As E3 2010 rapidly approaches, the invitable video game rumors have begun to circulate. As media, gamers, and insidious fanboys speculate about the show’s happenings, there’s much chatter about a PSP2, PSPhone, Xbox 360 Slim, Xbox 720, and, sadly, Dreamcast 2. These systems, which currently live in the realm of fantasy, have got me to thinking of video game consoles of days past and present.

Over the course of my 20+ years of gaming, I’ve owned just about every system worth owning (except for the SEGA Master System and PlayStation 3 ) and I love them all for different reasons. The Xbox 360 nailed online gaming and digital distribution. The PC Engine opened my eyes to importing and the 2D shooter/shmup. The PlayStation brought a level of maturity to gaming.

But it’s Dreamcast that lives in my heart. In it’s short run, it managed to crank out several titles across a wide range of categories. It had a nice variety of 2D fighters, shmups, and bad ass SEGA originals that represented the height of the company’s creativity. Plus it had a web browser (which I used to download character packs for Fire Pro D) and VMUs.

Although I’d like to think that my word is law (much like a kindly, benevolent dictator), I recognize that it’s not. So please share what you consider to be the best console ever. I promise not to judge even though you’ll probably be patently wrong.

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s King of Fighters XIII.

As a longtime fan of SNK Playmore various 2D properties, the gaming community’s eye-roll reaction to the recent  King of Fighters XIII announcement left me saddened. Not to the point where I wanted to place razor to wrist, but enough to make me stop and analyze why the news fell on such bitter ears.

King of Fighters XII, despite an excellent engine, had its flaws; flaws that can be easily remedied when King of Fighters XIII makes its debut.

Expand The Roster
Say what you will about the hory, undersexed stereotype associated with hardcore gamers, but Mai being excluded from the game, and not being made available as DLC, took the starch out of many gamers’ noodle. King of Fighters XIII needs to give players the most popular and beloved characters such as Geese Howard, Rock Howard,  and Duck King. SNK Playmore seems to have learned its lessen as the loc test for KOFXIII reveal that Mai is indeed in the house, along with King.

Expand The Moveset
Besides the laggy online play, one of the biggest gripes against King of Fighters XII was the condensed moveset. Ralf, Clark, and other grapplers were particularly gimped, which is a shame considering that they need those variety of up close and personal attacks to counteract the long distance fireball spamming that the shotoclones dish out. SNK Playmore would be wise to take the movesets found in King of Fighters ’98: Ultimate Match and apply them to the new sprites. And for the love of all that’s good and pure in this world, give Iori his powers back.

Add A God Damned Boss
SNK Playmore’s 2D fighters are known for featuring some of the toughest, most frustrating end-game characters in the genre. King of the Fighters XII had one of the lamest, anti-climatic finishes in fighting game history–it could’ve benefited from a Goenitz, Geese, or Rugal.

Recreate The Old SNK Feel
One of the hallmarks of old SNK was the fine attention to detail; one of the hallmarks of SNK Playmore has been a decided lack of the fine detail. Older King of Fighters maintained a rowdy aura by having your teammates standing in the background rooting you on when you land an attack, and wincing when you receive one. The King of the Fighters XII backgrounds were absolutely gorgeous, some of the best of the SNK Playmore era, but it lacked some of the past magic. In addition, the music wasn’t as edgy as past games, which were simultaneously blood-pumping and catchy.

What do you like to see in King of Fighters XIII?

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s the Nintendo 3DS.

Nintendo of Japan let slip a press release that detailed the that the company is planning to release a 3D-capable verions of its mega-popular handheld (with an unveiling to come in June at E3) you could pretty much hear the rage strokes taking place in the American division.

Currently named the Nintendo 3DS, this upcoming handheld is positioned as the successor to both the Ninteno DS and Nintendo DSi, and will use a “compatible cart” that ensures backwards compatibility with older games. The Big N intends to launch the Nintendo 3DS “during the fiscal year ending March 2011.” Plus, reports are circulating that the Nintendo 3DS will pack a rumble function of sorts, plus a “3D control stick.”

That would be all fine and dandy if Nintendo of America wasn’t planning to launch the Nintendo DSi XL next week. Now, the Nintendo 3DS may be available for purchase until next year, but the fact that’s its now looming in the horizon may put off gamers looking to purchase a Nintendo handheld.

So, as always, what’s your stance?

image courtesy of motifake.com

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s disappointing games.

As gamers, there are few circumstances in life more disappointing than ripping a highly-anticipated game from the shrink wrap, popping it into a console, and then sobbing softly when brutal reality hits: the long awaited game isn’t quite what you were expecting. I’m not talking games that outright blow; this is all about games that are decent/good, but didn’t live up to the hype.

Mine was, don’t laugh, Dance Dance Revolution. After watching the kids in Chinatown bust out some crazy moves on DDR, I thought that it was a true dance simulation, not Simon-meets-Twister. I eventually had quite a bit of fun with the game, but I never quite overcame the initial sinking feeling.

I pass the mic to you: which game let you down the most?

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s the hardest games ever.

Games just aren’t as hard as they used to be.

Don’t mistake this statement as one coming from a person looking to artificially give his gaming accomplishments more weight – - I see it as fact. Outside of a few throwback titles (Mega Man 9, Mega Man 10), few contemporary games achieve the level of hair-pulling insanity that ran rampant through the 8- and 16-bit eras.

The 2D-X team has decided to list our most frustrating 2D games and, as expected, they’re all pretty old. Agree? Disagree? Let your voice be heard, folks.

Chris Gampat, News Editor
Action titles, truthfully, have to be amongst the hardest games I’ve ever played. A couple of them really stand out, but the king has to be the original Prince of Persia. The reason why is because you needed to save your beloved princess in one hour while fighting through hordes of palace guards, skeletons, countering your alter ego that is created when you jump through a mirror and navigating traps. The game really started to mess with your mind, too, because you had the counter down at the bottom of the screen telling you “15 mins…30 mins…” and you didn’t know just how many levels there were to navigate and how long it was going to take for you to win this. Eventually you start to realize that you don’t need to fight all the guards in order to win, but back then us gamers really didn’t figure that out. This is probably the first game I’ve ever played where in order to win you really need to just concentrate on getting to your objective and that’s all. It is to date one of the only games I’ve never beaten. In fact, I only know people that have beaten it using cheat codes.

Thomas Rivas, Contributing Editor
The Battle of Olympus has to be one of the most difficult games I’ve ever played. You may not die with one hit, but seemingly never-ending quests filled with absurd obstacles will have most players rethinking whether or not Helene (the damsel in distress) is worth all the trouble. If there’s one thing you’ll be doing a lot of in this game, it’s falling. For a heavily armed man on a perilous journey to save the love of his life, Orpheus (the hero) can’t take a hit. Any contact with a creature or projectile knocks your player back a few steps into an uncontrollable moonwalk-like motion. Normally, that might be pretty cool, but when you’re at the edge of a platform and moonwalk yourself into a pit, it can be anything but.

Jeffrey L. Wilson, Editor-in-Chief
No question, it’s Image Fight II, a semi-obscure Irem-developed PC Engine Super CD shooter that will make you want to toss rocks at grandma . Casual shmup fans like often cite bullet-hell shooters as some of the most difficult in the drama, but few games actually destory your ships and portions of your soul like Image Fight II. Vertical shmups are my preferred style of shooting, and Image Fight II did all it could to take the fun out of it. The sprites are relatively big, which combined with the limited vertical movement, made bobbing and weaving incoming artillery pure bastardy. I never passed the third level. Whatevs.

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s Dreamcast 2 speculation.

Ever since the pre-mature death of the legendary Dreamcast, hardcore SEGA fanboys have held on to a small, minute, glimmer of hope that the company would shift from being a third-party developer for Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony and return to making its own hardware. The passion and love has even gone so far that some delusional types believe that Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 may be the first title for what may very well be the Dreamcast 2.

Crazed fandom aside, there have been strong arguments from both sides of the Dreamcast 2 debate. Supporters claim that SEGA can fill an empty niche by creating a casual-hardcore system; one similar to the Nintendo Wii that has a low cost of proudction and features fun titles that makes the most of the relatively meager power (except it would be filled with more House of the Dead titles than work out “games”). Detractors stand firm that the money to once again jump into the hardware game (and create an online component) would place SEGA in financial jeopardy.

So what’s your view: should SEGA return to hardware with a Dreamcast follow up?

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s video game series moving from 2D to 3D.

The news of Team 17′s new 2D Worms game, Worms Reloaded, caused the proverbial warm fuzzy, not only because I’m a massive embassador of 2D games, but due to the fact that it also caused me to painfully reflect on the travesty that was Worms 3D.

Really, I can’t fault Team 17′s attempt at a 3D Worms video game; after all, it was the era before the 2D video game rebirth that began with Mega Man 9. Everyone was doing 3D. What I do fault, however, are the horrid camera angles and overall suspect execution that led to a subpar title.

Still, not all 2D games that have crossed over into the third dimension have crashed and burned. The Metal Gear Solid series is a prime example of the transition done correctly. The reason why it worked is that the MSX and NES Metal Gear games have always been 3D at heart; the technology to embrace the stealth gameplay wouldn’t come to years later.

So I hand you the mic: what do you consider to be the best and worst 2D to 3D jumps in video games?

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s Street Fighter IV for iPhone.

I’ll be frank: the internets can play home to all manner of bullocks. From Tommy Hilfiger dropping the n-word on Oprah to aliens plotting 9-11 to steal NYC’s soul, there’s massive amounts of rubbish to be found. So when I discovered chatter about Street Fighter IV coming to iPhone, and casually dismissed it as the imagination of a mad man. Then I saw this:

I clicked the link out of pure curiosity and was taken to IGN’s coverage of Street Fighter IV for iPhone. My mind raced: I checked the calendar to make sure that it wasn’t April 1st. Nope. I looked at the tweet again–it came Capcom itself. This appeared to be real, but it didn’t make sense.

Street Fighter IV is known for its virgin-tight controls; iPhone gaming most definitely is not. How Capcom will turn this into a happy union is beyond me, but IGN has deets on the control scheme and the playable characters that have been announced so far. Hint: they’re probably just who you’ve expected.

Question for the masses: do you think Street Fighter IV can be successful ported to Apple’s platform? Discuss!

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s Battleblock Theater.

When it comes to weaving 2D video game magic, very few indies or majors do it with such passion and love as The Behemoth. Starting with the run-and-gun shooting of Alien Hominid, and pushing forward to the new-classic Castle Crashers, the California-based dev team has given fans plenty of wacky action, and eye-catchingly cute characters and environments. Now, The Behemoth is back with its third title, Battleblock Theater.

Not much is known about the game other than what news was released last year – - it will be  competitive multi-player game in the mold of Super Smash Bros. that this writer thinks looks positively bad ass. Like past hits, Battleblock Theater is XBLA bound; no word on PSN or WiiWare.

So I turn this over to you, dear reader. Do you think The Behemoth can strike gold one more time with Battleblock Theater?

Virtual Vox Pop is a weekly open mic in which we ask you, the reader, to sound off on a particular topic. This week, it’s Capcom’s stance on sprites.

Street Fighter IV is awesome fighter that brought hardcore fighting back to the mainstream. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a a damned fine fighting game that manages to capture the insanity of previous “Vs.” games while maintaining its own distinct feel. What do they have in common? They both feature sprite-less games that utilize 3D polygonal models on a 2D plane. 2.5D, if you will.

In an interview with Kotaku, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom producer Ryota Niitsuma spilled the beans on the company’s future fighting plans – - and they don’t involve sprites. 2.5D is the wave of the future leaving fans of pure 2D fighters a bit cold and lonely.

Now, I’m not going to knock the move: the visuals in both games area great. But the sprite lover in me laments the fact that we won’t see Capcom produce a 2D extravaganza that surpasses Street Fighter III: Third Strike‘s absolutely insane animation. ‘Tis a shame, especially with the horsepower that modern consoles are capable of producing.

But what say you?