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Virtua Fighter 3tb is a top notch fighting game that pays sweet homage to the arcade
original. There have been a number of reviews on the DC version of VF3tb that have
expressed salient thoughts on the game. NCS feels no need to write yet another VF3 review.
No, this little space is about the History section on the VF3tb disc.
This entertaining movie basically recounts the evolution of the VF series from the blockier
than thou fighters in the original Virtua Fighter to the lifelike personas that we
now see in the third incarnation of VF. The movie starts off with a wire frame of a
fighter which is then filled in with the polygonal forms from VF. The next scene shows two
wire frames that are bending their knees at the joints, they're filled in with polygons
and a bout begins. End VF1 and enter the VF2 portion of the movie which shows off the more
realistic movements of the fighters as they evolve into more complicated polygon forms.
There is a funky little ditty where Shun Di busts a move in his drunken style for a good
20 seconds. The next sequence shows Shun doing the same thing, only with a fully rendered
palatial background behind him. VF3 is the graphical kicker with Aoi starting the show by
dancing with her iridescent fan. In this scene, she stands in front of a mountain as snow
fiits down slowly and wistfully. Her dance easily shows the lifelike movements that AM2
have now perfected for their models. Jacky later joins Aoi and promptly gets his ass
kicked. Aoi's dance ends with her looking off into the distance, somewhat glazed in the
eyes. A number of other fighters are featured: Lau pummels Pai, Pai (inside a train
station) kicks Jacky's ass (is he everyone's whipping boy?), Jacky (on top of a high rise)
pulls off some moves by himself and attacks Jeffrey. Jeffrey does his thing in the islands
and puffs out his pecs as a swarm of seagulls fly overhead. Jeffrey later beats Jacky down
with a vicious knee to the head blast. The Dural scene that follows is lush with Dural
surfacing from a murky metallic ether. A head forms and then the entire body emerges. It
whirls around in space for a couple of seconds, the glistening silver body reflecting the
light but casting no shadows. Dural performs some tai chi and pulls off a number of moves
on the same high rise that Jacky performed in. Taka Arashi ends the movie as he does the
sumo excercise inside a sumo wrestling circle. Impressive evolution and an enjoyable
diversion. We would like to mention that our favorite fighting background
is the one with Wolf in the desert. Howling winds stir up wisps of dust and sand in the
background while billowing dust clouds pass occasionally in the foreground. If you look at
the horizon, the lower clouds are distorted because of the heat trails from the hot sand
while the clouds that are higher up remain fluffy, staid and pristine. |
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Candy
Toy of the Day |
| Deluxe
Candy Toy. Neat little mini viewcam that features a Pokemon movie that you play by
pressing a button. We have very small quantities of this Candy Toy so we must limit to one
per customer. |
Per
unit US$10 |
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complete Playstation import software listing for February 1999 will be posted tomorrow. A
neat import that will ship on February 04 is Pocket Muu Muu which
contains 100 mini games for the Pocket Station. Also of note is Motto Nyanto
Wonderful 2, the kitten and puppy growth sim. Takara adds to their Choro license
with Combat Choro Q where you man a tank and battle it out against enemy
armor. Magical Drop III + Wonderful is expected on February 24 and
features the arcade puzzle game and a new version titled Plus 1. Finally, we're looking
forward to Monster Farm 2, the game that lets you create a monster from a
music disc. |
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| NCS
has been compiling information on Dreamcast defects and otherwise non-working consoles.
Admittedly the sampling size is still small but the amount of defects is a surprisingly
large percentage of the total number of consoles that we have received. Out of 270
Dreamcast units that NCS has sold or had a part in distributing, 33 units (12% of the
sampling size) had problems that required repairs. These were new machines that needed
service right out of the box. The two most common problems that we have found are defects
in the operation of the GD-Rom drive and system lock-ups after the machine has been on for
about an hour. As such, NCS is now testing all new shipments of consoles individually
to ensure quality. Sending a new DC with priority overnight shipping to a customer in
California, only to have it fail at boot-up is pretty unbelievable. It's a tedious process
to test every DC but it appears to be a necessity in the current situation. |
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Send e-mail to ncs@escape.com |
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