Microsoft to boot some games from XBLA

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

From Fugitive at Q23:

That would potentially put the Hardwood games, Gauntlet, Crystal Quest, Time Pilot, Scramble, TotemBall, Contra, Novadrome, Defender, New Rally-X, Root Beer Tapper, Double Dragon, Wing Commander Arena, Rocketmen, Gyruss, Centipede, Mad Tracks, Discs of Tron, Soltrio Solitaire, Rush 'N Attack, Xevious, Track and Field, Missile Command, Spyglass Board Games, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Marathon: Durandal, Super Contra, Speedball 2, Ecco, Asteroids, Geon: Emotions, Cyberball 2072, Tempest, Yaris, Word Puzzle, Screwjumper, Arcadian Warriors, Boogie Bunnies, Triggerheart Exelica, Brain Challenge, Bliss Island, TiQal, Mr. Driller, Battlezone, and Rocky and Bullwinkle on the chopping block, depending on their conversion rate.

Haha, way to go, 360 reviewers. We're living in a world where the "Metacritic" scores of Tempest, Asteroids, Gyruss and fucking Defender are less than 65%? Hahahaha! Stupid sons of bitches.

Whatever passes for the gaming press these days is utterly worthless. I can understand the conversion rate being poor, because these games are freely available through MAME. But someone has to take the time to play through Tempest and say, "Eh, it sucks, one out of five stars" and then post their uninformed and ignorant opinion to a website that an aggregate collects.

[Worm]

I think they're reviewing the specific Xbox 360 port. My problem with the 2084 port is that they somehow worked on neat backgrounds for around the game area rather than making the sprites not look like shit on a normal TV.

Roboton 2084
The scores are pretty laughable altogether. "IT'S OLD. 60 POINTS"

Defender Vs. Tempest
One is reviewed as a good port and the other is reviewed as a bad port, all the same, sixties all around!

[Roody_Yogurt]

Some of these ports are pretty horrible.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Fair enough! I switch my ire to the incompetent porters!

[Worm]

Yeah, but even when the ports are good they give the game all 60s. Somehow there is an idea that any remake of any game will always be a 60, which is retarded.

The worst part is when the guy reviewing Tempest points to Space Giraffe, which is just a psychedelic mod to Tempest.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Look, just tell me who I should be hating here, god dammit.

[Worm]

Everyone.

[Roody_Yogurt]

I say, first, hate the porters, because some of that shit they're pulling is inexcusable for what they're doing to those games.

Secondly, while I think the X-Box Live store is a good idea, hate to Microsoft for being only being able to do good things in their patented half-assed manner. One gets the feeling that they have a somewhat rigid pricing system, resulting in the crappiest of downloads being priced the same as the good stuff. I think the average price of game or movie (I mean, $6 for a 24 hour viewing window... c'mon!) or whatever is too high, and more people should be railing against that shit.

Thirdly, we should hate on the players themselves. If the average gamer is over 30 years old now, why are the teenagers the loudest contingent of videogame fans? While part of growing up is learning how useful it is to shut up, just the same, while there are good gaming sites run by people our age, we should all speak up a bit more just to remind the world that older gamers are watching their shit.

[Lex]

Basing success on convertion rate seems really mean to me. I download most every demo just to check them out, with no intention of buying them. And I bet there are loads of kids out there that do the same, without the physical ability to buy a game even if they DID like the demo.
It's like punishing ID because the Doom shareware did so well.