My initial reaction to seeing the new screen shot from Street Fighter 4 was “oh there it is!” The trailer released a few weeks ago by Capcom was pretty vague in regards to which “D” they were going to use. So I was very curious which direction they were going to take it. Would they remain true to SF’s roots and keep it 2D? Clearly, a hi-def version of super detailed sprites throwing fireballs at each other at a silky-smooth frame rate afforded by today’s consoles would be a SF fan’s wet dream.

However, when I saw that picture of Ryu rendered in 3D today, I admit I was slightly let down. Is the Street Fighter franchise doomed? More after the break.

The Super NES is home to some of the most memorable video game sound tracks of all time. Much of this is thanks to the then incredible sound processor inside of the SNES. See, unlike nearly all video game consoles before it, the SNES had a dedicated sound processor called the SONY SPC700, which was designed by none other than Ken Kutaragi. The SPC700 worked in conjunction with a digital signal processor or DSP, and together they made the most amazing game music possible. One thing that impresses me even today is how much better SNES music sounded even compared to arcade games that were released during the same period. For example, the music in Street Fighter II for the SNES outclasses the arcade original by a long shot.

Some game music composers were able to do really incredible things with the sound card, making many of the most memorable soundtracks in gaming.

The following are a handful of games, in no particular order that made the most of the SNES sound chip, and pushed the hardware to its limits.

A few months ago I wrote a short article about how I bought a Playstation 3, and then packed it back up and put it in my closet. Since then, I’ve set up the PS3 and have spent a fair amount of time with it. I still don’t own any games (well, real games anyway) for the console, but at the same time, I’m pretty happy with the it. If that makes any sense.

I figure since there are so many negative articles about the PS3, why not write something positive about it for once? Now listen, I could easily rebuttal every positive I write down with a negative, but remember, this is a positive write up. Without further ado…

Playstation Store: I have to hand it to Sony, the Playstation Store is awesome. It isn’t the most user friendly experience (damn it, a negative already), but the amount of content up there more than makes up for it. The store gets updated every Thursday with a wide range of content. You can usually find at least one or two new demos, additional game content, download only titles, movie trailers, wallpapers, and then some. Prices vary, but there is a healthy amount of free stuff up there for grabs. I might not have any games, but I downloaded enough demos to fill up more than half of the 60 gig hard drive. In fact, I recently went through and deleted a bunch of stuff.

Believe it or not, when Metroid II debuted on the Gameboy in 1991, it was sort of a big deal. While the original title still holds a dear place in my heart, I honestly can’t say it has aged with grace. While the core idea of the game is still a great idea, the actual level structure, along with the “bomb and shoot every block” design philosophy isn’t exactly the most sound. Metroid II not only set out to satisfy fans of the original, but also to alleviate some of the problems of the original. At the same time, it needed to overcome and use to its advantage, the limited Gameboy technology.

When Metroid II came out, I remember many of my friends playing through it. They were all stumped in their quest to hunt down 38 Metroids. I didn’t own a Gameboy when the title was released, so I only heard tales of Samus’ quest, and occasionally I’d be able to jump in and shoot a handful of bad guys. From what I remember, none of them actually made it through the labyrinths of SR-388.

Eventually I owned a Gameboy and borrowed Metroid II off of my cousin. Just like everyone else who was playing the game, I too became stuck and unable to advance any further. In fact, I almost quit playing the game all together, but an issue of Nintendo Power had a much needed map. It actually wasn’t the greatest map, it just gave players a general idea of how the structure of SR-388 worked. It was enough to get me through the game, and over 10 game hours later all the Metroids were defeated. I felt that the game was too confusing and too hard, the type of game I would probably never want to play through again. Well over a decade later, all proceeding Metroid games mastered, and Prime 3 still fresh in my mind, I decided it was time to track down a copy of Metroid II and experience it again.

Seriously! Like, the other day, I was watching TV, and I saw an ad for Mountain Dew’s new “Game Fuel”. I mean, this drink totally puts your regular sports drinks to shame. Gatorade’s for those sissies playing football. This shit here’s for gamers. There’s nothing I need more when I’m gaming my ass off into the early hours of the morning than a cold bottle of Game Fuel to keep me going. Game Fuel will give me the edge as its mascot, this Master Chief guy, looks totally bad-ass.

But that’s not all! Read on!

The older I get, the less I value the opinions of game journalists. Chances are it has gotten to the point where I’m older than most of these people, and I have probably been playing games longer than most of them. If there is one site that I find myself valuing less and less as time goes on, it would be Gamespot. If Gamespot’s Twilight Princess review caused controversy on the internets, than their review of Metroid Prime 3 will probably cause the world to explode by tomorrow morning.

Personally, I could care less what these people score the game, but the part that absolutely killed me was one of the “cons” that they had listed.

“Steamlined controls make things a little too easy and a little less adventurous.”

This has been a common complaint since the Xbox 360 launched and I’m sure there will be many Xbox apologists who will dismiss this article with now-standard “QQ” argument. However, I’m going to take the hits and write this post anyway. Microsoft has set so many bad precedents with the Xbox 360 that I shudder to think what repercussions will occur for console generations to come. So without further ado:

Article starts after the jump…

So tonight, Nintendo released two new videos to Wii owners who have downloaded the “Prime Preview”. The first one is another instructional video of a female voice telling us about the “Ped suite”. Its basically a back pack that holds phazon that can be used sparingly to boost armor and weapons temporarily. The voice tells us that it is currently being tested by a bunch of marines, and that there has been no known illness or side-effects of the back pack on the men. However, the last images of the clip show a marine getting a twitchy arm and looking about nervously. I didn’t quite see how this fit in with Samus, but after “painting” with the remote twice in a row, I found a second picture hiding behind the video clips. Its a closeup of Samus in what I think is most likely the Ped Suite because the design on her chest is similar to the schematics shown in the clip.

In the second clip, we see in-game footage of Samus fighting off some Space Pirates. It looked like this happens early on in the game as she only has two energy containers. Things don’t seem to be going well for her as all of her power shots and missiles appear to bounce off of them. However, about 2/3 through the clip, something happens, and her life gauge is replaced with “energy container injected”. She now has a new power bar there and she’s kicking rear. The bar goes down every time she shoots. The clips ends there.

My wife and I are looking for a house, and before we blow all of our savings on a down payment, closing costs, paint, carpets, and whatever else we end up needing, I wanted to “future proof” my house with the latest tech. She agreed to let me buy an HDTV (because she secretly wanted one too), but I was also able to worm a Playstation 3 into the mix. Personally, I had zero plans to buy a next gen system until some major price cuts started. I was perfectly fine relying on my Wii to get my gaming on. Besides, my wife basically told me no more video game systems after I bought a Wii (yeah, right). Anyway, a week ago Best Buy had a deal going on where if you purchase a 40-inch 1080p Sony HDTV, and a PS3 together, and you’ll save 600 bucks. For the first time ever, I wanted to own a video game system for something other than video games. I explained to my wife that if we get a 1080p set, we might as well take advantage of it with a Blu-ray player, that player being the PS3. She agreed, and I went into Best Buy later that week and bought the TV and the PS3. Unfortunately, the TV was back ordered, but I was able to walk out with the PS3. I didn’t mind, because I don’t have anywhere to put the TV right now anyway.

With the “deal” I was forced into buying one of two PS3 games, either Motorstorm, or some baseball game. Naturally I picked Motorstorm, which is really a fine game (and it looks amazing) but I decided I didn’t want Motorstorm. I thought about doing the old switcheroo at Gamestop (if they take advantage of us, we can take advantage of them) and getting Virtua Fighter 5 instead. Then I remembered just how much I wanted to play Odin Sphere for the PS2, so I went to Gamestop and traded Motorstorm for Odin Sphere and Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, paying only a 10 dollar difference. I couldn’t be happier, but the result is that I now had no game to play on my shiny (really shiny) Playstation 3. Before people go crazy, I know Motorstorm is a good game, but my thought is that in a year from now Odin Sphere is going to be 60 bucks on eBay, while I’ll be able to find Motorstorm as a Greatest Hits for 20 bucks at any store.

I saw on Joystiq, that DOOM co-creator John Romero has posted a pack of unreleased MIDIs from the game’s soundtrack. Considering that I played the tar out of DOOM when it was originally released in 1993, I was pretty excited. Not only did that game give me nightmares, but I also happen to like the music in all its synth glory. I remember thinking that it reminded me alot of Alice In Chains and NIN, and I didnt realize how right I was.

Romero says “there’s a reason these weren’t released - they’re not very good”, however I beg to differ and believe it was more a case of copywrite infringement that kept these from being put into the game. Not only did these unreleased tracks remind me of my favorite grunge bands, but they were EXACTLY them. I was shocked that half of Alice In Chains’ Dirt was on there as well as Stone Temple Pilots, Slayer, and a few others I couldn’t quite put my finger on though sounded familiar to me. What shocks me even more is that most comments on Joystiq and Romeros blog don’t even recognize the music. I guess I am indeed getting old.

Doing some further research, it appears that John Carmack had given music CDs to DOOM’s composer Bobby Prince as reference material. The idea was to use these as a spring board to define what the game’s music should sound like. I think that these tracks were exploratory attempts to see if they could even recreate the sounds and melodies used by contemporary rock bands to push the limits of the day’s harware. Remember, this was 1993 and most PCs didnt even have sound cards in them yet.