PixlBit

Alright Stanton, I'm having a major dilemma here: My brother-in-law is getting a PS3 for Christmas. I've bought him a controller and a $50 PSN card. My other bro-in-law has two controllers. All together, five of us could play this game. I'm nostalgic, the rest of my family isn't quite as nostalgic, but the former bro-in-law mentioned does like the classic TMNT arcade games.

Do I force him to buy this and try to get five members of my family to play through this once? What would you recommend?

I thought I remembered Mario Party 2 being a ton of fun, but it's been so long since I played it, so I wasn't going to say anything. I recall spending a ton of time with the Mini-game land, which I remember being an extra single-player mode where you quest to beat all the mini-games on a high difficulty.

This Valentine's day! Hmm. Not the best release date, in my opinion. Regardless, this is one I'll pick up. I really liked Dragon Quest V's characterization and party chat options, and Dragon Quest IV was a bit of fun. Apparently this game wraps up the Zenithian trilogy, so I'll be giving it a go, come release.

What makes it so crappy? Decent grammar and punctuation? Well-reasoned purpose to actually help people give games during the holidays? It was probably the tasty baby. How could you not want to eat him up!?

Maybe it was the tasty baby. Anyway, Matto, I have a tip for you! It's actual html coding that works on the site's comments, so to italicize, you need to use <> around the i. Forum code is just a little different.

Given the bosses do add a little bit of variety, it was tempting to score the game slightly higher, but ultimately, upon asking myself "Would I enjoy this game if it were only the bosses?" At this point, I realized that most of the bosses really weren't all that much fun, nor were they so different from each other (some are even reused for Sasuke, albeit for no real reason). Given that I wouldn't really recommend buying a WiiWare type game of the boss fights, I ultimately decided that just because the bosses provide variety, it doesn't mean the frustrations within the boss battles should be ignored.

From earthboundcentral.com comes an interesting find. While playing the game for fun, a member of Fangamer.net happened to stumble across a new debug mode in Earthbound. The mode seems to have been activated by a bump to the Fangamer SNES, but it's actual in-game trigger has not yet been found. Since its discovery, a patch making the menu accessible through a rom of the game has been created, and can be found at the link I mentioned above.

To me, this is pretty phenomenal, though. To think the folks at Starmen.net never found this in all their years is outstanding. Even more outstanding? A fellow at Fangamer, Starmen.net's for-profit retro gaming merch and event site was playing through Earthbound casually while eating some McDonalds. I have to wonder how many times he's beaten the game, and when the last time he played it was. I'm more just shocked because it means the guys over there live up to their reputation. Congrats on the find!

It's a Pac-Man guitar, actually.

People on Ebay might want to buy it. I'd consider trying there for better direct results.

For some odd reason, Chris didn't like 3D Dot Game Heroes. I didn't play it yet, but Link to the Past is the Zelda game I do like, and I noticed the resemblance, too. I did watch him play it when the guy was trying to make the wife choice that was in Dragon Quest V. That was definitely worth a laugh or two, right there.

I'm entirely considering buying the PSN version of this game just because six players can play on one console.

While this is probably the classic Konami Arcade Beat-em-up I played the least back when I was a kid, I do at least remember trying to put in a coin, only to pick the wrong quarter slot and provide some other player with extra lives. Whoops!