Entries in the ‘ENTHUSIASM’ Category:

SUDDENLY IT BECAME MONEY WELL SPENT (A SPECIAL REPORT)

We just had to post this- recently we bought ourselves a TurboGrafx-16 off eBay. You know, the FAKE 16-bit console that utterly TANKED in every country they tried selling it in outside Japan. We had to hold down the vomit brought on by the sheer LAMENESS of the games it came with- Keith Courage, Dungeon Explorer and the rest of the parade of mediocre HuCards it came with DID NOT IMPRESS.

In desperation we ordered a flashcard so we could download ROMs for free to play on it, in order to avoid having to spend more money on the thing in the future. And we are pleased to report this list of games that are INDEED WORTH PLAYING on the TG-16, and how you should buy one immediately!

1. The conversion of Shinobi. Better than the Master System version even if it is REALLY HARD. Might be Japan-only, though. Yeah, it is.

2. This really weird hybrid puzzle/shooter game called Somer Assault (GET IT? “SOMERSAULT”!). It’s quite the peach and we’re trying it beat it. You play as a purple slinky dropped down from heaven BY GOD HIMSELF and must battle monsters based on the 12 signs of the zodiac. More on this as the story develops.

A MAJOR TRAVESTY:
They ported Power Drift to it! Fucking Power Drift! Did they forget that the TG-16 is an NES with a really nice graphics chip? It’s not like we’re crazy about the game or anything, but we like the arcade version and knew THE SECOND WE COPIED OVER THE ROM that it would be total crap because the original has sprites scaling and rotating at breakneck speed, something the PCE could not do, no matter how many copies of Ys Book I and II you throw at it. UK:R gives Power Drift on the TG-16 (or perhaps PC-Engine since it was a Japan only release, thank god) a 3/10.

And don’t let anyone tell you the conversion of Out Run is better than the Genesis/Mega Drive version. It’s not.

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PARTIALLY AMUSING DOUBLE ENTENDRE FOUND ON GAME CASE

Bite...FISH!!

This is a game called Get Bass for the Dreamcast. It was released to us Westerners under the painfully generic title of Sega Bass Fishing (and it was fittingly ported to the PC as a budget title under that name). Quite simply, it is in our opinion that Get Bass/Sega Bass Fishing is the GREATEST game on the Dreamcast, despite its buggy nature which you’ll be aware of if you’ve played it. The game is an EMOTIONAL THRILL RIDE, and perhaps we’ll elaborate with a series of posts about how great it is when the Sega Superstars Tennis nonsense dies down. And we are using the Japanese title because we like the Japanese title more. We respect a game title that instantly tells you the goal of the game before you’ve even hit start.

We always feel so rebellious when we see the For Japan Only text

We know you’re probably on the edge of your seat with anticipation about the game, so here we’ve gone to the trouble of plugging in the scanner and getting an image of the back of the jewel case. Click on it to make it bigger. Go on. See anything special?

To answer your question: no, we are currently single

Why, it’s a bit of English text! And this bit of English text could be interpreted as some sort of slang for a sex act involving the PENIS. But don’t worry, you can let the kids play this one, especially how it’s just been released on Wii as a budget title, which we excitedly bought, played for a few minutes, and then decided the Dreamcast version was still better despite how it FUCKING crashes on you RIGHT BEFORE THE SAVE SCREEN after a tournament and how there’s WAY too much slowdown to be excusable.

Oh yes- go play Sega Bass Fishing and leave loads of comments about how great it is and how we were right AGAIN about a certain game being fantastic. Go on, we’ll wait. Come on, just torrent it or something, you lazy bastards.

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SEGA FANS ONCE AGAIN HUMILIATED AND DISAPPOINTED

Some of the diehard few still clutching onto their Dreamcasts and STILL REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE LIE that the PS2 can do better graphics were ecstatic over the apparent “relaunching” of Dreamcast.com. As of this writing the link leads to some page about phishing and how the page was the perpetrator of a phishing scam. Just a few days ago it looked all official and Sega-ey like it was really set up by Sega of Japan, and it had this graphic on the front page:


Why yes! Yes, we do! Oh, sweet Jesus, it seems Sega really cares after all. And through the way that question is phrased, it knows that anybody who still has a Dreamcast (or even more uncommon, plays it regularly!) is a serious video game nerd who needs to move on and enjoy some of their more recent mediocre games for the current video game consoles on the market.

But don’t toss your Dreamcast! If you were to click on that graphic you would be taken to a page where you were asked to enter your console’s serial number and your email address, and in return, get your VERY OWN Dreamcast.com email address- generated from your console’s SERIAL NUMBER. Yes, you could have had an email address of something like “DU51820572@user.dreamcast.com” which is actually just a Gmail account in disguise (see below). Try using that as your business account and see how long it takes to get blacklisted by every spam filter in the world.
But then it turns out that Sega doesn’t even own the Dreamcast.com domain anymore, and somebody else set it up- apparently as part of a maniacal plot to harvest the email addresses of innocent Sega fans. But for what purpose, we don’t know, and we want someone to tell us. We had the misfortune of getting overexcited and hurriedly ripping out our Dreamcast from its connectors to get it over to the computer to enter in the serial number, and now some HOOLIGAN has our email address instead of mother Sega. But then again, so what? According to our spam folder, so do 974 other fine people on the internet.

The worst part, or the most predictable part, is that people thought this meant Sega was planning something for the Dreamcast’s 10th anniversary (that’s right, 10th) which is coming up in November. We thought we finally might be getting Dreamcast 2, and this email signup was perhaps for a beta test of the NEW Dreamcast Online Network, which obviously would be better than Xbox Live (and we need not mention fucking PlayStation Home). As it turns out, it was all a load of depressing crap and it’s just the latest in a long line of Dreamcast-related embarrassments, right next to the last game ever released for the console being a mediocre shooter and how they shut down the last GD-ROM factory a few months ago. Now we have to go through the trouble of putting the VGA box back in, which is always tough because of its short cable. Whoever did this better mail us a mint copy of De La Jet Set Radio, and soon.

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FORZA MOTORSPORT 2 – A REVIEW OF IT

We don’t often bother with reviews as they’re a lot of effort and words, plus most games are so boring they don’t deserve any free publicity and the most fun we get from them is putting them straight on Ebay.

But once every year or so something comes along that stops us playing Virtua Tennis and is actually worth the money games cost.

Forza 2

We thought we’d got bored of racing games, but it turned out we hadn’t – we’d just got bored of waiting for PGR3 to load.

Forza 2

On paper, Forza 2’s the most boring game in the world. It’s cars, tracks, loads of modding options, painting options, tuning options and the sort of screens we usually don’t ever bother looking at, apart from by accident when we’re trying to work out how to put it all on Easy.

Forza 2

But it’s not boring. It’s the least-boring driving game since OutRun2.

Forza 2

This is mainly because of the car-painting section, which even artistically retarded people like us can use to make the cars look awesome.

Forza 2

This has taken four hours so far. The car designing feature is utterly amazing, although you need to spend more hours than there are to make anything good. The text tool, for example, only lets you put on one letter at a time. So much as we’d like to do a SPIEL MACHT FREI design, we not going to bother. Even doing “UK RESISTANCE” would result in getting bored and stopping after just the “U” and the “K”.

Forza 2

This is the best we can manage. For some examples of what proper people can do when bothered, go over to the forums at Forzamotorsport.net where some good people have really tried hard.

Forza 2

This is what a good person has done. Staggering. When doing something else, like watching TV, shopping or what passes as work, all we can think about is getting back to Forza 2 and making a pretty car. It’s the biggest obsession we’ve had since Anna Kournikova’s bottom.

Forza 2

If you’re good at art and stuff AND can be bothered, please can you design a UKR-themed car, or an Idiot Toys-themed car, and gift it to us. We’ll do an update about it, or if more than one person bothers, we’ll do an update about them. If you’re not “scene” enough to know our Gamertag, mail in and ask.

Forza 2

Here’s something about what the graphics are like, for the benefit of our German readers: 60fps. Very pretty. Very smooth. People moaning about what Forza 2 looks like are idiots, as it’s all really pretty. Even the menus are nice, well laid out and nothing like the awkward mess of Forza 1.

Forza 2

This update reads like an advert :(

Forza 2

The game comes with some free music for listening to while painting your car and waiting for things to load. It’s really good music, all electronic stuff you wouldn’t expect a bunch of Americans to put in a racing game. There is no Bryan Adams and we are yet to come across “Song 2”.

Forza 2

We have no idea who any of the bands are, due to being really out of touch with youth culture. However, it has made us realise that perhaps some new music is good after all and maybe we shouldn’t only ever listen to the Pet Shop Boys.

Forza 2. Too many to alt-caption individually :(

Suzuka. Forever remembered as a Ferrari F355 track. Finally, nearly ten years later, games are starting to look a bit better than Dreamcast ones.

Forza 2

A SERIOUS BAD POINT: It’s hard getting online races to work. Really hard. In six attempts last night we connected to zero games, and just got error messages about the game not existing any more even though you could actually see it.

Forza 2

A SERIOUS THOUGHT: It’s odd that even now the best example of online gaming is still Project Gotham Racing 2. Why is it that new games still can’t do lobbies as good as or better than PGR2’s? This is the sort of serious, deep thought we occasionally have, before going back to thinking about who would win in a sex fight between Ulala and Betty Boo and if it’s wrong to have toast for dinner again tonight.

Forza 2

We have more screenshots of it than things to say.

Forza 2

Oh yes. The car Auction House is brilliant, and you can see it on your PC on the game’s web site. This is clever.

Forza 2

There are lots of races and cars.

Forza 2

It is nice.

Forza 2

Basically, we like Forza 2 as much as Virtua Tennis 3, which makes it only the second game this year we’ve played through choice in the evenings. This must mean it’s at least a 9/10.

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JACQUES MAKES FANTASIES REALITIES

We are now in Richard Jacques’ MySpace Top 12. This is awesome. This means Richard spent at least two minutes last night thinking about us. We have INTERACTED with Richard Jacques.

We are also now the bread in a Natalie Imbruglia sandwich, with Billie Piper being the other bit of bread:

The bread in a Natalie Imbruglia sandwich, with Billie Piper being the other bit of bread

Now when people ask us if we have any friends, we can say “Yes. Richard Jacques, and we are also very close to Natalie Imbruglia and Billie Piper.”

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JACQUES BREAKS INTO 'THE CLUB'

We know SO MUCH about Richard Jacques we even know that his surname is pronounced “Jakes” rather than “Jacks”. Which means everyone’s clever headlines like “Richard Jacques off to SEGA” and “We’d rather Jacques” are WRONG and based on incorrect Richard knowledge.

Therefore our headline about Rich doing the music for SEGA’s upcoming The Club is a good headline, a rhyming headline, and a right headline. Even though it doesn’t scan as well as, say, “Richard Jacques off in The Club” or some other such lame entendre that will be all over the internet by tomorrow.

Anyway. here’s a link about it that uses the very boring headline “SEGA reveals music composers for THE CLUB”.

That’s a screenshot of The Club. Hopefully Richard will see this update and send us a link to an audio sampler piece, although, what with copyrights and legal things, this might not be possible.

There are no audio clips on his MySpace page and we note with some sadness that we are not in his “top 12”. There is a photo of him playing a piano though. He appears to be cheating by using a Mac to read the music off.

BACK OFF, BITCH.

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VIRTUA TENNIS PLAYED ON THE DREAMCAST FISHING CONTROLLER

A quite awesome discovery, made by the enthusiastic youths over at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Yet more proof that… you know the rest :(

“Almost like a Wii remote – BUT SEVEN YEARS EARLIER!”

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A SEGA WORLD THAT ISN'T A STINKING, RUSTING, PISS-BUCKET FROM HELL, OR CLOSED

Not all SEGA WORLDs have died and/or fallen into disrepair! This one hasn’t. It’s probably got a good six months left before the “S” stops working and they close the place instead of spending the money on fixing it.

SEGA WORLD NARA!

“Hello! When in Nara (Japan) recently – I took this photo with UKR in mind. Then I thought, “Nah, they don’t like stuff like that anymore, forget it.” But, your last update suggests otherwise ! So here you go. Looks quite cheerful, eh ? Fitting for a town where deer roam the streets freely, perhaps. No-one in there though. Enjoy your time, M.”

Open. Just about

Cuddly toys don’t count as paying customers, and it looks a bit empty. Has anyone ever seen more than three people in an arcade since 1996?

Enjoy your short-term employment

“Enjoy your time” – that’s a message to the staff of SEGA WORLD Nara. They’ll be selling noodles down the market this time next year.

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A BLACK T-SHIRT, FOR PEOPLE WHO ONLY LIKE AND WEAR BLACK T-SHIRTS

We have made another t-shirt. It’s black and about Sony being fucked. It’s a celebration in 100-percent cotton. We’ve only got 50 of them done, so once they’re gone, they’re gone. Buy them here.

If we sell just twelve of these t-shirts we’ll have made more profit out of PlayStation3 than Sony and all third-party PS3 software publishers.

To make room for this future unsold stock, we’ve made all our unwanted, wrong-colour stock of old shirts 12 quid each. There is only limited room in our t-shirt/bike/porn/hostage storage cupboard. Our apologies to the two people who bought one in the last month.

These new ones are 14 Mighty English Pounds each, and that includes postage, even if you live somewhere far away that costs three quid to send it to. You also get a free envelope customised with your address written on it, plus a label in the back of the neck of each shirt that conveniently tells you what size it is.

Here, we put two oranges inside the shirt to simulate what it might look like if a girl was wearing it. It wasn’t very arousing, and just made ‘things’ seem worse.

If you work for Sony Computer Entertainment or Chart Track you can have one for free. Just email in from your work address, asking nicely, and saying that UKR is the best site on the whole internet, even including Pornotube and Torrentspy, and that it “brightens up your day” with its “accurate reporting of sales figures and public opinion”.

This is pretty much just a vanity project so we have one to wear around the house. We’re not expecting anyone to actually buy one.

AN EXPLANATION OF THE DESIGN
“RIP” is in an approximation of the PlayStation3 font, which means PS3/Sony is dead. “2007-2007” is the year PS3 was born and subsequently died in Europe. You know, like a gravestone. “United in Resistance” is just a thing we put on as it sounded nice and sort of linked back to the site.

The only downside we can think of this design is people might think you’re viral-marketing Spider-Man 3, a film so bad it managed to travel back in time and rewrite history to make the first film rubbish as well.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SUMO DIGITAL ABOUT VIRTUA TENNIS 3

This is an interview we did with Sumo Digital, the developer of the Xbox 360 and PSP versions of Virtua Tennis 3.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

It’s not a particularly good interview, as we were trying too hard to be funny in our questions and they were trying too hard to be funny in their answers. As a result, it contains no useful information at all.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Still, it’s an interview with Sumo Digital about Virtua Tennis 3 and has lots of great screenshots we took, so as long as it gets at least 10 Diggs and a link from Kotaku it will have been worth the effort.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE LYCETT AND TOBY ALLEN, FROM SUMO DIGITAL, ABOUT VT3:

For idiot newcomers who’ve just discovered gaming thanks to Nintendo’s new toy, please say why Virtua Tennis is the best sports game in the world.

It’s more like playing real tennis, you actually have to move your player around the court. It’s nice and easy to play, you don’t have to worry about loads of buttons and controls, so pretty much anyone can just pick it up! Plus you can play sitting down, which’ll be a new experience to Wii owners, that and the players having a full complement of limbs.

We noted with GREAT JOY that VT3 plays the same as VT always has. This is more of a statement than a question, so you don’t have to say anything after this one.

If it ain’t broke…

VT3’s new mini games – are these designed by Sumo or AM3?

Whilst we did suggest various mini-games – most to do with selecting inappropriate camera angles! – these were dropped in favour of the AM3 ones :o)

For our European readers who like statistics, can you say how many mini games there are?

I believe we have at least more than one mini-game, and possibly less than 13.

What about other stuff? Is there other stuff?

You are expecting more? You can hear tennis players moaning and groaning at your every movement and you want more…?

Is there a ‘super racquet’?

Yes. But we’re not saying what special abilities it will endow you with.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

From a technical point of view, how do you make graphics go on a TV screen?

Inside each console is a sausage mincer that takes the raw graphics, then minces them up to go down the cable to the screen. This is why some cables are better than others. Take composite, it’s only got the one video tube, about as thick as a chipolata. This is why the picture on composite is all greasy and smeared. We recommend using a good quality component cable, which allows us to deliver a nice red Cumberland, green Lincolnshire and blue traditional Banger, giving overall a much meatier picture.

Is Richard Jacques doing any of the sound? You could get him to do grunting noises.

We prefer the girls grunting noises to be honest.

Can we help in any way? We could make grunting noises, or help ‘do’ the manual. For free, obviously.

We’d love to say yes, but usually we expect people to pay us for the privilege of working with us.

Who would you rather work closely with in a hot motion capture studio – Maria Sharapova or Daniela Hantuchova?

Wait a minute, we didn’t have to choose last time.

Can you adjust chest sizes in the character creation menu?

Of course we can, we’ll probably lock it out of the final game though.

You’re implementing the online play for Xbox 360 VT3 – how’s that going?

It’s going at 1080p at 60fps mostly. Plus with it being on Live, you can add your own grunts to the game! Or heavy breathing, whichever you prefer really.

Why is it that some games are glitchy and rubbish on Xbox Live, but others are really smooth? Surely developers should all enable ‘Really Smooth Mode’ by default?

Sending online data is similar to sending video, just you need to make sure there is no gristle in there. We use Tyne Brand data, unlike some other developers who use meat they’ve got cheap in the pub.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Do you have any involvement with the PS3 version of VT3?

We’ve played it. That and stole all AM3’s source code, which saved us doing a load of work.

Wouldn’t it be great if Sony closed and SEGA made a new console? Say, for Christmas 2007? It would be about five times as powerful as Xbox 360 and would launch with just Space Channel 5 Part 3!

But if Sony shut, there’d be no PS3 to play Sudoku on! We would of course welcome a new Sega console like a brother we never knew we had. So long as they weren’t ginger.

Isn’t it sad what’s happened to Sonic The Hedgehog recently?

Don’t tell me that was Sonic I hit on the way home from the pub. I just thought it was a blue haired punk juggling some rings. Sorry mate.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

We might launch a campaign soon saying SEGA should make a new 2D Sonic game to release on Xbox Live/Virtual Console. Would you support this move? And more importantly, would you buy a t-shirt supporting it if we got some made up and charged about £17 for it?

We’d fully endorse a new 2D Sonic title. In fact we’re available for work as soon as VT3 goes. We only charge two thirds of our normal fee for a 2D game, since it has one less dimensions worth of graphics. T-Shirt wise, so long as it is better than the rival gangs ones, we didn’t get that.

Do you have any quotes you’d like us to get in the VT3 review? Usually we charge money for this service, but seeing as it’s Virtua Tennis we’ll do it for free.

VT3 is the only game to buy in March. Period.

Finally, can you say something controversial, so we can make it the headline and get loads of traffic from Digg? Say something like “PS3 isn’t as good as Xbox 360” or “Wii is just a Gamecube with a rubbish controller”.

Jack Thompson agrees that Virtual Tennis 3 is wholesome family fun. It is the only game he officially likes. Allegedly.

Thanks!

HERE ARE SOME ADDITIONAL SCREENSHOTS WE TOOK OF XBOX 360 VIRTUA TENNIS 3, SHOWN IN THEIR FULL 1080p GLORY:

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

We’re very proud of this screenshot. Great composition.

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

Virtua Tennis 3 on Xbox 360

We’ve reviewed Xbox 360 Virtua Tennis 3 about four times so far for various media outlets, giving it two 9/10s and two 5/5s. We’ll give it 10/10 here as you understand a bit better. 10/10. It’s the first game this year we’ve been genuinely enthusiastic about, instead of just pretending to be enthusiastic about.

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