Puppies and Hedgehogs

I write about how I haven't bought a new Gamecube game in months, then I turn around and buy one a few days later. I picked up Sonic Gems Collection a couple of days ago. My verdict: unless you're a diehard Sonic fan like myself, it's not really worth your $29.99. Sonic CD is the highlight of the collection, and even then I think it's overrated-- it's a good game, but gameplay-wise it's easily topped by both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Sonic the Fighters is nice to have in a collection, as it never saw a home release, but it's pretty much a dummied down version of Virtua Fighter. And despite what many critics have said, I actually enjoy Sonic R, but it hasn't held up very well. (Except for the fabulously cheesy soundtrack.) The six Game Gear games in the collection are worthless; why the hell would I want to play a Game Gear game blown up to huge proportions on my television? It looks awful. Vectorman and Vectorman 2 round out the collection, and are actually two of the better games on the disc. What pisses me off the most about Sonic Gems Collection is that Sega of America actually removed three of the games from the Japanese version (Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3), supposedly so the game wouldn't get a Teen rating. What utter bull.

Faring better in my new game purchases is Nintendogs, which, despite being mind-numbingly cute, is actually a pretty neat use of the Nintendo DS's capabilities. So far I have a chocolate lab puppy named Mario, and I've taught him how to sit, lie down, roll over, and shake. I'm trying to teach him to chase his tail next. Yes, this sounds utterly goofy, and it is, but it's pretty fun all the same.

In my earlier rant about EA and Madden, I forgot to say something about Blitz: The League. I might consider picking this one up. Basically, Midway, having lost the NFL license, decided to make Blitz into the most over-the-top football game imaginable. Apparently, they hired the writer for Playmakers (the ESPN football drama forced off the air by the NFL) to write the storyline. I'm intrigued, and the Blitz games have always been pretty fun. I'll be waiting to see how this turns out.

Oh yeah, and I'm officially on vacation now. I have two weeks left to take before the end of October, and next week will be the first one. Of course, I'm not going anywhere... but if someone walked up to me and handed me a thousand bucks, I'd be off to Walt Disney World in a heartbeat. However, I don't see that happening, so I'm basically going to sit around for a week, watch movies, and play video games. On second thought, that's a vacation enough for me.