'Sup. Seeing as it's been about 9 millenia since I last ejaculated anything of note onto these hallowed pages, I thought it was about time I got back into the swing of things with a post of sorts. I have however, in my absence, been a regular visitor to the 'Yard and have been quite entertained by the exploits of the rest of the team over the past few weeks and months. Kudos where it's due.So what's been happening then? Well, there's this 'credit crunch' thing going on at the moment. To be quite honest, if it wasn't for BBC News presenters constantly banging on in their painfully middle class accents about the ECONOMIC CRISIS gripping the ENTIRE MEGAVERSE, I'd be none the wiser to it's apparent existence. How so? Simple: I, like many other proletariat, live within my means, don't go fox hunting and don't take my obese kids to boarding school in a Range Rover. So, you see - for the normal person, everything is as it ever was: expensive. For the rich...well: WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, BITCHES! YEEHAW!!!
There is a point to my rambling on about this Bantha shit though - the price of Netto beans may have gone up by a solar system-shattering 1.5% in the last month (which has hit me hard, regardless of the contents of the last paragraph); but the meagre price of a Dreamcast game has remained constant, even in the light of Wall Street crumbling to the ground and the FTSE melting down into the sub-components of a Pot Noodle.Want evidence, my Lord? Then wrap your festering eye sockets around this little lot:
Virtua Atlete 2K - eBay price: A QUID!
Never been much of a fan of athletics games. They're always the same - basically you have to either tap buttons so fast that your fingers seize like a Montego engine in winter; or you have to rotate the analogue stick until it buries itself into your palm and draws blood (something that actually happened to a friend of mine). Virtua Athlete 2K is no different. It's basically an unofficial take on the Olympics and involves you participating in a number of events such as running, running and jumping, throwing stuff and, well not much else.
The number of events is pretty small and there's no swimming, fencing or shooting involved. Granted, those aren't really athletics per se but with such a crappy roster of events (7, with a few unlockable ones) you'd have thought Sega would involve them just for the sake of longevity. Graphically, Athlete is fairly good looking. It's not Anna Faris good looking, but it's decent enough. For a quid, I'm not going to berate Virtua Athlete 2K too much but if I'd paid 40 notes for this back in the day I probably would've taken it back to the shop and projectile vomited bile into the face of the twat who allowed me to purchase it.
Resident Evil 2 - eBay price: £2.40
I recently ventured into a branch of Gamestation and was astounded to find that they had a handful of Dreamcast games hidden in one of those glass cabinets that they unusually preserve for the display of broken and/or stolen iPods. One of those games was Resident Evil 2, and they were asking £24.99 for it. TWENTY FIVE QUID! As much as I love the DC, there's not a chance in hell that I would even entertain the notion of paying that much for ANY DC title. Not even a white label disc that contained fully working versions of Picassio, Take the Bullet and Scud Race. Actually, I probably would pay 25 nicker for that, but Resi 2? Pfft.
But why was it so expensive? Is the DC version that much of an improvement over the original PSX game that it warrants such an incredible price point? The answer is a resounding no. It's basically the same game, albeit with higher resolution backgrounds and a new random item mode, plus a few extra bonus modes that were only available in the original after you'd completed the game. Everyone and their mum has played Resi 2 before so there's not much point in me going into the story in any great depth, but it's basically a survival horror set in Raccoon City, you can play as either Leon or Claire and you've got to shoot zombies...yada yada yada. On the plus side, the VM helpfully lets you know how much health you've got left...but this feature is made redundant if you're using one of those cheapo-nasty third party VMs with no screen. To put it bluntly, if you've ever sampled any version of Resi 2 before (excluding the pathetic Game.com version), you've played the DC version. But if you ain't - it's a classic; and at £2.40 it was a steal, too.
Like I said, it's a Tony Hawk clone with frankly superb graphics...but only 3 - yes THREE! - stages. Oh, and a rather strange back story that involves a robotic paedophile who steals kids and takes them to his magic castle for a thorough seeing to (I would imagine). Dodgy storylines aside, Razor is a fairly enjoyable game for the time it lasts - all there is to it is riding your scooter around the various (3) stages doing tricks and collecting scooter wheels. It's clearly another one of those infamous kiddie games and it's predictably easy peasy lemon (muthafuckin') squeezy, but if you have a four-year-old who loves scooters AND has a penchant for rare Dreamcast games...by all means make Razor Freestyle Scooter your next purchase.
Razor Freestyle Scooter - eBay price: yep, another quid!
I seem to recall that at the very end of my last post I promised a review of Razor Freestyle Scooter. It's taken until now to do it because I simply couldn't be bothered. But here it is! Another entrant into the "I only paid a pound for it" Hall of Fame (Shame?), Razor is a sort of Tony Hawk style game, only with the 'coolness' associated with sk8r bois/MTV rejects ripped out and replaced with those hideous little folding scooter things that feral youths just love to ride along pavements up and down the country. They're also extremely useful as getaway vehicles after mugging old women for their pension money...erm...apparently. Cough. But back to Razor Freestyle Scooter.
Like I said, it's a Tony Hawk clone with frankly superb graphics...but only 3 - yes THREE! - stages. Oh, and a rather strange back story that involves a robotic paedophile who steals kids and takes them to his magic castle for a thorough seeing to (I would imagine). Dodgy storylines aside, Razor is a fairly enjoyable game for the time it lasts - all there is to it is riding your scooter around the various (3) stages doing tricks and collecting scooter wheels. It's clearly another one of those infamous kiddie games and it's predictably easy peasy lemon (muthafuckin') squeezy, but if you have a four-year-old who loves scooters AND has a penchant for rare Dreamcast games...by all means make Razor Freestyle Scooter your next purchase.Moving away from my most recent purchases, I was toying with the idea of finally taking the plunge and buying a Dreamcast VGA cable. Y'see, I bought a fucking amazing HDTV a few months back and whilst it displays my Xbox 360 games in glorious 1080i HD-O-Vision(TM), when I plug my faithful ol' DC into it via SCART, it looks like someone has smeared a tub of beef dripping across the screen. I then, in my infinate wisdom, went and got an S-VHS cable off Amazon...only to find that it doesn't FUCKING work. So basically what I'm saying is: Can anyone out there in the ether tell me where to get a reasonably priced VGA box/cable from? Cheers, me dears.
Finally, I'd just like to congratulate Sega on their awesome homage to all things Dreamcast: Sega Superstars Tennis. Got it on 360 yesterday for a tenner...and it's simply brilliant.
That is all.
