I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Gamespot interviewed Michael Pachter , the senior vice president of research for investment banking and brokerage firm Wedbush Morgan Securities. While his title might suggest that he doesn't know anything about gaming, his responses to questions are insightful and exceptionally opinionated - in a way I like! Here's on of my favorite snippets: GS: What's the conventional wisdom say when looking at Microsoft's decision to can its sports lineup? Is it that they can't compete with EA's sports lineup? MP: It's not just that no one can compete with EA. Microsoft [games] suck! I guess their tennis game was good--Top Spin. Microsoft should can all games that they developed and should have bought somebody who knows how to do it. GS: Have they bought anyone in recent history that knows what they're doing? MP: The Rare guys were great developers for the N64, but they didn?t do anything for these guys. [Microsoft] made some really bad decisions. T

This cool toy is the type of thing that I've been dying to do for years but really don't have the ear to get it right. A fantastic way to spend 5 minutes or the better part of an hour. Josh Nimoy has a number of other cool toys to play with; I especially enjoy his Textension project that plays with text as 3D objects. I actually did do a project like this.

According to EuroGamer , Sammy, a game publisher most known for its pachinko gambling machines, owns 22 percent of Sega and will purchase the remaining 78 percent by the end of the year. And the knife to the stomach: Satomi-san, who will be president of the new merged company, has previously expressed his desire to see Sega focusing increasingly on the arcade market, and hopes to use the company's development talent and wealth of intellectual property to build on the success of Sammy's low-cost Atomiswave arcade system. Will the creative nucleus of Sega survive yet another blow to their collective pride? Probably, but with an ever-increasing arcade-centric approach, will anyone outside Japan be able to tell? Wise from thy gwave! Sorry. Had to do that.

SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium I played so much Match of the Millennium since Friday that I developed a tiny blister on my thumb from the fireballs, dragon punches, and spinning pile-drivers I've been landing. Or trying to land, at least. This potentially weekend crippling injury hasn't stopped me from continuing to bust some heads, mainly because Match of the Millennium is one of the best handheld games I've played. MotM is to the Neo Geo Pocket Color what Tetris, Link's Awakening, Mario Golf, and Advance Wars are to Nintendo handhelds. SNK's flagship title for their handheld is exceptionally polished and full featured. There's no shortage of things to explore in the game; there are a few dozen franchise characters from both Capcom and SNK to play, solo, tag team, and 3 character team modes, a few different fighting styles, and a Olympic themed mini-game system that are great to play when you only have a couple of minutes to get yo

Every E3, there's usually one or two little gems that I can't wait to get my hands on. This year it comes as Odama from Yoot Saito, the mastermind behind Seaman, for the Nintendo GameCube. Here's a snippit on Odama from GameSpot: . . . Odama is fundamentally a pinball game, and bears all the basic traits of a good pinball game--realistic physics, the ability to tilt the board, and so on. However, the pinball happens to take place on a historical battlefield. And what you need to do, in order to help your army achieve victory against superior enemy odds, is use the odama--a gigantic, metal ball--to bulldoze enemy forces, buildings, and defenses, so that you can clear a path for your army's siege party to reach the enemy warlord. How's that for strange? Who says RTS games can't be innovative?

From the new trailer the next Pixar movie is going to be, wait for it, incredible. It certainly has a more teenage feel than Pixar's earlier work with some serious Hollywood style action sequences and lots of explosions! I'm dying to see it.

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect 16 player multiplayer on the PS2 version. This is a bit of a blessing and a curse. Blessing because the TimeSplitters series needs to be online like hot chocolate needs marshmallows; curse because the PS2 version of TimeSplitters 2 is crippled by load times up four times as long as the other platforms, plus it ain't nearly as pretty. If Future Perfect somehow supported XBox Live (a possibility with EA's "surprise" announcement of their support of Microsoft's online gaming system), that would be reason enough for me to buy the system. Well, Full Spectrum Warrior may cause me to break down anyways. . . Second Sight Its hard to determine which I'm more excited about: the next TimeSplitters or Free Radical's first non-fps with an actual storyline. Looks like the game has psychic powers, stealth, and some gunplay - rarely a boring mix! Here's an SAT analogy for you geeks out there - Factor 5 is to Hoth Missions a

Looks cool, but the IGN article that came with the picture has me a little scared: What was wrong with the original Prince? Camera, pacing, easy enemies, no boss fights, sand creatures who felt fluffy...? Prince of Persia 2 promises to remedy this -- all of this. Combat will be the biggest change. Ubi is touting a new "freeform" combat system that will allow gamers to string together any attack or move to any other. The result is rumored to be something akin to Tony Hawk, not necessarily in terms of specific control and button layout, but rather in how it will be possible to move from a swipe to a stab to a summersault to a rail slide, or heel grab, or whatever. I've agreed that the camera had issues, but I thought they did have boss fights? And since when do boss fights make for a better game? Who thought the creatures in the first game were fluffy? I also didn't mind the game's "ease", I had issue with the poor feedback and widely varying d