geekdaddy

So, my ankle has some soft tissue damage with no bone break….yea?! I am still out of action for four to eight weeks, and can’t teach standing up ten hours a day. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!!!!! Anyway, to make up for my lack of mobility, my wife let me have 50 dollars on EBay towards my gaming fetish. This is what I bought.

Sega Genesis for the PSP:

This collection truly sucks eggs. From the awful tinny sound, to the uninspired dashboard this outing does no justice to the Sega Genesis legacy. There are one or two gems on this disc. The Golden Axe Trilogy is always entertaining, as are Altered Beast and Comix Zone. These are shining examples of what you can do with 16 bit technology. However, Flicky…..that isn’t your best Sega. I also wonder why so many Ecco the Dolphin Titles made it into this collection? Maybe there were licensing issues. I give this collection from Sega 6 out of 10. They did okay…but others are doing it better.
Midway Arcade Treasures Extended Play:
This collection is much better than the Sega one. As well as featuring enhanced multiplayer wireless, the collection has some really good games. If you were a quarter pumper in the late Eighties, you know all of these titles. Rampage, Gauntlet, Mortal Kombat, Paperboy, and 720 are just a few of the instant classics on this disc. (Skate or Die!!!!!!) While I miss some of the content from the PS2 disk, most notably Smash TV, this collection really does inspire nostalgia for Saturday afternoons at the arcade. I give it an 7 out of 10.

Puzzle Challenge Crosswords and More:

Sometimes I like to remind my brain why it’s there. This collection of puzzle games is just the thing to clean the cobwebs out of the old belfry. While there are other puzzle formats on the disc, I like the crosswords the best. There are different levels to the puzzles, so you can be a beginner and not flame out. My grandfather was a crossword nut back in the day. He actually had the dictionaries he wrote himself with little notes about how to beat hard puzzles. It’s brain food without being boring. A good collection if you want a break from beating the snot out of things. It earns a 7 out of 10.

Capcom Classics Collection (Reloaded):

This is hands down the best retro collection ever put on the PSP. The sound is fabulous, the graphics are crisp, and the games make you proud to have been a gamer in the trenches during the Eighties. My favorites on the disc are Knights of the Round and King of the Dragons. Both titles are quest based, side scrolling games, with tons of action. I also like Street Fighter 2, although I have to admit I get my butt kicked a lot at that one.

The finest feature of this collection is the dashboard. You earn coins for each game you play. You then take these coins to the slot machine, and play to earn cheats, game art, and game music. This is pure genius. I tip my hat to you Capcom. Bravo!!!! You have made an exciting, engaging, interesting collection better by adding these little touches. I give this collection 10 out of 10. AKB :}

I am one of the hundreds of thousands of gamers who own a Playstation Portable. I should love it; after all it cost me enough when I bought it. I don’t. I don’t love it the way I love the Wii, or my PS2, or even my Gametap subscription. Sometimes I wonder why.

First off, the games face some real challenges. The whole UMD disc thing is a big, fat pain in the butt. I have had 6 of those plastic rings break, rendering the games useless. I usually have game insurance on what I buy, especially at Game Crazy, but it is still no fun to go exchange on a gimpy leg. The selection of games is okay, if not awe-inspiring. My favorites are retro classics, (SNK, Sega, NEO-GEO) D&D types, (Untold Legends, etc.) and Puzzle categories. The games are usually formatted fine, although some of the PSOne Classics you can download from the Sony online store are formatted a little funny.

That brings us to Sony’s problem number two, which is homebrew applications. So many home developers are making cool programs for the PSP these days. A great example is PSP Genesis. This is a Homebrew Sega Genesis emulator. I understand…..piracy is not what you want to promote with your product. However, the cat and mouse game between Dark Alex (M33) and Sony is wearing thin. What if Sony went the WiiWare route with the homebrew community? Why not make a “channel” where homebrew applications that do not infringe on copyrights can be put out legally? Then homebrew guys and gals would get recognition for authorship, maybe a little cash, and we as PSP users would get to download more content without UMD problems. Everybody wins. At the very least get the Playstation Store to offer more content, at better prices.

Thirdly, the web browser is arthritic. I am not downloading gigabytes of porn on it. Well, not most nights! I am trying to do simple things like check the weather, or my e-mail. It is slow, clunky, and quite obviously an afterthought. One other thing that bugs me about the browser is the memory. I have a 8 gig stick, but my web browser can’t use that as a cache. Two words Sony should look up in the dictionary is virtual memory. Even Windows 98 had this feature. Or, you could go the ReadyBoost route like Vista did.

Video on the PSP is okay. I don’t have a huge problem with converting regular format video to MP4. In fact there are web services out there where you can find this conversion already done. (It rhymes with Myso-Hunt) I love watching Robot Chicken, Mythbusters, and Doctor Who. Scrubs is cool too. If Sony had a video download service like iTunes does, that would go a long way to keeping this kind of stuff legal.
So, overall the Sony Playstation Portable is solid, dependable, but not very exciting. I do like it for some uses, but feel that other uses are lacking. I think a bunch of the problems could be ironed out within the software with updates, if Sony so chose. I will be waiting. (Insert crickets chirping here…and the howl of a lonely coyote) AKB :}

   One fine day I was rummaging around the Playstation2 cabinet at Bookman’s Entertainment Exchange in Phoenix. I found a couple of great retro titles that really took me back to my teenage days in the late 80’s.  One is the PS2 Namco Collection, which has gems like Galaga, Dig Dug, Pac Man and the like. The other title is a grouping of William’s and Midway Hits. This one time-warped me back to my days as a quarter pumper extraordinaire.

Midway hits have some of the greatest arcade hits of the Eighties. There is Joust and Defender of course, but there are also other instant classics like Rampage, Paperboy, and 780. (SKATE OR DIE!!!!!!) The original Gauntlet is on there too, as well as one of my personal faves Rampart. By the way Rampart should just be called please blow my shit up!!!! Thank You!

My wife is a teen librarian in the Phoenix area, and she had a video game night at the library. There was Rock Band, and Super Smash Brothers on the Wii, and Guitar Hero on the PS2. Then I put in my retro disks. The girls weren’t too excited over them, but the boys were. All of these games were new to them, and they spent a decent portion of the night playing Rampage, Smash TV, and Ms. Pac Man.

They didn’t believe me when I mentioned that my best friend in High School and I played all of these games when they came out. Apparently, I get out of my coffin everyday to astound the living world with facts like these. But that is what these games are great for……..there is pure nostalgia value in these cases. I love the fact that playing these games can make me feel fifteen again for a few minutes. But I’m glad I always come back. Fifteen is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.