Bloody pulp

well, the focus of this post is fighting (though there's nothing directly related to the crap series known as Street Fighter EX ^^). I'm pretty tired today and my hand is kinda hurtin', have a blister too. why? well after class today, i went to the arcades w/ my friends. played some more KOF XI, my team includes terry, iori, kim and sometimes, ash, shen and elisabeth (i mostly pick her cuz she's hot but she's pretty shitty IMO). Also, played some T5.1 and 3S. I got my ass kicked in 3S and feel like going back and practicing. After that, i went to play my friend's SFZ3 Double Upper for his PSP. It's a fantastic game and undoubtedly the best portable fighter. the tag variable battle mode is fun but not that great when compared to Capcom's own Vs. series. Still, it's a nice and welcome addition. Ingrid still plays like shit as in CFJ. My friend got the special dpad (which is a bitch since it glues to the PSP dpad and if you remove it, it will lose it's stickiness) and it's an improvement in peforming the special moves. It's still not that great but better than what you're given. Definitely needs some adjusting to it. Nintendo's patented Dpad is still the best, I loved SNES SFs and the GBA's SFA3 ('cept for the 4 buttons). Anyways, since i play fighters religiously and seriously, i can't take this game seriously even though it's the best version of all the SFZ/A 3. I'm so used to stick, thus playing against the CPU or against another player w/ 4 face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons feels weird to me now. On some related news, Capcom announced yesterday that they will release Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for the PS2 in NA this summer! Needless to say, I AM STOKED! It's about time as many have been wating for this. Pocket fighters is a nice bonus, even though i found that game kinda lame gameplay-wise, though graphically it was awesome and amusing w/ all those neat cameos and animations. I rather have Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo :P. I am sorta disappointed that the SFA 3 included here is the arcade and not the DC one w/ all the console exclusive characters (the page states 25, not including the 3 hidden in the arcade version). It's cool that it will have dramatic battle mode, but i could care less for that. IGN's got cool title and menu shots of the game here and the logo can be seen at street fighter devotion. It also seems like there's no online, which definitely sux. I bet a Xbox version will come out after w/ online, since it's much easier on the Xbox server. Man, w/ all this gaming, i really got to finish RE4 soon since i've been meaning to play it but just held back cuz of my urge of fighting. *sign*

other game news of interest: Tourist Trophy (the gran turismo of motorcycles) scored a 32/40; Eyeshield DS scored a 30/40 and Bust a Move DS scored a 27/40 on famitsu.

Hot yummy pics of Dixie and the Rumbles Roses XX chicks can be seen at Jeux-France. On that note, i'm not digging Dixie's graphical look more and more @_@. Her 'inferior' PS2 model was way more yummy IMO. Gametrailers also has a new "exclusive trailer".

I saw ppl playing Dirge of Cereberus today. The CG scenes i saw were jaw-dropping as expected. As mentioned, they're Advent Children quality. In-game cutscenes were okay and gameplay graphics were meh by today's PS2 standards. The RE4 aiming looks hard to control but also easy (cuz of 'dumbed-down' auto aim). The melee fighting looks cool for a bit but gets stale and repetitive. Anyways, get this game for the CG movies like I will. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, check out Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie and the rest of the FF7 gang (oh, like Vincent :P) here, played against the Gackt's (what a homo, IMO :P) Redemption, which isn't too bad.

some sad movie news: yes, you may have heard Chris Penn died yesterday before his movie, The Darwin Awards premiered at Sundance. Tragic and shocking. I liked the guy for the roles he did, especially in Reservoir Dogs and True Romance which are some of my fave movies (mostly cuz they're written by Tarantino). Cause of death is still unknown. May he R.I.P. then.

manga catch: trying to get caught up in Naruto and Bleach, though i must say the latest chapter of Bleach proves interesting (love the colored chapter spread, Rangiku hit me w/ your snowballs!). Naruto is getting back into the fighting again and the popularity vote goes to Sasuke again w/ Naruto taking another dive to 4th now. Though i am going WTF w/ the rest. It's cool that Kakashi got #2 but Deidara and Sasori being so high? Fuck that, Itachi and Yondaime got shafted IMO. The art for this poplarity sucks too (ie. Neji) and so boring. Kishimoto, get some cool poses wouldja? It's also funny to see Sasuke in his old CS look as either Kishimoto doesn't want to spoil us or still has no fucking clue on his new design :P. I've been very disappointed w/ this guy since the time skip and hope he has the guts to end it soon like he said he would.

hockey news: well the pens did a raping on Ovechkin w/out Super Mario. Crosby got 4 points 2night but Ovechkin is still leading for the Calder. Anyways, I just want to mention Lemieux's 2nd retirement and how great he was. The 2nd best player to ever play the game. This guy's got 1723 points in 915 games, 7th all time whereas everyone above him has played at least 1000 games. If he were healthy and didn't suffer any problems, he just might have been able to to surpass Gretzky. I love Gretzky though ^_^. Gretz had an average of 1.92 pts./game whereas Lemieux had a 1.88 pts./game. He was truly super. Many greats retiring this year, first Hull; then Messier; Yzerman announcing that it's his final year and now Lemieux for good.

something mainstream anime: shot of the my-hime 'movie'. My order for it is getting ready, i can't wait!


As you can see, i got Street Fighter 2 #2A today. Great art w/ an awesome Ryu vs. Sagat fight. The Cammy door poster is apparently out in some regions, unfortunately my comic store hasn't gotten it yet. Also, I checked the new Previews, it had the covers for issue 5 and a future rival schools cover (i forgot which one). SF2#5 Cover A has T.Hawk and Cammy on front facing against the Dolls (as always, it's done by Alvin), Cover B has the 4 SF2 bosses (done by Andrew Hou) and the foil features Gen (done by Sven). I forgot Rival School's covers. I just remember Cover B is done by Omar Dogan (w/ Hinata and Sakura) and it looks great. cover A is by Rey obviously but i don't remember who's on it, i forgot the foil too. I haven't seen these covers online yet, but i'll post them once i do.

Final thing, I checked out Boin 2 and Kurai Mirai today. Kurai Mirai....bleh. It had potential right off the bat, then that hot chick getting two boys gaying each other up turned me off. Add to that, the main action scene involved a loli-like chick...ugh. Hot chick scene is what saved it for me and kept me watching till finish.
Now, i had high hopes for Boin2. Ep.2 had the same quality of art and animation as episode 1 (ie. not amazing but above average and inconsistent). The episode was good as it's just all sex like episode 1. However what let me down was that the action scenes involved 2 of the girls i didn't care for and again, nothing on Natsuko. The trailer basically just showed the fucking ending which had me in high hopes of more Touko, as she comes in in the end and i was like "yesh, more touko ACTION" but NO. Anyways, if you're a Nao and Mitsugu fan, you'll dig and more power to ya. This episode can also mean the end of it as the ending makes it seem that way. It's ambiguous as they can add more episodes if they feel like it. But knowing Milky, the wouldn't want to and just want to work on new stuff.

so here's another gemini knives pic: