I couldn't get yesterday's update to load due to issues with my steadily failing USB pen drive.  This was a frustrating turn of events, because I very desperately wanted the update to coincide with the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (even though what I'd written had nothing to do with the game at all).  Oh well... at least you should be seeing it NOW.

Before I go, I've got a word of advice for those of you looking for a good controller for your home computer.  End the search now, because you're not going to find one.  Instead, purchase a PC JoyBox from a supplier of import accessories like Jandaman.com.  Let me tell you, this thing SMOKES.  Not only is it automatically recognized by your computer, but its performs beautifully with either Saturn or Playstation controllers... there's no lag whatsoever, making all your games on your PC just as fun as they were on those two systems. 

When used wisely, the two joypads can handle pretty much anything you throw at them. The Japanese and second run Saturn pads are perfect for fighters and other fast-action arcade games which require precise digital input, while the mountain of buttons and sticks on the Playstation Dual Shock pad is great for emulating more advanced systems like the Nintendo 64. 

Words cannot express how happy I am with the PC JoyBox.  If you love emulators, but the many crappy joysticks designed specifically for PCs are making the experience less appealing than it could be, you absolutely must have one of these adapters.  It's the best twenty bucks you'll ever spend.

It's Tuesday.  October 26th, to be precise, and you know what THAT means!  Everyone's playing that hot new video game everyone's been dying to get their hands on for years.  Yes, it's another game in the series that made a swarthy, tackily-dressed Italian famous.  I'm talking about none other than... Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door!

That other game is getting plenty of publicity... G4's even gone so far as to devote an entire day of programming to it.  I'd much rather talk about sequel to the Nintendo 64's best role-playing game, Paper Mario.  I really enjoyed what I've played so far, and there are definitely improvements over the previous game.  Remember how you'd get frustrated with the buddy characters in the first Paper Mario, who never contributed as much to the fights as Mario himself?  That's been fixed... there's a lot more you can do with them now, making the battles less monotonous.  Your partners have a lot more personality now, too.  The character designs are more distinctive, so instead of hanging out with a plain old Koopa or Boo, you get a shy turtle wearing a sweatshirt and band-aids, and an immense ghostly diva with a crush on Mario.

I'm not entirely convinced that the game is better than the original Paper Mario, however.  The levels are woefully short for an RPG, and they're not as cleverly designed as they were in the previous game.  Parts of the game had left me frustrated and confused due to goals that were unclear and paths that were needlessly obscured.  Your first partner character, Goombella, does offer advice to help you get through these tight spots, but it's not always enough.  You're going to need a FAQ for this one... just try to resist the temptation to look ahead!  Some of the plot twists sandwiched between each level are a shocking surprise. 

In general, the storyline is well-written and quite entertaining.  I appreciate the fact that the American translators are trying to give the characters in the Mario universe more depth, despite their paper-thin appearance.  Some of the jokes are pretty clever as well... you won't be laughing quite as hard as you did when you were playing Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, but you'll be laughing all the same.

Is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door the game of the year?  As much as I'd like to say so, no, it isn't.  However, it's so full of vibrance and life that it's bound to wind up on your top ten list.  It's certainly a nice change of pace from the reckless violence in that OTHER recently released video game.

It's a slow news day, and I haven't played Katamari Damacy yet (although it hasn't been for lack of trying, believe me...).  I guess StarFox will be the subject of the day, since I just took StarFox Adventures back to the rental store and the English translation patch for StarFox 2 was recently released.

A lot of people hated StarFox Adventures.  I can understand why, as it was a huge departure from the previous games in the series.  Having played over a dozen extremely loose NES adaptations of popular arcade titles, I can understand the frustration that can result from this kind of false advertising.  Still, it is worth pointing out that Dinosaur Planet was originally designed as its own series... the association with StarFox just came later, when development shifted from the N64 to the GameCube.

If you can get past the tacked on license, you've got to admit that StarFox Adventures isn't an entirely bad game.  If nothing else, it's got some of the most fantastic graphics you'll see on the GameCube, with rendered characters so incredibly realistic you can almost feel the soft fur and smooth, shiny scales.  The quests won't keep you up late at night like Zelda: Wind Waker did, however... the level design is confusing, the battles are unsatisfying, and the annoying, demanding characters don't give you much incentive to rescue them.  "Give me alpine roots!  Give me GrubTub fungus!  Give me this, give me that!"  After a couple hours of dealing with these ungrateful, uncooperative idiots, I felt like jumping into the Arwing and flying as far away from the forsaken planet as possible.  Those stupid woolly mammoths can do their OWN chores for once.

I'll admit it, the game even started to get on my nerves after a while.  However, StarFox Adventures is a competant adventure that gets entirely too much grief for not meeting the expectations of Nintendo fans.  Yes, it's not really StarFox, but at the same time, it's not a bad game in its own right.

Don't mind me... I'm just here to do some much needed maintenence on the site.  Now that I've got ad banners on all the currently supported pages, including the Saturn reviews, those annoying pop-up ads should vanish.  Those pop-ups ARE going to disappear now, right?  Right, Dave?  Dude, you're starting to scare me.

I haven't been in the mood to update the site, so I've been spending all that free time playing games.  I picked up Midway Arcade Treasures for my GameCube last week, and rented the sequel earlier today to see how the two games compare.  Strangely, neither of these collections impressed me the way that Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits for the Sega Saturn had.  Sure, Midway Arcade Treasures has a lot more games, but it's also got a lot less content.  Nearly every game on the collection warns you that it's missing press artwork, or interviews, or a history file, making the total package frustratingly incomplete.  There's also the issue of the overly specialized GameCube controller, which just isn't up to the task of bringing you arcade-quality gameplay.  That's a task better left to the Saturn's digital joypad, which offers a level of precision you just can't get from any of today's game systems.

Despite this, I would recommend Midway Arcade Treasures 2 without a moment's hesitation.  It's an extremely generous collection, offering titles like Mortal Kombat 3 and Primal Rage that were released as single games less than ten years ago.  Also, this is the first time that a truly worthwhile version of Total Carnage has been released for a home console.  All the hilarious, steroid-drenched gameplay that was left out of T*HQ's mediocre Super NES version is here... you'll be gunning down thousands of enemy soldiers while picking up American flags and being urged to "blow up big stuff" with the bombs scattered throughout each stage.  It's not the only great game on the disc, but it's definitely my favorite, and the only reason I need to take this collection home for good when I get my next paycheck.

It's been ages since I've given the site a respectable update.  I'm going to have to think about adding content to one of the feature pages, like the Game Boy Advance review index or Fighter's Misery.  Then there's that Space Invaders retrospective, and the peripherals like the Game Boy Player that I wanted to cover on the site... there are just so many choices that I don't know where to begin!

I'll have to decide over the weekend, I suppose.  In the meantime, have you heard about the controversy surrounding Infogrames, the current owners of the Atari brand name?  They've been handing out cease and desist letters to classic video game sites faster than a cheap old lady can hand out bags of pennies to disappointed kids on Halloween.  They haven't threatened to shut down sites like Atari Age (yet...), but they have stopped them from selling homebrew games featuring characters from old Atari titles like Pong and Adventure.

Now I do realize that Infogrames (not to be confused with the golden breakfast treat that gives anyone who eats it violent diahrria) has a legal right to stop these games from being produced, but it does set a rather frightening precedent.  Atari built the foundation for the video game industry, and any game built on that foundation, whether created by hobbyists or large corporations, could be subject to an Infogrames lawsuit.  There's a lot of potential for abuse here... hopefully, Infogrames will know where to draw the line with its legal threats.