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• Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!

  True story the first: way back during the summer of 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, I took the cash moneys I’d been given by my loving family (money intended for college), pooled it in with a dash of my savings account, and marched to my local Electronics Boutique. “Ho, Game Jockey!” I said, full of mirth and good will, “Take these funds and place my name inside your hallowed ledger. I am pre-ordering a Dreamcast in full!” It was going to be awesome. I paid for the system, Sonic Adventure, and a VMU. They gave me a t-shirt and a receipt. I then waited for that sacred day of 9/9/99 to roll around when all that is good would be delivered to me. Turned out Electronics Boutique were filthy liars, in more way than one. First, the midnight sale didn’t start until 1:30am. I am sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this fact, though none of the shifty nerds in line were let in on it. I was nonplussed but hardly enraged. But then I got to the counter, handed them my receipt, and was handed a bag with a Dreamcast in it. But no VMU. No Sonic Adventure. I then calmly asked the cashier when these items would be forthcoming and he replied, “That is all that’s paid for on this receipt.” Then I murdered him. Not really, but it was another half an hour before they finally handed over the goods. It was a long night. True story the second: back in October, I pre-ordered the Persona 4 Social Link Expansion Pack from Amazon.com believing I was getting quite the deal: Persona 4 plus an extra “B-sides” soundtrack, a nifty t-shirt, a Persona calendar, and a stuffed animal of the game’s bizarre anthropomorphic character, Teddy, all for thirty bucks. That is a steal. When a giant box arrived at my work place yesterday, I was pumped and ready for some role-playing. Then I opened it and discovered that I can’t read. You see, this wasn’t an awesome pre-order deal. This was a bunch of stuff you pay for BESIDES the game. Amazon cleverly notes this in the product features section: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 game sold separately. I am not smart. Pre-ordering is a dangerous business. But my lack of attention is your good fortune! Read More... Posted Dec 12 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, dreamcast, atlus, persona 4, sonic adventure, vmu

• Saving Shenmue With Toys

  Is it possible to save a beloved franchise with one dollar and an envelope? The Shenmue MySpace Campaign is betting yes. Between Thanksgiving day, which also happens to be the tenth anniversary of the Dreamcast, and December 29th (they claim this is Shenmue’s anniversary, but that’s not how I recall it) they want everyone who fondly reminisces about forklifts and sailors to send Sega a capsule toy and a little prayer. A prayer for Shenmue III. Now this campaign will probably be good for one or two Sega employees who’ve been struggling to complete their collection of little plastic Pokemon. And it’s great to see that people are still really passionate for what was an innovative and influential game—it’s one of my favorite series, too. But it’s highly unlikely there will ever be another one, no matter what the longtime fans do to encourage it. The Shenmue MySpace Campaign is comparing this effort to the one the got Jericho back on television, but there’s a couple of differences between that and this. Jericho did come back as a result of fan campaigning, but only as a seven episode mid-season replacement—it’s not like Sega could take that “toe in the water” approach with a game. Jericho did six million viewers on average, which is considered poor for network television but was probably enough to at least break even on the effort—so the network likely only lost an opportunity cost. Read More... Posted Nov 26 2008, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: dreamcast, yu suzuki, shenmue, joe keiser, myspace, letting go

• Where Is the PSP?

  I am a superstitious man. I throw salt over my shoulder and knock on wood. I refuse to cross paths with black cats, something that is difficult when you share an apartment with one. When wandering about Manhattan, with its many scaffolding-covered building fronts, I am occasionally paralyzed by an all-consuming fear of the literal hundreds of ladders I pass beneath every day! I also know to not buy videogame consoles on launch day. If I do, I know that I will never play that many games for that device that looked so tempting before I actually had it. It all started with the Dreamcast, a system I adored, but I maybe owned a total of ten games for before its ignoble death (almost all of them published by Sega themselves). Two years out from its release, and it looks like the same is happening with Wii, a system that I turn on to play Gamecube games for more often than actual Wii discs. And then there’s the PSP. Oh, I was excited by that little monster when it came out back in early 2005. So excited, I decided it was a good idea to wake up at 6 AM on release day to pick one up, along with copies of Lumines and Ridge Racer. I played both pretty extensively for a month and then didn’t turn on the machine again until December of 2006. Now I’m not saying there aren’t good games for the PSP. One of the six games I’ve ever purchased, Zoe Mode’s absolutely astounding Crush would make my top fifty games ever made. But it’s hard to deny that the handheld takes up almost zero space in the collective consciousness of gaming broadly. Read More... Posted Nov 25 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, psp, where is, sony, sega, parasite eve, dreamcast, crush, kingdom hearts, scea, patapon 2, prinny can I really be the hero, disgaea, birth by sleep, the 3rd birthday, locoroco 2

• Sega "Gets" the Wii

  As previously stated, the Nintendo Wii is just about two years old now, well enough into its life cycle to no longer forgive developers for unfamiliar hardware restrictions and lazy ports (yes, I'm looking at you, Harmonix and Rock Band). Most people still look at the Wii as home of the goofy mini-game collection despite its having also hosted some truly unique and wonderful unloved gems like EA's Boom Blox, Ubisoft's No More Heroes, Capcom's Zack & Wiki and THQ's de Blob. There is one major game publisher, though, who seems hard-pressed to make the Wii completely awesome with a wide range of aggressive titles, and that publisher is (believe it or not) Sega. That's right, longtime Nintendo rival Sega. Kinda makes you wonder why the Dreamcast flopped... Read More... Posted Oct 31 2008, 12:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: boom blox, derrick sanskrit, no more heroes, wii, madworld, the conduit, sega, sonic the hedgehog, zack & wiki, dreamcast, sonic unleashed, sonic and the secret rings, de blob, house of the dead, samba de amigo, nights, sonic and the black knight

• 9/9/99 9 Years Later

  Numerology fans take note; what was one purported to be the biggest day in entertainment history took place exactly 9 year ago. Plagiarism fans also take note: I got this idea from the latest episode of Retronauts. Yes, we're nearly a decade from the launch of Sega's little-console-that-could-but-didn't, and aside from making me feel incredibly old, this anniversary of sorts had me thinking about just where I was on 9/9/1999. My most distinct memory of that time period--which is mostly fuzzy and inexplicably filled with Pokemon--is being madly in love with a high school girl. Luckily for her, I was also in high school; but even with us having that much in common, it was never meant to be. So did I console myself by splurging and then weeping on Sega's newest system? Fittingly, Final Fantasy VIII absorbed most of my pain in telling the story of an emotional cripple that made me look much more stable by comparison. I eventually got a Dreamcast a whole year later, but my relationship with it was just as sordid and artificial as my high school fling. I used it. Read More... Posted Sep 09 2008, 11:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: ico, sega, sonic the hedgehog, grand theft auto, dreamcast, bob mackey

• Ports That Need To Be Made: iTouchRez

  The news last week that Q Entertainment would be bringing its popular handheld titles Meteos to XBox Live Arcade and Lumines to Playstation Network got me to thinking about what other Q titles could use ports to new platforms. Far and away, the best idea to come out of this meandering train of thought was this: Rez, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, or as I like to call it iTouchRez. Read More... Posted Sep 05 2008, 04:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: sega, dreamcast, rez, tetsuya mizuguchi, iphone

• Tales of The Focus Group: Peter Moore Takes No Guff

  I get latching onto game designers as personalities. It’s no different than the cult of personality that sprouts up around musicians, writers, and film directors. Gaming’s rich with characters too: from the robot-building eccentrics like Will Wright, frothing madmen like David Jaffe, and mean drunks like Tomonobu Itagaki. What mystifies me is the way gamers latch onto publishing executives and marketers. Seriously, who cares about Reggie Fils-Aime? The guy doesn’t make Nintendo’s games, he just makes sure they’re profitable. Or how about Peter Moore? When that wily Brit was in charge of Microsoft’s games division, there was no end of fanboy chatter about his antics. Oh, Peter Moore got a Grand Theft Auto IV tattoo! Take that, Sony! Once he moved on to EA Sports, the guy disappeared from the limelight, no longer a face for console war jibber-jabber. Well, after today, I am forced to admit that I am interested in Peter Moore. Not because he’s starting some wild new business initiative to ramp up EA’s creative output or anything of the sort. No, I want to know more about Peter Moore because one of his last actions as president of Sega of America was to tell Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, to fuck off. Read More... Posted Sep 05 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ea, xbox 360, Grand theft auto 4, sega, dreamcast, peter moore, yuji naka

• Yeah, But Is It Art?: Crazy Taxi

  Time is both the best friend and worst enemy of art. Culture shifts and morphs daily into new language and new modes of expression, and the voice of the past either becomes timeless or unintelligible in tandem. Author David Lindsay was no one in the 1920s while he was still publishing. He was thirty years dead by the time his hallucinatory novel A Voyage to Arcturus was celebrated by academia. Alternatively, Our American Cousin was considered great comedy and great theater a century and a half back. Today, you’d be hard pressed to understand what the damn script even means. Enduring works persist for a number of reasons. They speak to an unchanging facet of human experience (love, loss, etc.) or they stay durable through sheer architectural integrity, perfect examples of their medium (I can find no other reason why people continue to read Melville.) Sometimes, though, art survives as a time capsule, something that takes a place and a time, no matter how insignificant, and preserves it. Crazy Taxi, in its American Dreamcast release, is the millennial turn preserved in digital amber. Read More... Posted Aug 22 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, yeah but is it art, tony hawk, dreamcast, burnout, crazy taxi

• Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions

  Mule [myool] – noun – an individual, male or female, who exhibits qualities of sweetness, silliness, generosity, enthusiasm, exuberance, exaggerated sexuality and adventurousness simultaneously. Some things just pass you by. Sometimes you turn on the radio and hear a song that makes you perk up and when you find out who it was, turns out it’s your all-time favorite band. You never heard that song before and it baffles you that something like that could escape your attention. I felt that way after checking out the unedited Kenji Eno interview put together by Shane Bettenhausen and James Mielke over at 1up. Not only have I never played a single game by the maverick designer, but up until today I didn’t even know who he was. Which, I have to admit, is frustrating the ever loving hell out of me. Eno is responsible for some of gaming’s most infamous cult creations (shooter/point-and-click adventures D, D2, and Enemy Zero) and other oddities that I have trouble believing are even real (off-the-wall minigame collection Short Warp came packed with a condom. It was for the 3DO. I shit you not.) Read More... Posted Aug 08 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, 1up, shane bettenhausen, sega, dreamcast, Panasonic, 3do, d, d2, warp, james mielke, enemy zero, Kenji eno, Saturn, real sound

• Revenge of the Port: Dead Rising Shuffles, Moans on Wii

  The true death of the arcade came at the beginning of this decade. It wasn’t when gamers started opting for the comfort and value of playing at home; it was when home consoles finally started equaling (and surpassing) the technological heft of the arcade cabinets themselves. Sega, one of the only surviving arcade giants, signed the death warrant themselves when developing the Dreamcast and its arcade-motherboard-twin, Naomi. Games at home and games in the arcade, identical for the first time. The move may have had the negative effect of killing off the already declining amusement center population across the Western world, but it also had a significant silver lining: the death of the shoddy arcade port. Approximations of more technologically demanding games have been a staple of gaming in the home since the 1970s, but, with the exception of stray PC-based ports, downgraded game experiences have largely disappeared since 2000. Today, in 2008, the fracturing of the console space seems to be bringing them back in force. Read More... Posted Jul 16 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, xbox 360, resident evil, wii, capcom, nes, PC, pokemon, sega, grand theft auto, dreamcast, port, koei, Naomi, dead rising, dynasty warriors

• Gaga for Segagaga

  You suckers in America won't get to read it for a while, but this month's Edge features a great interview with Tez Okano, creator of an odd little Japan-only Dreamcast RPG called SGGG (pronounced Segagaga). The object of the game is to save Sega from financial collapse, and was ironically released around the time of Sega's collapse (2001), in the console arena, at least. Segagaga is a plan formulated to save Sega from DOGMA, an evil corporation intended to portray Sony. From there it goes totally meta. You talk to a down on his luck Alex Kidd and go up against a flying, sentient Genesis console in a schmup segment. Insane. Read More... Posted Jul 08 2008, 12:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: sega, monkey island, cole stryker, sonic, dreamcast, edge, alex kidd, segagaga

• The Long and Winding Road: Rez’s Journey From Proof-of-Concept to Game

  Tetsuya Mizuguchi was already a respected game designer when the Dreamcast released in 1998, thanks in large part to his expert work on the home conversion of Sega Rally in the mid-90s, but it wasn’t until he began working on Sega’s ill-fated final system that he expressed his true creative voice. Mizuguchi’s reputation is built on his designs blending gameplay and music (as in Derrick’s fav Gunpey). Dreamcast’s Rez, Mizuguchi’s minimalist synesthesia masterpiece, is arguably the purest meeting between traditional play and music generation ever made. Rez wasn’t born whole into the world however. As you can see from this early footage, Rez started out as Project K, and the changes it underwent could not be more dramatic. Read More... Posted Jun 19 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, xbox 360, dreamcast, rez, long and winding road, tetsuya mizuguchi

• The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2 Part 1

  When Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden finally released, it was mind-altering. No three-dimensional action game played as well, looked as good, or had its raw scope, and no one in the world was expecting it to deliver as it did. After all, the game had been vaporware for half a decade. Remember when Tecmo announced it as a game for Sega’s Project Katana (the development codename for Dreamcast)? How about when it was supposed to be a Playstation 2 launch title? By the time Team Ninja announced that they’d be releasing it as an Xbox title, I was starting to wonder if the game existed at all. When no screens or video of the game materialized for another three years, it was fair to assume that Gaiden was destined to be little more than trivia fodder. But then February 2004 rolled around and there it was. That month will, in my mind, always be a benchmark in the history of action games. Ninja Gaiden has aged well in four years, its multiple revisions and expansions right through the Playstation 3 remake Ninja Gaiden Sigma proving its foundation to be sturdy and engaging. 3D action games broadly, however, have surpassed it. God of War brought bigger, more exciting environments and enemy confrontations while improving accessibility and even Ninja Gaiden’s immediate forebear Devil May Cry added more depth in its third and fourth entries. Even the lackluster Heavenly Sword took away Ninja Gaiden’s crown as the genre’s most visceral visual spectacle. I’ve been lukewarm on Ninja Gaiden II since it was announced last year. I couldn’t tell what was wrong. Something about it just seemed so sterile, so rote in comparison to everything else hitting the new wave of consoles. Dynamic limb removal is the big innovation? Really? This is Ninja Gaiden II! Time to redefine 3D action a second time! I realize that’s an unfair expectation to put on a game but it isn’t unfair to expect a modicum of refinement, some change to the established formula that utilizes both hindsight and the power of new technology. That’s why Ninja Gaiden II is, initially, so disappointing. Read More... Posted Jun 09 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, xbox 360, devil may cry, 61fps review, Playstation, ninja gaiden, dreamcast, god of war