Now the question is, “Why review games that have already been reviewed dozens of times and already have very reliable index ratings on sites such as www.gamerankings.com?

Well, the answer is Retroviewing! Retroviewing is a term we like to create, and it is when we look at a well-established or sometimes not-so-well-established game and take a look at how it has impacted gaming as a whole. We wish to retroview ground-breaking titles such as the Nintendo 64’s “No Mercy” as well as some very poorly received games such as Rise to Honor for the Playstation 2.

Now you will notice that the previously mentioned games are not necessarily the most popular games for their respective platforms, but they both added something to gaming in general, whether it was adding many new gameplay functions or showing that a well-known actor as hero in a game could still crash and burn with bad gameplay.

Welcome all to a new section on www.someonestolemydomain.com called the “Retroview”. This is a new type of article and we wish to dedicate some web space re-reviewing or “retroviewing” games from various consoles which are at least two years old.

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Platform:	Playstation 2
Date of Release:	March 25, 2003
Developer:	Harmonix
Publisher:	Sony Computer Entertainment
Game Type:	Music/Beat
gamerankings.com Rating:	85%
gamestats.com Rating:	87%

Today’s reviewable game, luckily, is a great one. Amplitude sparked the revolution that is culminating in two games which will be available very soon for various platforms: Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. Literally, Amplitude is the grandpapa of both Guitar Hero III and Rock Band.

Actually, Amplitude is the sequel to a lesser-known gem named “Frequency”. However, Amplitude, in my view, was a larger impact on the “action music” gaming genre since it included close to 20 tracks from popular artists such as David Bowie, Pink, Papa Roach and Blink 182.

A few months ago, I was strolling my usual jaunt down the endless gauntlet of tubes that we call the Internet, I came across a mainstream press story referring to thesimexchange.com. In the article, it impressed upon readers the expectation of success of a particular title I won't mention merely because I've forgotten completely. Perhaps more interesting is that the article used the basis of thesimexchange.com's predictions to support its thesis.

Thesimeexchange.com's entire premise is deeply rooted in what is a commonly accepted wisdom about the so-called Web 2.0: the wisdom of crowds (willing or unwilling). It uses common economic stock market principals to make meaningful (and shockingly accurate) predictions about sales and review scores by allowing gamer-nerds to participate in a fantasy stock market. However, it's not just a fantasy- it's a well planned and organized effort by its creator Brian Shiau to create a simulation that has true implications and use in the real world.

And there you have it. The announcement that was supposed to shock the world, specifically PS3 fans, is Street Fighter 4.

STREET F***ING FIGHTER 4!!!!

Are you kidding me? That's the game that's supposed to make up for taking DMC4's exclusivity away and outright abandoning MH3 on the PS3 entirely? Street Fighter 4 is supposed to do that? What the f*** is WRONG with you Capcom? Have you lost it completely? Exactly what does another Street Fighter game, that will probably be just an HD version of Street Fighter 3 with possibly new characters/stages, have that is so frickin' great?

After a long absence, this DragonKnight has returned to a place he likes to think of as a second home on the Internet. After some problems, and some severe computer boredom, I have returned to SSMD to help out my good friend HolmesIV and also because this place is a far better site than most I frequent. Hopefully it will rub off on me.

This morning I updated my Wii to System Software 1.3.

Right now ,this doesn't appear to add anything more than the oft-rumoured USB keyboard support. The update also notes that Everybody Votes channel needs to be re-downloaded in order to work with version 1.3. Other than that, details on this update are very scarce indeed.

Perhaps this system update also addresses some display interlacing problems people have been having with certain TVs, while playing Neo Geo games.

Bottom line, it didn't brick my system: update away!

It's that time of year again, when NHL nerds get all excited- joining their pools, buying their fantasy draft magazines and beginning to once again live vicariously through polygonal facsimiles of their hockey-night heroes. I'm certainly of the latter variety and take great pride participating as a volunteer organizer to the Total Action Hockey community. The community is dedicated to mature simulation sports entertainment, offering full team management, with full stats tracking, newswire, podcasts, highlights and more.

(If you're interested in joining a league for any video-hockey game/platform:
hop on over to http://www.totalactionhockey.com).

One of the big questions in the community this year is which NHL game to play, and on what platform? I'm here to say that despite some deficiencies, this year's PS3 version of NHL 2k8 is a definite upgrade over years past. I have been hard on 2k sports over the years. They have disappointed me to no end but I have an admission to make. It appears that Kush games has made a quantum leap- making right, what once went wrong. I really wish I could say they have addressed some of my previous complaints, but we'll go over those a bit later.

This year, veteran players will notice something odd when they first play NHL 2k8. What once was a robust and enjoyable interface has now been gutted from the game and replaced with something that seems completely abstract at first. New players will simply find it uncomfortable, but veteran players will likely hate it, as I did. That is, until I took the time to go through the tutorials and learned them inside and out. Once I played the CPU a few times on Hall-of-Famer difficulty, something magical happened: I found that I could dance with the puck in a way I could never do with classic controls. The "Pro-stick" control easily blows EA's "Skill-stick" control implementation away in terms of realism and variety. See for yourself, why:

Well, it's good to be back. You probably didn't notice this site, being offline for 6 months, but I've certainly missed doing it. To explain, I moved and was without an office for some time, and my computer sat idle tucked under numerous boxes. Unfortunately, it hosted the only backup copy of my fledgling blog, so naturally, when someonestolemydomain.com was transferred to a new host, my site's files were simply deleted in the transfer.

Simply amazing! With no access to my backup, I chose to focus on the important things in life: like refinishing my desk so I could write again in comfort!

But now we're here and I have some things planned to get this site back on track:

A new season of NHL 2k hockey is about to begin and even I have to admit there have been some major improvements.

Halo3

Warhawk improvements

Sony Skin for someonestolemydomain.com

thesimexchange.com: Life of a gaming futures day-trader.

There are lots of games to review and issues to write about this Christmas season. The console wars have never been so exciting.

Until the new articles come, Look Shiny!...here's a portion of my (working) console collection on display in my office. There's still some stuff to collect and many 4-in-1's in storage but here is the gist of the good stuff:

Top Shelf		ColecoVision / Virtual Boy
2nd Shelf		Atari 2600 1st-3rd Rev.
3rd Shelf		NES-001 NES w/ Rad Racer, Power Glove, Game Genie, Mega Man 1-6, Zelda 1 and 2, Ninja Gaiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (ULTRA), Tengen Rolling Thunder, Blades of Steel, Super Dodge Ball, Punchout!!! (Mr. Dream re-release), Super Mario Brothers 1-3, Excitebike, and Metal Gear.
4th Shelf		HES-TGX-001 Turbographx-16, Model 1310 with 3005-24 board Sega Master System
5th Shelf		Sega Genesis II w/ Sega CD II, Beggar Prince (MD/Genesis US release 2007), SNS-001 SNES (yellowed!)
6th Shelf		Texas Instruments TI-99, Asst. Classic Vic-20 Carts, SCPH-9001 Playstation

There's one thing HolmesIV knows about, and that's greatness. I mean, just look around this spiffy little blog. Nothing but total greatness. Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller know what I'm talking about, but even they do not come close to the level of greatness of say, "Mister" Billy Mitchell.

But much to Billy's dismay, this article is not entirely about him. It's about an upcoming movie called The King of Kong [Review: geeksofdoom.com]. I've got to be honest with you readers, I didn't even know about this movie until picking the story up in the digg.com upcoming stories section this morning, but trust me- it's big.