Yesterware

I got a new toy yesterday - something I had passed up a few years back (presumably because these babys were really really expensive and didn't offer much bang for the buck). I just got a shiny almost new Philips CD-I player. This was one of those multi-media systems that came out around the same time as the Playstation, Saturn, 3DO and the Jaguar and touted itself as a "multi-media" device. It played music CDs, Video CDs and special CD-I (I for "Interactive") discs, some of which qualified as video games. When I caught wind of a lost Mario game that was fabled to exist for the system, I dug and dug until I found a copy of it on the net. Since there aren't any actually working emulators for the CD-I system, I was forced to purchase one in order to play this Mario game that never was. I was surprised to discover a small but rather dedicated fan following for this platform. The lost Mario game was about what you can expect from a very early alpha protot

I've been a die-hard Nintendo fanboy for as long as I've known what Nintendo was. When I first saw the NES and what it did, some magical switch clicked in my head and I've been hooked ever since. I remember getting into arguments that nearly led to blows with Sega fans. Silly? Sure, but I was a kid and what is childhood but a chance to be serious when you're being silly? Flash forward over a dozen years, and I find myself still having arguments with other games over platform preference, but now the argment isn't Nintendo vs. Sega, it's Console vs. PC. Now the arguments in favor of PC gaming have always been the following: The keyboard and mouse setup offers the ultimate precise control PC's are modular and can be way more powerful than consoles PC's are useful for a lot more than just playing games - Teamspeak, for example. These are the points that I find myself debating with PC enthusiasts, and here are my rebuttals: Although I freely admit that mo

I've now been playing Oblivion for about 50 hours and I have a few more things to say. The game is still phenominal, has yet to become boring or repetitive, and I'm sure I'm only about a third of the way through with it. Some of the newness has worn off, however. I'm up to 14 complete XBOX 360 lockups. I'm not really surprised by this, evidently this is hallmark of Bethesda games. Nor am I really annoyed with it. With a game as rich and complex as this, my programmer's mind is telling me that these are acceptable losses. There were a couple of things that I do take issue with, however. I've run into at least three quests where I had to revert to a previous save and begin all over to complete because glitches or poor design made them unfinishable - one of which was part of the core story! Bethesda ought to worry about correcting these snafus, not charging people extra money for horse armor. And while I'm on that subject, I have to say that Bethes

I recently picked up 24 the game for $35 at a local EB. Being an avid fan of the show, I thought it'd be interesting to see how good (or bad) it was. From a story perspective, it's just like the show - in fact it seems to be the remains of the original 3rd season - that is to say chronologically it takes place between season 2 and 3 and features a lot of interesting "oh, that's when that happned" moments. The herkey-jerkey camera bobs just like the show's action sequences giving you a feeling of urgency, and although PS2 graphics are really feeling their age at this point, it manages to pull off a passable in that category. The inane and wildly inaccurate techno-babble is here too - for example they show a picture of what is clearly an encrypted code generator used by banks and the like, but inaccurately describe it as a PDA, and the stereotypical nerdy guy has to try to decrypt its "hard drive" to get at the info (neither PDAs nor code generato

Growing up in the 80's I have vague recollections of Laser Tag and it's rival product Photon (at least I think that's what it's called). I never played it when I was little but I always wanted to. So when I was at my nephew's 6 th birthday party this weekend and was invited to play “Lazer Tag” with him and a bunch of his 6-8 year-old friends, I wasn't sure what I was in for. I'm fairly certain that the Laser Tag of the 80's was never quite like what I experienced. For starters, the equipment, a gun shaped like a UPC scanner, and vest with glowing target areas, made everyone look vaguely like a Wal-Mart employee going to war. With the soundtrack from the N64 Goldeneye and the movie Mortal Kombat blasting in the background, a dark maze with strobe lights flashing, blacklights giving everything an ethereal glow, and 7 other people running around trying to shoot you with lasers, it was just like an FPS - the most tiring one I've ever played. After 15 m