Not unlike Ferris Bueller, I spent my day off in Chicago having an unheard amount of fun with 2 of my friends (powet forum regulars TheOrange and Phil Bond).
First up was GameWorks.  Instead of tokens or quarters they use some weird card system that depending on the day will subtract either points or time after you swipe into your cabinet of choice. As advanced and cool as this sound, the system was DOWN when we arrived and so all we could do was stare at the Mario Kart arcade machine.  A helpful attendant gave a free play while we waited for the card system to be fixed and we sat down to enjoy some MK action.
The action was less than spectacular.  We were not impressed and realized we were missing nothing by not having a machine closer to home.
Then the card system was working again so we gave the game another go.  Wow.  What a difference.  After adjusting to the controls and weapons system a little bit we were having a great time.  We tried most of the tracks and the ultimate conclusion is if these tracks and weapons don’t make it into the Revolution Mario Kart it’ll be a shame.
Elsewhere in GameWorks, my friends tried Guitar Freaks, a precursor to the PS2 hit Guitar Hero.  This game actually did suck, as it lacked any licensed music and controlled a lot simpler.
We had to hop out of there and head for another arcade, Nickel City, for the Soul Calibur III regional tournament.  Powet forum regular Phil Bond has been in Soul Calibur tournaments for longer than the site has been around, and though Chicago hosts some of the best players in the world, this was to be a great learning experience.
Nickel City charges $2 to get in and then after that none of the games take quarters or tokens, just nickels.  Dropping 8 coins into the Mario Kart machine there felt like a lot but for only 40 cents a play it wasn’t bad.  In the back of the arcade there was 2 rows of Free-Play machines.  Older games, but still some really good stuff.  Mortal Kombat 1, Killer Instinct 2, a half dozen variations of Street Fighter, TMNT the arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man, Tetris… yeah it was really worth the $2 to get in there to play all these games until you got tired.  I got a bag of nickels and ended up only really spending it on San Fransisco Rush 2049, which I’ve got on dreamcast in a closet somewhere.  It was a real throwback to about 6 years ago.
After a breif intermission at a Chinese Buffet and JToy (an import shop formerly located in the Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa), we retired to TheOrange’s apartment.  There we played some real Guitar Hero, Mario Kart and Meteos on DS, and I got to see what Halo 2 looks like on an xbox 360 (cleaner graphics, higher frame rate!).
It was the most sunrise-to-sunset gaming I’d done a long, long while.  Why haven’t we done this before?

This is an enhanced version of the third installment of the Elder Scrolls series, complete with all the content from Bloodmoon and Tribunal, the two expansion packs. I wasn’t even into PC style RPGS until this came along. Imagine the free roaming gameplay of Grand theft auto taken to a whole new level, in which you could go anywhere and do anything you wanted. THe whole world is open to you and you do not have to be confined by the main plot. Wanna rise to the top of a guild? Practice magic? Hunt for treasure in ancient tombs? WHatever you can think of it’s here. Only few issues with it are the combat, and the fact that besides teleporting, there is no alternative to walking across th eland. However, both of these issues will be corrected in the upcomming xbox 360 sequel, Oblivion.

Kikizo Games has an exclusive hands on with the final PS3 devkit running near final hardware, all backed up by anonymous developer comments.
The site is probably getting hammered with links right now so it takes a minute to load a page, but its an interesting read.

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy sequelizes probably the best Star Wars game in years, and certainly the best based on the prequel trilogy. Doing episodes 4, 5 and 6 I really, really hope to get a LEGO Admiral Ackbar.

Already hotly rumoured, a conference call today according to IGN confirms Activision to develop the game for the Transformers movie.
Activision’s got some solid developers making Spider-Man and an endless stream of Tony Hawk titles.  Few publishers are better suited for this type of license…

Rockstar is pretty much to the video game industry what the South is to hip hop. They may not be as ‘abstract’ as everyone else, but they add their own unique twists to tried and true gaming conventions that, other  developers will be all too happy to try to emulate.  (See Driv3er, True Crime, and Narc) So with that in mind, lets look at 2 of their most recent games.

The warriors is based upon the cult classic 1979 film.  This is probably one of the most referenced films in hip hop next to Scarface.  Anyone who has seen the film can tell that that could make a game in and of itself, but Rockstar manages to add in new content to flesh out the backstory.  You’ll learn how the warriors spent the summer leading up to the big meeting, get up close and personal with the gangs seen only briefly in the film, and even learned how the gang got together.  The game starts at the fateful night where gang leader and visionary Cyrus is gunned down, but in a Quentin Taratino-esque twist, we flashback to 3 months before the meeting, which makes up 2/3rds of the game.  Rockstar attempts to reinvent the brawler for a new generation (an act barely achieved successfully by fighting force and Gekkido on the PS1) by combining elements of their other titles such as GTA and Manhunt, and they succeed.   The environments are large and open with hidden objectives to discover, and some stealth elements and minigames help move this game away from the same ol same ol brawler territory.  Also to note is the team dynamic, in which you can use the right analog stick to issue commands to your AI controlled teammates.  Although it takes some time to get used to, this isn’t complicated at all, and you can do anything from having them wreck the place to watching your back.  The game also does a fine job of capturing the look and feel of the movie throughout the game, as much of the last third of the game is directly out of the movie.  Several unlockables (including a double dragon-esque arcade game) help round this out and keep players coming back for more.

As the latest entry in Rockstar’s franchise, Grand Theft Auto:  Liberty city stories doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done in the past three entries, almost being a step backwards, as many of the features and enhancements from Vice City and San Andreas have been left out.  Your protagonist can’t swim, targeting is as cumbersome as ever, and many of the missions range from just plain bland to outright frustrating.  However, as a PSP game, GTA LCS is one of the first real ‘must buy’ games for the system.  It contains everything that GTA is known for (a free open world, a dirty sense of humor, a somewhat compelling plot, and a vast selection of weapons and vehicles to utilize in order to wreak havoc on civilians), and it brings every square foot of liberty city to PSP.  Also, this is the first version to feature wireless multiplayer.  Although it’s ad-hoc only, it’s still nice to finally have this in a game without having to rely on a PC hack.  Also interesting to note is that a save game exploit can be used to load homebrew games for users stuck with an upgraded PSP.

The NEW 96.3 Star Country!! has eaten my favorite radio station, WMAD. I should’ve expected it when major alt-rock stations like WHFS in Washington DC and Y100 in Philadelphia have also gone off the air in the last year. What chance did my fun little Madison station have?
A lot of chance I though since WMAD was playing a great mix of current hits along with 90s alt-rock radio favorites. I could count on hearing System of a Down and “Underground” by Ben Folds Five in the same hour. But since it’s a Clear Channel station, it was ultimately doomed.
I guess its really time I got my iPod fixed since I’m NOT going to suddenly listen to WJJO all the time.

Brett Ratner’s bid to doom the franchise!
Ok, maybe not. Take away what I know about the movie from spy reports and this actually looks good. Not as killer as that first X2 teaser with Holst’s “Mars” playing over the footage of the army invading the masion all with Magneto’s voice-over… but its still decent. Nerd note: Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut in Magneto’s army doesn’t make sense since he isn’t a mutant. But if we got organic webshooters, we’ll get this and no-one will probably care too much.
The Xverse has some nice caps of the trailer if you can’t watch it for whatever reason. I already made myself a new desktop celebrating the infamous Magneto quote from the X-Men Arcade game: Welcome To Die!

New Game Informer magazine (Splinter Cell cover) has a 6 page story about the X3 game from Activision. 3 playable characters: Wolverine (obviously), Iceman (cool!), and Nightcrawler (huh?).
The game itself bridges the gap between 2 and 3, and will feature missions returning to Alkali lake to salvage bits from Stryker’s Cerebro to fix the one damaged during the assault on the mansion. Wolvie also meets up with Deathstryke who’s survived, and will go to Japan (Silver Samurai?). His levels will be brawlers, taking on many enemies and taking cover only long enough to heal before pounding through more enemies.
Iceman gets very fast paced levels as he’ll race around using that ice surfing trick I loved so much from the old Spiderman show. Looks like his levels will use some Sonic the Hedgehog type stuff. one of the screen shots show him using an ice blast against a fire engulfing a nuclear plant (likely Pyro’s handywork).
Nightcrawler’s levels will supposedly set his story out away from the action of X3, hopefully explaining away why he’s not in the movie. He gets *bamf* around people, kicking them in the back and also sneak around.

Movie games are SO hit and miss these days, which is better than they used to be, which was all miss. Though I know I should prepare for another ass game linked to what may very well be an ass movie, x2 was too kind to me to just abandon it now. I still saw Batman Forever after all, but learned my lesson by Batman & Robin.