Jimbrowski

Often overlooked is the dreadful response time on the PSP's LCD screen. Not such a big deal on bright 3D polygon games, but a nightmare when playing 2D or games with dark backgrounds. Gradius, Ultimate Ghosts n Goblins the worst offenders as their sharply detailed backgrounds just dissolve into black sludge whenever you start moving.

Both screens have their strengths and weaknesses - DS lite is a little oversaturated and betrays its 65K palette when doing fade outs/color banding. These are small crimes compared to the PSPs response rate induced blurring. Take a look at Ghouls and Ghosts, Rolling Thunder (on Namco greatest hits), any of the Gradius games (you can only see the starfield when paused - wtf!). Not such a big problem when shifting polygons around compared to 16-bit era sprites. Can't wait to see how Contra and Gradius look on the DS...and don't mention the diagonals.

I was working in finance at the time and I remember telling our Japanese shares trader to get long nintendo - one of the rumors I read was that due to its involvement with Sony in '91-'92 making a CD-ROM drive for the SNES, it was going to be announced that Nintendo had rights to the Playstation name and was due royalties from Sony on that name and all software sold for that platform. It was a pretty ridiculous rumor, but the sort of thing that gets your pulse going until you realise that Sony would never, ever be that stupid...apart from that immersion rumble thing.

Great post - I am looking to get a component switch box what with the Wii arriving in October. The main TV will have the 360, Wii and PS2 all hooked up, and the LCD monitor/TV will have the PC Engine, SNES, Genesis and Neo Geo CD and PSOne hooked up using its SCART socket. I have a convertor that turns RGB SCART into component which is waaay better than the RF some of you lot are putting up with for your 16-bit stuff. I think the older systems just look better on a CRT given the interlaced output.

The original Xbox game looks pretty good on the 360 via HD, but a little washed out and the framerate stutters at certain points. Having never played the PC version I'm not able to say how it compares, but it is an enthralling experience. I'd like to see it on the Wii -- thinking nunchuck controlled gravity gun antics

This is the big question - will the Virtual Console be region free? 90% of the best PC Engine games released in Japan never made it over to the US Turbo audience, and neither machine was ever released in my homeland - the UK. On top of that, who wouldn't want to get some of the Japanese Genesis games that never left the East (Eliminate Down, Alien Soldier, etc) My Turbo wish list would include: Dracula X, Street Fighter 2, Star Parodia, the Gradius series (not as good as the emulated PSX deluxe pack but not too shabby back in 1992); Mr Heli, Side Arms, Gunhed, Raiden, Ordyne, Dungeon Explorer, Ultimate Tiger (single player Twin Cobra); Atomic Robo Kid, Bomberman '94, PC Kid series; Alien Crush, Devil Crash, Sega conversions (Space Harrier, Outrun, Afterburner), Aeroblaster, Dragon Spirit, Shinobi, Tatsujin...I can't wait to see what they have.