On Kotaku there was an article about used games, and how in the eyes of developers they're seen as "Parasitic" to the Gaming Industry. Stores like Game Stop, and Game Crazy make money off used games, none of it goes to the pockets of the developers, or distributers. With production budgets rivaling some Hollywood movies, you can see how this can be damaging to the industry.

Officially I stand on the side where i can find gaming gems that are no longer being produced for dying consoles. A great example of this for me is finding Megaman 8 at Game Crazy for $7. Another one is finding a used copy of Castlevania: SOTN at a local blockbuster. The latter
being a title that's quite hard to find. Also, the ability to purchase not-so-new titles at a discount, enables me to enjoy a wider range of titles that i wouldn't shell out $50+ bucks for.

I believe that these higher level problems are caused by the industry itesef. This used game "epidemic" is a product of an oversaturated market, where the inflated cost of production and development nessesitates premier game producers to only focus on "money maker" games and genres. They justfy these huge budgets by rehashing games that have been financially successful in the past, adding a few bells and whilstles, and selling milllions of copies around the world to hopefully end up with profit in the end. In the end they cause these problems to happen; besides the fact that you end up with a game market that is a little dull, and lacking any real originality.

Very much like my stance on the "Great" online pirated music debate, i will pay full price for something that i think is worth it, and that i want to support with my hard earned dollars. And there are a few games that i would, and have paid full-release-date-gouge-your-money-out-of-your-pocket price. A couple off the top of my head are God of War, Rachet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Katamari Damacy, The Orange Box And i think that these are phenominal games were completely worth what i paid(some even more since i got them as "Greatest Hits"), which is the case with most of the games that i own(i tend to do a lot of research before making a game purchase)

In the end, its not our problem whether they or not the Game Industry has a worthwhile enough product for me and you, as a consumer, to warrant a $50+ purchase.  If we dont think it's worth it, then we wont buy it at full price, and the "Industry" will need to rethink what they know about us, and our tastes, and try to find another way to keep us interested, and not use us as a scape goat for their shortcomings.

 http://kotaku.com/344807/used-game-sales-are-parasitic-hurting-industry

I made a post a while back about an NES emulator the the iPhone. For those of you lucky enough to have an iPhone is here is the iPhone NES Emulator.

I have not had the chance to test it(since i can't afford this rediculously expensive white elephant of a cellphone). This seems like a work in progress, so i have no idea what kind of ROM incompatibilities there may be.

This is one of the games that fueled my search for retro games online, and to the discovery of gods gift to game nostalgists like me: ROMS. Anyway this reminds me of a story that relates to this game, and its music of my childhood. When i was junior high, i had a group of friends whose entire reason for being around each other was because of the video games we loved to play(One of tm was Makio, from the Thunder Force 4 post). I had sleep overs at my other friends house, Jerry, at almost a weekly basis. Super EDF was one of the games that i had brought over for every one to try out(I was the only one with an SNES, Jerry and Makio would not defect from the Genesis camp). During one of the brief and rare moments that we were not playing, or watching someone else play a game, we decided to have an arm wrestling competition. So during the match we would have one of the people not involved play music from the sound test. I was like a little chubby frosted flakes fuled Hulk O' Maniac.

The game itself is quite good, incorporating RPG elements into the selectable weapon systems. Fortunately the music actually does the game justice. Tsukasa Tawada composed the sound track to this game, as well as Pokemon Colosseum. Its too bad that most of the games he composed music for have never made it to western shores.

The music is J-pop influnced, with a futuristic military funk to it. Midnight Intercept is a testiment to the funk; i only wish was as funky to be able to play the bass line.

Tracks of note are:

• Sunlit A Colony
• Name Entry
• Midnight Intercept

There arent that many tracks; but it is a shooter, so its not that unsual. Super EDF Soundtrack

The Thunder Force series is one of the best series of shooters ever released on Genesis, or on any video game system or computer for that matter. A friend from junior high named Makio had this, along with a couple hundred other genesis games ( he was "the kid who had all the cool systems and newest games"; the one who existed in everyones' childhood). I'd go to his house to play video games, and he'd be playing Thunder Force 3(also composed by Toshiharu Yamanishi and Tomomi Ootani) from time to time. The reason why i was reminded of these games is because of an episode of Airwaves (monthly podcast of chiptunes and retro game music) that focused on Genesis (aka Mega Drive) composers. You can find this episode at the Airwaves Archives(episode 18).

Thunder Force 4 was composed by a trio of composers: Toshiharu Yamanishi (last fm), Takeshi Yoshida, Tomomi Ootani. Tomomi Ootani worked on the soundtracks for part 2, and 3 along with Toshiharu Yamanishi. Unfortunately I cant seem to find any other games scores that Takeshi Yoshida has worked on. They have a number of original works of their own, in collaboration, and on their own, that even to this day are being released. The Thunder Force 4 soundtrack is easily the most awesome among the entire
series; granted I've never heard Thunder Force 1, though i can only assume it gets better, not worse. With its bass and guitar heavy tracks, with a
futuristic twang , they're quite"Metal" and go along well with the theme of destroying giant intergalactic machines enslaving random planet in some far off galaxy. Despite being heavy, there are some Jazzy and J-Pop overtones (more on some tracks than others) and some beautiful synth work that make this score very hard to get sick of.

There are a number of great tracks of note for this game, with goofy names to boot:

• Metal Squad
• Don't Go Off
• Fighting Back
• Space Walk
• The Sky Line
• Silvery Light of the Moon
• Count Down
• Because You Are The Number One
• Remember of Knight of Legend
• Omake 4
• Omake 7
• Omake 9
• Omake 10

These should be listened to, religiously! The rest of the tracks also deserve to be explored, so dont be shy.

Thunder Force 4 Soundtrack

This is a wallpaper that i made a while back. Magician Lord is a paganistic platformer released only on NEO GEO. The music is quite good, and the game sports bloody pentagrams and demon overtones, which is never a bad thing in my book. :P

Seems to run a bit sluggishly, but it can only get better from here on.

NES emlulator on iPhone

This would be the major reason why i may actually be dumb enough to shell out 700 bucks for phone. Too bad the iPhone doesnt have the nessesary buttons, it's gonna suck trying to clean cheetos stains from the touch screenscreen.

Composed by Syusaku Uchiyama, this soundtrack grew on me quite a bit, as did the game. For me this is one of best Megaman scores since Megaman 3. Its quite poppy, jazzy, and light hearted. But by the end of the game the music take decidedly darker note; more ambient electronic music bordering on drum 'n bass, and gabber core. My favorite tracks include Granade Man, Frost Man, Wily Stage 1, Wily Stage 2, and Title

Megaman 8 Soundtrack

Mr. Uchiyama body of work also includes the scores for Resident Evil 2, and Megaman X3.

Hackeers have appearantly found a way to possibly run homebrew games and apps on the Wii.

Wii Hacked

I dont believe this will be taken lightly by Nintendo. The emulation scene has flourished only because the copyright holders of "retro" games haven't raised their voice, they're more worried about making the next bestest greatestest game of the century. With old school games being so hip nowadays in Xbox Live and Wii's Virtual Console, i hardly think that Nintendo will allow their profit from these repackaged games to be comprimised. </gloom>

I guess we'll see how Nintendo handles this, if at all.