11/30/05

It's not your ordinary, average update to The Gameroom Blitz, ladies and gentlemen... it's the first update to the Dan Hibiki tribute page in months!  The man in mauve hasn't seen much action lately, but thanks to reader Onikage88, we've got a brief video of Dan training some new recruits... and getting schooled by an old rival!

For all you PC gamers out there, Sega and M-80 wanted me to let you know that there's a new mission pack for the critically acclaimed Rome: Total War.  It's called Barbarian Invasion, and you'll find more information about it here.  According to M-80's press release, Barbarian Invasion adds a new dimension to the gameplay of this military strategy title, allowing you to either defend the once proud Roman empire or trample it in the dust with an army of bloodthirsty berzerkers.

Strategy titles have never been to my personal taste, but if you're into games that require careful thought rather than quick reflexes, Rome: Total War and its recent expansion pack should keep your mind sharp through the lazy holiday season.

One final bit of news to report... the ghost of the corrupt Clinton presidency has returned to haunt gamers, with a proposed ratings system enforced by our "friends" at the freakin' FCC.  Dearest Hillary, whatever will you do when you've taken your favorite scapegoat and legislated it out of existence?  You might actually have to pass some meaningful laws for a change, rather than pandering to lobotomized parents who can't read a large bold M on the front of a game box.

It makes me glad that Hillary Clinton and her bone-headed husband are finally out of the White House.  I mean, really, who else could be so irresponsible and self-serving?  Who, I ask you, who?

Oh yeah, I forgot about him.

11/21/05

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  That's a fitting description for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which brings online functionality to your favorite Nintendo DS games... well, if those games happen to be Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk's American Sk8teland, anyway.

I've only tried Mario Kart DS myself, but I've been alternately amazed and aggravated by the game's online features.  When the connection is stable, the gameplay is outstanding, but when it's not, you'll have immense difficulty just STARTING a race, let alone finishing one.

When I first tried to get Mario Kart DS online (at around 7:00PM Eastern time), breaks in the connection were so frequent that it was a desperate fight just to squeeze a single lap out of the game, much less a full four round circuit.  The best I was able to get, after thirty minutes of searching for opponents, was a two lap race cut short by the all-too familiar black screen of death™.

So I took a break to cool off.  After an hour of fooling around with my PSP, downloading a patch for my copy of WipeOut Pure and trying in vain to start a multiplayer battle in Twisted Metal Head-On, I came back to Mario Kart DS.  At this point my expectations were pretty low, so you can only imagine how surprised I was when the game's online experience, which was absolutely awful just an hour ago, suddenly turned into a work of art.

I was able to play through several circuits without being disconnected once, and without the more minor aggravation of characters that spastically dart around the screen.  The encouraging media coverage of Nintendo's Wi-Fi service, which seemed so very wrong at first, was starting to sound a lot more accurate.

Don't believe all the hype.  At present, there aren't many games that support Nintendo's online service, and unless you luck out and connect to the network when traffic is low, they're not always fun to play.  Still, there's definitely promise here.  I've seen what the Wi-Fi service can do... let's hope that in the future, this strong performance will become the rule rather than the exception.

11/14/05

It's another exciting installment of "Overdue Updates Gone Wild!"  Watch as hot, sexy updates to The Gameroom Blitz bare it all after a week-long delay!  Order now and you'll get a review of Trauma Center: Under the Knife for free!  Why settle for seeing a little skin when you can find out what's underneath it?

So what's going on in the world of gaming?  There's a distressing new trend by media outlets to either downplay the Revolution or ignore it entirely in discussions about the next generation of consoles.  Take IGN and GameSpot (please).  On the top of each page, where the links to each system are placed, there are references to both the Xbox and Playstation 3, but no mention whatsoever of the Revolution.

Now I can understand why they'd include the Xbox 360, given the fact that it's set to be released in a couple of weeks, but why the Playstation 3 and not the Revolution?  Sure, we've all seen the video clips of games like Metal Gear Solid 4, but what we HAVEN'T seen are those games running on real hardware.  At the moment, there's little concrete information about either console... no final system specifications, no game demos running on real hardware, no nothin'.

One would tend to conclude that bias was the catalyst for the decision to leave the Revolution out of the headers of both sites.  Sure, Nintendo's not the "cool" hardware manufacturer at the moment, but it's still a major player in the industry, and it's unfair to stack the deck against the company with "objective" news coverage that removes the Revolution from the next generation system wars before it even has a chance to compete.

It's also worth noting that both IGN and GameSpot mention the Playstation Portable in their headers and side bars well before the Nintendo DS.  Uh, guys?  Who's been selling handheld consoles the longest?  Which system has sold the most units so far?  Which console's name should be listed first alphabetically? 

Sometimes I wonder just how far video game journalism has come since the dark days of Sendai-owned EGM (Sega Genesis?  What's that?) and Video Games, the magazine which did everything within its power to make its readers buy the original Playstation.

11/6/05

There's good news and bad news for Nintendo fans.  According to members of the press who were invited to Nintendo's Seattle office for a test drive of Mario Kart DS, the company's upcoming wi-fi service not only works, it works well enough to give players a chance to challenge DS owners the world over.  There are claims that American players can make connections across the ocean to countries as distant as Germany, although it's not yet clear if a connection could stretch as far as Japan, where the Nintendo DS is especially popular.  I doubt it, although it could be possible if you live in one of those oddball states that brush against the Asian border.

On the darker side of the news, it seems that the long-awaited Generation NEX from Messiah is a profound disappointment.  It can't handle all of the games in the NES library, and many of the others are hobbled with off-pitch sound effects and nasty colors.  The opinion among most gamers who bought a Generation NEX is that Messiah didn't deliver on its lofty promises, and that their new faux-NES is little more than a stylish paperweight.  I thought about stepping on the same landmine they did, but considering that it's been nearly a year since I've played my REAL NES, the Generation NEX would have been a waste of my money even if it had been properly designed.

Oh yeah, before I forget, there's a couple new reviews in Advance Theory.  If you wondered how the recent sequel to Gunstar Heroes turned out, and how it compares to last year's Metal Slug Advance, you'd be well advised to give it a look. Also, there's a new mini-review on the bottom of the index page, inspired by my love of an arcade favorite from the 1980's that has made a comeback, thanks to the recent release of  Taito Legends on the Xbox and Playstation 2.

11/1/05

It's almost four 'o clock, so I'll make this brief.  Frame by Frame has been updated, but this time, the freshly reviewed cartoons are all from your childhood.  Well, MY childhood, anyway.  They're longer and more descriptive than the usual cartoon reviews published on the site, so you'll probably enjoy them even if you're not familiar with the shows themselves.