New Daytona 2 Stuff

I looked around on Google a bit and I found a never-before-seen Daytona 2 article from Sega Saturn Magazine.  Not to be confused with the Makato Osaki interview from before.  This is mostly people talking up the game as it was being released.  I have these saved on my computer and my Photobucket account for safety's sake.  Click on the pics to enlarge.

Got the pics from here (in a much higher resolution).


Now you know what's really interesting?  If you look at Page 4, you see a clean Toshihiro Nagoshi there, sitting by the desk with the Daytona 2 banners.  Test driving stock cars around Twin Ring Motegi.  Now, what has happened since then?  Go from racing games to tanning salons to Super Monkey Balls to Binary Domain.  Who would've thought it would turn out this way?  It also mentions  an interview with Nagoshi in an upcoming issue, but I didn't see that one.  We got an interview with Osaki but not Nagoshi.  I don't if there's a missing issue or what...

I've always asked this question--do we really need Mr. Nagoshi's consent to make another racing game?  I don't know what else to say.  It's just really heartbreaking to see how our so-called "hero" has forsaken us.

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And this is another thing.  It's semi-relevant.  If you've been watching American football today, you may have seen footage of the Metrodome in Minnesota cave in due to snow.  This is the fourth time this has happened in the stadium's history.  It's not supported by beams, it's supported by air pressure...makes sense, right?  What is this, a circus tent?



"Even the Metrodome has given up on the Vikings."

And how appropriate is it to talk about "caving in" now.  Look at my world when it comes to Daytona USA.  Just sitting here waiting out the big fish when everyone else but me (and a few select companions) are all twisted out of shape by it.  Then I read this thing about Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and how great it is.  Criterion is genius.  I'm not even going to bother debating.

 Criterion's creative director Craig Sullivan talking about stuff.

"...we're really glad that people are embracing it and having fun."

And check out these quotes by commenters:

*** The attitudes of Criterion and Naughty Dog are where their great games start. I bet it is a blast to be employed by them. 

*** I stand by my personal belief that Criterion are the greatest game development studio of all time, with Naughty Dog and Rockstar tied for second

*** I've been following Criterion since the first Burnout came out, and I've loved all their games. They honestly know how to make fun games. I complained about Paradise before release because they were going to actually try making an open-world game, but they did it right. I thought they were going to screw up NFS, but they made it better. Seriously, whatever game they announce, I know it will rock.

So make Burnout Revenge 2 !!!!!!!! 

Bro, you know what.  You probably expect me to come on here fists swinging like a fanboy loser.  Doesn't really bother me.  That's just the way it is.  I'm glad that people out there are happy, but I'm just tired man.  Just kind of sucks to see everyone else having fun but me.  And no, this isn't a "oh woe is me, please be my friend and shower me with nice things" kind of posts.  I just don't think it's fair how I picked one of the hardest gaming series to follow as my wingman.  Geez.

If you like Burnout then that's ok.  But if you're in my camp of Sega diehards, then this song's for us:

Spike VGA's And Stupid Stuff

First off, I took a shower a while back and I got some water in my ear which has me completely disoriented right now so that sucks.

I had no idea the Spike Video Game Awards were this Saturday, nor did I care.  It's so tempting to get on here and call the show a piece of crap, but I'm not even going to do that.  It is what it is.

The Winners.

Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption.  Now I don't really care any way.  At least it wasn't something overly violent and annoying like God of War.

Best Shooter: Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Now I love how when I'm on the 360 Dashboard, I see all this stuff for Halo: Reach.  Buy Halo Reach!  Mess around with the Forge Editor and all that crap.  Well guess what--everyone's playing Call of Duty: Black Ops.  I hate to sound like a jerk, but I prefer the contemporary style of Call of Duty over Halo, sorry that's just the way I think.  Way back to Counter-Strike and Goldeneye.

EDIT:
Basically, it's like that quote "Men love blondes but marry brunettes," or something.  So everyone buys Call of Duty but MS would prefer if you played Halo.  I think that's how it works.

Best Driving Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.  Now, I would've picked Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing but remember, no one cares about cool stuff like that anymore.  Thankfully, Hot Pursuit is not a game that I loathe.  We should all be thankful that Split/Second didn't win instead.  I don't even know if GT5 was nominated.

Best Music Game: Rock Band 3.  As it should be.

Best Downloadable Game: Costume Quest.  Wrong answer man.  Should be Perfect Dark.  EDIT: I'm also surprised it wasn't Super Meat Boy.

As for the rest of the awards, I don't care and I'm not going to bother mentioning them because I would be wasting your time.

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Then there's also game announcements and stuff.  You have Kratos from God of War who will appear in Mortal Kombat.  First of all, I can't believe these two are still going.  Sure, slash and hack each other to death.  I still think it's weird that Kratos was in that PSP Soul Calibur which doesn't make any sense cause there's no gore in it.

But then there's Forza 4.  Just after GT5.  You know these guys are going for the jugular here.  Polyphony Digital had six years to work on it and people have brought up tons of complaints.  I may seem partial to GT5, but I think they may have screwed up really bad here.  We'll see if Forza 4 gets the PI ratings right and throws in some new courses, then GT6 will be playing catchup big-time.  Kazunori Yamauchi, you had the sim racing genre down until then, you played prevent defense and now you're on your heels.

Forza 4 trailer.

Just for show.  I think it's really weird that you can "ramp" another car in GT5 since in previous ones, I thought your collision box extended the entire space above and below your car, but not here:

I'm done talking, goodbye.

Lots Of Weird Stuff Going On (GFAQs, Servers, Forza)

This happened about two weeks ago.  I received an invite to a private GameFAQs board called "LifeFAQs."  Now considering the fiasco over the video proposal contest (which I'm not even going to link to--click on the tags to the right) and the realization that private boards are not accessible unless the admin specifically types your name in, I was convinced that they're just a waste of time.

So you may think this guy invited me because he saw my entry.  Well, no, that's not it.  The guy got this list of all the GameFAQs accounts older than eight years old and I happened to be on it.  The board is actually rather big now, like another LUE (Life, Universe, Everything) board where people discuss their favorite flavor poptarts and their grief over breaking up with girlfriends.

Putting aside all pettiness, I'm not a fan of big boards at all.  I used to post at a "big board" but it took a huge-ass amount of energy just to remain semi-relevant because there's hundreds of posts to reply too.  I'd much prefer a small board where you can maintain close friendships with a few people than to be the "cool guy" that everyone likes.

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And this is a news story that I've picked up on too.  It kind of relates the the OutRun Online Arcade server removal issue I talked about earlier.  Well, if you've been following Halo Wars, then you've probably heard in November that Microsoft is pulling the plug on the stat-tracking server on Dec. 15, much to the fanbase's chagrin.  However, because enough Halo fans complained about it, Microsoft has decided to keep the server up.

Going offline...
...just kidding, we're not going anywhere (yet).

Wow, isn't that great.  A game lives or dies by the servers.  Servers go down, game bricks.  And this is what you get when you rely on official servers instead of dedicated ones (EDIT: I think anyway, not sure if there's any remedy to server games RIP).  And throw in downloaded games too.  Oh, what about my Microsoft Achievement Points?  Well, if that were to go away, then I would have to come onto this blog and disagree with their decision in a not-so-polite manner.

And of course, this follows Electronic Arts' claim that they will only make games that adhere to online mode.  See here.  Can be loosely interpreted at a poke at Japanese games which have always been lackluster in the online component...

Oh, let me throw in that I've also been playing Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Yes, I'm a toolbag.  Yes, it's kind of fun.  So I'm already Level 26 and I think the Galil is a dead sexy gun (for a gun of course).  And I also made this crude Sega logo as my pic...it's not that grand because the game doesn't have every letter of the alphabet so I had to use a 5 and a 6 for the S and the G and then tweak it from there.  Will post pics later.

But I also look at Call of Duty and the house of cards it's built on...everything is on a server.  Not a dedicated server, I might add!  Just public servers.  See Starcraft 2, Modern Warfare 2, etc.  Server goes down, everything flushed down the toilet.  And you can also say this about World of Warcraft or Halo or any other game that people log hours upon days upon weeks into.

You could say that down the road about five years from now when the servers are gone that "no one will care about the game anyway," which is a seemingly legit argument, but why make all these disposable games in the first place?  About as disposable as cameras and toilet paper!  I'm getting really redundant here, just read the old OutRun post I linked to up there.  If this is the future of gaming, then I'm sure as hell gonna hang on to my Daytona games as the ship slowly sinks.  I don't want to be a sellout who buys all these brand new games that I will dispose of in the next three months.  That's just pathetic, I can't take it.

BTW, I'm backing up my Blogspot too.  Just in case the server is hit by a hurricane, a volcano, or a nuke.  I put too much thought into this site to let it slip through my hands like sand on a beach.

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One more story.  Forza 3, in an attempt to sway me back to their game, has released ten community-selected classics cars in a future DLC pack.  This includes the DeLorean.  Congrats Turn10 for deceiving me into believing your game was "dead," now go fix your PI ratings and maybe I'll reconsider.

88 MPH

We May Not Have A New Daytona Game But At Least We Have This

A few days old:


 
Same people who made the Vigilante 8 XBL port.  BTW, anyone a bit caught off-guard by this guy's voice?  Like you'd expect this macho badass but you get this friendly Disney movie trailer guy instead.  It's probably for the better though.

More info here.

The idea of driving a port-a-potty with an engine is disturbing enough...but the rest could be okay.  I'd take it over Fast and the Furious any day, that's for sure.  Wonder if it'll be anything like this (but with more ridiculous cars of course):

Oh yeah, I'm reading from this article a quote by Jimmie himself.  It's kind of interesting.  He says: 

There’s no denying that video games are certainly one of the most popular forms of entertainment. There are certainly a lot of entertaining racing games, but I’ve always felt there was something missing. I wanted to capture that kind of ‘anything goes’ element in racing and make a unique game that appeals to everyone. The teams at Autumn Games and Isopod Laps are incredibly talented, which gives us the opportunity to develop what I hope is a truly ground-breaking series. 

Here, let me fix that for you: 

There’s no denying that video games are certainly one of the most popular forms of entertainment. There are certainly a lot of mediocre racing games, but I’ve always felt there was something missing. I wanted to make another damn fine Daytona game that appeals to everyone (except Cruis'n and Mario Kart fans). The teams at Sega and AM2 R&D are incredibly talented (not including Nagoshi-San who is a worthless bum), which gives us the opportunity to revive what I know is a truly ground-breaking series and spare us from the miserable state of current racing games.

Now there is justice in the world.

Finally Done With That Garbage (College)

Today is somewhat of a glorious day since I am now officially done with my Fall 2010 semester of Southeastern Louisiana University.  I expect all A's this semester which would be a huge boost of confidence, I might add.

But this one's quite different for another reason.  This was the last semester I had classes on campus.  I only have Spring 2010 left and that is three (or two, depending on whether I pass the English CLEP exam) online courses and a public speaking lecture in a community center fifteen miles from my home.  I'm not graduating yet, but I should next semester.

Now what does this mean?  Oh God, it means a LOT of things.  The last four and a half (nine) semesters...
driving an hour to campus and another hour back...
spending tons of gas money...
trying to find a parking spot on a consistent basis...
living in that cramped dorm room (albeit with private bedrooms so I can sleep alone) pumping who-knows-what particles through the air conditioner and the water faucet...
eating the same old food in the cafeteria...
living with weird roommates who would never make a noise and would listen to every word that I said (like a ghost)...
busting my ass for A's when nothing seemed to come out of it for the longest time...
killing time alone because everyone else is either a WoW addict or just plain crazy...
taking awful classes like Classical Ideas and Physics Lab, Oh MAN...
making myself look like a fool in front of others because of my pathetic social skills...
pulling overnighters at the computer lab just to correct one or two lines of Java code or to get a little robot or circuit board to move...
being nickeled and dimed by little permits and letters I had to fill out and run around campus for...
did I mention trying to find a parking spot...?

Hey, I'm sorry I had to bring this up.  But let me put it this way.  It's like being a American WWII soldier for the entirety of the course.  Europe, the Pacific, whatever.  You travel so far from home, you get shot at, you live in less-than-stellar conditions, but it's over.  Yes, I know that being in the military is far tougher than being in college, but you have NO IDEA how much of a physical toll it took on me in the last few semesters because the BS started to pile up.

And now, I can say with some confidence that I don't have to go back there next semester.  I just want to move on.  I want to relax a little.  I want to go to video game school and make that Daytona game, I've just had it.  I feel a great sigh of relief, but it hasn't kicked in yet.

To be fair, I did meet some really good people at school.  But they were casuals friendships that only lasted for the duration of one or two classes then I never saw them again.  Oh, when you're like me, you tend to be grateful for anyone who's willing to be in your presence for over fifteen seconds, but those people are most likely gone for good.

So what did I do when I made it home?  Dumped off the stuff from my dorm room and fell asleep.  Now I'm here and I'm gonna go hang out and do stuff.  Yeah, I'll get back to you in like two seconds.  Let me decompress.  Lots of stuff to talk about.

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