SNK vs. the world

I'll be the first to admit that I am sometimes a little slow on the uptake, but the last few weeks a revalation has hit me between the eyes.

I have always quite liked SNK's fighting games but have always been leaning heavily towards Capcom's Strret fighter games for preference. I have found that they are more accessible and easier to master and that SNK had fidly controls and odd characters (Choi Bounge, Earthquake, etc).

Fatal fury I liked a lot because it felt a bit like street fighter, but the king of fighters never quite did it for me.

But now ten years on, and with street fighter 4 more than a year away (more on that later), I have been snapping up King of fighters games for 4 and 5 quid.
This time I have been practicing hard and have come to the conclusion that they might actually be better than Streetfighter!

Before Galford vomits blood at this sacriligious statement, let me explain...

I will always love Street fighter perhaps more than any other games out there but even as a loyal Capcom fanboy, I have to admit that some of their releases have been lazy remixes of previous games with little to distinguish them apart.
I will always buy each and every fighter they release but I know that they will never push me out of comfort zone and make me earn my skills.

SNK however reinvent the wheel with almost every KOF title buy changing the moves and the rules. It's also interesting to see how so many of their ideas made their way into the capcom vs. series.

So does that mean that KOF is better than SF?

Perhaps not but its a very close call, besides I for one am very glad to have rediscovered the joys of KOF and maybe I should spend a little more time with Samurai showdown and Guilty Gear.

Of course, the best damn fighting game in existance is Capcom vs. SNK 2 so that says it all really.

With Street Fighter 4 heading into psuedo 3d territory, I wonder if one day we can look forward to SF vs Tekken, Capcom vs Virtua fighter or Dead or alive vs Bloody roar.

OK, thats enough rambling for now.
Later
Zigganoid

And About Time Too!

Okay, so I have always been annoyed that Gran Turismo Mobile never surfaced for the PSP. Despite some of the games I own, like all other Sony Products I have come into contact with I thought that the PSP was really failing to hit the mark when it came to gaming satisfaction. I also think that it is the least portable of all the extensive handheld gaming technology that I own. I had heard rumblings from the 'underground movement' that it was very possible to play PS1 games on the PSP. This excited me, as I always believed that the very limited collection of original Playstation titles I own would go very well on a PSP, as games like Tenchu completely outshine their portable counterparts.

But the PSP is a very expensive piece of kit, and the only way I knew of playing such games involved custom firmware, downgrading, upgrading, the chance of bricking the fucker, downloading pirated games, a certain amount of incompatibility, etc, etc... Basically, I did not want to run the risk of ruining what is undeniably a great piece of kit by experimentation and inexact sciences. But then, I heard about the Playstation Store.

Initially, this (like so many other aspects of Sony) was shaping up to be a total let-down. For starters, it was only accessible through the PS3. A games console I really, really don't want to own. This was going to make it a store for total loyalists. Secondly, I thought that knowing Sony, games weren't going to be cheap. Therefore, imagine my excitement when recently I discovered that someone with half a brain in the huge conglomerate decided to put it out for the general public via the Sony site. Then, imagine my glee when after signing up and boosting my PSP to a frankly dizzying firmware version I found that classics like Wipeout and Destruction Derby only cost about £3.50 each for a direct download to my PSP, with the added bonus of free demos and trailers! This is the sort of thing I like to expect from big gaming companies. I had always liked the idea of Virtual Console on the Wii, and hoped that others would jump on what seemed to be a very sensible bandwagon. The online store itself has only been running for 2 months, and it does seem that the classic games have undergone a little modification to improve compatibility with the PSP. Therefore, at present there only seem to be a handful of titles available. But hopefully soon, the back-catalogue will broaden and I will have the chance to have games like Gran Turismo 2, Streetfighter EX Plus Alpha, and Tenchu 2 on a system that I can finally carry around with me without having to lug bagfuls of very fragile UMDs too.

Congratulations Sony, you finally did something right. Hats off to you! (Now back on again. It's fucking COLD here!)

- Galford

Passion reborn....or the rebirth of HADOUKEN!!!!

We here at Bucketmonkey.com are proud and sometimes smug faced fanboys of streetfighter and a load of other fighty-jumpy-bitchslapathonic-biff'em ups.
Recently though I have found I have drifted away from the genre I have always loved so dearly. I have continued to buy most fighting games that come out but have generally been uninspired by them.

SVC chaos, Mortal Kombat deception, Tekken dark resurection and Neo geo collosium have all graced the gaming shelf in the last year or so but having played each for about half an hour there they have stayed.

Then a few things happened....

I recently visited Galford and got beaten more thoroughly than he has any right to expect on Street fighter Alpha 3, Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Street fighter 3. This caused shame upon my face on quiverrings of the lip (not really I'm a badass really...but anyway).

Street fighter 4 was anounced and the promo video doing the rounds for it has me very very very very very very excited indeed. I will use it as an excuse to buy a xbox 360 (I hope and pray it isn't a PS3 exclusive or I will be very upset but probably fork out the cash anyway.

Then insomnia and illness hit me and I was feeling pretty pissed off with noisy neighbours and bloody giunea bloody pigs bloody chewing bloody their bloody bars bloody bloody bloody!!!!!
I needed to lose the agression in a hurry and Street fighter 3 jumped from the shelf with a triple salto split legged moonsault into my xbox (ok thats a lie)

I began badly with a vague memory of the newer characters I resorted to Ryu and Ken.
I lost and lost and lsot and lost again, and then I began to get my touch back. Before an hour was up I was stringing together mindblowing combos and cursing like a blue-arsed sailor who has just lost a Mr. Blue arse competition.

The love was back.
I was a happy man.
I was king of the world.
And then Gill appears!
WHAT A BASTARD!
REGENERATE!!!!!
WHAT THE.....
LIKE HE ISN'T TOUGH ENOUGH!
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, having finally beat him using a frankly embarrising ammount of continues, I felt it was time for a change.

Surely SVC chaos couldn't be as bad as I remember it.
Lets give it another try.
Hmm, this is one ugly game.....although the pyrotechnics are pretty sweet.
Hmmmmm.
Didn't do to well, the timing is screwed up.
One more go....
A bit better that time.
Maybe just one more try.
Lost again.
I wonder.....
(picks up instruction book for the first time)
Oooh you can play as Violent Ken and Zero from Megaman, and the reason the moves aren't working is....
Ahaaaa!!!!
Got it, yayayayayaya I'm doing great.

Hang on Aren't I supposed to hate this game?

Hmmmm.
Well, I will be reviewing SVC chaos at some point in the future but I will leave you with this thought...

Practice really does make perfect and the thing I had forgotten in this age of instant thrills and take-your-hand tutorials is that in the days of the megadrive, games were harder and the more you played them the better they got.
You don't have to be able to finish every game and flashy graphics can hide a dog but sometimes the ugly games do have a wonderful personallity if you learn to look deeper.

Signing off for now
The phenomonal Zigganoid Bonkneck

Live soft, Die with a Hard...

Rather belatedly, I actually sat down to watch Die Hard 4.0 last night. It's one of those sorts of films where I plan to watch it in the Cinema, then having missed that, I plan to rent it. Then it gets put out on general release, so I make a note to get a copy. Then it makes budget, and I think to myself 'Yes, I really, really will get it now.' Then, finally my brother in law lends it to me and after it collects around 2 months of dust on my shelf, I finally get round to watching it.

This happens to a lot of DVDs in my household.

Now I am typical Hollywood fodder. I love the occasional action no-brainer, of which this fits squarely into a very large peg. However, this film is exactly like every other Internet-computer-hacker film out there.

Sooner or later, every action hero film star has to be in a film about computer hackers taking over the world. But I can't help but think that this is totally surreal. Computers and Internet connections were super-fast, the OS (obviously not Windows and thankfully not OSX) Gave no errors, or dialog boxes of any kind... and it seems that the mouse has been completely dispensed with. The whole of the US monetary network seems to be hackable from a Palm Tungsten E with a rubber keyboard, and everything went completely smoothly. Naah.

In reality, the script would've contained lines like:

'Virus is now uploading sir. His computer will be completely useless in... 3 hours... providing he doesn't turn his computer off and reboots when we have finished.'

'Patch me though to the Main Street Camera.'
'I can't sir. We have the wrong graphics driver.'

'Has the money been transferred to my account?'
'Don't know sir, I have forgotten the Internet Banking password.'

I can't help but think that the director has obviously got consultants there to help with the 'lingo' and the technical detail, but then he keeps overruling them saying things like 'But that's not fast enough.' or 'That's just too boring.' Or my personal favourite - 'I don't like that. But then, I don't know anything about all this computer crap.'

I just love it when people refer to my field of expertise as crap. You know who you are, you fuckers.

Next week, I plan to review a children's classic film, where Rupert the Bear learns how to download porn.

- Galford.

Look, Just Belt Up!

Okay, so I'm going to start with a bit of personal indulgence. At the weekend, more specifically Sunday afternoon, my social status upgraded quite significantly. After spending nearly 4 hours in a Birmingham sports centre, I attained a frankly dizzyingly high qualification in my other main chosen sport and past-time. I became a 3rd Dan Black belt in Karate. There are not many things in life that I can honestly say I have stuck with over the years of my existence. But I have been into Martial Arts for a very long time. Somewhere in the realms of 22 years. I love it as a sport and method of fitness - and to be quite honest, if I didn't partake in Karate, I would be completely obese, I'm sure of it. I'm also fairly sure that if it wasn't for games such as Streetfighter 2, Final Fight, Virtua Fighter and Double Dragon to name but a few, I would not be where I am today.

Anyway, on with today's post. I think I'll try doing it in a fighting pose.

Max and Baz came over Tuesday night. This is my allocated games night. My significant other works in the evening, so once I have put the kids to bed, the night is my own. This week, it hailed the return of the Dreamcast.

Now, I play practically nothing but fighting games when Zig graces my humble front room, but when party no. 2 come to visit, there is really only one game that will do. Toy Commander. Now I know that there are many games out there that would wipe the floor with this little DC title, but as I'm sure most gamers will agree - sometimes a game just fits the bill perfectly. And more times than not, it's one that you least expect. Between us, we have really clocked up the man-hours on Toy Commander. It's a wonderful game. You can choose between ground-based vehicles such as tanks and Jeeps, helicopters and aeroplane themed vehicles. Ground vehicles are a little boring, unless you like being strafed to death. Helicopters tend to be sitting ducks, so we spend most of the time in aeroplanes. The fantastic thing about Toy Commander though, and the thing that constantly brings us back is the fact that the game is played from a child's perspective. Planes don't stall, you don't blackout pulling a 9G dive. If someone is chasing you down, you simply nose-dive the ground and turn on a dime to face them. Try doing any of that in Ace Combat! Ammo comes in the form of pencils, erasers, drawing pins and firecrackers. Wonderfully harmless - and the whole game gives you the feeling you had when you were a child, running round with a matchbox aeroplane making engine noises with your lips. While at the same time, it is one of the most engaging games when it comes to dogfights. But best of all, this game has no online function. Which means it is played with people in the same room as you.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against online play. I do think that it leads to total social deprivation though. If I shoot someone in Toy Commander, there's something quite fulfilling about having them swear at me from a distance usually not more than 2 yards away...

HIYAAAH!! (Crick) Ow.

- Galford.

Just when you thought it was safe...

...They released the iPhone in the UK. Great. Excuse me while I rush out and not buy one.

Just when I thought people bragging about their wonderful white frontal lobe replacement in the discomfort of our homes and offices was just about within the realms of my pain threshold, now people can do it in the street too. It was bad enough that these Macophiles spent the entire time pissing all over PCs like they are personally allergic to them, now they are going to start doing it with phones as well.

Apple are still of the belief that adding 'i' before otherwise very mundane words suddenly makes them very cool. Well, how about the iTrowel, or iFingernails, or iDysentery? No, they are not cool.

Well, how about this: I don't give an iFuck about your iCrappy alternative technology. I don't iFucking iNeed to iChange my phone, mp3 player or iFrigging iPC (I'll bet that hurt) because you iRetarded iTwats say that everything except Apple products are the iDevil's iShit!

I am quite happy with my Nokia n70, my Creative Zen, and my Dell Latitude D600. They do what I want. Just because they don't give me an iBlowjob whenever I'm using them doesn't mean that they are not up to the job. Shove it up your iAss! Go away and play with your iBalls! (eyeballs? No one gets me!)

Thank you. I'll get off my iSoapbox now.

- Galford.

I hate to say I told you so...

..but I did. Sonic and Mario in a game together. I knew it was only a matter of time. The frankly gut wrenching site of the spiky blue hedgehog and the gay plumber playing table tennis together required more than just a double-take at our local Toys R Us.

I think I broke my neck.

Back in my much younger days, there was a time when a malicious rumour circulated that Sega and Nintendo were planning to make a console together. Now I knew that this would never happen, as a devoted Segaphile, I knew this would never happen. I also saw an entire flock of pigs in full flight the day Sega announced that they were disbanding their hardware division. Digression aside, it did set me thinking though. It would only be a matter of time before we saw the two flagship characters in an official game together. I wrote an email to the then almost completely unknown Teletext entity known as Digitiser on the subject. It provoked a substantial response, considering the incredibly limited following that it had. That was nearly eight years ago. An age in the great scale of computer games... Many disagreeing, many really disagreeing.

But don't get me wrong. I have nothing against games coming together. Some of my favourite games are amalgamations. Marvel Vs Capcom, Fighters Megamix, Kingdon Hearts, Capcom Vs SNK... hell, I even have Battletoads v Double Dragon on MegaDrive somewhere... but this allegiance, while inevitable, is just strange. It would like teaming up Lamborghini and Ferrari. Yes, they both make great cars. Yes, they have years and years of pedigree and design. But... Why? It would be a disaster for one or both factions!

I always thought Sega and Nintendo coming together would be like sleeping with the enemy, and while I wait with baited breath to see what will come of this unholy alliance, I also wonder what the bastard offspring of a mach 2 marsupial and a stunted comical rogue trader woudl look like...

- Galford.