12/31/05

Here it comes, folks... the new year!  Are you ready for a new batch of game consoles?  Well, you'd better be, because the Xbox 360 is already here, and the Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Revolution will both hit store shelves next fall (if not even sooner).

Then there's Amp'd Mobile, which is ready to carry the torch that first burned Nokia and its own entertainment-centric cell phone, the N-Gage.  The ads for the Amp'd line of phones are somehow even more obnoxious than the ones for the N-Gage, suggesting that the heir to Nokia's porcelain throne has learned nothing from the mistakes of its predecessor.

"So, what about the site," you ask?  Well, let's just say you asked anyway.  The Gameroom Blitz is fast approaching its tenth year online, and I should find some way to celebrate the anniversary.  Actually updating every once in a while would be a good start. MAME: Full Access, originally intended as a bi-monthly column, will be lucky to be a bi-yearly feature at this point, and there are plenty of other sections of the Blitz that could use new content.  Ah, there's so much to do, and so little motivation to do it!

If I start updating the site on a regular basis, the next step is to come up with a new layout to replace the current one.  I don't mind the way The Gameroom Blitz looks right now, but I'm sure that look could be improved with a little effort and imagination.  It gives me something to think about between classes at college and outside contributions to sites like GameTap and 1UP.

12/28/05

So I was hanging around at the local Target the other day, when I came across this not-so-little number.  The manufacturers are trying to pass it off as a full-sized arcade machine for your living room, but after spending some time with the Midway Home Use Arcade Machine, it's more accurate to call it the world's largest and most expensive TV Games unit. 

It's almost the size of a real arcade cabinet, but the parts inside are anything but arcade quality, with el cheapo joysticks and a television monitor that turns vivid reds into hazy yellows.  The games, all translations of popular Midway arcade titles, seemed pretty close to the hits I remember from my childhood, but I can't help but think that the designers would have been better off just packing them all in a standard TV games unit.  That way, they could have saved both themselves and their customers a whole lot of money.

As it is, you're paying an Xbox 360 price for early 1980's technology, housed in a cabinet that's much worse than what you'd find in a real arcade or even the local laundromat.  Anyway you slice it, it's not a smart investment.

Anyway, I've done a little maintenence on the site, and finally added a PSP section to the Sony review page.  It's not hard to guess which of the system's games I reviewed first!

12/27/05

It's the holiday season.  Christmas has come and gone with many gifts given and received.  I've finally got an arcade-quality joystick, although I had to buy a Tekken game along with it.  My PSP got its first real workout in ages, doing what it does best... impressing people who can't afford it.  After a long-overdue modification, the Sega Saturn's been taken out of retirement and set in front of the television where it belongs. Finally, the recently released Nintendo DS version of Bust-A-Move has set the series back on solid ground after years of artistically repellant sequels on the Playstation 2, GameCube, and Xbox.

Ah yes, life is good.  Now, if only I could do something about the incredible disappearing message board!

12/20/05

I was asked by reader William Campi if I had any opinion on the recent outburst by film critic Roger Ebert, who concluded that video games are not a legitimate form of art.  You'd better believe I have an opinion about this... in fact, I've got four of them!

1)  Art is highly subjective.  So are opinions.  Roger Ebert has arrogantly made the error of considering his personal opinion to be factual and authoritative.  The reality is that his point of view is only a fact in the eyes of a single man.

2)  By his own admission, Roger Ebert admits that he's not familiar with video games.  His declaration that they are "not art" is as valid as my saying "I've never seen the King Kong movie, but I'm confident in saying that it's terrible, since I've never been all that fond of gorillas."

3)  Video games contain paintings, music, sculpture (if you count polygonal rendering, and I do), cinema, animation, and prose.  Seperately, all of these things are considered art.  When put together as a cohesive whole, they're... not?  Does that make any sense at all?

4)  If a cross submerged in urine can be considered a work of art... if a man can haphazardly scatter paint and cigarette butts over a canvas and call it art... if a musician can sit at a piano for over four minutes without playing a single note and call this empty performance art... it is entirely reasonable to consider video games a form of artistic expression.

My final word on all this?  Roger Ebert is just a snobbish elitist; a man who feels threatened by the increasing popularity of a hobby which has overtaken theatre as the preferred form of entertainment for many Americans.  Ebert is entitled to his opinion, or would be, if he bothered to do any research, but in the end, his word is neither law nor fact.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll blow the dust off my DVD collection and watch a film critic who I still admire and respect.  Namely, this one.

12/16/05

It's time once again to give the site its annual, minty-fresh Christmas makeover!  The candy cane-striped borders provide the thrills, while the freezing temperature and complete lack of new content provide the chills. 

Hopefully, I'll have something new on the site in time for all the usual winter holidays, like Festivus, and Pule, and, Redd Foxx's birthday, and... uh, someone turn off my television before my brain melts and spills out of my ear.

12/12/05

Oh Sega, why must you taunt me so with your on-again, off-again support for the Dreamcast?  There are rumors that the system is going to be re-released alongside a new Milestone shooter called Radilgy.  It's good news if it's true, but personally, I would have been a lot happier if Sega had waited until now to discontinue the Dreamcast in the first place.

Speaking of science-fiction games for long-dead systems, Solar Plexus is now available for purchase from the Atari Age store.  If you're a fan of the Atari 2600, you really ought to get yourself a copy of the game... there's nothing else quite like it on the system.
 
Well, that's it for this update.  Back to studying... I've got finals this week, after all!

12/7/05

Complete Convergence has been updated one last time for the handful of people who are still running emulators on their PSPs.  The final installment of the series takes you step by step through the installation of the system's best Neo-Geo CD emulator, letting you play your favorite arcade titles from the 1990's on the go. 

In other news, things are really heating up for the Xbox 360... and I don't mean that in a good way.  Many of the units shipped are prone to overheating, leaving their owners a little steamed as well.  Lawsuits have already been filed against Microsoft for fudging the first shipment of 360s, a surprising development when you consider how long it took gamers to take legal action when their Playstation 2s stopped reading discs. 
 
I'm not the world's biggest Microsoft fan, ranking somewhere between Steve Jobs and the Linux penguin.  However, I can't help but think these lawsuits were motivated as much by the hopes of digging through Bill Gates' deep pockets as they were the aggravation of taking home a faulty game system.  It's reasonable to expect a refund for malfunctioning merchandise, but lumping "unspecified damages" into this claim makes me think the people who filed it are hoping to get a lot more out of the deal than a replacement Xbox 360.