Saw the title. Laughed very hard.

Dragon Quest 3 was the one where people got mugged for their copies of the game. They don't have an explicit law about releasing Dragon Quest on weekends, but SquareEnix releases them on Saturdays out of respect for work/school (same thing happens with Pokemon and now Monster Hunter in Japan).

Zach, after playing Dead Space 2 can you tell me if the game would be any better with Wii pointer controls like RE 4 Wii edition?

I don't think so. I believe, but am not positive, that there is a Move option, but I think you also need the Nav controller, so I wouldn't be able to play that anyway.

I never had any trouble aiming with the stick in DS2, though, or DS1.

Lionel Richie 4eva.

I was the same way with RE 4 until I played the Wii version and now I prefer that style of game using the pointer controls.

What Nathan complained about with the RB3 Squier guitar not making the "wrong" sound when you play the wrong note... can be resolved if you plug into an amp while you play the game. Same should apply with keyboard. It's not practical for the game to generate wrong notes, because every song would have to include tons of wrong notes in the same tone of the song's correct notes.

Haha nothing like opening up with Zach singing.  There should be a musical number in cricket cast.

Do you guys feel activision will have learned from murdereing these franchises to give CoD a break and not milk it to death?

Also why no lamenting Hudson USA in the news section?

Like 1/2 my VC games are turbografx -16 stuff.  (Cause I love shmups)

Jonny, I wasn't sure if the game was acting as an amp itself, and then also checking notes digitally. If it was doing that, it could just play whatever audio your guitar was producing, check what notes you're hitting behind the scenes and score accordingly.

Only tangentially related to this episode, but damn each and every last one of you for pushing Picrack on me.  Damn you all to hell.

Also, play Mass Effect 2; I think all of you would like it.  Zach especially, what with the alien boobies and all.

I think the alien characters, the humanoid ones, are missed opportunities. This isn't Star Trek! But hey, Miranda looks good.

You really haven't played Mass Effect, have you?

Zach I think you are like me.  I also don't really enjoy bioware games.  So I've never played Mass Effects or dragon age.  I also feel the fascination with the "choose your own adventure" mechanic in WRPGs is ultimately stupid like it is in books.  To me it shows the devs aren't confident with their narrative giving people the fun so they give you "choices" to be fun.  The reason why its so popular in games right now compared ot books is caused games are inherently interactive so its seems cooler.  But ultimately I think wrpgs are a fad like choose your own adventure novels in the 90s.  It will go away or become way less popular in a few years.  I think.

Gamers have been fascinated with choice in video games since the early days of the medium. Zork, for instance, bears many of the same concepts as modern Western RPGs. I think games that focus on player choice will only increase in number as games are better able to represent real-world situations.

I have never gone back and attempted a Zork game, but I did play some of the old text-based versions of the early Quest For Glory PC games (at least the first two text-based versions) for the PC were that they gave the illusion of choice, even if a greater degree of choice didn't exist.  (For those who don't know, it was an adventure game (like King's Quest) with light RPG elements.)  Whereas the later games in the series were driven by a dialogue tree, it seemed as if choice in that game was a real discovery since it was limited only by your imagination and the robustness of the text parsing system.  I spent a lot of time asking characters about everything under the sun or exploring different ways to solve a problem, and I really enjoyed it when I got an unexpected event or easter egg in response. 

It's odd, but more modern games haven't provided that same sense of discovery that I got when I played Quest For Glory II as a kid, mostly because I feel that many choices in modern games are kind of spoon-fed to the player. 

Choice is an attempt to add gameyness to the parts of the game that don't involve putting bullets into people. Most of the time in an RPG is spent on the story so it should be more than just a non-interactive sequence.

Glory Days TD is based very closely off the Pop Island engine, some assets haven't even been changed (like the transition effect of the giant cartoon mouth closing or the "for maximum joy" intro screen) to fit the game's theme better. The military vehicles have been thrown into Pop Island with Paperfield which looks inconsistent in that regard (but since it plays the same as the regular Pop Island the 200 point price may still make it more attractive). I'm hoping for a proper Glory Days game next.