PlanetDreamcast | Community | Mailbag | 6/22/01

Community - Mailbag 6/22/01 - Sonic Week - by RaptoR Horray! It's Sonic Week. Time to celebrate with a Sonic-related mailbag. We painted the mailbag blue in honor of our great gaming mascot this week. Well... we would have. Unfortunately the closest we came to doing this was contemplating adding a lick of paint to our mail server or a random staff member (reojojo ran away too damn fast). Anyway, on with this week's mail... Welcome to the PDC Mailbag. Every week we toss in a bunch of letters from our readers and do our best to dazzle you with wit and wisdom. Roughly, that translates to copying/pasting your emails and writing the first thing that comes to mind. But hey, you take what you can get. If you have something you want to contribute to the Mailbag, send it to this address! From: [email protected] Subject: Your aerowings review cracked me up! hahaha u guys are f****n hilarious We try to amuse you when we can. :) From: [email protected] Subject: Sonic Gripe 'Lo there, I was reading your Sonic Week day 2 article, and while most of it was accurate/informative, I have to take issue with something. Sonic Spinball for the Genesis was an extraordinary game. Where you get off calling it a generic pinball game with Sonic substitutes I have no idea. In which arcade pinball machine are their stages? enemies? bosses? Spinball, while incredibly difficult, was also an incredible game. It was fast paced as any Sonic title should be, oozed imagination, tested reflexes and demanded skill, and above all was amazingly fun. I don't know who or what provided your material for that mini-review of Spinball, but if it has been several years since you've played Spinball, and my guess is that it has, I suggest you dig it out and give it another go. Thank you for your time. --Greg While our passage on Sonic Spinball was perhaps a little harsh (especially for a Sonic tribute week), the main point still stands. Sonic Spinball was pinball with a twist. If you were expecting a style of gameplay similar to the Casino Nights Zone of Sonic 2, you'll be disappointed. The game took time and commitment to master, but was rewarding once you mastered the necessary skills. If you bought Sonic Spinball expecting a quick fix of platforming action, you'd be disappointed. From: Rob Owrin Subject: I know I sound picky but..."I can't find the words to describe just how bad the voice acting was. How about a metaphor? Sonic sounded like a 12 year-old boy who was constantly being kicked in the groin, causing his voice to crack, constantly. The rest of the cast sounded as if they were found on a street corner and paid minimum wage to read the script into a microphone with no time to rehearse." That isn't a metaphor its a simile. A metaphor would be...I am a bird; if a human was saying it. We can't argue with you there. That was a mistake on the author's part. From: Chris_Lee Subject: PS2 rules To all u deadcast lovers out there, i am a ps2 fan. u say u have instant internet access. Yeah true but only on a 33k modem. with the ps2 40gig hard drive coming out, the deadcast will be dead and u will have to go back to the mega drive which was the best sega console. Y do u all say that u have loads of good games, the only good game was shenmue and crazy taxi. If you havent realised that dreamcasts are not being made any more and in 2 yrs time sega are giving up on it all together. Lets just say good ridance. a PS2 fan Called Toby hello ps2 fan thank u for writing 2 planetdeadcast. i think u should iether go hear or listen to teh reply. teh reply si that the deadcast uses a 56k modem in the us, and a 33k modem in europe. we still play teh deadcast games online with litle lag. mega drive was good, but deadcast isnt dead and is better. we do have lots of good games u stpuid person. just go to teh best deadcast games section. good ridddanse?!/?111 sega are making teh games for teh ps2 now. and u will play them becoz they r gud. thank u 4 listening. a Deadcast fan called RaptoR From: Gilgrass Marc Subject: alone in the dark 4 do you know of any walkthroughs for this game, or discusion forums I don't beleive there are any walkthroughs for Alone in the Dark 4 at the moment. As for discussion forums, why not register for a free GameSpy ID and head over to our shiny new ForumPlanet forums. From: [email protected] Subject: Sonic Week criticism I have just read your article on Sonic merchandise and I would like to ask that you correct some MAJOR mistakes made in its writing. Most importantly, I am DISMAYED at the dismissal made of the UK Sonic comic. Almost ALL of the information shown is wrong, and I am shocked by your statement that "none of these books were really worth the cash". It NEVER reprinted ANYTHING from the Archie comics; its 22 pages of new comic every two weeks were well worth the money and generally of better quality than Archie's at its peak. What's more, it's STILL going; rumours of its demise are GREATLY exaggerated. Below is the paragraph as you have displayed, with corrections made: "Sonic [actually the title is 'Sonic the Comic', often abbreviated to STC, although the full title always appeared on the cover] "A short-lived [not short-lived; it has been published for over 200 issues spanning eight years AND IS STILL GOING STRONG] comic by Fleetway [actually Egmont Fleetway Limited], Sonic was basically just a re-vamp of the Archie book [no it isn't; it actually started BEFORE the Archie series and has never even made reference to it], with new covers [it had much more than that] and more British sounding dialogue [stories were written from scratch; the ONLY similarity between the Archie comic and the UK comic is that they were based on the same source material; ie the Sonic games - and in fact that is the barest of similarities because Archie was primarily based on the Sonic cartoons...]. (Fleetway is in the U.K.) Unfortunately, none of these books were really worth the cash though [they were actually]. You see, each of the comics only consisted of one quarter of a single Archie book [no they didn't. 36 pages every two weeks, there are 22 pages of exclusive new comic strip, 7 of which were Sonic, the rest split between Sonic spin-offs such as Knuckles and Sega game tie-ins such as Golden Axe, Shinobi, Shining Force and Decap Attack. The rest of the comic used to consist of features on Sega games but these days it's mostly readers art and pin-ups. NONE OF IT originated from the Archie comic]. If you're looking to pick up some Sonic comics, I'd look for the Archie versions instead [and I wouldn't follow your advice because you clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Sonic fans who have read a good deal of both generally tend to agree that Sonic the Comic is BETTER than the Archie Sonic series, so your advice is confusing.]." If that does not provide enough information to correct your article then drop me a line and I'll write one for you. If no action is taken I shall set the comic's artists on you, for I have their e-mail addresses... Other mistakes: ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG wasn't cancelled, it ran for 65 episodes and finished there. The SONIC THE HEDGEHOG cartoon DIDN'T receive great ratings during season two because it was up against Power Rangers. This is partly what killed it off. Sonic's voice in SONIC UNDERGROUND is done by Jaleel White, just like the previous two cartoons, so why you complain about the voice acting for Sonic is a tad confusing. Although to be fair he plays Sonic's brother and sister AS WELL in this cartoon. Archie still publish their SONIC THE HEDGEHOG comic. It was popular with the fans of the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon when it was good but deeply unpopular with the hardcore Sega crowd, since it differentiated from the plot of the games so much. It has been widely regarded as not being any good any more for the past three or four years. Attempts to bring the series closer to the games have failed because the cartoon and the games are not compatible formats. If you could do something about these GLARING mistakes (particularly on the UK Sonic comic) I would be a very happy man. Zac *ahem* After reading your lengthy mail, I completely agree with the points made. Being a UK-based Sonic fan, I know all about STC (the Fleetway comic) and the few Sonic cartoon series that made it across to Blighty. The writer of our Sonic Week feature is based in Canada, and unfortunately didn't share my knowledge of goings-on in Europe. And don't even think of setting the comic's writers/artists on us, for we will fend them off with our GameSpy Consoles Monkey Army. ph34r. ;) From: Richard Subject: Comments and Questions Hey all at PlanetDreamCast! Just wanted to say that the site is great, and I'm loving the Sonic Week feature! Hope you guys leave that up and not take it down after a while! I engjoyed reading Sonic Week, and I've enjoyed reading information about the DreamCast (I just bought my DreamCast a month ago!) I'm glad that PlanetDreamCast exists! My questions are, and this relates to PlanetDreamCast and others... Will PlanetDC stay for a long time? Or are there plans for a shutdown soon because Sega is discontinuing the DC??? I do hope the PDC stays! My other question is, will there be other features similar to that of the Sonic Week?? I think doing something like that, a week on something on the DC, or just a Sega product in general (be it the SMS, Genesis, Saturn, or any games from any of the 4/5 Systems) is a great idea! Gives some of us gamers out here a history on some of our favorite consoles and games! I would like to make a suggestion that goes with that,... expanding the history a bit more if its possible (I for one like reading the history of the company, and its consoles) I've already read the History of Sega, but felt it was too short... I think a longer one would be excellent, with more history on not only the company, like almost thourough, but also thourough history on the consoles! I think that would be a great Idea however, its all up to you guys! Though I hope it could be done! We'll leave our Sonic Week feature up for as long as the site stays up! :) In reply to your other questions, PlanetDreamcast will (in the words of digitaltaco) carry on covering the Dreamcast 'till there's nothing left to cover. A Sega History Week feature is a great idea. If you want more information on classic Sega games, check out our semi-regular Sega Classics features. From: Magenta H. Nezumi Subject: Broadband Adaptor and lag and such In response to your response to the 'networking DC and PC' in the last mailbag: Personally, the reason I'm really annoyed about games not supporting the BBA is because I have a home LAN with a shared Internet connection, and I don't want to have to get a separate dialup account for my Dreamcast. It's not a lag issue; it's not like I want to be an LPB FAGOT when I play PSO or Chu Chu Rocket, I just want to be able to get online to begin with! As far as wanting to network a DC and a PC, that should be easy - pop it on your home LAN and it should work. Finding software to do stuff with it is a bit more tricky, though. :) If you just want to browse your files on your PC you can always just run a webserver. It's not too terribly useful though. BTW, if you want to network two computers directly (rather than using a hub), you need a crossover cable instead of a normal Ethernet cable. Networking a Dreamcast, in theory, should be no different than networking a PC. The problem is that the Dreamcast has absolutely no software to make it terribly useful, unless you want to count Dreamcast Linux anyway. -- Magenta H. Nezumi http://trikuare.cx - home of the porcupine It is annoying that people with broadband have to rent out a second analog line to play DC games that don't support the BBA. Unfortunately if a game's developers decide they don't want (or can't be bothered to implement) broadband support in a game, there's nothing we can do. In theory setting up your PC as a webserver and pointing to it through the DC browser would work, although it wouldn't be an awful lot of use. Why not just browse the files on your computer using Windows? :) From: JEXMODO Subject: Sonic The sonic adventure website is quite frankly, DEAD. It hasn't been up dated since November 2000!! It no longer filled with hardcore sonic fans, (They've gone to pso and the SA2 website.) But the occasional old-timer visiting the lonley abandoned newbies, (like me.) It looked like a fun site too!!! Too bad. I also heard the chao blackmarket portion of the site no longer works. Sonic team should convert the site into a sonic lounge for all sonic fans. And actually update it!!!! This would add some life to an otherwise dying system... Sigh.......... JEXMODO P.S. The sonic week feature on your site kicked ass!!!!!!! Keep up the good work!!!!!! We're glad you liked our Sonic Week feature, JEXMODO. The original Sonic Adventure site was created as a website for a game, not a community. Because of this it's hardly surprising that no-one goes there anymore. All the fans that would have played SA originally are now getting stuck into PSO and the brilliant SA2, so why don't you join them on the respective websites?   From: Ronan Subject: Question about the cheats, for msr? Ronan You'll find all the cheats you could ever want at GameSpy's CheatingPlanet! From: Louie Cheung Subject: cheats would you have any cheats for the game rival school 2? if you got anything could you please email me at [email protected]? thank you so much and nice site ^_^ Glad you like the site, Louie. :) There are no Rival Schools cheats to be found just yet, even on our sister site, CheatingPlanet (a great source for codes and cheats). My advice to you is to keep checking this section of the site. That's it, the end of this week's PlanetDreamcast mailbag. But never fear, we'll be back next week with more witless answers to your Dreamcast questions and comments. Want to have your say? Mail this handy address.