen to be in the film. They basically exist to look "cool," transform and fight each other on screen. Oh yeah, and to sell GM cars and trucks, not to mention Mountain Dew and Xbox 360.

- Most of the Transformers were animated really weird. They seemed like monkeys or something, constantly jumping all over the place. Just the way they moved was more organic, not robotic like you'd expect. The only TF that really moved like a huge robot would is Blackout.

- There were parts of the movie where some of the TFs were made out to seem like bumbling oafs with no intelligence whatsoever, like they can't even walk without destroying everything in their paths.

- The TFs die and get injured way too easily. They've never had any kind of specific weakness like they do in this film. Humans can hurt and kill Transformers in this movie.

- This movie is not for kids, even though Michael Bay would have you believe it is (his target audience was kids to people in their 20s. See the link below for an interview with him). There were several scenes with innappropriate sexual innuendo and a completely useless scene where they talk about masturbation Yes that's right, masturbation That whole sequence was the stupidest part of the movie.

- As I said earlier this movie is about humans and the Transformers just happen to be in the movie. Some TFs have only one line in the movie. Starscream has like 2 lines, Blackout has maybe 1 line, Barricade has like 2 lines, Devastator has like one frickin word. The autobots fair a little better but even then they have only like 5 lines each, if that. And of course Prime and Megs have a good amount of lines, although some of them were quite lame. I never imagined the day where I'd here Prime say "my bad" like he was some dumb ass teenager.

- About the designs, there is so much useless detail that when they transform and even when they are moving around at times, that you can't tell what the hell part of the body you're looking at, for one. And when they transform it's just a big jumbled mess of mechanical parts that somehow end up being a robot. There's no sense to any of it. One of the fun things about Transforming a toy, or even watching the cartoon, is figuring out and noticing what part of the body becomes what. If you were to do that in the movie, you'd have to put it in slow mo to figure out how the hell they really transform. It's like Michael Bay thinks the G1 designs are too basic and too dumb for today's standards and he made them all frickin super detailed and crazy and "modern." (See my comment earlier on him calling the G1 designs lame).

The best part of the movie was the character Frenzy. Frenzy was one of Soundwave's little cassette tapes. Remember Soundwave? He was the boombox Transformer that had a bunch of minion cassette tape TFs that he'd use for recon, battle and attacking humans. In this movie Frenzy turns into a boombox and he's used for recon mainly. Basically he's the comic relief in the film and he's very entertaining.

Anothercool thing was that the Hoover Dam played an important role in the film. The very first episode in the original cartoon culminated with a memorable battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron at the Hoover Dam. This is where Prime fights with an energon saber and megatron with an energon mace. There is a scene in this movie where Prime uses something similar to his energon weapon and it's quite brutal too. So at least there was some sort of nod to the original show in this film, but this is the only important one. There is some cheesy dialogue where a character says "more then meets the eye" and there is even some dailogue from the original film where Prime and Megs fight, but it doesn't work well in this film.

So if you can't tell, I did not like this film at all. I had absolutely no expectations going into this film. I assumed it was going to suck, and it did. My only hope is that the sequel can be all about the Transformers and the only humans involved are Sam and his family, since they've now "introduced" the TFs even though they did a horrible job at it.

In other news, I purchased a Japanese PS2 and Transformers Takati (sp?), which only came out in Japan and features the original TFs and it's even in english. I don't expect to receive the game for another couple weeks but look forward to some footage from the game, as well as other crazy Japanese games in the next several weeks.

Here is that link to the interview with Michael Bay.

Achievement weekend.

This weekend I played through Marvel Ultimate Alliance again just to get the achievements released for the DLC and others I was missing. I got about 300 points over the weekend. Here are my thoughts on the new characters:

Sabretooth: At first he didn't seem all that great but once you get that "Claw Frenzy" move, or whatever it's called, he's fricking awesome, especially for boss battles. I think he's the best of the new characters. The claw frenzy move is where you repeatedly press "A" and Sabretooth just runs all over the place slashing whatever he comes in contact with and doing massive damage. It's best when you use it in combination with the berserker rage move cause then you do more damage and he slashes even faster. I also had the "Atuma's Wrath" item equipped the entire time so he always did a ton of damage. I used the Age of Apocalypse outfit and maxed out the claw damage stat. I also used Sabretooth for most of the game.

Magneto: I found him to be decent but not all that great. I think I should have used him more though. Once I got up to Mephisto's Realm and got his achievements on that level(both the costume one, talking with Prof X and Widow maker) I quit using him. His telekinesis move is great but the other moves weren't all that good. I guess if I unlocked the last two moves he might have been a lot better.

Dr Doom: Doom is a great character, one of the better DLC characters. His face mask laser blast is extremely powerful but his other moves weren't all that effective. I just used that one move the whole time. I ended up using his Secret Wars outfit and I used him almost the entire game.

Venom: This was a disappointment for me. Venom didn't have that many good moves. I found myself using that one move he has that is very similar to Thor's lighting attack and Silver Surfers rage attack. His other moves were just complete crap. Once I unlocked his costumes I stopped using him immediately.

Hulk: At first I thought Hulk was going to be awesome but he's just too slow and his moves suck. I wound up using his foot stomp move most of the time. Again, once I unlocked all his outfits I quit using him.

Hawkeye: At first I thought he sucked completely but once I got that Ice Pick move and that paralizer move, he is easily one of the better DLC characters. The ice pick freezes all enemies and then you can shoot them with the paralizer and it usually kills them in one hit from that. I used his modern outfit with the bow damage stat maxed out. Great character for bosses to, especially in tight corridors. If you save his Xtreme attack and use it on a boss you can kill them with one hit usually. He spins around firing tons of arrows and they all richochet off the walls to hit multiple times. A fun character to use overall.

Cyclops: At first he kinda sucked but then I unlocked the richochet blast move and he ended up being a decent character, especially in an area with walls, as the optic blasts constantly richochet and hit enemies multiple times. His other moves kinda suck though. I used his ultimate outfit.

Nightcrawler: Fantastic. He has a similar move to Deadpool's sword spin attack. Kills the bosses with little effort. He has a great moveset too, lots of effective attacks. I used his Age of Apocalypse outfit. My final team for the battle with Doom was Dr. Doom, Sabretooth, Nightcrawler and Cyclops.

I mainly went back to MUA to get a break from Forza 2 but after finishing it I went back to Forza once again. I got 4 achievements in like 10 minutes lol. 5 points for winning a race when you started in last place,5 points for winning a race and having the lowest PI, and 10 points for winning a race with no assists and on hard difficulty. I used that 1970 Porsche for the first achievements and then I used a maxed out U class Skyline in the Nissan Manufacturer race to get the second two. I raced on the oval track so I didn't have to change gears much, even on hard difficulty I won by a mile.

In other news I've gotten into the import video game scene and I will soon be witness to the greatness and the wackiness that is Japanese gaming. More info on that later!

So after hearing about the news of professional wrestler Chris Benoit killing himself and his family last weekend, I looked up a few of my favorite wrestlers on Wikipedia. I used to be a big wreslting fan but I haven't watched professional wrestling since 2001 or so. During the 90s and late 80s I loved the WWF and then the WCW. Hulk Hogan was always, and still is, my favorite wrestler. So I looked up his wikipedia entry and found this little nugget:

Apparently in 2005 Marvel Comics sued World Wrestling Entertainment (aka WWE or WWF before a different lawsuit) over the name "Hulk Hogan." Marvel said it was copyright infringement over the name "Incredible Hulk." I don't know the details of the lawsuit but either Marvel won or WWE settled and now they can no longer call Hulk Hogan, "Hulk Hogan." They have to callhim either "Hogan" or "Hollywood Hogan" (a name he went by during the nWo -New World Order-days). So that means any time they want to say Hulk Hogan they have to bleep out the "Hulk" part. This means that any DVD that has been released after 2005 that contains archived footage of old matches has to censor the word "Hulk." AND any still pictures (and I assume video) where Hogan has the word "Hulk" on his costume, that has to be blacked out. How freakin lame is this. Thank you Marvel for ruining my childhood memories. I was thinking about buying that Hulk Hogan DVD box set that came out a while back but I bet that thing is censored like mad. It's bad enough that they have to bleep out "WWF" thanks to the pansy assed World Wildlife Federation who sued the WWF over the name, even though the WWF had exsisted for decades and they decide to sue out of the blue. It's the same thing here. Marvel just up and decides to sue over the Hulk name for no apparent reason. If anyone has any further details regarding this lawsuit I'd love to hear them. I couldn't find anything when I searched online for it.

This is just another reason to add to my dislike of Marvel over the past year or so, the lame Civil War comic, the killing off of Captain America just to boost sales, several other lame comic books (Annihilation, The Initiative), the lame Fantastic Four sequel,and now this.

Not much going on with me, just addicted to Forza 2.  I put over 100 hours into Pokemon Diamond over the past few weeks, and then I finished up PGR3.

I started a blog up a blogger.com for the hell of it.  I'm not sure if I'll use it much or not, maybe for non video game related stuff.  I haven't been in the blogging mood lately, just addicted to games.  Anyway you can check it out at http://gigastormz.blogspot.com/ if you want.

Last night I went to the Machine Head/Megadeth/Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals) concert at the Target Center. I didn't get home until 1:30 and I only got 4 hours of sleep. Man I'm going to be tired tonight. It was worth it though. I had never seen Megadeth or any form of Black Sabbath before and that was really cool. We had seats in the lower level with a straight on view of the stage. They were great seats but it probably would have been better to be on the floor. I rarely go to concerts with seating so this was a welcome change.

Machine Head was pretty good. I had never listened to them before and I think I'll have to check out their new album. Megadeth was simply awesome. I would have loved it if they co-headlined with Sabbath, I could listen to them play for hours. It's too bad I didn't see them at a smaller club so I could see Dave Mustaine's masterful guitarwork up close and personal. They played 3 songs from their new album, United Abominations, which all sounded pretty good. They also played a bunch of stuff from Rust in Peace, and then the only song I knew the lyrics to, Symphony of Destruction. I wish they would have played Angry Again but other then that the setlist was great, albiet very short. One thing about both Machine Head and Megadeth, is that the sound quality was kinda bad. It's like they were using crappy speakers and amps or something. There was feedback most of the time and it was like the guitars were too loud for the speakers to handle. And when you compared the two bands to the way Sabbath sounded, it was like Night and Day. Megadeth/Machine Head sounded like a garage band performance but Sabbath was like the top quality sound you'd expect from a legendary band like them. I wish they could have used Sabbath's equipment or at least their sound guy.

Sabbath's setlist could have been better but other then that the show was great. It was a worth it just to see the extended version of Heaven and Hell with Tony Iommi's amazing guitar solos and the encore performance of Neon Knights was frickin awesome. The show wasn't sold out and it seemed like a lot of people weren't into it. I think it's because they were expecting songs from Sabbath's era with Ozzy but they only played songs from the 3 albums they did with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer. I'm glad they played Computer God and Sign of the Southern Cross but I wish they would have played Time Machine from Dehumanizer. Sabbath had a cool stage set to look like a castle with iron gates, towers, archway, a huge door, windows shaped like crosses and cool lanterns that were lit up most of the show. There weren't any pyros but some cool smoke and light effects. One of the effects made Dio look like the devil, a single red spotlight and a voice changing effect to make his voice sound like Satan a couple times. That was really cool. Overall it was a great show and I had fun, just wish it wasn't on a Sunday night.

As for RRW I got burned out at the end of day 5 and I didn't really play anymore games. I was sick of the constant cycle of playing a game, recording footage, wasting bandwith uploading it to GS and blogging about it. I felt like I was spending more time on Gamespot talking about what I played then the actual time I spent playing the games. Maybe next time I'll plan it out better and select only a couple games instead of a whole bunch. It was worth it just to put up the TMNT IV footage. Too bad Windows Movie Maker doesn't let me import video of SNES or NES games so I could have put it in only a few parts instead of 10.

For day five I did not get any gaming in. Yes I'm horrible, I know. Right now I'm getting ready to head off to the midnight showing of Spider-Man 3!! I can't wait to see this movie. I just hope all those damned trailers they've been showing won't ruin it for me. I feel like I've seen the whole movie already.

I managed to upload all the footage from RRW Day 3 and 4, check those out below. And for whatever reason one of my videos is featured as the Fresh Video of the Day! It's the U.N. Squadron gameplay footage. Anyone know what it takes to be featured??

I have a three day weekend so I should have plenty of time for the last two days of Retro Revival Week. Anyone have any requests for game footage from any of the games in my collection??

EDIT: I actually did get a bit of retro gaming in for Day 5.  I played U.N. Squadron again but didn't get much farther then were I got in the video.  I also played a few games on Capcom (lassics Volume 2, King of Dragons and a shooter that I've never heard of and can't remember the name.  Started with a "V" I think.  Varth, Varath, Varnak, something like that.  It was surprisingly cool. 

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Have fun with Day 6!

Once again not a whole lot of time for gaming but I did play a few games. I also picked up Spider-Man 2.1, Batman and Batman Returns on DVD at Circuit City for $9.99 each! All of them are 2 disc special editions so it was a great deal. Can't wait for Spidey 3 tomorrow! I took the day off work just to see the movie. I'll also have a lot of extra time for some retro gaming!

Final Fight - Capcom 1990 Arcade

I tried out a bunch of games on the Capcom (lassics Collection volume 1. One of which was Final Fight, probably the most well-known beat-em up out there. I played until I got a Game Over with Haggar. I recorded footage from the first level and part of the second. This game is a lot harder then I remembered. Maybe because I'm used to the SNES version and not the arcade. If you check out the Wikipedia article there is a section on censorship. Apparently there were a bunch of things censored for the US versions of the arcade game and the SNES game. I'm curious if these things were uncensored for the Capcom (lassics Collection...

Final Fantasy Tactics - Squaresoft 1997

I think I'm done with NES and SNES games for Retro Revival Week so I'm jumping into some PSOne games for the rest of the week. This is my second favorite game of all time, right behind Final Fantasy VII. Man, I used to play this game ALL the time when it came out. I know I've put in 300+ hours on it. I maxed out the game clock at 99:99:99 lol I threw in my memory card to see what game saves I had and I found one about 11 hours into the game. I recorded a battle from the main story. I think it was Barius Hill? I was surprised that I'm still good at this game. No one died in the battles I played yesterday. Video will be uploaded later tonight. It turned out to be a pretty good video, you get to see a bunch of different attacks so it's good for someone who has never played the game yet. When you watch it be sure to take note of the screams the enemies make when they die and the sounds of the weapons slashing into their flesh. Ah, the sound of death is music to my ears. I don't know why but I just love their death screams. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

I managed to upload the last part of my TMNT IV Co-op session last night as well as the footage from Day 2 of RRW. See below for those vids:

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