Inquiring About The Public's Opinion Of SEGA...

As I sit here mulling over the bowl of cereal I don't have because my family forgot to buy some, I got to thinking about our dear friend SEGA once again.  You see, brand recognition and popularity is what helps keep companies in business.  So this leads me to ask this vital question...

Do you think Sega is "cool" anymore?

Where does Sega go on the Cool Wall?

Top Gear, telling you how it is since 2002.

Now.  Some of you will say, "Well of course Sega is cool!  They made some kickass games!  Who cares what people think of Sega?"  You're sorta right.  Us Sega hipsters got this little circlejerk going on and screw what anyone else thinks!  But it is IMPORTANT what other people think of Sega.  Sega cannot survive alone cause of a couple of fanboys on the Internet, they need a portion of the Average Joe gamer demographic to run out and invest in their stuff too.

See, that's what I mean about being "cool."  The term "cool" as in "genuinely interested in their products."  Being cool is important--it's how crap pop music, TV, movies, and video games manage to be relevant despite lacking any original content or substance at all.  Being "cool" is neither a good or bad thing--it's like handing off the baton or being "King of the Hill."  You gotta reach out and grab it somehow.  Sega was cool back in the 90's!  Sonic the Hedgehog!  Game consoles!  Arcades!  Kickass!  People loved that stuff.  But nowadays, everyone has written off Sega as a decayed corpse as they flock around the Western developers--FPS, RTS, adventure, MMO's with "realistic/grungy/shockingly depressing" hi-res graphics.  In other words, the complete antithesis of Sega! :(

This whole "cool" topic came about reading this compelling article about Nintendo and violent games' places in the marketplace.  Basically how the concept of "family entertainment" that Nintendo has relied on for so long has eroded over the last decade.  Think about it....what are the most popular games these days?  Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Gears of War.  Games with copious profanity, violence, and (some) sexual content.  They sell Halo and GoW toys in kids/family stores though MS/Epic shrug at the thought of directly advertising violence to kids.  Case in point, these games have claimed the "cool" mantle.  Realistic, gritty games are in vogue, clean happy games are out.

How did this happen?  You can name many reasons.  Kids look up to teens/young adults for what is cool--adults play violent games, so do kids.  The concept of a "family" has diminished--we spend less time face-to-face and have high numbers of single parent households therefore.  We've conditioned ourselves to violence and the "Jackass generation" that we hardly flinch at the idea at our of kids disrespecting each other.  I'm not a sociologist so I won't pursue the issue longer but look at this point mentioned in the article--55-60% of parents do not check nor do they even care about ESRB/PEGI ratings.  This is ridiculous.

But don't get me wrong...I'm not blaming violent games for society's problems, nor am I saying you can't enjoy these games yourself.  But these kind of games are adverse to Sega's M.O., plus don't you get tired of people realistically shooting, stabbing, blowing each other up?  Why is it that whenever anyone unveils a non-violent, colorful game, it's a cringe-inducing kids title, a shameful freemium game, or both?  Also would you let this kid play Call of Duty?  There's thousands of kids like this every day.  Boy, violence is good for them!

EDIT: This YouTube video makes another good point about game popularity--YouTube Let's Plays.  Nintendo has been vigilant in the past about taking down any YouTube gameplay videos.  Other companies, notsomuch.  I'm not a Let's Play watcher but I can see what they're getting at here--YouTube clips are basically free advertising and Nintendo better accept that soon.

And what does Nintendo, Sega's last ally in the war against gray skies, do about it?  SUCK AT EVERYTHING!  The Wii was a success cause they advertised it to that core young-adult demographic and did a great job with the motion control stuff.  Now the Wii U gives us some awkward gaming pad and is advertising itself to...little kids?  I swear, I saw a Toys R Us commercial last Christmas with little kids harping on a Wii U sales deal.  Is THIS the game console that the mainstream demographic (18-35 year olds) going to buy?  Especially with its outdated graphics and same old games from last generation?  I'm not a graphics junkie but at least Sega's new releases were top-notch technology (i.e. Scud Race/Daytona 2 being years ahead of the N64/Playstation).  Seriously, the 3DS is the only thing keeping Nintendo alive.  I still don't know how Pokemon remains relevant as ever these days, especially since all I hear from Pokemon nostalgists is bitching about how perfect Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow was (news flash--there were "bad" Pokemon in that game too) but shit, if it makes Nintendo money, then great.

Nintendo is a company I want...no, NEED to succeed in order to establish "balance" against Sony and Microsoft.  Now they are throwing their arms up and open for acquisitions or mergers?  RED FLAG!!  The fact Sega has hooked its anchor to Nintendo's sinking ship (in the form of Sonic games exclusive for the Wii U) is suicidal.

You want a kids console?  Buy a V-Tech.

Now, time for a pop quiz!  Get out a sheet of paper and writing utensil.  Write down up to five things that you think Sega has done that was "cool" at any time in its history.  You have thirty seconds, now....GO!

...

Time's up!  Compare your list to mine.  If you're like me, you've probably written down a list of things like this:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Now, let's run through this list and compare them to the Sega of today.  Home consoles?  Sorry, Sega put the kaibosh on that in 2001 so let's cross that out.  Arcades?  Those are dead in the West and the only stuff we see are mediocre and never live up to the 90's so cross that out too.  Blue-sky games?  HA, please spare me, Sega does the bare minimum to keep their legacy from eating dust by releasing sparse, straight ports of their games to cash in on nostalgia from the fanboys so let's cross that one out.  Brash?  Edgy?  Name for me ONE bold thing that Sega has said or done.  No "Sega does what Nintendon't" or Sega screams.  Almost all of Sega's official advertising is done through their online blog site as they cut and run like a scared puppy.  So cross that one out as well.  So what does our list look like now?

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Yes, it's true, love it or hate it, Sonic IS Sega.  Sonic is the only thing that Sega has going for it...the only thing Sega hasn't given up on in the last 22 years, even dragging the franchise through the horse shit that was the post-SA2 era.  Seriously, just listen to the first forty seconds of this Giant Bomb video and you'll see what I mean.  "Sonic" = "Sega"  I'll probably talk about this in a Part 2 next time cause I'm tired and have gone on for too long, good night all.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PART TWO.

E3 Drivel, Sony, Racing Games

Guys, I have a confession to make.  I haven't been keeping up on E3.  I do not care about 99.9999% of the games they talk about.  I know about how everyone is taking a dump on Microsoft whom is trying to spin-doctor their way out of the fact their console sucks. Microsoft blows now, Sony all the way, even though I have little incentive to buy any next-gen consoles.  But I will tell you what I know.

This is the best thing that Sony has done since Kevin Butler.

Yeehaw, watch this burn on nine different screens for nine times the sizzle.
Also the PS4 is region-free, Xbox One isn't, oh happy days are here again.

See you in Hell, Microsoft.  Where you'll be forced to play sub-par Kinect games for eternity, the same exact games you forced your pitiful developers to make.  Really, they have a patent on viewing/counting the number of people the Kinect picks up on, NO SERIOUSLY, READ THIS.  Didn't get this from from /r/gaming either.  See you in hell too with your little 2-second satisfaction posts for LE SWEET, SWEET KARMA.

As for Pokemon, you now have Fairy type Pokemon.  Boy I'd never see the day, rofl!!  As for Smash Bros, you have Mega Man and Wii Fit Trainer.  Hooray Nintendo.  Let's hope that Sonic makes a return especially to return the favor that Sonic games are going Nintendo-exclusive.  Speaking of Sonic and Sega, well, there's really nothing I give a crap about.  There's new Sonic games, including another Sonic & Mario Olympics game (WHO KEEPS BUYING THESE????), Bayonetta 2, and some Mickey Mouse game I don't care about (I'm trying to get the fuck out of Orlando, remember?) but that's it.  Hey Sumo, where is that elusive DLC character for Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed?  Where's Ryo Hazuki?  Where's Segata Sanshiro?  Where's Yu Suzuki with the Shenmue 3 announcement?  And that's how the world turns for a Sega fan--get your hopes up, wait, wait, wait, wait, get old, wait, wait, wait, wait, muse about how good you thought Sega was, wait, wait, wait, wait, then get a life or die of heartache.

Now about racing games.  Nope, nothing I care about.  Forza and Driveclub are bleh--too much realism, not enough emphasis on having fun.  Well, how about Need for Speed: Rivals?  Surely this game would induce vomiting but hold up a sec--just watch the gameplay footage.  It's a bit weird cause there's multiple screens going on.  Basically, it's simultaneous gameplay from the points of view from the evader and the cop.

  

Now this game isn't made by Black Box, responsible for the atrocity that is NFS: The Runs, or Criterion with their overrated crash-gasm games.  This is from Ghost Games, a new EA studio out of Gothemburg, Sweden.  And overall, looking at this game, it doesn't look TOO bad.  Basically, it feels kinda like the old NFS games--you drive around, cops are behind you with the radio chatter, you weave around ever-changing landscapes, and there's no stupid bonuses for doing stunts, shunting and using EMPs to make your rivals crash and die.  Here's footage from NFS 4: High Stakes on the PS1.

Looks familiar, don't it?  Plus Rivals has Ferraris in it.  Hey, if Ferrari endorses something (*coughoutrun2cough*), you know it's gotta be good stuff.  But I'm not getting my hopes up cause this is still a NFS game that has EA's greasy fingerprints all over it so I'm still a no-buy for me.  But it's worth giving props where it's due.

Other racing games...well, there's also Mario Kart 8.  Their new feature this time around is driving up on the ceiling and walls, kinda like in Super Mario Galaxy, to create more dynamic looking tracks.  They also seems to have tightened up the handling a bit cause I bet you they saw Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed and thought "oh shit we're gonna get our asses kicked here" even though they have yet to introduce boats or planes into their game--rather they stuck with hang-gliders and driving on the bottom of the lakes.  Sumo, you got Nintendo where you want 'em.

One more thing.  Dead Rising 3 sucks ass.  What made the first two cool were the colorful mall/casino backdrops.  Here's it's a crappy-ass town loaded with gritty shaders.  Oh, and I don't give a damn about The Last of Us either.  I know that's not E3-related but I'm tired of hearing about that damn game.  Again, where's Shenmue 3.  Later guys.

Sega All-Stars Racing WTFs (Ft. Nintendo/Zach Morris)

Dear Spike TV.  On behalf of myself and all the Sega fans out there, I demand you take that "Best Racing Game" award away from Burnout: Paradise 2 Need for Speed: Most Wanted (A Criterion Game) and give it to Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  You see, as a very important person on the Internet with an influential blog (95% of all traffic from Google Image Searches) my feelings matter very much, even if I didn't bother to watch your crummy awards show at all.  So until you stop hyping up overrated racing games, I call for an indefinite boycott of your lousy channel (even though I have denounced you badly enough before)!  YOU'RE CLEARLY OUT TO GET SEGA, THAT'S WHAT IT IS.  YOU GUYS SUCK!!!!  Go turn into a metrosexual channel just like G4.

EDIT: Just joking, don't really care what Spike TV does.  Even if Sega All-Stars Racing got recognition there, it would go in and out the ears of everyone watching.  A day after the show, not a single f*** will be given about the awards.  Seriously bro...that's the joke.

Now there's cause for concern about Sega All-Stars Racing's sales numbers.  Somewhere, a few Sega fans have jumped off a bridge (they've survived previous jumps) but this is a good comment I read from "IceHedge" on the TSSZNews article:

If you total these numbers up compared to how All-Stars Racing did roughly in its first week:

ASR sold 20,498 + 10,432 + 7,419 = 37,349

S&ASRT sold 34,825 + 9,272 + 9,506 = 53,603

In order: Wii/Wii U + Xbox 360 + PS3 units sold respectively

Yeah, we said the same doom & gloom stuff about the first Sega All-Stars Racing.  That it would bomb.  But the game went on to cruise to 3.2 million sales across all platforms worldwide which I suppose is successful (in Sega terms).  It's good enough to merit making a second Sega All-Stars Racing so it's not too bad.

Go ahead and blame Sega for doing a crap job at advertising.  Not enough commercials.  Only saw one commercial on ESPN2 while they were airing the Nationwide race with Danica's Sega car.  DarthS0L said Danica would get the word out, yada yada yada, but I don't think real-life car fans care about arcade racing games (a topic for another day).  Danica's impact on sales may have been below expectations but I'm not going to pile on Sega, Sumo Digital, or Danica Patrick for this because something MARKETING FAILS.  

But when you think of big sales, you compare Sega All-Stars Racing to some mega-hyped game like Black Ops 2 or Halo 4 and frankly...so what?  Games like CoD and Halo are basically hyped up so much they burn out too quickly.  Explains why they release a new one every year to the same exact massive sales numbers.  It's become tradition for every average joe gamer to run out and buy this on launch, play the crap out of multiplayer, then drop it for whatever else is the "cool new thing" at the moment--usually another very original gun/sword/knife-wielding action game.

EDIT whole paragraph: On the contrary, Sega All-Stars Racing isn't a "must-have" title for most (because racing games & Sega games aren't top-tier sellers by any means) but people will get around to it.  It'll have a longer shelf life than these quick Halo/CoD iterations because it won't be "eclipsed" as quickly.  I've heard of Wii U owners who wanted to pick this up but were holding out on the Wii U console altogether until its library got bigger.  Also the PC version isn't even out yet!  And Christmas isn't even here yet.  We're gonna have to go the "cult classic" route and do Sega's advertising for them.  It's what this blog helps me to do.  Anyway I'm not going into panic mode yet.

But you want to hear even crazier stuff?  I don't know what TSSZ News's deal is posting ridiculous rumors like this.  Apparently, Nintendo is planning to acquire Sega.  And this is from a video by the "HipHopGamer."

I don't believe it.  I don't even need to watch the video.  But I'll say this about Nintendo owning Sega--I'd be traumatized.  Why?  Because Nintendo and Sega think differently.  Nintendo is a successful game developer, Sega isn't anymore.  Nintendo pours tons of effort into Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and Wii stuff.  It's good stuff but predictable and highly reliant on some new features like the Wiimote and the 3D screen (that makes people vomit).  Yet Sega lives on the edge.  Always got the crazy new IPs for each console (including arcades...something Nintendo was completely lacking), got that Sonic attitude, making professional arcade titles that still get credit like Daytona and Virtua Fighter.  I don't know how much room Nintendo would give for Sega to flex (Nintendo-console exclusives would suck) but judging from how Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games went down, I think any Sega IPs would just be sterilized.  After all, Nintendo IPs like Smash Bros. sell and Sega ones (usually) don't.  Which way do you think Nintendo will steer the ship?

If this is true, I hope I'm wrong.  Don't need to be a Nintendo diehard to know just looking at the history between the two, they're meant to be rivals just by the way they operate.  If they were to merge, then one would have to change.  And I don't see Nintendo willing to change.

Also, look at this guy...Hip Hop Gamer.  If Nintendo acquiring Sega was such a big story, this would've at least made it to Kotaku or Reddit but no.  Now I don't have a hate-on for rap like some others do (though I hate this crap psuedo hip-hop from losers like Black Eyed Peas and R-Kelly or whatever tool thinks hanging out with Justin Bieber is a good thing) but I know that a lot of these hip-hop sites tend to harbor crazy conspiracy theories.  Like Jay-Z with the hand signals, Lil Wayne's occult rap lyrics, Michael Jackson was assassinated by a secret organzation.  That's extreme, I know, but I can't help but feel skeptical about any "exclusive" information they have to report.

Oh, speaking of conspiracy theories and making up Sega stuff, it's our good Dreamcast 2 friend, Zach Morris!!!  He predicted the Dreamcast 2's release on Dec 12, 2012.  Guess what, it's three days to go and unless Sega has serious brain damage, it would've been announced & advertised already.  But Zach Morris has another blog up -- Model4: Inside Sega's R&D.  Strangely, some of these posts, presumably by "employees of Zach Morris," make a little sense.  In other words, they are mildly informative and actually reference old Model2/32X/Saturn media.  So what's going on here?  Is this some guy who lives in some fictional world where he's the R&D guy of Sega, making elaborate posts about Sega insider information on crappy websites that hardly anyone reads (like Chris-Chan but a lot less graphic)?  Or is he one of the lamest trolls ever only trying to f*** with the minds of a few wandering Sega fans?  Forget this guy.  I'm taking a nap.

Quick, someone needs to make a "Scumbag Sega" meme--maybe then Sega would get some attention.

FUNNY CAR MEME IMAGE DUMP

I have a bunch of funny car/racing/Sega memes & gifs for you.  Found 'em off random websites like GameFAQs, Reddit, every terrible website out there over the years.  And since I'm too lazy to make an actual good post, this one's for you!

Because of the large number of pics, you must hit the jump to load the page.  Don't want to crash anyone's browsers here.

Nobody Loves Sega

I feel dejected right now.  One of my good friends who runs the Shenmue Stare site called it quits.  Seems like Sega fans are just losing it as am I.  So here comes the rant.

One thing we can all agree on right now is that Sega has some problems of certain levels of severity.  I mock Sega.  I pick at them a lot because I love their racing games and they haven't returned to their prime.  But at someone who has some knowledge of Sega (i.e. the immense amount of money they lost) it's somewhat understandable.  Yet to others, picking on Sega is usually for s***s and giggles by the media.  Here's a choice quote from the infamous Shenmue Dojo  post pertaining to Sega & Hajime Satomi of the Yakuza:

SEGA is also the victim of general bias and hate from both the gaming 'media' and 'gamers' in general; both of whom are indoctrinated to believe Nintendo is the be-all and end-all of gaming creativity when in truth Mityamoto's creative output is dwarfed by one SEGA development studio and slaughtered by Yu Suzuki alone. When companies such as RARE and UbiSoft are sold or sell-out, these typical sheep are up in arms. When SEGA was literally raped, butchered and murdered slowly by Sammy, nary a word from the press or the 'gaming' community.....

Exactly my point.  The thing is I'm afraid that lots of people are just ignorant of Sega as a whole.  Sega was this "great empire," now they are to be mocked and ridiculed on seldom occasions when someone on sites like Kotaku, Joystiq, or Reddit references Sega in some way.  But let's be clear, no matter how pessimistic I seem, Sega isn't doing TOO bad.  Here's a list of things they're doing well.    They're making money again.  They aren't abusing Sonic as much.  They released ports of Daytona USA, OutRun 2, Sega Rally, other Dreamcast games so I can't totally hate on the guy.  Seriously, read the LEAVE SEGA ALONE! post from last year.  But others who have no emotional investment in Sega, they couldn't care less.

Quick--here's a pop quiz.  Answer these questions in a minute and don't look up the answers:

1. Name four Sega consoles.
2. Name two important Sega people.
3. Name five franchises originated by Sega.

They couldn't do it.  They'd spit out the usual talking points, "Sega, hmm....they made the Genesis but the SNES was better, they made the Dreamcast which failed, they made Sonic the Hedgehog which they ruined....and oh, they made BAYONETTA! (not made by Sega, made by Platinum Games with some involvement on Sega's part) Other than that, I know nothing."  And these are the same people who gush all over Nintendo, all over Blizzard, all over Bethesda, all over Rockstar, all over Valve, all over other "visionaries" like Cliff Bleszinski and Notch but when it comes to Yu Suzuki or Yuji Naka, they draw a blank.  Can't stand it.

Okay, disclaimer time: I'm not saying EVERY GAMER thinks this way.  But I have a hunch that too many DO think that way since whenever I seldom hear about Sega, it's always in a negative light.  You don't necessarily have to be a "Sega fan" to criticize them too.  Take Electronic Arts--we all beat up on them but they're front & center on the stage all the time so there's no excuse not to know about their antics.  But here's some anti-Sega media:

EDIT: Click here to see the rest of these.

Speaking of Sega's age, they're practically on par with Nintendo.  FIRST RECOGNIZABLE GAMES: Nintendo's Donkey Kong = 1981.  Sega's Monaco GP = 1980.  CONSOLES: Sega Master System = 1985.  Nintendo Entertainment System = 1985.  Though technically, there's the Famicom which came out in 1983.  But anyway, I'm just trying to get this whole "Nintendo came first" baloney out of the way now.  Also, Sega was kicking ass in arcades during the 80's/90's yet Nintendo wasn't.  But since consoles are the only thing that mattered, Nintendo gets praised while Sega gets dumped on.  Arcade success means nothing to these people.

I realize Sega got what's coming to them when they trampled the Sonic series, but it's turned around and, all petty complaints aside, isn't as terrible as it once was.  So if the media could stop running with the mantra "I can't play Sanic gaemz cause they r so bad and made for furries and kids with autism" then maybe I won't get so irate whenever I read a Sonic story on these "neutral" game sites.

Wait, what--there's Harrison Ford with a Master System.  And nobody wants to play with him.  Speaking of which, I wonder where this NES bias came from.  I don't think I was ever shown a Master System.  Not that the NES is bad (it has uh...Mario and Zelda!) but come on--it can't be as bad as gamers portray it (by completely ignoring it altogether)?

The "news" sites like Kotaku are just bad.  Whenever you do hear something about Sega, it's a gag story.  Like "Sega's brown man (Nagoshi) interviews porn stars (for Yakuza)" or "Here's a screencap of old Sonic telling young Sonic 'Your future's gonna be great!' " or "WTF is wrong with Sega making a Mario & Sonic Olympics Game?"  I only glaze over that site's stories just to check in on what's the news with gaming in general but other than that, this site sucks.  Speaking of sucking, I've noticed Kotaku has the tendency to post news/videos/pictures seen off of Reddit Gaming a day later.  Lazy reporters have nothing good to say.

Speaking of Reddit Gaming.  I've browsed that website for a good three months thus far and I'm tired of it.  Most of the posts are innocuous (funny screenshots & other stuff) but Good Lord, I'd be lying if I didn't say it was the Valve Show over there.  Don't get me wrong--Valve is a great company, all their games are top-notch, they give you the tools & source code to make your own mods (look at my CS 1.6 maps), Gabe Newell is a pretty good billionaire who doesn't afraid of anything, but is this company the ONLY game dev they focus on?  Same group think--WHERE'S HALF LIFE 3???  GABEN, PORTAL, CAVE JOHNSON, WILL HALF-LIFE 3 EVER BE RELEASED???  EDIT: This is the top Reddit Gaming post of 9/3/12:

OMFG

As an aside, I'll go ahead and say this now.  Disregarding the fact I think Half-Life 2 is good but overrated (another linear single-player FPS but your character can't talk, how clever), Half-Life 3 is inevitable.  Valve is a very successful company.  Gabe Newell is a billionaire who is always in touch with fans.  There's at least 100 million Half-Life fans out there.  There WILL BE A Half-Life 3.  On the other hand, try saying that about Shenmue 3.  Or Daytona USA 3.  Or even Sonic Adventure 3.  NO SHOT.  Sega is nowhere near as good as Valve is and all of their talent has basically packed their bags & left.  EDIT: And any "diehard" Sega fans are so far & few between that you seldom hear them among the vast "ocean" of the Internet.

Speaking of Sega, Reddit Gaming couldn't give two s***s about Sega.  No surprise.  The only Sega-related story that makes the front page of Reddit Gaming is another repost of the "Genesis Tower."

And one more thing--this is about GameFAQs.  I still do my damnest to stay off that lousy-ass website.  But you remember a while back how GameFAQs would run all those Top 10 lists and Contests to decide what the best games ever made are?  I'm dead serious--if I go to this website and am told ONE MORE TIME about how great Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, Starcraft, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Portal are and how they're so much better than all other games, I'm going to punch a baby.  The same people who circlejerk their mainstream games on these websites, such as GameFAQs or Reddit, who try to lecture me on the same groupthink crap are going to make me snap.

It's just sad because the only truly apparent group of Sega fans are...Sonic fans.  And they're the ones who get raked over coals--for bickering amongst each over about what Sonic games are good or not (Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic CD, etc.), for being "furries," for spamming the message boards asking whether or not miscellaneous characters will be in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (omg, can we get Blaze the Cat DLC????), thereby obfuscating the point of the game which is to be about GOOD, SOLID RACING as opposed to a bunch of Sonic characters.  Really now, I like Sonic but seeing as the company now lives or dies by it gives the haters a bunch of ammo. 

And then there's other gamers.  We're at school and we're talking about what game companies we want to work.  Here's what happens:

Other Guy: "Where do you want to work?"

Me: "I want to work for Sega."

Other Guy: "Sega is a s***hole." (he's probably right)

Later that day, the same conversation occurs with another guy:

Another Guy: "Where do you want to go?"

Me: "I want to work for Sega."

Another Guy: "Wait, Sega is still around?????"

Case in point, no one knows s*** about Sega.  The hard work done by Yuji Naka, Yu Suzuki, and others will be washed away by a clusterf*** of Zelda, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Halo, Need for Speed, and Grand Theft Auto games.  Because we all know that those were the truly "innovative" games of our time while Sega.....pssh, they sucked, no one cares.

One more thing, there's this which was great because it paints Sega in a positive light and it actually made the non-Sega blogs like Kotaku: 

And there's always some smart-aleck who chimes in, "A Shenmue 3 wouldn't work in today's age."  Which is probably true.  I mean, the expectation people have for free-roam story-based games like these is too much.  Where are the weapons, why can't I blow up hookers, why can't you run over people in the forklift, why does this game have QTE's (Shenmue invented them but now every other game has incorporated them, running this type of gameplay into the ground).  Yet at the same time, these people don't want their Zelda/WoW/Half-Life/etc games to change--it's Shenmue that has to.  Zelda never ages, Mario never ages, Final Fantasy never ages, Street Fighter never ages, but Shenmue does therefore it's overrated.  Makes a whole lotta sense.

Seriously, I did not intend for this to be a "fanboy" post but for God's sake, if you're going to launch salvos again at Sega (like every other gamer has, regardless of whether they care about Sega's well being) then cut us some damn slack since dealing with this company is a roller-coaster ride and there's been some effort recently for Sega to make a comeback.  I felt this post needed to be made cause I'm getting pissed off about this every day.  Until then, here's hopes for blue skies...someday.

Adorable picture.  The irony is the PS3's older brother (the PS2) killed the Dreamcast.  How does it feel to be related to a killer?

EA Tiburon Field Trip And Retrospective (Do They Really Suck That Bad?)

So today, me and 50 other people from school drove 15 minutes up the road to tour EA Tiburon for a couple of hours.  While the words "EA" and "building" together conjure images of an Eldritch Location, the real estate is quite nice.  It's in this business park next to a Charles Schwab and Fidelity place.  The first building you see is the main studio.  Adjacent are two parking garages--one for employees, the other for visitors.  So where is EA getting all these visitors???  Um, whatever, we park wherever we can.

View Larger Map

This is it if you're interested.  So anyway, it's a six-story building.  First floor has a lobby, a store full of EA goods (including wonderful t-shirts that make you a big hit at gaming conventions), a conference room, and a cafe adjacent to a enclosed park/picnic area.  Second floor is marketing/finance stuff.  Third floor is NBA.  Fourth floor is Tiger Woods.  Fifth floor is Madden.  Sixth floor is NCAA Football.  So they're working on four games at once in the building.  There's about 350 employees working here right now.

The tour began with us all going to the lobby, getting a pass and a bag of EA freebies.  I got an EA Sports blue t-shirt and foam golf ball!  Others got mini basketballs & footballs.  Damn shame cause if they still did NASCAR then maybe I'd get a tire!  But anyway we were taken into a conference room where some guys talked to us about EA and stuff.

The propaganda presentations were about the Tiburon studio--"this is how we were founded" and "we're on the cutting edge of technology/social media," you know, all that softball stuff to get you loosened up.  Later we would all split into groups--the developers, the producers, the software engineers (they don't use the term "programmer" there), the tech artists, and the regular artists.

Oh, and about that NDA I signed...hardly anything mentioned was confidential.  During the programmer presentation, it was mostly about programming/shader/new tech stuff.  I couldn't even remember it all anyway and the blinds were open so anyone could look in and see for themselves (OMG, A SHINY LEBRON JAMES IN NBA LIVE).  Although we weren't allowed to bring cameras past the front gate.  Okay, sure thing, lady.

Frankly, these chats went on for way too long...I was waiting to tour the damn building.  But nonetheless, I got to ask a few questions for the EA guys:

"Will Sean Peyton be in Madden 13?"  Everyone cracked up.  Apparently not but it's because he wasn't part of the "coaches' club" or something so his likeness wouldn't be in the game anyway.

"Do you know where Peter Moore is?"  Peter Moore...that Sega bastard that killed the Dreamcast.  Apparently, he's living in San Francisco as the COO of EA Sports.  Didn't know he moved up so fast but w/e.  I'm always on the lookout for Sega guys.

"What happened with the NASCAR license?"  Apparently, EA decided to drop the series because they thought they'd make more money elsewhere. *coughFIFAcough*  I was wearing my Daytona Speedway hat so I looked like a moping racing fanboy I suppose.  Hey, it was a good question.  If they were still working on NASCAR, I might be more enthusiastic about an EA career.

(to an ex-student) "How similar is work at EA compared to grad school?"  Not much, apparently.  EA mandates that if you work too long a couple of days that you must go home and take a break.  I guess they don't want half-asleep programmers ruining the Perforce & stuff.

I should mention something funny.  During all this, some people brought out a bunch of goodies for us to enter for a raffle.  The prizes were some old-school EA t-shirts/phone cases, a bookbag full of EA games, an authentic Cleveland Browns helmet signed by Peyton Hillis (still in the box), some pair of shoes, and a pro-gaming headset.  Everyone got two tickets each and put theirs in the buckets of the prizes they want to win.  Everyone went heavy on the EA games and the headset.  Me?  I waited and put my tickets in the box with the best odds-to-value ratio and that was the NFL Helmet.  Surprise!!!...I won an actual NFL helmet signed by Madden '12 cover star Peyton Hillis.  It was the highlight of my day.

Me upon winning the helmet

Okay, time to go tour the building.  Obviously, I went on the "Engineer" tour.  Unfortunately it was a brief one and we only stopped on one floor--the six floor with NCAA Football development.  Even more unfortunate was that I had to haul that damn Peyton Hillis helmet around the entire building..."Whatcha got there?"  "Oh, I won a Peyton Hillis helmet in a raffle!"  The place looked rather...normal.  There were hardly any employees working at the time but the ones I saw looked clean.  The cubicles were densely packed but everyone had their own posters & toys so it really isn't that much different than grad school.  They had tons of reference posters of college football stuff for obvious reasons.  There was also all sorts of free food--chicken wings, cereal, candy bars, macaroni & cheese.  And a Mortal Kombat cabinet.  Didn't stop at the NBA, Tiger Woods, or Madden floors since they're pretty much the same thing with the same floor format (uniformity, it's in the game!).

The tour ended and we went to the cafe/picnic area, got some sandwiches and drinks and there were lots of EA guys around.  Most of them were young guys.  Everyone seemed nice and not terribly obnoxious.  Obviously, being socially awkward as I am (and still holding the Peyton Hillis helmet), I stuckwith my classmates.  I get a conversation or two with some tour guides and stuff because I radiate this aura about me as I sit lonely in the crowd staring at stuff and eating free M&M's and Twix bars.  There were also cookies with EA logos on them.  I'm sure they were delicious.

That's where the EA tour ends.  Regardless of my future with EA, I still got to see a legitimate game studio for the first time so the experience was alright.  Lately, everyone's been passing out resumes for job/internship interviews.  I dropped mine in a couple of inboxes--EA's included.  So I might have an interview with them really soon.  Hmm, interesting...a job interview with EA.  I just blew my mind.  They like to devour these newbie programmers...about 75% of them from previous classes (I'm not making this up) so that's pretty heavy.

Here's a bit of an aside from my recent expedition.  Looking at Electronic Arts for the millionth time, they're still full of crap in my book.  You can bring up a million reasons why EA sucks--the DLC, the DRMs, the killing of studios, the constant iteration of the same games, etc.  But give EA some credit since they do something right.  They're efficient, successful publishers.  If it weren't for them putting out mega hits like Mass Effect or Battlefield, you'd never have the luxury of ever playing them.  As for being an "evil" corporation, I could care less how much money EA makes.  The fact is I dislike them for other reasons...things that seep over to games I am actually interested in.

During the initial presentations, one thing we got a lot of was the "exciting new technology" from EA.  This included the new Madden tackle animations (look at this) and the realistic NBA light shaders (all the specular lights from the sweaty players, hence shiny Lebron James).  You know...it's great and all but I ask, "Where's the gameplay?"  Oh sure, for the most part new features/R&D begets new gameplay but still...it's the same game trapped in an eternal cycle.  "Oh, give us a few more years and we'll perfect it!"  Some EA guys said this is not a rehash at all and even went as far as to talk about 2K Sports and the exclusive NFL license.  BTW, did you think these guys were going to say anything remotely bad about themselves?  I don't think they're as evil as gamers say but I also don't think they're as good as they say about themselves.  Gaming is such a cut-throat business you take everybody with a grain of salt (even our beloved Sega).

In other words, if I hop on board with EA, I'm afraid most of my work with shaders/graphics.  Nothing really "new" in terms of gameplay besides bug squashing and whatnot.  Maybe I'm overstating this but that's the impression I got from the conversation.  And thus, this leads to even greater problems.  Yeah, EA puts out decent games but a lot of it is monotonous, only to be saved by massive, MASSIVE production value (EA has that $2 billion war chest, remember?).  And that's okay if that's their business plan.  I just think these big budget, broad, casual, play-it-safe titles are mainly what makes the game industry suck these days.  Hey, if EA is making money off this strategy, other publishers will follow suit.  Doesn't matter how stupid it is, if it sells, MAKE IT ANYWAY.  It it can't break 2.5 million copies, it's a failure (technically 5 million if you take it from this EA guy pertaining to Dead Space 3).

Sports, okay, I'll let those slide since there's no room to improve on that besides graphics.  But this mostly applies to Need for Speed I might add, most of which I find mediocre.  Most everything they make is a sequel or rehash in some way.  Hell, even Origin is a ripoff of Steam.  If it weren't for the HUGE IP's they've recently acquired like Mass Effect or Battlefield, I doubt anyone besides the sports junkies would care about EA.  Yeah sure, EA has recently made NBA Jam or NFL Blitz but those are just remakes which are really no better than the originals except for the graphics.  NFL Street was good but they canned it way too soon.  Skate is new I suppose.  Tony Hawk has gone to crap so at someone stepped up to the plate instead (speaking of which, where's the baseball games, EA???  Little Facebook/iPhone apps don't count).

EA I AM DISAPPOINT

On the other hand, there's one of the most beloved game developers in the world, Nintendo.  Now I'm not a huge Nintendo fan but I respect them for coming up with clever new IPs over a long time span like Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Smash Bros, the Wii, etc.  Even if they use the same IPs often, at least they do different things with them (different generations of Mario & Zelda).  Yeah sure, they've made some blunders recently but only extreme segments of gamers really hate Nintendo.  On the other hand, you can't say the same thing about Electronic Arts whom everyone seems to be indifferent to or hate.  Holy cow, EA won the Worst Company in America contest, what did you expect...that people love EA???

And how about Sega?  Hey, I'm not denying production value is bad (Sega was on top of things with arcade hardware like OutRun or Daytona which made them even more successful) but at least these games came with revolutionary gameplay.  And how about the Dreamcast?  Most people overlook this but Sega had some serious GUTS back then!  Look at all the IP's they released in that time: Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead, Sega Bass Fishing, Seaman, Super Monkey Ball, Shenmue.  I mean, geez, if modern-day EA went back in time and made their own figurative Dreamcast, what games would they make for it?  A bunch of sports titles, a Need for Speed, and some more titles from other companies that they didn't make themselves.

I don't know.  Taking shots at EA gets old after a while.  It's really dumb.  So how can I still think about working for these guys?  I have my doubts.  But these guys apparently like making Madden and NBA games (I assume...defectors will be PUNISHED by their EA overlords).  And no one there is really a scumbag--they're just guys working on games and getting along just fine.  If you're not emotionally attached to one particular game/genre/company then EA is probably up your alley...BUT THAT'S NOT ME.

I make a big deal out of the games I want to work on.  This can be a terrible attitude to have at times but I can't help it since if it weren't for Sega, I'd never be in this scenario in the first place!  So assume I get a job at EA.  While I struggle to program a simple shader at an EA "incubation session," Sega continues to commit suicide and by the time I make it there, they'll be dead.  You can't flat out ask any of these guys "hey, do you know how I can work for Sega?" since they obviously want people to stick with them and no one else!  The EA experience helps a lot on resumes, if that means anything.  You can also use that in-house experience to slingshot to other EA studios across the world (this includes Bioware and DICE) but that's not where I want to touch down, of course.  Still, it's SOMETHING to think about.

I have mixed emotions about EA and the whole thing right now.  Hey, I don't know where to work right now but in the coming months, we'll just examine our job opportunities and choose.  EA's not off the table but I am super hesitant.  There's smaller studios where I'd feel more at home that are eager to hire people in the Orlando area.  I can't spend all my time worrying about the future cause then I won't have fun.  Fairly certain everyone is a bit worried as well, even if they don't express it so you're not alone.  Okay, I'm done rambling, another super late night post, signing out...

City Buildin' War Games!

So today I came home early from school and OH WAIT NO I DIDN'T because I spent 5 hours straight trying to figure out how to change the palette colors of an OpenGL texture (the cars) for Super Sprint and utterly failed (trust me, I tried everything).  No, just doing the glColor3ub() thing doesn't work--it makes the entire car radiate these ugly diffuse lighting hues.  What a piece of crap.

So anyway, there's this huge gaming story that blew up on Reddit.  Some of you have heard already.  Some guy played the same Civilization 2 file for 10 years.  Apparently, you can't sit idle and let the AI auto-pilot your nation--you gotta make every move on your own (that's brutal).  And way into the future, it's been nothing but incessant war between the Celts, the Vikings, and the Americans.  It lasted for 1500 years and all they would do is nuke each other.  At first, I thought "oh this is cool," but now it has its own subreddit.  It's as if this guy stumbled upon his own version of 1984 or War Games.  Oh well, if you stick to ANY saved game for a decade, you deserve props.

See my friends, now THAT'S EMERGENT GAMEPLAY!!!  If you don't go to FIEA, you won't get it.

But Civilization 2 the point of this post.  I know very little about the Civilization series (you guys say "boooooo") but it does make me think because I like these kind of tile-based building/strategy games.  I'd go as far as to say that aside from racing games, strategy games of this sort would be one of my top choices for projects.  But NO FACEBOOK GAMES like Farmville or that crap--we're talkin' real serious games here.

Hasty transition to Advance Wars, a series of games for Nintendo handheld consoles.  Is it like Civilization?  I guess it is!  This is probably my favorite Nintendo IP (write it down, people, Eric actually loves a Nintendo game).  Played the heck out of all the games back in the day.  It was good old fun.

In case you know nothing about Advance Wars (made by Intelligent Systems), it's a turn-based war game in which you build various units like infantry, tanks, artillery, naval, and aircraft units.  They each have their own strengths, costs, and weaknesses.  You also get to choose from many different commanding officers AKA CO's (the guys you see above) which have unique skills and special abilities.  It gets much more complicated but that's the quickest explanation I can come up with.

Now this is Advance Wars: Dual Strike, the third entry in the series (sort of...if you don't include all the Famicom Wars for Japanese-only old-school Nintendo consoles).  Here, I like what they did with a multitude of things.  The units you see on screen are still cartoony and colorful as usual.  There's more units, characters, and maps than ever before.

But the game had a ton of problems--mainly that the balancing in the game just plain sucked.  Some characters were just plain overpowered (looking at Colin, Grit, & Kanbei as the main offenders) while others just didn't make sense...like they ran out of unique powers to give to CO's (like Koal...who gains a 10% damage bonus for units on roads...okay?).  Also, it was too lucrative to spam infantry (which clutter the map and can overtake cities & serve as meatshields) and air units were still superior to naval units.  Also, there was only room for three custom maps.  In other words, Intelligent Systems should've gone back to the drawing board and polished the heck out of it.  Seriously, there are fan-made ROM patches out there which balance the units & CO powers, something that the actual devs hastily glazed over.

But anyway, Intelligent Systems went back to the drawing board...and they completely overhauled Advance Wars.  The next game was called Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.

Simply because the Advance Wars series had reached a breaking point with Dual Strike (too many units, too many CO's, balance was out of whack), they killed off everything and brought about this new "theme," one that actually resembles a real war.  The "story" with this one is that meteor strikes kill 90% of the Earth's population (whether it's the previous AW world, we'll never know) and only a few survivors fight each other in an EPIC WAR GAME TO THE DEATH.  Before it was like, "Oh no, we lost, but at least we still have our friendship!"  Much, much different.

Days of Ruin did a lot of things right gameplay wise.  They balanced existing units and brought about new ones such as the bike infantry, the flare gun, the anti-tank, and the crop duster planes.  They also expanded the number of custom map slots to 50 (wow, finally!) and added Wi-Fi online play.  So what's there to hate about this game?

Oh, I dunno...it's not as COLORFUL as the previous Advance Wars???  While the new cast of characters is okay, the serious tone was a far cry from the old AW games.  The units/sprites aren't as cartoonish as before.  It just doesn't feel at home.  There's no blue skies in this game.  The game's hues feel more faded out--not even in a Sonic CD bad future kind of way--it's just bleak.  Bear in mind this is the same studio that made Fire Emblem so of course they would elevate Advance Wars to match the tone of that game and not the other way around.

This is my opinion of course.  Some will say the new Advance Wars look is appropriate but I have a tendency to err towards happy games over gritty/depressing ones.  Days of Ruin came out in 2008 and odds are if Nintendo decides to revisit the franchise, the next one will be just like Days of Ruin as well--in other words, the old characters/world is dead.  That sucks.  Though I don't know how anything from Days of Ruin can compete with something like this:

MAGICAL CHAIR POWERS!!

BTW, if you want to play Advance Wars online, check out this site.  Play Advance Wars games on your browser.  Also features the old CO's/units and up to 16 players in one game!

That's all I have to say about that.  There's also one more strategy game I'd like to talk about and it actually has to do with building cities!  No, not SimCity.  This is Monopoly Tycoon.

This is a multiplayer RTS (sort of) game unlike most others I've seen.  It has very little to do with Monopoly or the other Tycoon games.  It's more like an elaborate version of Lemonade Stand.  Here, you and up to five other players are given a blank city with spaces named after Monopoly properties.  You drag & drop various types of businesses in an attempt to gain more customers & sales than the other players.  It's a cut-throat game in that all the actions happen in real-time as you stave off other players from getting in your space.  Sell the right type of goods at the right prices in the right locations to gain the upper hand.  Also try building apartments and buying property leases (including railroads and utilities) via auctions for great benefits such as property tax and the ability to build hotels, parks, and other players' businesses.



Guess who uploaded this video?  ME.  EDIT: To "win" the game, you have to meet some money-related condition like "First to make $100,000 total assets."  As you can see here, to make money, you need to spend money.  You can go up to $10,000 in debt and hope to make it back in scores.  However, if you remain in the red for more than 24 hours, you go bankrupt and lose the game.  So you gotta live on the edge of bankruptcy to get ahead!

I must admit I was skeptical of the game's quality at first but I became engrossed in it in no time.  There's more depth than meets the eye but the problem is the game can move at a sluggish pace since if you're not building stuff or tweaking variables, you're just passively looking by as customers buy stuff with the little katching sounds ringing in the background which is cool so no harm done.  The main problem with the game is that the AI is dumb as bricks, there's no one online playing (find that one player AFK in the GameSpy lobby), among a few other petty issues that would whoosh right over your heads.

BTW, the music in the game is pretty cool.  The game goes from the 30's to the 90's over time.  Not only do new business arise over time but the music changes as well.  All the game's music does a great job of capturing their respective time period.  Swing music in the 40's, synthesizers in the 80's, crap dubstep in the 90's, this is great.  The 70's theme is my favorite though:



I also uploaded these clips too, thank me very much.

This is one game I hope gets another shot but it's very unlikely at this point.  Sort of...I heard SimCity 5 will have up to 16 player simultaneous online play?  I presume it'll be competitive like Monopoly Tycoon (or cooperative, whatever floats your boat) but I have my doubts...this it ELECTRONIC ARTS we're talking about so the likelihood of me picking SC5 up any time soon is very slim.

Anyway, I could talk about more tile-based games.  Like SimTower, that was awesome (already covered that a long time ago).  But once again, it's super-late and there's no other games I feel like talking about more than these two.  ADIOS.

E3 Sucks, Racing Games Suck (Who Would've Thunk It?)

All aboard the E3 Hype Train, where every company (besides Sega) gets major pimpage!  Good time to be a Sega fan!!!  Waiting for that Shenmue 3 announcement!  Waiting, waiting...still waiting.....(in the meantime, Nintendo has already gone through numerous new consoles & franchises...life is fair).

Anyway, I knew E3 was coming but I don't give a crap about it.  And especially after hearing some of the highlights thus far, I'm just flat out pissed.  What else is new.

EDIT: Dafuq happened to this .gif...it literally turned into a .png and doesn't animate anymore.  Stupid blogspot.

First!  I would like to congratulate Microsoft for turning Forza into a Need for Speed clone!  Here we go again...Forza Horizon is set an "open world" (don't you get sick of hearing that?) consisting of farms, canyons, and rural towns.  Driving around in sports cars, dodging traffic.  Hey, where's the cops?  Anyway, there's gonna be "speed shows" complete with trophy girls, drifting, and terrible dubstep.  EDIT: I also wonder what the wrecks will be like.  If it's anything similar to NFS/Burnout then that's a huge demerit IMO.  It's about racing, not smashing "beautifully-crafted metal cages" (according to GameInformer) to bits.

If there's any solace here, it's that it's not made by Turn 10--it's made by Playground Games.  So basically, Microsoft has joined in on EA's antics by using the titular "Forza" name on anything even remotely car-related.  What a joke.  We've had how many Gran Theft Autos, Need for Speeds, Test Drives, Midnight Clubs, Drivers, etc. so far?  Please do tell what this game'll do that the others haven't already.  EDIT: Well it SHOULD use Forza's handling which is leagues better than NFS's, I suppose.  If somehow, this game differentiates itself from the others in a drastic, then I won't be so bitter about this.  I might actually download the demo (oooooo).  Until then, I'm not holding my breath.

Only good news...I save $60 by not buying Forza 5.  Forza 4 gets a TIME EXTENSION!!  Get to keep my Ferraris for longer so I don't have to replay the whole game again to buy 'em all over again...

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BUT THERE'S MORE!!  There's a SECOND racing game announced on the same day.  This one is called Need for Speed: Most Wanted.  Huh, what?  Didn't we already get a Most Wanted?  Yes, we did...in 2005. But since gamers apparently have the attention span of a fruit fly, Criterion and EA decided what the hell--let's use the same name AGAIN!  Seven years later...who's gonna notice?

Seriously, I just looked up "most wanted" on GameFAQs (puke) and these are the results.  They seriously thew in the "(Criterion)" part of the title to differentiate the two.  Think about it--there are TWO NFS: Hot Pursuits on the Xbox 360 now.  And these aren't the same game (like a port/remake), these are two completely different games.  So why couldn't they come up with any other title???  Holy s***balls, this is unbelievable.  First Hot Pursuit, now this.  Originality at its finest.  EDIT: Sega also released two "Sonic the Hedgehog" games on 360/PS3 which is understandable seeing as Sonic 2006 sucked ass.

So what's the game like?  Well, as the natural evolution of games go, Need for Speed is now Burnout.  It's predicable as usual.  You drive around town running from cops.  It's another "open world" (does that mean anything anymore??) where you compete online to accomplish tasks to raise your score and become the "most wanted."  Oh wow, never heard of that concept before.  Not to mention the game's dingy teal/orange hues rear their head again in a vain attempt to appear more "edgy" and "futuristic" although it makes it look less appealing to look at as I can tell from here.

As for the racing, it looks generic as usual.  Run from the cops and overtake your rivals.  Occasionally, you'll knock out another racer/cop and a tame "you took him out" cutscene occurs.  Once again, your car is made out of steel and everyone else's are made out of tinfoil, seeing as you inexplicably take out five/six guys just trying to get away while your Porsche gets a few fender benders but that's it.  Guy hits a ramp and, on-cue, the title screen pops up.  The end, lukewarm applause follows.

FUN FACT: The mini-leaderboards on the lower-left side of screen feature names of English Royalty.  oicwutudidthar...

And one more thing.  Why the hell are there so many cities in racing games???  Didn't we get enough urban driving before in Grand Theft Auto, RR: Unbounded, and so forth?  Cities are great...until you overuse them.  Know what was the most fun I ever had driving around a city?  More fun than I'll ever have in a NFS game?

Exactamundo.

Seriously, I said before that Need for Speed is basically EA's petri dish for whatever concoctions they want to try with the racing genre and once again, I'm proven right.  Basically, they've given NFS over to Burnout since due to the abysmal failures that were Underground & The Run, no doubt the series will turn into Burnout clones in no time.

I'm sorry, guys.  I know some of you are Forza/NFS lunatics but this is pathetic.  While neither game is as egregious as Split/Second or Burnout: Revenge in terms of "car-nage", it's just insulting to know that the racing genre is all nice and cozy doing the same "street tuner" thing (plus wrecks) over and over and over and over again.  Really, I'm not going to sugar-coat this and pretend to be a rabid dog spouting crap laced in a witty fashion--I'm just ripping the band-aid off cause I'm pissed.

"Eric, if you don't like these games, what would you do differently?" - Cut the cliche crap out already.  Make a colorful racing game that has responsive controls for once.  While you can't entirely emulate Sega, there's still things that could make me stop & appreciate more often.  Read this and go away.

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BTW, Microsoft's show sucked too.  No new games, just some rapper guy named "Flo Rida" does a dance show featuring the Kinect.  Seriously, can the Kinect just DIE already?  And as for this horrible hip-hop crap that keeps playing over "pop music radio," I feel really bad for the "true rap" out there.  Yeah, I'm not the biggest rap fan in the world but nowadays, rap has become synonymous with trashy pop music that I'm fairly certain the original rap aficionados are sick of it too.

No....I hate this...

As for the rest of the shows, I don't give a damn.  To conclude, one wonders why do these game devs keep pushing the same crap down our throat even though we reject it?  I'm talking about racing games (for me anyway), the Kinect, World of Warcraft ads, terrible Spike TV/G4 promos, pop music, Call of Duty, etc.  I'm guessing the more of this they throw at you, your "immunities" will break down and you'll succumb to the whole thing.  Like, "oh I give up, I'll buy Need for Speed because I need a racing game" or "oh, I'll buy the Kinect cause it can't be THAT bad" or something.  That's the ONLY explanation I have as to why these things never cease to go away.  What a piece of crap.

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BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS!  According to SegaBITS, Nagoshi-San is at this year's E3!  I'M CALLING IT NOW, he will say NOTHING of importance except maybe to announce another English translation of Yakuza whatever number much to the delight of a couple of thousand Sega diehards.  Wait, that sums up us wanting a new Daytona.  We can't win now, can we?

*walking around E3*

"Who are you?" - generic nerd

"I'm the creative head of Sega!" - Nagoshi-San

"Sega sucks." - generic nerd

" :( " - Nagoshi-San

Now you know why I piss all over E3.  Check for more Sonic & Sega Racing 2 info--that's the only thing I really care about now.  That and NASCAR: The Game 2013.  I love me some NASCAR....

I'M SHO PISHED AWFFF U GAIIISSS!!!

Old Racing Game: Rad Racer!!!

It's Rad Racer!  RRAAAAD RRACCCEE---oh never mind.

Since I've got nothing better to talk about, let's talk old NES racing games.  Just got done with R.C. Pro-Am, why not another R-racing game?

This is a 1987 NES classic by Square.  Wait--SQUARE???  Yes, Final Fantasy's Square.  Well, they also made Chocobo Racing which proves that Square can hang with the big boys such as Sega and....uh, no one else cause Sega's the king.



This is the whole game in action--from start to finish in 25 minutes (no continues run which is very difficult).   Now let's evaluate what you see.  You're driving a red Ferrari down the road as object fly by via parallax scrolling.  You're dodging traffic alongside a beach with palm trees and blue skies as well as other colorful landscapes.  You can listen to one of three music tracks.  If you hit an object on the side of the road, you flip over and are placed back on course.

Oh, and there's a girl riding shotgun with you.

I've never played a game like this before--oh wait, it's just an OutRun clone, lol.

OutRun came out in '86, Rad Racer in '87.  Considering the wonderful quality of OutRun home ports at the time, Rad Racer was very good.  It also had the benefit of coming out on the NES while OutRun came out on oddball consoles like the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Master System, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Hey if you want to praise Rad Racer, fine by me, but give credit where credit's due...!

Sooo...some more stuff about this game.  You have a choice of two cars at the start--a Ferrari 328 Twin Turbo (which is in OutRun 2 BTW) and an F1 car.  Surprisingly, side-by-side comparisons have proven that both cars are exactly identical in speed.  The only difference is that driving the Ferrari will spawn sports car traffic while driving the F1 car will spawn other F1 cars.  Also, instead of a gear shifter, both cars have an infinite "turbo boost" that makes you accelerate faster but harder to turn.  So good for you!  Automatic transmission FTW!!!  I need naaawwwsssssss...

Guess what?  The top speed in this game is 255 kph (158.45 mph).  This is stupid for two reasons.  One, the range for a byte (or 8 bits) of memory is 0 thru 255.  So basically, they only had one byte to give for the top speed.  FYI, OutRun tops out at 293 kph (TWO BYTES!!!...that's the Yu Suzuki assembly programming).  It just sticks out like a sore thumb.  Second, what the f'n hell are they thinking making an F1 car go 160 mph max???  F1 cars normally drive up to 220 mph.  Same thing with the Ferrari too, though I doubt any of these numbers matter since it's unlikely this game's metrics match real-life speed.

Here it is--here's every track in the game.  1-4 on the left, 5-8 on the right.  The 4th track looks like a Famas assault rifle.  You don't go thru intersections like in OutRun--instead you remain in the same stage for about 2-3 minutes (with a few scenery changes at each checkpoint) then move onto the next one.  Run out of time and you get to restart at the beginning of the level you failed at.  Oh, BTW, this is one hard-ass game so good luck trying to beat it, especially the latter levels where you can't afford to even crash once.  But OutRun was hard too so there's another thing Square copied.  Bravo, Square.

Come to think of it, OutRun really needed more pitch black/neon green tracks so Square delivers again on that front.

This is the last track in the game.  Each track has their own unique traffic cars and here we have a cavalcade of Ferrari Testarossas driving along the beach.  Just like in OutRun.  It's as if Square is mocking us.  Well, go back to your little bishounen games and shove it.

The game also has one more fun feature--3D glasses support!!!  Just hit the select button (or something) and it toggles from normal to 3D mode.  It turns the screen into these hideous hues of red and blue.  Just like modern-day 3D gimmicks, this one sucks too.

Anyway, there's a sequel called Rad Racer 2 which looks very similar but with more polished handling.  And a mph gauge instead of a kph gauge which means a top speed of...255 mph.  Very realistic.  But I don't want to discuss that game now since I have very little to say.  So Rad Racer's pretty cool and it would get a 9.1 in my book, but since it's an OutRun IMPOSTOR, I deduct 9 points so it has a Final Review Score of 0.1.  Don't like it NES fanboys, come at me, bro--I have the Power Glove.



And please check out on R.C. Pro-Am, California Speed, Initial D, RoadBlasters, and Super Sprint/Super-Off Road/Indy Heat.  Damn I love to pimp out other links on my blog.