OK, Capcom, Thanks for cancelling Mega Man Universe, seemingly since Keiji Inafune quit the company among other things. Also, Thank you, Daletto, a.k.a Capcom Online, for literally forbidding everyone who isn't Japanese from accessing your server farm.

I wish to also thank the part of Capcom that decided to release a 'Super' Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, and who requires that every player pays at least 15 bucks for the Arcade Edition refinements of Super Street Fighter 4.

Now, I'm not often critical of a company's strategy for a year, but we currently have a Mega Man online game that's in apparent development hell, well, since the only page for it is a blog in Korean anyway, and a hugely popular, for it's niche status, Monster Hunter online game that Capcom can't release in America since Daletto is 'only for Japan', plus expansion packs for games that are likely to rake in far more than they should be.

Please, Capcom, stop serving Asia with what we want, and giving us stuff that is full of micro-transactions even after we gave you $40-50 already.

I would prefer, when Megaman Legends 3 comes out, for you to not require we pay $5 for something we already want, and you tell Daletto to start serving ALL of Capcom. Otherwise, you might just lose customers a lot more than you already have.

Final Fantasy XI
US Release date: 28th October 2003
EU Release date: 17th September 2004

Super Smash Brothers Brawl
US Release date: 9th March 2008
EU Release Date: 27th June.2008 (Confirmed)

Two major examples of delays on games for a unknown reason. The former, in the year that it took for Square-Enix to press the European Client discs, Final Fantasy 11 fell into disarray, and European gamers paid dearly for this.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which has a online tournament option, got a typical 3-4 month delay on the European release.
Now, 3-4 months might not look like much, but various games have at least that delay, with only some games companies releasing the game in the same month.
All the games with this delay have one thing in common... A major component is online play.

Let's say Diamond and Pearl came out in all areas at the same time, and Legendaries were released at the same time everywhere...
Suddenly, You don't have Europe's gamers clamoring for a good deal on GTS and only the japanese gamers actually getting one.

I have made a new rule about how to deal with games...

America, When the game comes to Europe, Be sure to do something for me, and everyone else in Europe...
Be sure to beat us senseless so we don't soil the games that Japan made for you... Apparently, We're all second-rate to you.

We have hundreds of games out for the Wii Virtual Console.
Nintendo and SEGA, as well as numerous other companies, have bent over backwards to give us a huge cross-section of gaming's history.

Well, Except SNK... Who have given the Wii 8 titles, and a disc of a further half-dozen, and the Playstation 2... Dozens.

The Playstation 2 SNK fanboys have anthologies for King Of Fighters, Fatal Fury and Art Of Fighting, and have got pretty much exclusive rights to the entire KOF Maximum Impact series.
The Wii has had the first games in KOF, Fatal Fury, Art Of Fighting and Samurai Shodown.
The Playstation format has had pretty much every single KOF game, and recently got Art Of Fighting as a anthology.

Now, SNK, I understand supporting the Playstation 2, but PLEASE, stop sending all your retro coders to the Sony devkits.
The Wii NeoGeo library needs those games!

OK, I want to play Dream Of Mirror Online or Rumble Fighter, and it looks like it might happen again with me playing Mabinogi.

What I'm talking about is the games company declaring, in the small print, 'Due to licensing issues, this game is for North America only'.

Now, I can understand some licensing issues might occur, and would accept them if there were European servers to go to.

Now, DOMO does have a European service, but Rumble Fighter and Mabinogi don't, and it seems to be the in thing now to slap a IP blocker into the code of the Open Beta.
Come on... Since when was it illegal for you to play a game?
Now, I agree that, if I wanted to play Monster Farm Online. I'd find it difficult, but hell, Come on America... Stop being the land of the oppressed and the home of the cowardly...

I am happy to be from the UK...
But, just like with anime, some stellar games are passing me by.
World Of Warcraft I'd love to play with my friend from Canada, but that has a version of IP blocking.
Guild Wars I do, and enjoy it when I can.
RF Online, well, I do play that with him.
My friend will be visiting the UK in the next few weeks...
I set him a challenge to play Mabinogi from launch to character maturation... He might just fail it, not because he's a bad player, but because now games have a new law in their code...
The one which says segregation of gamers is perfectly fine.

Publishers, you get those huge user numbers not through cutting the world up into blocks of IP addressses.
You get them by saying 'Here's our game... Play it.'
Stop blocking off licenses to make them seem even more special... It just makes them harder to sell.

OK, Codemasters have literally given away to everyone who wants them their two imported licenses, Rising Force Online and Archlord.
The item shop is only items which, really, shouldn't be in regular drops anyway, and there is plenty to do for anyone, without ever needing to pay a dime.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, we have Disney, who said, hand on heart, 'Pirates Of The Carribean is free forever', only to, mere days before release go 'Of course, Unlimited Access does require a fee...', with Limited Access being equivalent to nerfed access.

Now, I know what I like about Free-to-play, and hate about Pay-to-play.
Project Entropia is the worst kind of 'free' game, where there is no Basic Living Stipend currency, i.e a type of money that is in drops, and is earned through regular drops, as compared to the second currency, which is only earned through RMT.
However, this new beast, which flaunts a 'free forever' model, but, when you look hard enough, there's no item shop, the ****c part of a F2P game, and a necessary evil. Instead, you get a client which is ad-supported, and those ads get you... very little.

Someone tell the companies that 'Limited' Access doesn't work...
All it is, really, is lining your pockets with ad revenue above and beyond the totally unneeded subscription fee.
Free Forever means no subscription fee... so why is there one?

Name me five series with young role models in cartoons who are put in danger from threats that children should be made aware of at a young age.
Here's the catch... The cartoon has to have been made in the past 10 years.

Can't find them? If so, Well, Join the club.
I know of only a couple of situations myself, where children as young as 10-12 years old are put at risk due to their actions.

A few years back, Sonic X aired a episode where, in Japan, Maria Robotnik is shot dead.
However, to help soften the blow, In America, Maria Robotnik is captured, not shot, and has apparently died due to some other reason.
One Piece was edited for broadcast to children...
Guns, Swords, Knives, cigarettes... all kinds of things, some of them which a child can see just by looking at their parents, were edited out, sometimes poorly.
For some unfathomable reason, automatically, when kids are the target audience -
1. Signs become blank, since children apparently don't need to have literacy skills quite yet at the level where they can read simple signs.
2. Weapons are edited out of existence, since children apparently never will be shot or stabbed or otherwise murdered in cold blood.
3. If possible, character death is removed or the blow softened, since children will never encounter death...

Look, America, Your censorship is getting ridiculous.
In the 80's and early 90's, kids were regularly getting into real trouble, where they could die, where men with guns and knives were out to get them, where bombs did go off in their general vicinity...
In the 00's, apparently, though, those kids no longer appear in cartoons at all, and the guys with guns and knives had their weapons confiscated, and the bombs are all duds.
We have terrorism, child sex crimes, child murder and gun crime committed against children in the real world...
Why must the world of cartoons have a sense of morality where children only learn about it too late?

NOTE TO READERS - Yes, this is more slamming THQ than any other developer, but, well, I'm sure you've found other games developers just as guilty.

I recently picked up Smackdown Vs. RAW 2008 for the Wii...
I have to say this, right now...
If this is THQ's idea of a joke, I'm not laughing.
Wii uses lose Cage Matches, Elimination Chamber matches, Table Matches and Ladder Matches, and by extension, TLC Matches, for no good reason, ESPECIALLY since the PS2 and PSP both have had full match type sets since 2006.
Effectively, They cut pretty much every match type which could show off the Wii's capabilities... even though they knew it could support them.
Next, the control system on both Wii and NDS has 'redundant button' syndrome, again for no good reason.
Again, we look to the PSP, and find that, yes, THQ had ALREADY done a control system which used less buttons... THQ, I don't accept the 'Exclusive Control System'... when you nerf the system... again to make the others look better.
Lastly, What you see and what you get...
The NDS has it's roster sliced, and pretty much no unlocks... plus the Main Event mode, under a different name... and THQ, Don't tell me otherwise.
The Wii, that gets officially Main Event mode, which is a thinly veiled version of Season Mode, apparently because, again, falsely, you apparently can't support 24/7 mode on a Wii.

OK, That's my rant against Smackdown Vs. RAW over.
What isn't over is the fact THQ lied to the press and other people in the industry when they effectively said that the Wii was sub-par... It couldn't give you the 'full WWE experience' the other consoles can.
Now, I admit, when you look at the numbers, it isn't truly in the Next Generation, but, well, That's no excuse to send it two generations back in how well you do support for it.
THQ does NOT support Virtual Console, which tells me something...
It's likely part of a boycott, within the industry, which is trying to tell Nintendo to bring out the 'real' Next-Gen console, a heavy beast of a console which has put millions of dollars behind one of two standards which are practically killing each other to sell software to the end-user.

If the Wii continues it's sales records, which are a different set of numbers to the ones the 'We don't support the Wii' developers want you to notice, then you'd see that it's selling like the proverbial hot cakes.
If I notice a game being released on PS3, X360 and Wii that, again, the Wii version falls far short of even the quality of games on the Playstation and N64, I will start complaining, since, yet again, some developers are making it seem like more powerful equals better.

You don't need 3.2 GHz processors and high-density discs to make a game good.
You just need gameplay, a good control system and a solid fanbase for the console and the game. Even the worst game will sell well then...
How do you think THQ are still selling their nerfed version of SvR 2008?

Every year there is the big Christmas this, big Christmas that...
In gaming, It's a competition to see who will be the big console of choice for Christmas shoppers...

In 2006, I played Buzz on a Playstation 2, and had a hell of a good time.
In 2007, I have six different choices for what to do over Christmas, and this time I have the money to make sure it works out...
Here's my analysis of how things are going in the run up to Christmas, and what my opinions on them are.

GAMEBOY ADVANCE [GBA]
Not really a contender any more. Nintendo have pretty much withdrawn support for it now, and more and more games are rendering that big hunk of plastic in the bottom of your NDS a permanent fixture.
I'd say, for the GBA being the Christmas baby for anyone is unlikely, and I'd upgrade to a NDS right now if you can...
I've sold off most of my Gameboy Advance games, only keeping those with some connectivity to the NDS, but those are getting scarce...

NINTENDO DOUBLE SCREEN [NDS]
Last year's big winner, it looks like it might have another rosy future ahead of it. Games are coming out almost daily somewhere, and it's joined the big boys this year with a Smackdown Vs. RAW conversion, which renders the PSP's chance of beating the NDS on that front obsolete.
What I'd like to see are more japanese games coming out in Europe, especially if recent anime licensing deals come through fine...
However, Yes, I do have a NDS for Christmas, but I've already bought it...

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE
Oh, How once we coveted owning one...
Then I discovered how shoddy you really were... Two PSPs sold, both due to tacky build quality in some of the components. First one, The screen broke down, Second one, The discs were rendered unable to even be sold on by shoddy casings.
Considering you are the one thing which could save Sony from virtually bankrupting themselves over the debacle going on with the PS3, What went wrong?
I will not be hoping for third time lucky...

XBOX 360
Now for the real meat of the article.
The XBox 360 has the AAAAA title Halo 3 under it's belt, guaranteed connectivity to Vista and a slew of features which make it incredibly desirable...
However, I won't be buying it until sometime in 2008... and it's not it's fault.
If Microsoft worked out why I am still using XP, and will still be using XP long into 2008, I'd buy Vista on the spot when they worked it out.
Basically, Great console... but I don't want a Vista custom box... I want a games machine.

PLAYSTATION 3
I'll make it simple and quick... £350-400
Yes, It's sexy, It's the most powerful machine going, and it's got a slew of features that are very good, including some very very exclusive games.
However, It's backwards compatibility is even more patchy than the X-Box, and they are working day and night to fix them. Recent PS3s, due to removing one chipset, have become as bad as PCs for emulating the PS2... and they're using official firmware and hardware specifications, including parts no-one knows about, AND It costs a bomb.
If I wanted a Playstation console, I'd buy a cheap PS2 and get KOF for it.
Shame I don't want one.

REVOLUTION (WII)
Never liked the name, still make dirty jokes about it, but it's still the party machine for Christmas 2007 for me.
Why?
NiGHTS returning, Real genuine party games, backwards compatibility that is seamless, it has a embarrassing, for every other company, sideline in legalized emulation of superceded consoles, and even my young sister, who often looks at games controllers in confusion, will be able to join in.
The Wii has everything going for it the other consoles want to.

That's my opinion...
Yes, it's a bit biased, but it's very true.
The GBA... No longer supported by it's own makers.
The NDS... Beat the PSP over a year ago.
The PSP... Killed itself when Nintendo found it's weak spots.
The X360... Might work out... but not for me.
The PS3... Give me a thousand bucks, and I'll buy one... Till then, I'll make do.
The Wii... It's the machine that a lot of people will play over Christmas, since it has the capability to support a party... without people spending a hour setting it up.

Once, Sky owned the Digital TV airwaves, with ntl being a buggy and incomplete service which only won customers due to it's independence from telephone line updates and other annoying habits which plagued Sky's much more comprehensive selection.

Now, Sky is facing two anti-competition breach investigations, one over blocking a perfectly acceptable merger between Virgin and ITV, and the second over a totally out-of-proportion price hike.

What happened? Simple. Sky got scared. ntl in the 21st Century can offer you On-Demand which works like Sky+, and Virgin's new V+ service for their Cable TV customers undercuts Sky+ heavily AND offers a extra tuner for the recording function.

Virgin want Sky to deliver a sensible price for the channels they hiked up the price of. The UK Government want Sky to explain why they suddenly needed shares in ITV.
Both want to know why Sky is being so cutthroat right now, before they cut it's throat...

I see Sky losing badly here, and no amount of emergency price increases is going to save it.

 I had high hopes for PSP SFA3 and Darkstalkers, but both have come up flatter than if you'd used a steamroller on my expectations...

STREET FIGHTER ALPHA 3
The only improvements over the GBA version is that it's not had anything chopped out for space, since the PSP has plenty.
Unfortunately, It's MAX title is only due to the fact it's got everything that was cut from UPPER and ONE extra character...
(sarcasm) Whoopee... Go get me a copy... (end sarcasm)

DARKSTALKERS CHRONICLES
This is Vampire Savior 2 with unlockables bolted on... No way to say anything different, since it has even got that game's rather poor ending, where only Jedah or Pyron have a different one... There is no 'Good ending' in actual gameplay.
Dee, Donovan's possible future self, is missing, as is Vampire's newest favorite, the teenage version of Anita, because Capcom of Japan decided, rather egotistically, to make the 'True?' Donovan and True Anita Japan-only.
All they needed to do was add in the older backgrounds and add in some way to use Dee (Hold START on Donovan, Press any button?) and it would make for a game that would tie off the Vampire series. As it is, it makes it seem like Darkstalkers and Night Warriors Did Not Really Happen...

Capcom, PLEASE let your next arcade game on PSP be a decent game, decently treated...