pixellated

I've looked at it, and it seems ok...but who knows. I certainly gained an appreciation for Tony Hawk, so maybe Tricky would catch me too. I do have a love of Twisted Metal Black-but that's more Mad Max than racing/stunts. I'll give it a shot sometime.

Check; the $ makes a difference when you're buying this stuff. In my case, I could play the old PS1 games; and there's no way I'm giving up a chance to play Final Fantasy 7, ever. Ever ever. Same with Resident Evil 2. And the number of games available for the other systems just doesn't stack up; fine in my case, I'm not being hardcore right now. I'm merely wandering through GTA3, and I still have to finish Dark Cloud 2 and open stuff up in War of the Monsters-which you might dig on a bunch.

Storing music sounds interesting, but how useful is it? Maybe with the Live component(which I'll admit the Xbox does seem to have squared away better than most other consoles) it's good-you could trade songs and such(uh, piracy alert?). But I haven't had to buy more than one memory card. And the card is easier to transport than the whole system. Also, don't you have to buy something to get and Xbox to play DVD's? I seem to remember this-but that may no longer be true.

Also, what do you think of the buttons? My memory is that those were some small buttons to try and press. It could just be my imagination, though. The color cordination+alphabet doesn't suck, but it's not as universal. 'A' doesn't mean much to a Japanese person-and I've recently read a bit on color-blindness. It affects mostly white males-I think 10% or so. The colorcoded buttons, especially a green & red one, may not be as helpful to a colorblind person. A colored X or O does-because of the generic symbol there, which is emphasized over the color. Not that what you like is wrong, but I think this is one place where Sony stomped people-that controller seems more universal. Not that universal is always better.

However, getting to play linked up is pretty sweet. Like the LAN parties read about on Quarter To Three. (I think I'm using the language right here.) And yeah, PS2's can do that too, but I've never had reason/need to do it. Then again; I drive to someone's house to play Magic-and that's a hit and miss proposition. Videogame rules, at least, don't mutate...

Splinter Cell didn't look as good(of course) but got solid reviews for the PS2. What I saw of it was great, but the roomie was playing it, and said it was too hard. I witnessed this in action; head shots that didn't do what head shots were supposed to do-kill people. And in Splinter Cell, you pretty much get one shot to get it right, and that's it. Bummer.