Oh man I played Bug … although on the PC, not the Saturn. That was that weird period of time in the mid-to-late-90s when a struggling Sega inexplicably thought it was a great idea to port many of its best first-party games to the PC. I mean, I'm sure they sold well, but you'd think you'd want to direct traffic to your…

"It’s a combination that just doesn’t feel as natural as its respective parts, and looking back at the platformers that came out in the following decades, it was an evolutionary dead end."

I dunno, you'd think so, but Grand Theft Auto's design and engine have to do so much other stuff that the actual cab minigame element of it has never been as pure or straightforward or fun as Crazy Taxi — especially at the time. GTA controls smooth-ish now but was pretty darn clunky back in the PS2 era. Crazy Taxi, by…

Comix Zone played pretty great, actually. Hard as nails and very short, but it was a smooth, fun, versatile beat 'em up. That said I'm not really sure there's much new you can do with it. Good candidate for an HD redo, though.

A new Toe Jam and Earl is coming! Got Kickstarted a while ago. Looks pretty sweet, too.

Wouldn't be easier to list what Sega IPs we DON'T want revived, really? If you skew away from stuff that Sega owns but no one really thinks of as being a Sega thing — like Persona — you've got a pretty short list of currently active Sega properties. (At least, outside of retro releases — where, to be fair, Sega…

If we can put covers on this list, I cannot highly enough recommend this version of "Bloody Tears," by San Antonio band Mariachi Entertainment System, which does mariachi covers of video game music. It's spectacular, and the Latin treatment really, really works for this track.

It was an interesting way to tackle a problem that video game controllers still struggle with, which is how to position the D-pad and the analog stick such that both work well as primary inputs. Nintendo recognized that for some games (mainly anything 2D and sprite-based) you'd want primary access to the D-pad, but…

I like that Nintendo designed and released a game — the first Mario Party — that was seemingly engineered from the ground up to destroy your controllers. All four of them.

Aw, I think you're being too hard on Nintendo here. For one thing, you've got to give credit to the company that pioneered so many fundamental aspects of game control that we're still using to this day — the D-pad, analog sticks, rumble, touchscreen control, motion control. All five of those features are basically…

I dunno, I actually think the N64, of all the consoles of that generation, would have run the CPS-2 fighters the best. I can only theorize, of course, but they don't have THAT many vocal samples, no FMVs, and no textures — in other words, all the advantages that the Playstation typically had over the N64 would have…

God, words can't convey how excited I am that Planetes has been reissued in the glorious omnibus format. When you're a manga fan you're so used to things falling out of print and just dropping off the face of the Earth, so it's nice to see something (that really deserves it) get such a good treatment.

It's screening at both the Hollywood Theatre and the Mission Theater (a McMenamin's in NW), and those are just the ones announced so far. It'll probably pop up another couple of places as well.

It'll never happen, but God, this could be incredible with the Wii U. 1 player gets the Gamepad and can control Jason, unseen by the other players, while the other three (or more, as Smash Bros. demonstrates is possible) could use the Wiimote to control counselors on the TV. It could be a blast.

I have no real, strong ethical objection to this or anything, and I totally understand anyone who contributes money. Who wouldn't like to play a prettier-looking Mario Kart 64?

It's interesting to me that you should mention Ten, because I think Tennant had a chemistry very much like what you're describing with Catherine Tate. There was never any romantic element to their relationship, obviously, but they related to each other much like an old married couple, and if the dynamic had shifted…

I'd like to pour one out for the IFC of, oh, about 10 years or so ago. Back in the halcyon early days of the network, back when it had nudity and swearing and violence and there was no advertising, it really was a cool channel. It was very formative in exposing the high-school-age Boy From Ipanema to some great cult…

"All Mine" is one of the all-time-great-Bond-themes-that-isn't-actually-a-Bond-theme, kind of like the Dirty Projectors' "Gun Has No Trigger."

Yeah, I'm not optimistic about that. We've yet to see a single N64 Virtual Console release on the Wii U, let alone Gamecube. I'm not sure they've even mentioned it past the initial reference to possibly releasing GC games on the service. It may be technically difficult to emulate the GC on the Wii U, but it's still…

It's always perplexed me that the Gamecube hasn't gone on to inspire a Dreamcast-like cult reverence, especially since, thanks to the original Wii's backwards-compatability, so many people did ultimately end up owning a machine that could play its games.