The last thing I wanted to mention was the Star Wars Blu Ray announcement from Panasonic. It was certainly great to be a Star Wars fan and also attend this event. A group of stormtroopers came out from the side to greet us in front of the rows and then Darth Vader came out on stage. He was then greeted by I believe one of the people over Panasonic and then finally someone from Amazon. They announced that the Blu Rays could be pre-ordered there first. When I first heard this announcement I thought there might be something new about the Blu Rays that I didn’t know about yet, but that wasn’t the case, but they did show the first trailer for the set that I hadn’t seen yet. There are certainly a lot of people that are through with Star Wars now and all the number of times it has been released on the various video formats. It these were just the bare bone movies than I’d agree with them. I’m mainly looking forward to the 30+ hours of extras and am hoping most of it has to do with the original trilogy. There’s a lot of material out there that hasn’t been shown yet. Below is a clip that was shown at Star Wars Celebration V of Luke building his lightsaber in a scene that was cut from Return of the Jedi. I remember reading this scene in the book version and had wondered if it was filmed, but no confirmation had ever been given until now. I hope these sets contain many more scenes like this. That scene and the trailer are shown below.

Anandtech spent some time with Epic Games’ Mark Rein last week and was shown a demo of the Unreal Engine 3 running on a 3rd Generation iPod Touch. The demo included a flythrough as well as a playable level from Unreal Tournament.
It’s using a modified Unreal Tournament level previously shown off at GDC. A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and they’re experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt.

The Unreal Engine 3 is a modern 3D gaming engine which powers games such as Bioshock, Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3.

Because of the huge stronghold Nintendo had the first two years the Genesis only did moderately well. There main selling point was that you could bring the arcade home and they ported several arcade titles to the system with very similar graphics. I remember one time my brother took me to the Red Cliffs Mall in St. George around this time. We played Altered Beasts at the arcade, Tilt. He asked me if there was a system that had that game. It just happened to be the pack in game with the Genesis at the time. We went to the K.B. Toys that was at the mall and I showed him. I think he was contemplating getting one for us. However, at that time the Genesis still had a $200 price tag, so it didn’t happen.

It wasn’t until 1991 that the Genesis started to really take off and that’s because that was the year of Sonic the Hedgehog. From previous interviews I have read, Sega knew they needed to come up with a mascot that could rival mario and this one ended up being their choice. It was also the President of Sega of America’s idea to make this game a pack in game in order to help sell systems. From what I have read Sega of Japan was not happy with this idea, since it was pretty much giving away their killer app for free. However, they decided to go along and allow the idea. After the release of Sonic, and a $50 price decrease, the Genesis started selling like hot cakes. It was that year that I finally got one. I managed to sell my NES and all my games and then pooled up all my lawn mowing money from the summer to get one.

Over time Sega managed to get half of the video game market which is pretty impressive. However, they made some mistakes near the end of the Genesis’ life which cost them dearly. A big debate at the time was which system was better Genesis or Super Nintendo? I personally jumped back and forth between both systems over the years. When I switched to the Super Nintendo, I had a friend who also had a Genesis, so sometimes we would swap systems over the weekends. It made it a great way to enjoy both great libraries. The main disadvantage with the Genesis was it could only display 64 colors on the screen at one time, while the Super Nintendo could do 256. Games that were ported to both systems almost always looked better on the Super Nintendo, especially arcade ports. However, the Genesis had some great exclusive titles that looked great and colorful, one of them being the Sonic series.

This post turned out being a lot longer than I thought it would, but I thought it appropriate to share some of my memories of the time and a little of the history.

Happy Birthday Genesis!

Here is a pic of my boxed system.

Here are the links to the skype’s website as well as the subscription plans.

Now for the fun one. Last week ID released the source code for an iPhone version of Wolfenstein 3D. They also officially released the game in the app store for $5 which isn’t a bad price. Because the source code was released, someone also compiled it themselves and released it on Cydia for free on jailbroken iPhones. I decided to try it for free to give it a try and I am pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to control and use. Wolfenstein is considered the game that really kicked off the first person shooter craze. I used to play it back in the day on our 386 computer running at a whopping 16 mhz. ID has also stated that they are working on porting the Quake series to the iPhone and I can’t wait to see how they pull those off. Here are some screenshots from the iPhone version of Wolf 3D.

Here are the two box arts for each version and below is the preview for the new Wii version.

This game was probably one of the first RPGs to be released on the CD format. The Sega CD version has anime style cut scenes with voice dialog, but in game you still have to read text like other RPGs at the time. It also has an amazing CD quality soundtrack which was also another advantage of being released on CD over cartridge.

Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia page about the rave reviews this game received.

The English version released the following year met with a similar response, with Skid of GameFan magazine calling it “far and away the best RPG I have ever played in English”, praising the game’s graphics, sound, and story as “well conceived and executed”.[29] The magazine’s editors would later name it as the greatest role-playing game of 1993.[2] GamePro similarly reviewed it as “not just the best Sega CD RPG ever, but one of the best on any Sega system”, giving particular merit to the game’s translation.[31] Game Players described it as a “solid RPG, and well worth your time” but found fault in the game’s small character graphics that “look like every other RPG” and the virtually non-existent replay value.[32] Electronic Gaming Monthly granted the game an average 7.6 or “worthy” rating, commending the game’s background music but dismissing its battle sequences as “dull”.[28] In 2006, Lunar ranked 113th in EGM and 1UP.com’s “The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time”, celebrating the two-hundred games that were considered the best during their original release.[35]

Here are a couple screenshots from the game.

Tonight I decided it was time to give the Super Nintendo some love. The game I chose was Super Castlevania IV. This game is definitely my favorite of the series even though I have always been a fan of all the games. For being a launch game they really made use of all the abilities of the Super Nintendo. The music, graphics, and sound effects go well with the game to create the spooky atmosphere. This was the first time in my life that I sat down and played straight through the game. It took me roughly two hours and a couple continues.

There was never a U.S. commercial for Castlevania IV. I think by this time the series was popular enough that advertising wasn’t needed. Instead here is a youtube clip showing what the final battle with Dracula is like. It shows right off how the game developers were able to create the mood of the game. You get the eerie music, the torches that light up as you approach them, the scrolling dark clouds in the distance, and the prince of darkness himself Dracula. Enjoy!

Here are my two times.

Street Fighter 2 is considered one of the games the put the Super Nintendo ahead of the Genesis. It was announced that it would be exclusive to this system, so many Street Fighter 2 die hards had to get the SNES. I had the game pre-ordered a few months before the game came out. Probably about a year later Capcom found a loophole in their agreement with Nintendo and released the Champion Edition version on the Genesis, but then later the SNES got the Turbo version. It is pretty crazy how many versions of Street Fighter 2 were released before making it to number 3.

Here is the original commercial for Street Fighter 2 for the SNES.

and here is the ending of the game with the emeralds.