Week 4

Week 5

If you haven't gone over to blogger to check out my new 366 list, now's the time to do so. I'm going to get back to posting over here slightly soon but you're missing out by not going over there.

But to see what you're missing

Week 1 and Week 2

Good day all and be sure to click on over.

Friday, April 13, 2007

361. Popful Mail

April 13th, 2007

361. Popful Mail

Sega-CD (1994)

Developed by Falcom, Published by Working Designs

Also see: Ys series, Wonder Boy series

I don't quite understand pointy ears. Mr. Spock is cool but Legolas? Ugh. But outside of the covers of fantasy novels and the internet, the female elf is oddly under represented. Which is sad because I always have room for another fetish. But at least Falcom is there for us horny, pointy-ear loving males; and they throw in pink hair to boot, and of course the obiligatory scant clothes.

Of course if you missed the whole Sega-CD thing for the most part you didn't miss much, but you did miss Popful Mail, which despite giving us scanty clad elf bounty hunters, is an extremely tame title.

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading....

April 12th, 2007

362. Cooking Mama
Nintendo DS (2006)
Developed by Office Create, Published (in the US) by Majesco
Also See: Cooking Mama: Cook Off (Wii) and Cake Mania (cell)


You all know I just love my games full of charm and you can't get much more charming than the Nintendo DS's Cooking Mama. It's a casual gamers game that involves tapping and drawing with the stylus to preform mundane cooking tasks like slice veggies, washing rice, grinding meat, and stirring a pot. I hate to cook and you'd think a game like that would suck but when you turn all the tasks into easy, intinutive micro/mini-games it becomes a surprisingly fun game even if there's not much depth to it. With 75 recipes in all, Cooking Mama might take some time to gold medal all of them. But sadly, your cooking skills will not grow because of playing Cooking Mama. In fact, I think my cooking skills are worse than before. *chops meat with his stylus* Yeah, cooking still sucks.

Continue reading on -- http://tugoutyourgod.blogspot.com/2007/04/362-cooking-mama.html#links

363. Blades of Steel

The first surprise of the list? Prehaps. When the original 260 list came out I had one major rule, no games that hadn't been released in North America. I broke that rule for two games -- one being Radiant Silvergun and the other of course being Final Fantasy III. Both of those making the top 100 and for rightful reason. Granted I had only played Final Fantasy III as a poorly translated ROM, but hands down Final Fantasy III is worthy of top 100 placement. It really showed the power of the Famicom at the very end of its lifespan and to me, for my money, it looks better than Final Fantasy IV. The sound and music are utterly mind blowing, that such beautiful music can come out of the basic bleeps and beeps of limited technology. The depth of the orignal job system and the mind numbing difficulty meant you couldn't just sit back and take a brain nap like you could with Final Fantasy IX or X. And the story is actually surprisingly decent without any sort of characterization.

TO CONTINUE -- http://tugoutyourgod.blogspot.com/2007/04/364-final-fantasy-iii-ds.html

365. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

366. Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode

With the 366 about to start I've decided to have blogger.com take care of my blogging needs instead of myspace. I'll be posting like small previews here that will link to my blogger but for the most part.....sorry, I'm going over there. I think you'll all note that its much better looking over there. Still....I'll continue to at least keep updating here.

Well here's the auspicious beginning to the biggest project undertaken by man that will never be read or turned into a big budget blockbuster movie. I can't think of any real witty title or opening that hasn't been done before and something tells me a shout of, "call me Ishmael" would fail in making sense.

A little over a year ago I was challenged to compose a list of the 100 greatest video games ever. Of course, 100 is never enough for me and the project quickly metamorphed into the 260 greatest video games ever. Which is absurd as I rarely finish any project in which I begin. I'm one of those...unfinishers...people that never finish the shit they start. So many great ideas but damnit, they never get to the end. Something else comes along and it's on to the next crazy scheme or plan.

TO READ THE REST -- http://tugoutyourgod.blogspot.com/

Well apparently the PS3 did just ok in Europe over the weekend setting sales records after sales records across the PAL territories. Call me skepitical but the numbers came out way too fast on Monday and Sony would bring them up even if no one was talking about them. They still are. Mario and Sonic are going to appear in a video game...together....for the Olympics? And Sony says "I know; it's great! We sold 160k PS3s in the UK. People are buying one for their pets, too!!!" Yeah so, why did a major UK retailer cut the price by 25 English pounds just to get rid of the stock they have? Also come talk when you've sold 3 million in the UK -- as the Nintendo DS did over the weekend.

No offense but of course you broke sales records all over the PAL. NO ONE HAS CARED ABOUT THE PAL UNTIL NOW!!! Yeah they've received systems but at a very reduced library of games. The Wii did well early but you know a bunch of UK gamers had to be sitting around thinking, "there's no way we'll get half these games. Hell we probably won't get Mario Galaxy until 2012." But imagine their surprise with the Virtual Console and the fact that Nintendo let some games slip into the PALs well before they came to the US.

Supposedly we're talking about 600k of PS3s moved from Thrusday's launch to Monday morning in the PALs, which just seems odd and conflicting with so many reports. Still that's only 60% of the PS3s shipped around Europe and Australia.  While Sony will continue talking out of their asses that they didn't want the thing to sell out and flubbing numbers (dont' get me wrong, everyone does it) it still never reached their pre-order expectations.

Strangely still is the fact that almost 20,000 pre-orders were canceled the night before.  Analysts outside of Sony claim this is because of reports claiming that they would be able to get a PS3 whenever they desired because of the poor numbers. I'm really not sure what's going on here but what I do know for sure is Sony will magically claim victory in Europe. Probably by the end of the week.

And Hey, Nintendo -- good job sitting on your hands through all this. While Microsoft was sabotaging all of Europe with ad campaigns every where during the PS3 launch night, we failed to really see any such advertising attempt by Nintendo and now coming out is the story that Nintendo has let the Wii supply dry up because they have their numbers for the year. Uhm...yeah. Nothing like trying to meet expectations, folks. We'll see an influx of Wiis on April 1st (as that's when the new fisical year begins obviously) so if you're still searching here in the States or in Europe, take a break for a couple days. But hey, Nintendo you could have had some Wii units on the shelf to compete with the PS3 launch. Go figure you'd drop the ball on this one.

As some of you have commented to away from the Blog that I'm seemingly becoming more and more anti-Nintendo of late, don't worry. It's just frustration. I've bought pretty much every little whacky gadget that Nintendo has released. I have the fucking e-Reader for fuck sake. All the stuff had so much potential but just never garnered the needed support or further attention required for it to reach its potential. I'm not saying the Wii will fall into this same category as the DK Bongos, the Action Pad or the e-Reader, but Nintendo has dropped the ball before of gadgets and despite some amazing titles on the N64 and GameCube, it was their own stupid missteps, and inability to see the forrest from the trees that doomed those consoles. Sure the Wii is great and people love it, but don't just stop there -- make it better and do so quickly. Adding the Everyone Votes Channel just doesn't hack it. Games like Sonic and the Secret Rings and Cooking Mama: Cook Off and Wing Island just don't cut it. People will soon grow bored of Wii Sports and not everyone drank the kool-aid of Twilight Princess. Despite owning 13 Wii games, I fucking play my PS2 about 80% of the time (Rogue Galaxy and God of War II) and my DS gets 19%. Please tell me Paper Mario is going to be the killer-app I'm looking for; a reason to play my Wii other than an hour of Super Swing Golf failure a week. I still need SSX Blur I guess, but something tells me even my beloved SSX franchise won't be enough. God online play would be so sweet right now. Good going Nintendo.