Puzzle games have taken the reign this season, with my copy of Kuru Kururin Paradise coming in, and me being hooked for many happy minutes at a time.  I'm balancing that out with Pikmin 2; Schala, you're right; it IS heartbreaking seeing a Pikmin die. -_-;  I also picked up Super Puzzle Fighter II X for Matching Service, just so that my Dreamcast has something to do -- I'd forgotten how freaken awesome the game is.  I'm itching to pick up Magnetica next; Ryu, you played it yet?

I wish I had more people to play Street Fighter Alpha Anthology with, but Gem Fighter is better than I remember.  It sure is fun to look at.  And to listen to. 

And for those wondering, I finally ended up going with Dragon Quest VIII for my pick of RPG.  Ultimately, it won out over Suikoden V, because it was 2am, the game shops were closed, and, well..... DQVIII was already sitting on my shelf, waiting to be opened.  So, I opened it.  Impressions may follow by summer's end.

I'm heavily into the turn-based strategy on PC at the moment (though I can see this particular obsession lasting a while longer than most).

Rome: Total War, Civilization IV, Alpha Centauri, and Galactic Civilizations are pretty much dominating any gaming time I have. Last week I did have a brief, insanely obsessive addiction to The Sims 2, but that seems to have died off along with my Sim (burned to death in the kitchen!).

Oh, and the ever-present Guitar Hero

Boo! In time, you shall see the light...

Let's see...I'm still in the process of getting settled into a good RPG myself. I kind of left Suikoden IV with the lightbulb on, but with nobody home (I'll go back to it one day, but I can't take the sailing anymore). Had a brief nostalgia kick for Wild Arms 2, amidst rumors of a Code-F style remake...Good openings, I remember why I had such a good time with this one. Then I figured I'd start up Wild Arms 4, which seems to be pretty good thus far. I'll probably stick this one out...Very cool style it has going for it and the music makes it easy to sit through (especially since I know my favorites well beforehand). Funny thing was, I paid less for a new copy of WA4 ($8.96 from the Circuit City sale) than I did for a used WA2 back when it was fairly new ($9.99 for a used copy that was missing the instructions).

Only other major one is Burger Time. Never liked this game in the past and I still have control issues with it, but something about it just 'clicked'. I have an entire routine down for clearing level 3 now(which always stunted my progress) and I look forward to playing through level 4 every time, since its practically a bonus round (not uncommon to drop five...um, bad guys from the top). Still can't finish the sixth level. Games like this make me glad I still have my NES hooked up.

I plan on finishing up Ace Combat 5, picking up either Big Brain or Brain Age, along with Phoenix Wright and giving Shadow of the Collossus a rental over the next couple weeks. And of course, Tetris DS and Mario are hogging all of the DS time.

I'm playing Drill Dozer for GBA, Shadow Hearts II and finishing up my Expert run through Guitar Hero. I was getting all 5 star ratings for a while, then mostly 4s, and now I'm barely scraping past with 3. Bark at the Moon is a bitch!

*high fives Sabreman*

Guitar Hero is one of my favorite PS2 games ever. Great shit, man. I still need to beat case 5 in Phoenix Wright.

I'll play! I'll play!

I'm currently working on Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, along with Dotstream, Ouendan, and of course the occasional Animal Crossing DS (lots of portable love these days!).  I just finished Chibi Robo, which ended up being one of my favorite games on the Gamecube... I'll be finding the thread here about that game and continuing it soon, I think...

I'd offer to challenge you, but I'm really bad at fighting games compared to people with skill.  I can beat my friends, and I can make it through the default difficulty settings, but that's about it.  I get destroyed every time I try to play anybody at E3.  It's funny because they never believe me when I tell them that I just want to check out the game and that I'm really awful.  They think I'm just being modest until they destory me in about 11 seconds.  I remember some poor Japanese guy trying to teach me how to play one of the Virtual On games at one of the shows.  If I had known how to say "please don't waste your time, I just want to check it out" in Japanese, I would have said it, but I didn't (and still don't), so I grudgingly tried to play along in Engrish.

Well, I was playing Phoenix Wright, but then I got Ouendan and that's really all I've been playing since I got it.  I'd like to go back and knock out the last case in PW and I'd like to go back to Peach and finish getting everything on the 2nd run, but time is running out before the fall onslaught begins.  I originally wanted to use this summer to really dive into DQ8, but that didn't happen and it looks like I may never get to give that game the attention I wanted to since XS3 got pushed up and that takes precedence for me.

Probably because a lot of the people who usually attend E3 and hang out at the Capcom booth are some of the best Street Fighter players in the world. I'd call myself an "intermediate" player and I get pwned something hard over here on the EC and on Live (for CvS 2 and 3rd Strike). I just play for fun now, but it's hard on the ego sometimes...

Alpha Anthology MUST come out for Live...Alpha 2 is my favorite "traditional" Street Fighter and I'd jump at the chance to play anyone at it (I've played a combined total of 5 matches against actual people...and one was me goofing around with Dan.) 3rd Strike has nothing on that one and I love 3rd Strike. Alpha 3...Not a fan of much of what was added (or taken away...I hate the VC system compared to A2's, since you have to choose between them and supers), but still fun. Same for Alpha 1, which was obsolete by the time I got to playing A2, but I always wanted to play it against people.

I just never paid the Anthology version of Alpha 2 much mind because I have four versions already (SNES, PS1, Saturn, PC ROM) and I've long OD'ed on playing the CPU.

Working on Case 5 on Phoenix Wright (so very good),
working on *ick* God of War at my brother-in-law's behest (so very terrible),
finishing up Mesal Gear Solid (which didn't grab me like I assumed it would)
and Aria of Sorrow (good game, but some of those bosses are ridiculously overpowered).

Those are the main four of the moment. But yeah, take my advice and don't EVER subject yourself to GoW.

I'm playing Fire Emblem 7 on Hector Hard Mode (which is kicking my ass, but I'm slowly but surely makin' my way through) along with Tales of Symphonia for the second time - I wanna get around to the side-quests I missed out on before; the curse chest/weapons one in particular.

After that, I still have a list of shit I wanna beat before late August, but at this rate, it's not gonna happen.

Amen to that, man. That backlog just gets bigger and bigger.

I have a soft spot for Alpha 1 because it came out at just the right time and it was a refreshing change from the Super/Super Turbo stuff.  When it came out for PSX, I had to borrow my friend's system so I could rent it.  Anyway, I'm not sure whether Alpha 2 or Alpha 3 is my favorite SF game.  I like them both quite a bit, but it's hard for me to pick one over the other.  The only SF3 game I really like is the first one because it doesn't have the EX moves.  I wish the PS2 version of 3rd Strike had the option to turn those off.

Still making my way through Chain of Memories. I think I'm on the last floor, at least. After that, I plan on diving immediately into KH2, even though there are tons of other older games I have awaiting me (FF10 is still slowwwwwwly being worked on). Among those games is FF4 GBA, which I'm actually not sure if I want to play. If I could get my hands on a legit copy of Partners in Time, I'd go for that, too. Heh, at least I finished Minish Cap...I have to restart Oracle of Seasons, though.

AAHHHH!! So many choices! *faint*

I remember I was out of gaming for awhile and I stopped playing Street Fighter after the original SF2 because all the "new" versions coming out looked the same. Then when I had my Playstation, I saw Alpha 2 in the store and everything it had added. Imagine my shock at seeing the ginormous Zangief in Alpha 2 after the one on SF2. That (and playing Marvel 1 at the arcade) helped rekindle my fighting game spirit.

Should be easy to fix: Go in under "System Direction" and switch to "Original". Then flip over to page 8 under directions menu and switch off EX moves. At least, that's how it works on the Xbox version.

EX moves are something I've learned to live with and use in the game, since I can't just ask people to turn them off. They're annoying because of their speed and trajectory (normally, they don't inflict a huge amount of damage, but they're hard to defend against), but really, they're a part of the game and one of the reasons to factor into which Super Art you pick (you don't want supers that only have one bar if you're going to use a lot of EX moves). Personally, I find parrying at higher levels of play much more annoying and more than reason enough to prefer the Alphas.

Glad to see someone sharing my intense dislike for this game.

Anyway, I'm working on:

DS: Mario & Luigi 2, having a blast, like with the first game.

Rockman ZX: Very nice, but not quite as good as the Zero games if you ask me, dispite obvious similarities. Wish there would've been a stronger rock-flavor to the music, although it's still pretty good. The game gets pretty damn hard as well later on.

PS2: Fatal Frame 3 or whatever the English title is. These games shouldn't be played in anything but Japanese anyway. Bought the first one, loved it, so bought the sequels.
So far I'd say Part 2 is the best, but 3 is still very enjoyable.
Theoretically I'm still playing VP Sylmeria as well, although I'm considering selling it, cos it's just not very interesting.

GC: Just put down Baten Kaitos II which I'm ALSO going to sell, cos it annoyes me to NO end. How can a sequel where so little has changed (except for the battle system) be SO damn boring when the original was so great?
Perhaps it's because there's less of EVERYTHING (only 3 characters?), and almost 50% of the game is reused backgrounds from the original. Blech.

Still have Skies of Arcadia waiting for me though, so I'll pop that in next.

Finally have time to chip away at my PS2 backlog. I just finished Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which happens to be my first stealth game ever, (not counting Metal Gear: Ghost Babel). I plan on picking up Chaos Theory soon, because I'm absolutely hooked despite my previous phobia of stealth games. I'm also very interested in getting into the Metal Gear Solid games, but I'm worried that they may be more action oriented than the Splinter Cell games.

Currently, I'm halfway through X-Men: Legends, and I'm planning on starting Star Wars Battlefront II and Ratchet 3 soon.

Speaking of sucking at Street Fighter, my friend asked me why I own so many fighting games when I'm so terrible at them. I think I may be the only person in the world who enjoys fighting games purely for the technical and artistic aspects. For some reason I just love executing special moves and looking at the pretty, pretty art. And yes, I also follow the convoluted storylines.

How are the loading times for Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, anyway? I was very tempted to buy it when I saw it yesterday, but I'm still wary of any potential load times. More importantly, when they say arcade-perfect ports, I assume that no frames of animation were cut this time?

I picked up Tokyo Extreme Racer Drift a while back, and it's a decent game. I was expecting something more akin to Initial D, but the flaws in the game are ones you can learn to live with.

Other than that, I've been replaying Wind Waker in anticipation for Twilight Princess . . .

Not so much playing, but I did finally end up watching Evangelion in it's entirety with my younger brother (who's been dying to watch the show since he was, like, 8).

Oh, and New Super Mario Bros is awesome.

I still need to get to work on Suikoden 5. Jesus, I haven't touched it in forever. V_V

Amazingu, I agree with you as well on God of War. At the very least, the game is horribly overrated by almost everyone who had anything good to say about it.

Agreed on Fatal Frame 2, as well! Had one hell of a sad ending, and is possibly the scariest game in existence.

I have no idea about the arcade-perfectness of the animation, but I can tell you that once in a game, the load times are very quick.

Well, shows how good my memory is.  Apparently both my DC and PS2 versions have the ability to turn them off.  Of course, looking at the system direction menu, now I'm really getting confused as to exactly what some of these things are.  Specifically, what are "target combos?"  Also, do you know if it's possible to unlock things in 3rd Strike if you mess with the system direction stuff before going into arcade mode?  Some FAQs I saw said if you switch the overall mode to "Original"  you can't unlock things, but I didn't see anything about what happens if you make little tweaks.

Target combos are quick chains that characters have. It varies for each character (similar to the chains Guy and Gen have in Alpha 2 and 3). For example, Ken can chain standing Mp to standing HP, then combo a Hadouken after it. Yun's normal chain is WP, WK, MP, followed by pretty much anything (try a weak rolling special move canceled into a super...Or just plain Genei-Jin activation, then a juggle combo). Ibuki has a shitload of them. Most aren't terribly useful...The Ken/Yun ones are the most common and damage on most is generally less then a basic normal move canceled into a special/super, plus most end in a move that has a lot of lag on it. They probably could have been implemented a lot better, as most of the weaker characters don't have very good ones (or any at all). A basic FAQ should cover all of them.

I haven't messed around with the modes, so I can't really comment. Normally, I just turn the game on and go right into training, then 1P or online (whatever I'm in the mood for). From what I know, there isn't a great deal of unlockables in the game to begin with...Probably a chance to play as Gill.

Actually, once you're in the game, there's no load time.  Period.  It's freaken awesome.  Like, MMX Collection on GC awesome.

Yep but, once again, Capcom have removed the in-game move lists in the English-language versions. I got the JP version. Ideally I'd love to have it in English but I don't like Capcom removing features.

Wait, huh? Wasn't the game developed by the US branch in the first place?

Happy to hear about the load times. My only version of SFA2 is the SNES version, so I think I'll upgrade just so I don't have to face those ridiculously bad load times anymore. I also got my answer regarding the animation over at GameFAQs. The general consensus seems to be that some frames were taken out, but it's barely noticeable. It all sounds good to me, so I'll definitely pick it up eventually.

ServBot sez:

Word also has it that Movelists have been stripped from the game.  Just like Street Fighter Zero 3 MAX, this is quite a drag.  I suspect this had something to do with the deal Capcom has made with Bradygames (ie exclusivity).  No movelists in game would encourage sales of Bradygames' guide.  Quite a dirty tactic.

Shoot...I hope its' not the same POS Bradygames guide that came out for Alpha 3. I marvel at the complete and utter uselessness of that thing (I bought and read it before I actually learned how Alpha 3 was supposed to be played). One whole paragraph dedicated to Custom Combos, nothing even remotely useful about normal moves, zero information about match-ups and the most basic combos you can imagine with specials/super combos...What a disaster.

Hopefully, they got the guys who did the Anniversary Collection guide to do it. Now THAT is an amazing reference...

Capcom recently closed its U.S. studio after the disastrous 3D Final Fight game.

Thanks for the explanation of target combos.  Anyway, you can unlock Gill and pages 8-10 of system direction.  To answer my earlier question, if you change individual stuff in system direction, I don't think it has any effect on the aracde mode since I tried disabling EX moves last night and it ignored that (I guess it only works in vs.).  I suppose this is why I remember being annoyed about not being able to disable EX moves... you can't get rid of them in 1p, the way I play the most. :-(

Well, I'm going back to playing Kingdom Hearts II. Honestly, there isn't anything else to play (al least console-wise).

I've also been playing the New Super Mario Bros. on a friend's DS and I haven't found it very interesting. For one thing, it's painfully easy. I've made it to the sixth world in just under an hour. I wish they had upped the challenge a bit (and made the bosses more interesting).

Hmm, I only assume it was developed by Capcom USA since all copyright notices mention them specifically: http://www.capcom.co.jp/sfz_fg/

Their Darkstalkers Collection doesn't receive this distinction (though Capcom Fighting Jam does, which could explain some things...): http://www3.capcom.co.jp/vampire_dc/

Personally, I thought Beat Down and Final Fight: Streetwise were pretty decent. Certainly not the best ever in their genre, but they were cheap fun (especially if you waited for them to go in the bargain bin like I did). I do remember reading that the studio that made them was shut down, but perhaps there are still programmers left at Capcom USA to take care of ports and the like?

I just 4-starred Bark at the Moon on EX, which makes me awesome:

http://www.chudahs-corner.com/userdirs/zane/expert2.jpg

Mad respect.  I haven't even attempted Bark At The Moon on Expert yet.  In fact, the only EX song I've truly committed myself to perfecting is Crossroads -- hours of practice later, and I'm ranking five stars and 96% notes hit. 

Damn, I love the song.