Iconic game characters

[Esrever]

I think it's just the UK's magazine industry that's better than ours. Their science magazines are better, too.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

Most of their best writers ended up migrating over to Next Gen, and Game Players really only went downhill from there.

Some also went to IGN *shudder* Then again, I'm talking about 1998/1999, when IGN was still decent.

Regardless, the writing was, for the most part, insightful and intelligent, the layouts were clean and easy to follow, and they were critical and often ruthless (they had a knack for getting their interview subjects foaming at the mouth). Of course it was too smart for its own good, and in its last year lost all the charge and wit that once defined it. I think in trying to dumb the magazine down to appeal to a wider readership, they alienated the only audience they had.

Their layout was awesome, now that I think about it. Their screencaps also looked significantly better than other magazines'. However, I didn't know Next Generation ran up until late 1998..I thought they folded in mid-1998 along with Game Players (after they became Ultra Game Players and stopped being cool). What did it look like by the end (layout and magazine wise), I wonder?

[Double-S-]

The hell, the Plasma Gun is from Quake please.

[Light Speed]

The hell, the Plasma Gun is from Quake please.

It's not like a plasma gun is an original idea. Besides I said Plasma Rifle, in Halo there's a Plasma Rifle and a Plasma Pistol, neither are just called a Plasma Gun please.

[Baba O'Reily]

Even furry porn can't compete with Caffee's gun fetish. Look, the whole discussion came screeching to a halt.

If anything, furry porn starts conversation, what with the cries of OMGWTF WHY DON'T YOU GO BACK TO MEXICO FREAK.

[Starscream]

Some random notes:

*That new Tomb Raider game is looking pretty decent indeed. I haven't bought a Tomb Raider game since Chronicles, but the footage I've seen from this one actually has me excited again. I still think they should just remake the first one. One of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

*I don't think Masterchief looks or sounds very iconic at all. As far as naming, personality and outfit goes, he's about as cheap a character as you can get. In fact I never liked the look of Halo in its entirity, which is bland, uniform and seems recycled from better, more edgier sci-fi games.

*I don't really follow this discussion on weapons but still let me throw in: Railgun über alles!

*I used to buy a lot more gaming magazines. I still have a huge stack of old mags lying around here. I should look into them actually, see if I can find something interesting. My absolute favourite was GamesMaster, but I stopped buying it some time ago.

[Light Speed]

I have a shit ton of PSM magazines because despite cancelling the subscription I recieved them for another year or so with the THIS IS YOUR FINAL ISSUE thing on them. Then a year after that they came for another 8 months or something. That magazine blows though.

[Zeta]

*I don't think Masterchief looks or sounds very iconic at all. As far as naming, personality and outfit goes, he's about as cheap a character as you can get. In fact I never liked the look of Halo in its entirity, which is bland, uniform and seems recycled from better, more edgier sci-fi games.

Secon'd. He looks like a generic space soldier to me, and you could swap him out with a Starship Trooper and I'd never notice.

[plasticwingsband]

*I don't think Masterchief looks or sounds very iconic at all. As far as naming, personality and outfit goes, he's about as cheap a character as you can get. In fact I never liked the look of Halo in its entirity, which is bland, uniform and seems recycled from better, more edgier sci-fi games.

Secon'd. He looks like a generic space soldier to me, and you could swap him out with a Starship Trooper and I'd never notice.

well you may not notice but i'd notice because starship troopers was a bitchin' movie

gawd i love b movies so much

[chriscaffee]

*I don't think Masterchief looks or sounds very iconic at all. As far as naming, personality and outfit goes, he's about as cheap a character as you can get. In fact I never liked the look of Halo in its entirity, which is bland, uniform and seems recycled from better, more edgier sci-fi games.

Secon'd. He looks like a generic space soldier to me, and you could swap him out with a Starship Trooper and I'd never notice.

The armor in Starship Troopers consists of a helmet and an armored vest. Now if you were comparing the Halo marines to Cameron's Colonial Marines then you might have a point, especially with the dropships. Seriously that's a pretty asinine comparison. It would be more accurate to say he looks like a Stormtrooper or something of that nature, you know a "generic space soldier" that actually has full body armor, rather the just grabbing the first name you come across that seems related.

Starship Troopers as a movie was retarded. Evidently an Ithica 37 shotgun has a capacity of fifteen shells, or so we are led to believe. In addition we are to buy the fact that Ruger Mini-14s - I mean Morita Rifles - fire 7.62mm x 51 NATO rounds when they are in fact using 5.56mm x 45 rounds.

Fun fact: Ruger Mini-14s are also used as the base weapon for the futuristic assault rifles used by Schwarzenegger in "Total Recall."

"Ha ha ha you think this is the real Quaid!"

*Bad guys look away.

"It is."

*Kills bad guys.

[plasticwingsband]

*I don't think Masterchief looks or sounds very iconic at all. As far as naming, personality and outfit goes, he's about as cheap a character as you can get. In fact I never liked the look of Halo in its entirity, which is bland, uniform and seems recycled from better, more edgier sci-fi games.

Secon'd. He looks like a generic space soldier to me, and you could swap him out with a Starship Trooper and I'd never notice.

Starship Troopers as a movie was retarded.

so is cube as a movie as well as sonic r as a game

this does nothing to detract from the enjoyment i get from them, however

[chriscaffee]

I've never understood the hate surrounding Sonic R.

[Esrever]

I thought it was fun enough. But it was so short. It's the kind of thing that will completely satisfy you as a budget PC title or a game in a compilation, but will severely piss you off as a $50 Saturn release, I think.

[Starscream]

I like Starship Troopers

[Frieza2000]

Sister Bluebird flying high above,

[plasticwingsband]

sonic r is extremely fun, but it's more than a little broken

however it's not supremely broken like sonic heroes or anything

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

Sonic R is a good game. It just needed more tracks. I could live with everything else if there were more tracks.

[chriscaffee]

Yeah, I mean I picked it up for ten dollars or so and it was worth every cent. I suppose I wouldn't have been as satisfied if it had been fifty, but then again, playable Metal Sonic...

[Baba O'Reily]

Sister Bluebird flying high above,

*E-handjob*

[Dunjohn]

I liked Starship Troopers. It's quirky interpretation of what "nice" fascism might be like was fun. The only thing that really annoyed me was the way that harpy love interest girl never once stopped grinning.

[Dash]

All this talk about magazines is reminding me of how much I miss GameFan. It had a messy look with tons of stuff crammed onto one page, but I thought it looked cool. More importantly, the covers were consistantly awesome(some being hand drawn by a hired artist(Spaz!), which is almost unheard of today).

Oh yeah, and the articles were pretty good too if I recall correctly. I don't think that's why I bought it though.

[Starscream]

I liked Starship Troopers. It's quirky interpretation of what "nice" fascism might be like was fun. The only thing that really annoyed me was the way that harpy love interest girl never once stopped grinning.

Precisely.

[chriscaffee]

I like how the director of the movie believes he did Heinlen justice.

[Kishi]

All this talk about magazines is reminding me of how much I miss GameFan. It had a messy look with tons of stuff crammed onto one page, but I thought it looked cool.

If nothing else, I liked GameFan for their unabashed elitism. Unlike Edge, they weren't pretentious so much as they were simple fanboys, and unlike Next Generation, they were fanboys for the most obscure stuff. For example, when Snatcher came out in America for the Sega CD in 1994, their reviews glibly opened with how great it was that most of the gore had been preserved from the Japanese PC Engine version. Honestly, how many Americans even knew what a PC Engine was in 1994?

The good side of this is that they always had the best (and usually the only) information on import items like Guardian Heroes, Symphony of the Night, and the Sonic OVA long before they were released outside of Japan. They were also first to report on things like the numerous extra features included in the domestic version of FFVII, and they were ahead of the retro gaming trend by at least a few years with their Graveyard feature, where they looked back at games like Nam 1975, Magician Lord, and Rocket Knight Adventures.

More importantly, the covers were consistantly awesome(some being hand drawn by a hired artist(Spaz!), which is almost unheard of today).

PSM also commissioned comic artists to do their covers for the first few years of their existence. I wish that kind of thing were done more often.

[Light Speed]

PSM still does I thought. I haven't really seen a magazine by them in a couple of years, but I remember on the inside cover of every magazine they'd show the step by step making of the cover.