Dreamcast Acquired

That was fast, even for me. I'm known to be impulsive, but even I was surprised that less than 10 hours after I made that post, I had a dreamcast. I started by checking EBay, and found that if I wanted to buy a DC now, I would get one in the $40 and up range, usually without any games. There were some in the $20 range but they would inevitably see their price inflate as the time drew nearer. In the morning I checked Craigslist, and found very little initially, but as I scrolled down, I found what would become my dreamcast.

First of all, the weird thing. I didn't get one Dreamcast. I got two. Two? He told me one of them didn't work. But they both work. One of them however is completely in Japanese. I played Sonic Adventure, it was in Japanese. I tried to play a different game, and it loaded but wouldn't get past the loading screen. I tried the other Dreamcast, and it worked just fine, and bonus! It was in English. Oh, and the Japanese Dreamcast is autographed by someone from Sonic Team. I can't quite make out the name. It begins with a 'y'.

As it turns out, I wound up getting a bunch of games with my DC, including a lot of the games on my list that I already knew I wanted:

The one game I knew for sure I wanted. While I have the Xbox sequal, it doesn't compare to the original. Great game. I wish Sega would bring it back, even if they have to stick motion controller waggle to it.

I figured Crazy Taxi 2 would be the harder of the two to find and get. So this was a nice surprise.

Admittedly this game only made my list because my friend Jon swears it's great. I understand it probably hasn't aged well, but I take his word for it and wanted to get it. I was probably more surprised that this was included than any other game.

Chris, to answer your question, Yes, this came out for Gamecube, but I remember it got mediocre reviews. The first of many for Sonic titles, I'm afraid. I'm not sure if it got bad reviews because it was a bad port, or if it got bad reviews because people woke up and realized that 3D Sonic just didn't work.

Not much different than any other Bomberman, but I have to admit, that's probably the best Bomberman artwork I've ever seen. I've played this several times and keep blowing myself up. I HATE that you can kick the bombs, it makes it so much harder to trap the player when they can just kick the bomb away.

A pleasant surprise. This game was not mentioned in the original summary. I found it in one of the dreamcasts. I was considering this game. I have played it only on the GBA and really liked it. I figured I should check out it's big brother. A fun, creative puzzler. So unfortunately, no case for me, but beggars can't be choosers.

On the other end of the spectrum is Seaman. This is one of the most famous dreamcast games, but one I have never had ANY interest in. EVER. When I was considering DC games I should get, this one occured to me, but I just have no interest in it. Imagine my elation that I wound up with it. It even came with the microphone adapter. No mic, but it seems to use the standard mic input. I guess I'll give it a shot now that it's in my living room, just to see what all the fuss is about.

Now this is a game I got when I got my Dreamcast originally. I could just never get into it though. I'm not sure why. I know it's supposed to be excellent and again, my friend Jon raves about this game. This is just going to infuriate him because now I have the game and I'm still not going to play it. I just don't have that kind of time. It's not the same as Seaman, Seaman will only take me a few minutes to experience, I've experienced Shenmue, I don't want to put the time in to finishing it.

After that comes the stuff I have no interest in at all Most of which will never get into the dreamcast:

Sega's bad attempt to rip off Mario Party. I'm unlikely to play this unless a group of people all of a sudden get a hankering to try it out.

Requisite genaric Racing title. Next.

Requisite genaric sports title. Next.

Sega had quite a few fishing games on the Dream Cast. Did you know they actually made a fishing controller for it?

What? 2 Fishing games? What was this guy, a fanatic? That's just excessive. The weird thing is this one was never opened. That's right folks. I own an unopened copy of Sega Bass Fishing! W00T!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd we've reached rock bottom. Seriously? He had the fishing controller? Sigh. But to answer your question, hell yes I'm going to try it out. But I'll play Marine fishing. I'm not opening my ultra collectable Bass Fishing.

So that's my haul. 2 Dreamcasts, 5 controllers, 2 Memory sticks, all those games, plus the fishing controller and seaman controller. Quite the assemblage of games. I must admit I'm pretty happy with it. And what did this run down memory lane cost me? $15 for the whole thing. I love Craigslist.

P.S. Super Magnetic Neo is bought from EBay and on it's way.

Help Wanted!

I have been feeling regret lately. Years ago when I was in college, after it's life ended, I traded my Dreamcast in towards a PS2. I can't say I made the wrong call there, the PS2 is one of the best systems of all time. But now I'm browsing EBay and it seems like I can pick up a Dreamcast cheap. Like $20. And that could even come with a game or 2. So the question is, what games do I need to get if I get a dreamcast? Here are the games that immediately come to mind:

1) Jet Grind Radio
2) Sonic Advance
3) Soul Calibur
4) NBA 2K2
5) Crazy Taxi 1 & 2
6) Super Magnetic Neo (Shut up, I always wanted to play it)
7) Fur Fighters

Anything I'm missing? Note: I don't really care about anything that was ported to another system unless it was REALLY superior on the DC. So save you Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2 suggestions. And Jon, I am never playing Shenmue, so don't even bring it up. I have Rayman 2 on PS2, so I probably don't need it on DC unless it's ridiculously awesome. Star Wars Pod Racer.... that was great on N64, how was that on DC?

I realize I contradicted myself up there, if you have an idea, just post it. That includes if you just want to say something about something already on my list. (Though I am never changing my mind about Super Magnetic Neo)

Give me some ideas please1

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Date Acquired: 1.16.10 -Borrowed from my friend Ben in exchange for my copy of Modern Warfare 2

Date Completed: 1/31/2010

Thoughts: Obviously I'm a little different here. As you can see I've already reviewed Modern Warfare 2. I avoided playing CoD4 when it released, despite all the hype it got. It released in a great year for gaming, it was competing with other FPS's for my attention such as BioShock and Halo 3. And I never really played the other games, so I just passed this by. After it got such great word of mouth, I was open to the idea of picking it up, but even today, 3 years later after it's release and it's still $50 at retail. I don't buy new games for full price after 6 months. It's usually just a bad practice as a price drop is right around the corner (first party Nintendo games being the exception), so I figured I'd give this game a shot when it dropped to $30. Ha ha.

My opinion on this concerns exclusively the single player campaign. I love playing through games on multiplayer co-op with friends that I know, but playing in deathmatch after deathmatch with random internet strangers, many of whom are 13 year old kids hurling obscenities has no appeal to me. I understand this is a game that derives much of it's appeal from it's mulitplayer aspect, but that is an aspect that doesn't factor in with me (nor did it when I played MW2)

The first thing that hit me when I played this game was the graphics. I'm sure they were the cats pajamas in 2007 but in 2009 I was spoiled by the sequal which is to me the best looking game I've ever played. My roomate commented on it also when he saw me playing it. The game looks so much more dull than the dynamic, flashy Modern Warfare 2. I noticed it everywhere. I'm far from a graphics whore, but it was a very noticable difference. It didn't affect my enjoyment of the game (I think) but it was there.

To be honest I was pretty underwhelmed by this game. I'd heard so many great things about it, and I loved MW2 that I thought for sure I was going to be rocked by this. Maybe it's because Infinity Ward did such a fantastic job of improving their game for the sequel that they spoiled me. I don't think knowing bits of the plot before hand hurt me. When we went to rescue Nikolai, I knew we'd be successful because he spends all of MW2 giving me orders. I didn't think there'd be a problem playing the second game before the first, but I was only considering plot elements. I didn't think I'd miss anything from the story by playin them out of order, and I was right. While I didn't know the various characters such as Soap and Price were from the original game, it didn't keep me from enjoying and understanding the second game. But the true cost of playing them out of order may be that I was unable to appreciate the original as I would have if i hadn't played the sequal. But perhaps that's over stating things. Perhaps had I tried the original I wouldn't have thought much of it and never tried the sequal at all.

I'm not trying to take anything from the game, I know this game has it's rabid supporters, And I'd guess that 95% of them love the game for it's multiplayer, my stance on which is abundantly clear. I'm surpised at how different my reaction is to the two similar games, and I plan to keep playing it on veteran to see if maybe I was just in the wrong mood when I played it before. I'd recommend the game to those who haven't played it, but I'd encourage those not to skip the 2nd one, no matter their thoughts Call of Duty 4.