This video turned into a more overly ambitious review than I first thought.

Show notes after the jump
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Man, Square sure diversified after leaving Nintendo….oh wait, I said that last week didn’t I? Anyway, this fighting game (and collaboration with Namco and Dreamfactory) was as far away from the company’s RPG roots as it gets. It was also a departure from other fighting games around the time as well. Characters are allowed full 3-d movement, and don’t even have to face each other, not unlike Capcom’s Power Stone. The arenas contained interactive elements such as destructible crates that can be used as weapons. However the arenas are a bit on the small side, and the camera doesn’t track as well as it should sometimes. Even so, it’s still a fresh and fast-paced approach to the fighting game genre. The story (as with a good majority of other fighters) is that some mysterious conglomerate is holding a fighting tournament, and fighters from all around the world arrive to compete. Okay, so the story isn’t that original, but the characters are. On the surface, they look like your usual Tekken/Virtua Fighter archetypes, but their physical features and backstories make them something else. For instance, Ken ‘Godhand’ Mishima may look like your average fighting game main character, but he was a former assassin whose arm was replaced with a canon. Lee Shuwen may look like your typical old man kung-fu master, but he is suffering from a reverse aging disease. Not only do you get to play as these guys, several characters from a little known game called Final Fantasy 7 are also among the cast! Why would you want to play as any of the original yahoos, when you can play as Sephiroth?

Beside the main game, there are several minigames that can be played as well. There is a racing game and a board game, but the one you will be spending the most time with is the dungeon mode. Here, you take control of an archelogist as they explore a seemingly endless dungeon. Not unlike Diablo 2, you go through the dungeon building stats and gaining items and weapons to help you on your journey. The dungeons are even randomly generated, making the experience different each time.

Ehrgeiz may not have been be Street Fighter, but it introduced several unique concepts that were further refined in other games. The original disc has gone out of print, and was never re-released as part of SOny’s ‘Greatest Hits’ line. Thankfully, Japanese PS3 owners can purchase it at the PSN store, so hopefully this game will be available in the US PSN store as well. Gamers deserve a second chance to experience this classic, if for no other reason than the fact that gamers can control Sephiroth and his planet-destroying awesomeness.

What Would Madden Do?

Oh snap! We’re tackling this year’s Super Bowl commercials.

Get it?
These are football jokes. Also; the news and what we’re into.

Final Crisis spoilers ahead:

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An annual tradition in the United States is being held tonight. You see, all the big marketing geniuses make commercials for their new products, and in between those commercials there is an American football game.
Movie studios are now pulling out the big guns, and a lot of their teasers are already online.

UPDATE: Many of these ads have been pulled from youtube, but you can see them all on Hulu.com/superbowl as they air in the game, or using the viewer below!

Apologies to international readers, Hulu only works in the States. Transformersmovie.com has TF2, and Coming soon has GI JOE.

I reported on some leaked control art for Terminator 2 minimates a while back. We have some more details on them now from Minimate Headquarters.

There are two separate assortments to begin. The first is a case of single-packed minimates consisting of 5 different terminators with a rare chase figure of General John Connor. This was the control art that we had seen previously. This is more or less the same treatment the Battlestar Galactica Minimates got with the single-boxed Cylons.
The different Terminators include:
T-800 Endoskeleton
T-800 Endoskeleton Battle Damaged with Gatlin Gun
T-800 Half Human Terminator
T-1000 Cop
and our rare variant General John Connor
(see group shot after the jump)

The second assortment will be the first wave in an ongoing line of Terminator 2 themed minimates (pictured above). The wave will include:
Terminator (T800) & John Connor
Final Battle T1000 & Battle Damage Sarah Connor
Endoskeleton & Battle Damage T800
VARIANT: Endoskeleton & Kyle Reese
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What Do Lonzo Wilkinson and Laird James McCullen XXIV have in common? They’re both trapped inside the giant plastic prison that is the GI Joe Ultimate Battle Pack. I literally chop open the box to show you whats inside.

See that image? The US Federal government has run out of funds for the program to hand out these $40 coupons for the Ditigal TV switchover, which is probably why on Monday the Senate unanimously voted to extend the “analog shutoff” deadline from February 17th to June 12th.

Several other reasons for the delay were cited. For one, there’s still not enough accurate information out there about who needs to switch and what someone affected by this change will have to purchase in order to use a digital signal. That’s a vast understatement, since the media at large has only just this month caught on that digital signals will require many TV owners making the switch to buy a new antenna as well — which the current (now-bankrupt) government program doesn’t take into account.

(Read more about how badly this could screw things up after the break)

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