Eternal Darkness is by far one of my most fav. games ever. Just all around goodness being given away there. I just picked up Ikaruga today, very good title as well. I really don't have any complaints about my GC. I sold my PS2 a year ago to get the GC when I found out that all the Resident Evil series were coming out for it. RE remake and Zero were both very good. Can't wait for part 4 (you can skip 2 and 3, meh...).
My next move with the Cube is to buy that GBA player thing and buy Lunar so I can relive the best RPG I ever played (at the very least the one i enjoyed the most).

I think part of what swayed me is that there are genuinely good games available for a fraction of the typical $50. If you know where to look, you can find Metroid Prime, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Zero, Eternal Darkness, Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2, Hunter: The Gathering, Pikmin, Bloody Roar, TimeSplitters 2, Super Mario Sunshine, Tony Hawk 4, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time at or below the $20-$25 price point.

There are bargains for the PS2 as well, of course, which is why I bought one of those first.

I rented Zelda... and I have to say that I'm not overly impressed. It's not a terrible game by any means... but if it didn't have the Zelda name attached to it (if it starred Kukla, Fran and Ollie instead of Link, Zelda and Ganon), I can't imagine that it would have the "best game ever" hype that it does, or that it would be more than a moderate hit for the system.

The controls are funky, to say the least. Some of the elements (like swinging on ropes/grappling hooks) are well done, while some are just strange. Whoever heard of a 3D platform-scrolling adventure WITHOUT AN INDEPENDENT JUMP BUTTON? I've spent as much time watching Link plummet (and often wondering WHY he jumped when he did) as I have getting him to go where I want him to. Getting the camera to behave can be a chore, as well.

Some of the puzzles are aggravating as hell. I can honestly say that without online (FAQ) assistance, I would have taken the game back without ever having cleared one of the first dungeons (the Dragon Roost), because there were several points in it that I wouldn't have figured out on my own.

The _very first puzzle_ was one of them; I spent an hour trying to figure out why there was nothing in the room that might generate a key, and no way to progress beyond that point without one. The answer? There _wasn't_ anything in the room with a key... until you lit a pair of bonfires at one end of the room, at which point a chest with a key would magically warp itself into existence. Say WHAT? MAJOR point deduction in my book. Some puzzles that followed were clever, and some too clever by half.

The plot has the common RPG flaw of stopping dead at many points until you talk to just the right person, or visit just the right location... but it's often devoid of visual clues or hints to point you in the right direction when you're stuck.

All in all, I'll keep at it until the rental period's up, but this one's not joining my collection until it drops to the $20 mark or less. That way, if I end up smashing the disc, I won't feel so bad about it.

<i>I spent an hour trying to figure out why there was nothing in the room that might generate a key, and no way to progress beyond that point without one.</i>

Here's another thing that separates different people's attitudes about gaming. I now utterly resent anything puzzle-like. After five minutes of that sort of thing I would take the game out and cut it up into little pieces. Then I would buy it at a store so I could return it to the rental place. I prefer freecell to that kind of stuff.

Zelda was a seven-day rental. I returned it on Day 6.

My wife is loving Eternal Darkness, so the Cube purchase is nonetheless worthwhile.

I finally found a use for my local Blockbastard Video:

* Metroid Prime at EB: $49.99 new, $29.99 used (which is actually a rather significant disparity for them; typically, EB only drops about $5 off the price of preowned games).

* Metroid Prime at GameStop: $49.99 new, $29.99 used. (I'm not sure who mimicked whose price structure here.)

* Metroid Prime at Best Buy, Circuit City, and most other non-specialty retailers: $49.99 new.

* Metroid Prime at Blockbuster: <b>$19.99 new, $14.99 used.</b>

(DING! We have a winner.)

i enjoyed zelda quite a bit. i wholeheartedly disagree with anyone saying its the greatest game of all time, or even the greatest in the zelda series. that honour goes to 'a link to the past' for the snes. :)

i picked up the gameboy player the other day. i think this peripheral is a must-have only for those who miss the glory days of the snes. with so many classic snes games being ported to the gba, and the gba's already fine assortment of quality games, its enough to make the old-school 2d fanboy drool.

how do the games look on the tv screen? shitty. you can tell the games were meant for play on a tiny lcd. screen-scrolling is a tiny bit jerky. hard to notice when youre watching play, but very noticeable when youre actually playing. but it is nice to be able to play these games using the (in my case) significantly more comfortable gc controller.

arguably the best feature, the gameboy player does a damn fine job fixing the problem of so few rpgs on the cube.

~james

I'm not really sure what the point of the Game Boy Player is, honestly, except perhaps as it's being pushed now (packaged with the GameCube as a freebie). As a separate purchase, I can spend fifty bucks to play the games on a TV at a less-than-crisp resolution, or I can spend sixty bucks and play the games on the system they were designed for AND take the games with me wherever I go. It's hard to carry the Cube and Game Boy Player on the bus.

If you want RPGs that you can play on your TV, the PSOne is cheaper than the GB Player...

I do already own one portable that I can run through my TV -- a friend who worked for Sega got me a Game Gear that had an A/V output hack, so that I could run it through my VCR and play Bust-A-Move on the big screen. (At the time, I did not have a 3DO or a Super Nintendo, which were the only other systems Bust-A-Move was available for. It and its sequels have been ported all over creation since, of course -- BAM2: Arcade Edition was the _first_ game I bought for my original PSX.)

Then there's the TurboExpress, which took great console games and _made_ them portable... but I digress.

well, the games i enjoy the most right now are all on the gba (the castlevania games, zelda, metroid, etc.) and being able to choose which console to play them on (gba for crisper display and portability, gc for more comfortable, extended playtime) is nice.

~james

You ever beat Metroid Fusion?

I haven't had a chance to play much lately, but I'm still working my way through it. Jeez that game ruled.

not yet. definitely the finest game in the series though. i got metroid prime, and while it is a good game in its own right, i really think they should stick to 2d with the series. oh well.

~james

Thanks to the wonderful world of ROM images, I have now played <a href="http://pocket.ign.com/articles/410/410028p1.html">Wario Ware, Inc.</a> for the Game Boy Advance.

Once I make a beeline for my local EB tomorrow to buy the cartridge, I may not be seen again for the rest of July. Maybe for the summer. If I'm not back by November, forward my mail.

Additional diversion: I hooked up my old TurboDuo last night.

Sure, modern games have better graphics and sound... but can today's developers come up with anything more surreal than Toilet Kids?

Okay...so...let 's say I was wanting to try out this particular ROM image. How would I go about doing that, exactly? I've tried the alleged ROM sites online, but all you can really do there is vote for the site...it isn't like you ever actually get to what they purport to offer.

Of course, I would only be auditioning this in preparation for buying it...

When it comes to console ROMs, USENET newsgroups are your best friend. If you have a decent news feed (which I do -- Verizon's is surprisingly robust), and if you find a newsgroup where someone's posted what you're looking for, you can download everything from entire system collections for older consoles (say, everything for the Atari 2600 in one .RAR file) to CD-ROM images for newer systems like the PSX or Dreamcast.

The caveat is, of course, that you're restricted to whatever other people have posted recently. You can make requests, obviously, but that doesn't mean anyone has to listen. ;) (I've been requesting PSX Cho Aniki for ages...) Still, if you wait long enough and ask politely, just about anything will turn up.

Failing that, there are always peer-to-peer apps.

(Arcade games are found at www.mame.dk; register to enable downloading.)

I've been using MAME for years, and I have quite a ROM collection for it, but ROMs have become a lot harder to come by in recent years.

What extender do GBA ROMS use, anyway?