Sixty Hertz

Want to support your local arcade but have no idea where it is? Have no fear the internet is here! Two sites to help you track down some low cost gaming in these times of financial downturns: Arcadefly.com and ArcadeFinder.com… now hopefully those that actually own these arcade games would find the initiative to post their inventory on these webpages… it’s be like - i don’t know - advertising for free!

Good article, from the Arcadeheroes.com guys, on the pre-mature death-of-the-arcade reporting that’s been traveling through out the major sites. click.

It looks like Virtual On Oratorio Tangram is doing well enough to get a patch which adds some really cool features (and hopefully they fix the matchmaking as well as some of their menu issues). Here’s a list (gathered from gamefaqs.com user xneoken):

[*]Spectator mode for Xbox LIVE parties
[*]Shadow and lighting upgrade (3D models remain the same)
[*]Vibration added for Raiden Armor Break, Giant Dordray, Ajim Self-Destruct
[*]Customize Mode added for Fei-Yen Hyper, Cypher Fighter, and Bal series variants
[*]Standard can now use D-Pad, can also rotate now while moving (bugfix)
[*]Fixed how transparent Public Port was not being selected on random select

jp text can be found here.

Some great games being bidded on from the Jackson Estate. Give it a click.

Great little article on game difficulty from none other than the Wall Street Journal. You’d expect the other game journalism sites to have some insightful articles on difficulty but you’d be hoping for too much i guess. Perhaps this will light a fire under the game press to actually do some real journalism (notice the MIT researcher sited in the article… Wouldn’t that be nice to see in the gaming press???)

Here is the WSJ article.

The upstanding citizens over at ukresistance have been campaigning for a return to blue skies in video gaming for a while, but if you haven’t heard of it, hop on over and check it out yourself. RESIST!

Been too busy with work to update, but this was sent to me by my good friend from Bigfire:

Sega has taken out a TM for Cosmic Smash - the amazing block-out meets tony hawk game should make a perfect fit for psp, psn, xbla or wii… the original dreamcast (and naomi) had a leaderboard set-up already, and prooved to be quite the addiction. Check out the vid below.

I’m sure most people have heard already about Gamespot’s suspect firing of Gertsmann for giving a crap game a craptastic score - but basically i am and have been in opposition to most mainstream press and websites for several reasons, not just the fact that they are basically running informercials in the guise of “reviews” but also the lack of credentials of the reviewers (everybody has an opinion but i value miyamoto’s over yours anyday - those type of credentials), the lack of objectivism from the so-called “journalist” and the lack of any proof that they actually have played a game long enough to warrant a review… anyway, here’s a great link on the recent Gertsmann debacle.

Great article on G.Rev’s Versus Shmup. Click here.