I enjoy the Atelier series (Ayesha is on my to-buy list), but damn, I wish Tecmo Koei had allowed NISA to retain the publishing rights to the series. I don't care about the dual audio, since I never use it when it is an option anyway, but NISA at least promoted the hell out of these games instead of leaving them withering on the vine.
I visited East Germany in 1990, the summer after the Berlin Wall fell and East Germany (and East Berlin) were opened up by the Soviets. There was a striking contrast between the two Germanys that in some ways still persists 20 years later.
East Germany was run-down and still bore bullet holes and bombed-out shells from World War II, as well as bullet holes from more recent alteractions (the Execution Wall in East Berlin was particularly grim), and the place was very smoky. The East German Trabant cars used a very low-grade of gasoline that burned into yellow exhaust.
West Germany, by contrast, was very clean and fully rebuilt. Frankly, West Berlin was much cleaner than most American cities. There was no vandalism in the Berlin subways, compared to the extensive vandalism the New York subway system showed at the time - when we got back from Germany, we had to take a KLM flight from Frankfurt to JFK in New York and then took a bus back to Tinker AFB in Midwest City, OK, where we had started our trip.
Wow. Those houses look like the houses I saw in East Germany that still had WWII bullet holes in them.
Do you have used game stores in Mississippi? Here in Oklahoma there are two different chains - Game X-Change and Vintage Stock. They carry everything from the Atari to the Wii U. Vintage Stock also carries movies, CDs, vinyl records, and toys. I've found some very rare PS1 and PS2 games at very reasonable prices at those, and definitely better than what I could get the same games for on eBay or Amazon.
The PS2 and the Cube were, and still are, wonderful systems, and I'm always discovering new goodies on them. Now that I've upgraded from a Wii to a Wii U - the Wii U plays Wii games but not GC games - I want to buy a GC to replace the one that was stolen, and I want to get a Game Boy Player for it like the one I had on my old Gamecube.
I like the AVGN's Toaster NES. It powers on when he pushes the toaster lever down. I assume it doesn't automatically pop up, eject the cartridge, and kill the juice on the game.
I know I'm not touching SimCity, especially after the Spore fiasco. Apparently within the EA system, even Maxis wasn't too big to fail. I'll stick with SC4 for now, and if I want to look at a more up-to-date city sim, I'll look at Cities XL instead.
Xenoblade proves that great artists and engineers can overcome technical limitations. While it doesn't have the same sharp details as later PS3/360 games it is quite technically impressive.
I never did like Tomb Raider on the PS1. Nothing about it impressed me. Super Mario 64 was a far superior platformer with better controls. Resident Evil was far more interesting as a "mature" game. And I didn't even see her appeal as a video game sex symbol, when Namco and Square had far better offerings in that rather dubious department. Maybe it was a British thing?
That said, I'm interested in the new Tomb Raider. It's on the back burner behind games like Ni no Kuni or Bioshock Infinite, but it's the first time I've even been interested in Tomb Raider since the PS1 days, when I was primarily curious about all the hype behind the series. Maybe this will turn out to be another case of overhype, maybe not.
There are good games that can be done without conflict. It's generally possible to play through Metal Gear Solid games entirely on stealth, supposedly Fallout: New Vegas, and there have been good puzzle and adventure games that were completely without the player having to kill enemies.
One thing I will say in defense of the PS3 is that it's the best-built non-Nintendo console I've ever seen. The PS1 and PS2 were prone to the disc laser failing after a couple of years of heavy use - I know I went through 3 PS2s before I jumped into seventh-gen gaming with the Wii and 360, and two PS1s before that - and don't even get me started on the 360 unless you want to hear a bunch of ranting and swearing that make Gamemaster 4747 proud. And on the subject of Nintendo, even the NES wasn't the best-made piece of electronics out there. Some days I spent more time trying to get the NES cartridge to work without the screen flashing than I did playing the game!
But yeah, I definitely feel your pain. I will be definitely watching the next generation of consoles to make sure all the bugs are ironed out before I jump in. And I worry that EA's shady DRM practices of always online and all the other crooked stuff they put in their EULAs will become industry standard.
