Ever wanted to make your own block-rockin rap beats? Can’t afford thousands of dollars worth of studio equipment? Got a PSP? Well, Eidos has something for you. Traxxpad basically places a sequencer, sampler, and drum machine in the palm of your hand. The learning curve is a bit steep (especially if you are unfamiliar with music-creation software), but the disc is divided up into four basic functions. You lay down samples in the R.T.I.S.T editor, use the M.E.L.O.D to adjust their pitch and volume, and use the S.T.A.C to combine sequences and create a track. The Myxxer is basically a portable jam session, which makes it best for experimenting with the different samples. You can create tracks, export them as MP3s, or just save them to edit later. The WAV editor can be used to trim and crop your sounds, and you can use a PSP microphone to record vocals. Traxxpad contains over 1000 samples to use, and many of them have been supplied by outside producers and labels such as Sha-Money Management, Traxxamillion, and even Psychopathic Records (of ICP fame). The samples have been organized into sound banks, which you can load up and switch between at any time. You can even swap out samples from one bank and create a custom sound bank for whatever you need. There is a variety of different instruments, bass lines, and vocal effects, so if you’re creative, then you can come up with just about anything. Of course, seeing as how this is a PSP and not a computer, the limited controls will present some interface issues. Navigation through the menus is tricky, and there is a steep learning curve. The instruction book contains a brief tutorial, so you’d be wise to follow that before jumping in to the game.

Even with the steep learning curve, Traxxpad is an impressive piece of material. You’ll have to spend a lot of time with it to get the most out of it, but when you learn its ins and outs, the interface will become second nature, and you’ll be making dope tracks in little time at all. This PSP disc is quite powerful when it comes to the options you have available for making beats. There are better and more complex tools out there for producers-in-training (especially on the computer), but for beginners and seasoned veterans alike, Traxxpad is a good way to start out.

Out of all of Capcom’s intellectual properties, Mega Man stands as one of their best. The Blue Bomber has been around for more than 2 decades, and the franchise has branched out in several directions, including cartoons, action figures, comic books, and other merchandise. The series started off simple enough. As the title character, you fight a series of robots in whichever order you choose. When you defeat an enemy, you gained his weapon. The trick of course, was the find out which weapon worked best on which enemy. When you defeated all 8 robots, you went on to face Dr. Wily at his castle. As time went on, the series eventually spawned several spin-offs. While games such as Mega Man X placed a different face on the classic game play, other spin-offs such as Mega Man Legends have slowly moved away from what made the series great. Thankfully Capcom has recognized this, and as part of their retro-revival have created a new Mega Man game…for the NES! Of course seeing as how very few people these days have a working NES, Capcom did the next best thing: release it as a downloadable title via WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, and Playstation Network. The new game, Mega Man 9, will be released this month. In celebration of the new title, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will be dedicated to the blue bomber himself. Coincidentally, this also marks the three-year anniversary of Powet’s $20 GOTW, so head right on in and check out this small tribute.

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This little known title from Capcom is basically a homage to 80s action films. You play as a secret agent, sent into South America in order to stop a terrorist group and rescue its prisoners. You travel your way through several stages, shooting enemies and rescuing hostages. It even takes a few pages out of Rolling Thunder’s playbook, as you have to enter doorways to collect ammo and rescue hostages. While it may not have revolutionized the 2-d platformer genre, it was still an enjoyable experience for what it was.Hopefully this should show up on the Wii Virtual Console soon. Or better yet, Capcom will show some more retro gaming love and give gamers an next-generation update/sequel a’la Bionic Commando Rearmed, Street Fighter IV, and Mega Man 9.

Capcom is one of the most celebrated developers in the gaming industry. Throughout the years, they have released dozens of games. Many of these titles have become classics amongst gamers, achieving only cult status at the worst (Okami, Killer 7, Pheonix Wright), while at their best Capcom has created games that have spun off into mega-franchises (Mega Man, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry). One of their most prolific titles from the past decade casts players in the role of a hapless protagonist who has been thrust in the middle of a town infested with zombies. Using what little they have at their disposal, players must discover the truth behind the madness, assist any survivors, and live through the madness long enough to escape in one piece. The game I’m referring to of course, is 1998’s Playstation classic Resident Evil 2. The eagerly anticipated sequel pushed the series to new heights, becoming an instant best seller, and was regarded as one of the best games on the PS1. Capcom followed it up with more hits, including 2005’s Resident Evil 4, which changed the face of the series. Oh yeah, a while later Capcom released Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. While this sleeper hit carried the same basic premise of RE2, it was completely unrelated to Resident Evil. In fact, it gave gamers an experience that was unlike any previously seen survival horror video game.

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Bionic Commando Rearmed hit Xbox Live and PSN last week, so in honor of this special occasion, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will take a special look at the new game, as well as a previous entry in the series. Enjoy!

In 1987, Capcom released an arcade game called Top Secret, which we over here would know it as Bionic Commando. It was a side-scrolling platformer in which the protagonist used a grappling arm to traverse the game’s 4 levels. It wasn’t a terrible game, but it was nothing special. When an NES sequel, which was known in Japan as Top Secret: Hitler’s Revival was released the following year however, that was when the series really took off. Players took control of Nathan ‘Radd’ Spencer, who was sent behind enemy lines to rescue Super Joe from the Imperialist Nazis who sought to resurrect Adolf Hitler. Players traveled through several stages to uncover the enemy’s plan and stop them. [Read the rest of this entry…]

During the 80s, Cold War hysteria was at its peak, even as the Cold War itself was slowly ending. Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed new leader of a collapsing Soviet Union, movies such as Red Dawn and Amerika scared viewers with nightmares of a fictional Soviet takeover of the United States, and sports films such as Rocky IV displayed their own subliminal stances on the situation by depicting American athletes defeating Russian and Chinese competitors. Of course video games followed suit as well. One of the most influential was Konami’s Rush’n Attack (Russian Attack – get it?). Rush’n Attack was the name given to the North American version of the 1985 arcade game Green Beret. Players took control of a nameless marine as he used his knife to defeat the enemy forces and rescue his captured comrades. The enemy soldiers came at you from all sides, and you had to fend them off or avoid them, as just one hit would kill you. This made it kind of funny, because if you actually did “rush and attack” like the title says, then you’d be defeated within seconds. You gained weapons such as pistols and flame throwers, but they had limited ammo, and before long you were back to using your knife. It wasn’t a bad game, but It was nothing mind blowing either. If anything, it could be considered a spiritual predecessor to Konami’s Contra, which came a few years later.

However, when Rush’n Attack was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, it became something special. The plot was changed, and instead of rescuing POWs, your character had to destroy the enemy’s secret weapon. There were new weapons, 2-player co-op play, and the arcade’s military-style drumbeat that played throughout the levels was replaced by a full melodic soundtrack. It was a rare instance of a NES port of an arcade game being superior to the arcade original. While it wasn’t the classic that Contra was, Konami’s side-scrolling made its own unique impact on 8-bit gaming. Yeah, the arcade version is available on Xbox Live Arcade, but it just isn’t the same. Hopefully we should see the NES version on the Wii Virtual Console in the near future, provided it isn’t there already.

Bleach, shown Saturday nights on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, is one of the most watched anime shows among adults and teens. If not for its late night time slot and liberal amounts of blood and cleavage, it would be popular with younger viewers as well. Based on Shonen Jump’s manga of the same name, the series centers around Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager who has the ability to see the spirits of the dead. When a mysterious woman visits him, he is attacked by a creature known as a hollow. To defend himself and his family, he takes his strange visitor’s power and uses it to become a Soul Reaper, (or Shinigami as they are known in the Japanese version) who are samurai-like warriors who have special abilities they use to defeat hollows. While the series has nearly reached 200 episodes in Japan, it recently returned to U.S. TV last March after a brief hiatus, and at the time of this writing, it’s only at 77 episodes, so North American fans who don’t watch the online fansubs still have much to look forward to. While it may not be as huge and popular as Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, or Pokemon, Bleach has devoted a fairly large fanbase, and there is a decent variety of merchandise available for fans. There have been action figures, a collectible card game, English translations of the original manga, and most importantly, video games. Thus far, Sega has published two Bleach games on U.S. shores, one of which, Bleach: The Blade of Fate for the Nintendo DS, is this week’s $20 game of the week. As a special bonus, we’ll take a look at the other game, Bleach: Shattered Blade for the Nintendo Wii. Both of these games are fighters, and both vary in degrees of quality. Die hard fans of the series probably already have these two games, but more moderate fans will probably be on the fence about them. So if you want the word on how well these games play, continue forward.
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2000 was a good year for Squaresoft, particularly the summer. We got several awesome games from them, each of which was special in their own right. Some gained more accolades than others, though. Alongside Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross, we also got Parasite Eve 2, Vagrant Story, and this little number, Threads of Fate. Even though Threads of Fate was clearly geared towards kids, older action RPG fans who own a Playstation will enjoy this too.

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