TheBuck27

Cyberspeed was the very first Playstation game I ever played. In that regard it holds a bit of a nostalgia factor with me, because Playstation ended up becoming my favorite system. It was only replaced as my favorite when PS2 came along. Despite this, Cyberspeed really isn't a very good game, especially today. But the wacky TV commercials on the game make it worth a purchase just to see them.

As the title suggests, Cyberspeed is a futuristic racing game. You can choose from 8 ships, which have different stats, like speed, thrust, mass and shields (more on that later). Each ship has it's own character driving it (although you never see the character while racing), and each ship represents a different country. All the ships play identically, though, and they don't have any special weapons or anything of the sort to make any one ship different from another. It'll probably boil down to you picking which ship looks the best, and they all look very different, despite playing the same.

The way Cyberspeed is different from other racers is you're attached to a beam in the center of the track. This means you can go up and down and all around 360 degrees around this beam, which helps you avoid obstacles (of which there are a lot, especially in the later races). The controls in the game are simple but a little tough to handle sometimes. X accelerates, Square fires your primary weapon, R1 and Square fires your missiles, L2 boosts. The directional buttons move ship around. There's no braking in this game because the beam allows you to take a corner without crashing. But you'll still need to adjust your ship to enter the corner at the right angle. A red meter on the right side of the screen tells you how well you're cornering. One problem with the controls is if you accidentally press L1, your ship will turn around and you'll be facing the wrong way. You can press the button again to turn back the right way, but by that time it will have cost you a place or two. Other than this problem, the controls are fine and work well.

You can choose from a few different race types. There's the regular race mode, which is your simple racing mode where you race in all of the tracks, one after the other against 5 other ships in order. You must place in the Top 3 to move on to the next race. But if you race well, you can also unlock a bonus track where you race one on one against a particularly tough opponent, to unlock some goodies. The other modes consist of a Quick Race mode, where you jump right in, pick a ship and track, and race a standard one-off race against 5 other ships. The only other race mode is Time Attack, where you pick a ship and track and then race one on one against another ship, trying to get the best time possible. There's no other gameplay modes and every race is pretty much the same.

The only goal is to reach the end of the race in first place. To do this, you must master a number of techniques. It's impossible to just win a race outright just by going pedal to the metal. Instead you have to use a variety of relatively simple techniques, like shooting, boosting, cornering and avoiding obstacles. To keep your enemies behind you, it's necessary to shoot them. Actual damage to your ship doesn't make your ship slower for the rest of the race, but it can cause you to spin wildly and come to a stop, which usually sets you back about 3 or 4 places in the race. The amount of damage you can take before spinning out is determined by how high your Shields rating is. You can also boost, but your boost doesn't last long if you're not good at cornering. And you also must learn to use your few boosts wisely, because using them all at the beginning will get you the lead for now, but by the end of the race you'll be in last place. Because of the balance and overall difficulty of the game, races tend to stay close. It's hard to win in Cyberspeed. Not just hard to win, but hard to even place in the top 3. The game is a little too difficult for it's own good sometimes, which effects the game negatively. For an early PS1 game, Cyberspeed looks pretty good. The ships are detailed, with all distinctive looks. The tracks are colorful, but nothing else really stands out about them. Overall Cyberspeed looks about average for a game that came out in 1995.

Cyberspeed's sound is decent, but nothing special. The ships don't make much noise, which is disappointing considering they look like they should make a lot of noise. The other sounds in the game consist of weapons firing. A nice touch as far as the missiles go is a little beeping sound goes off when someone fires a missile at you, and it becomes faster the closer the missile gets to your ship. The other weapon sounds are kind of like muffled Star Wars laser sounds. There's an announcer in the game that says things like "behind you". "two laps to go" and "look at him go!" during gameplay. He's pretty annoying and he doesn't sound right in the context of the game. Overall the sound is okay in Cyberspeed.

The best part of Cyberspeed are the wacky TV commercials that play after each race. They're funny little spoofs for futuristic products. There's a scientist who demonstrates his brand new products, although the products all seem to have one fatal error in them. There's a company that delivers pizzas in 30 seconds while using a laser to cut a hole in the window where they deliver the pizza, and the same company also happens to be a window repair company. This weird stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. And while these commercials may not all be funny, they're goofy enough to be enjoyed by anyone who's into that sort of thing. The commercials may be good, but the actual gameplay is not as fun. It's okay but the game has a few too many flaws to be good. Either way though, if you were to find this game in a bargain bin, it'd probably cost less than a dollar. And for that price, it's worth it just to see the goofy commercials.

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for the Sega Genesis was the first true Pac-Man Sequel. Many other Pac-Man spin-offs were created between the release of the original and this game, but this one is completely different.

The story is basically the same. It's basically Pac-Man vs. the ghosts, but the gameplay is nothing like the original. It's a side scroller instead. Pac-Man walks, and interacts with his environment on his own though. You feel more like you're telling Pac-Man what to do, rather than actually controlling him.

You tell him which direction to go in, and you also have a slingshot that shoots two things. One, it shoots just basic rocks which you use to either tell Pac-Man to walk through a door into a building, or, this is the fun part, you can shoot them at him, or various things in the environment. This was implimented very heavily in the game. You can shoot apples out of trees, and have Pac-Man eat them, or shoot a dog to have him get angry at Pac-an and chase him. You can even shoot a bird to have it fly down and attack Pac-Man, and the bird ends up knocking down items that Pac-Man can't reach on his own. The second item you can shoot are the morphing balls that change Pac-Man into Super Pac-Man. These work basically the same way as the balls that turned the ghosts blue in the original Pac-Man. You only get three maximum, so use them stratigically.

Pac-Man 2 has some reflex-based stuff in the game, but by and large it's a strategy game. There are clever puzzles you have to solve in order to move on, and the game is very humorous.

Pac-Man himself has much more character in this game than the ball-eating Pac-Man from the original game. He acts funny, and his mood changes depending on what happens in the game. Shoot him with the slingshot, and he'll get angry and sad, let him eat an apple and that makes him happy. Some points of the game can't be beaten unless Pac-Man is happy, because he just ends up not caring about solving the puzzle, turning around and walking away. Pac-Man is also very aware of his surroundings, which is a good thing, as bad A.I. would've totally ruined this game, because it depends on it so much.

The game also provides some distractions. You can hang glide for example, and you can go to an arcade in the game and play the original Pac-Man and Pac-Man Junior, which is a nice touch. Overall, the gameplay in Pac-Man 2 is fun, but isn't for everybody, and for some it can get boring pretty quickly. I, personally, enjoyed it.

The graphics in Pac-Man 2 are good for the Genesis. The levels have some nice details and are very colorful. The items and animals in the game all look good too. Pac-Man himself looks great. He has a nice array of expressions, and they're very well done. You definitely can see easily what kind of mood Pac-Man is in just by looking at him. Overall the graphics in Pac-Man 2 are well done.

The sound in Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures isn't horrible, but it's not standout good either. Pac-Man speaks, but only in gibberish. The sounds of the slingshot are average, the music is good at setting the tone for each specific area, but nothing of it is too shocking. It turns out the best piece of sound in the game is when you're playing the classic Pac-Man in the arcade part of the game, just due to the nostalgia. Like I said Pac-Man 2's sound isn't bad, but it's not a memory that'll just burn into your mind like the original Pac-Man or Mario or Sonic, or Zelda or any of those games.

Pac-Man 2 is a game that unfortunately gets boring rather quickly. It's fun while it lasts, but if you keep doing the same thing like in this game, iit gets a bit dull and repetitive, even though the game is so witty and the nature of the game is pretty fun.

I gave it a 9 for tilt because I really did enjoy this game. If you're a Pac-Man fan who hasn't played this, then I'm sure you would enjoy it too, despite it's shortcomings. If you still have a working Genesis, and get bored one night, why not check out the back catalog of Genesis games and get this? Or you could just get a ROM, that would be easier. Either way, Pac-Man 2 is completely different from the original Pac-Man, but it's still very fun.

As always, the beginning is the best place to start. This game originally came out in Japan in 2005, and immediately generated rave reviews from the import fans. Personally, I wanted to play it, but a language barrier in the menu screens is too tough for me to clear, plus I've never imported a game before. So, that was that.

There were two Fire Pro games on the GBA, at that point the only two Fire Pro games to see an American release, but I never played them because I'm not into handhelds and never owned a GBA. Around that time, a Gamecube version of Fire Pro Wrestling was announced. I thought, cool, maybe I'll finally get to play this game on a console. But alas, it was canceled.

Later, in August 2007, I was reading online, when I found out Fire Pro Wrestling Returns would be making an American release on the PS2. Knowing how amazing the reviews were, and with PS2 being my favorite current console (and favorite console of all time), I was immediately ecstatic.

So, finally, on November 13th, 2007, the game finally made a release. I ordered my copy off of Amazon, and after some waiting and being frustrated, this past Tuesday it finally arrived.

My first impressions of the game was being awestruck at the amount of wrestlers in the game. Even knowing this information beforehand, I was still amazed at the sheer volume. 327 wrestlers to be exact, all based on real wrestlers but have their names changed (but can be easily changed back to their real names in the Wrestler Edit mode). Most of them are Japanese, but there are also Americans, and many wrestlers in the game are recognizable to American audiences. Notable names in that regard include AJ Styles, Petey Williams, Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Dynamite Kid, Rick Steiner, Low Ki (Senshi), Spanky (Brian Kendrick), Curry Man (Christopher Daniels in a mask), Bryan Danielson, Jushin Liger, Great Muta, Bret Hart, Bam Bam Bigelow, The Road Warriors, Bruiser Brody, Lou Thesz, Takeshi Morishima, KENTA, Naomichi Marufuji, Amazing Kong (Awesome Kong), Hiroshi Tanahashi, the list goes on and on. But, enough namedropping.

Also, there's actual promotions in this game, almost like EWR but an actual wrestling game with gameplay. You can create and your own promotions in this game, and rename all of the default ones to their real names (they're renamed in a silly fashion like the wrestlers, All Japan is Olive Japan, New Japan is View Japan, NOAH is Super Nova, etc).

So, I picked two of my favorite wrestlers of all time, Kenta Kobashi and Mitsuharu Misawa, for my first match (I was Kobashi). After being so used to Smackdown, it was kinda hard to get into the swing of things, though I was already a bit familiar with the grapples (I've watched gameplay videos). For all intents and purposes, I got my ass handed to me. But losing has never been this fun before. I kept coming back, and all of a sudden, practice made (almost) perfect, and I got my first victory. It's such a fun game, the perfect balance between challenging and rewarding, and you can do almost anything a real wrestler can. There's real strategy and flow to the matches, which is very satisfying for us hardcore wrestling fans.

Everything is so accurate in this game, it's staggering. Even though there's over 300 wrestlers in the game, the moves and logic differ so much, that basically no two wrestlers act exactly the same in a match. More on the logic when I get to the Wrestler Edit part.

The AI in the game is incredible. It's almost like playing a human opponent. It's that good. All the wrestlers act very similarly to their real life counterparts as well. You could take forever learning the tendencies of all the wrestlers, and truly be able to identify the "In-ring personalities" of the wrestlers, better than any other game I've ever played.

Then I tried some of the other match types. The barbed wire deathmatches are brutal and shocking at first, but they're about as gimmicky as the real thing, so their appeal wears thin after a while. The cage matches are okay, but nothing special if you're used to Smackdown's cage matches. The addition of 8-man tags is really cool, because I've wanted to play an 8-man tag in a game for a while now. The tag team mechanics are done pretty well, particularly the AI, which is just as smart even when there's 8 people around the ring.

Next, the famed Edit mode. There are 500 free slots for wrestlers, more than enough to create every wrestler I want to play as that isn't in the game, a bunch of YouTubers, SOS/WCSF wrestlers, a bunch of wacky original characters, major and minor characters from the show 24, the WMAC Masters, Alton Brown, The Angry Video Game Nerd, several incarnations of myself, and still have plenty of room to spare. There's plenty of customization options, and over 500 different heads (and multiple ways to edit those heads), so you can basically create any wrestler you want. Hell, any human being you want, and some non-humans.

And best of all, all of those created characters act exactly the way you want to when played by the CPU, because of the logic system. The logic system in this game is the best there is, in the history of video games. You can specifically set a wrestler's pace in the match, how often the pin, how often they go for a finisher or other big move, and customize how often they go for every move in their moveset individually. it's truly an amazing and accurate system. So, if you want to, you can create two deceased wrestlers that never faced each other, and if you set their moveset and logic perfectly, you can basically see exactly how that match would have played out had it happened in real life with both wrestlers in their prime.

There's also a ring editor. Unfortunately for you TNA fans, no Six-sided ring. However, there are several styles of turnbuckles, ring designs, and colors, so you can re-create TNA's old 4-sided ring if you'd like.

Also, you can create the TNA logo, or any other logo you can imagine in the logo editor. But beware, it's the hardest thing in the game. Only doing a 4 on 1 handicap match, where you're the 1, playing as the worst-skilled wrestler in the game, up against the top 4 in the game on Level 10 difficulty is as hard as using this level editor. And that's not an understatement in the least bit. It's possible to use this thing, but it takes a lot of getting used to, and even then it's hard. However, if you can use it, you can create literally any logo you want, which is kind of nice. You can only create Six logos max though.

There's also a Belt editor, which is easily as good or better than Smackdown's. Every aspect of the title can be edited at your whim, though this mode is a bit limited in terms of plate options. There's also an 8 belt limit, so I guess these belts were meant to be universal titles, as you can't create individual belts for every promotion, there's not enough slots for that. Overall, the edit mode is one of the main draws in the game. The detail is amazing, and it's definitely fun to use, despite the learning curve.

The graphics in this game are 2D, so they don't look nearly as crisp as Smackdown. However, in terms of art style, it's comparable to Street Fighter and the classic Sonic games, as it's still a beautiful game despite being 2D. Personally, I like the way this game looks. But if you can't stand 2D games, it's your loss.

The sound is probably the game's worst feature. But that isn't to say it's bad. It's about as good as Smackdown's sound. Except, you trade crappy commentary for generic rock tunes. Personally, I don't mind the music, and some of it is quite catchy. But if you don't like it, you can always turn it off in the options menu and just listen to the crowds and smacking/slamming noises, which are pretty generic too but get the job done. Worst case scenario, you can mute the game. It's still amazing to play though.

As for replay value, this game has more of it than almost any game I've ever played. This game is so detailed, it'll literally take forever to see everything there is to see, and do everything there is to do in this game. And even then, you'll probably still want to keep coming back because it's such a fun game to play. The best way I can sum up this game is by using a line that a lot of infomercials use. You know when they say "the last (thing) you'll ever have to buy"? Like, the last toothbrush you'll ever have to buy, or the last shaver, whatever? Well, this is the last wrestling game you'll ever have to buy.

Overall, I can't even rate this game, it's so amazing. Please note however, it's for both hardcore gamers and hardcore wrestling fans. If you're both, you should definitely buy this game right now if you haven't already. But if you're one, but not the other, you'd probably still get enjoyment out of it, especially because of its unbeatable price ($15). If you have a PS2, BUY THIS GAME NOW. If you don't have a PS2, BUY A PS2 AND GET THIS GAME NOW! Seriously, I can't even do it justice. Yes, believe the hype.

Final Score: 1,000,000 out of 10.