Amidst the usual video game champions on Amazon's Best Sellers List: Video Games, you might find something out of the ordinary. If you head south to around number 17, you'll see what I mean.

 

It appears that everyone's old video game flame known as the SNES is outselling Sony's Playstation 3 on Amazon.com. Wonder why? Here's my take:

 

* People aren't that interested in PS3s.

* Virtual Console games are giving people major cases of nostalgia.

* People are so frantic for the Wii that they'll get their hands on the closest thing.

* Someone is throwing a Mario Kart tourney and ordered a metric ton of units.

* Hell has frozen over.

 

In all seriousness though, this probably has more to do with the fact that there are ten times as many used, yellow-tinted SNES consoles floating around, but still an interesting sight nevertheless. – Alexander Yoon

 

Note: The list has been updated, and the PS3 has dropped to number 20, now behind Guitar Hero II and Oblivion.

 

Note pt. deux: The SNES/FC Twin monster is on its way to cracking the top ten and is hot on the tails of the Xbox 360. If it gets up there, then we officially live in Upside-Down Land.

»» Source: Gizmodo

The excellent Sega Saturn and ST-V emulator SSF was once again updated. The homepage is in japanese, so no changelog yet.

Get it here.

It's no surprise to hear that Sony's already working on the next gen PS3, but rumor has it that the new PS3 will have a dramatically different design from its current incarnation, shedding loads of that initial baby fat for a nice svelte profile. Sony Japan says that they're expected to transition to 45-nm chips by 2008. These new chips would halve the size of the PS3's current 90-nm chips, allowing for that thinner, curvier PS3. Considering how fat the current model is, the idea of a slimmer console is a welcome idea indeedp.

»» Source: Gizmodo

So we've got a mixture of positive, but mostly negative feedback to the GameTap "Review" submitted by ShibaTheDog. It was posted on the Digg front page, but it appeared that it was pulled off for "unprofessionalism".

We're currently working on a follow-up review (should be posted within the next week) by Gryph, the Co-Owner of 1Emulation.

But first, a word from ShibaTheDog...

"I was the one who wrote this review.... I read some of these comments and I think it's being misunderstood. This isn't meant to be taken entirely seriously. GameTap does indeed suck, but that doesn't mean I was being completely serious with my words."

Either way, his review has caused much a stir. Here are the highlights of all the feedback he received.

The product was not made with the intentions of everyone deleting their MAME/Nesticle/zSnes/genecyst directories, ROMS, and configurations - and signing up. The service was not designed or intended for power-users. Do you think that the programmers and marketing groups are clueless to the existence of emulation? They run an emulation service - they are aware; thus, you are not part of the target demographic. Will your next stellar review cover how CompUSA is over-priced and has a "sucks ass" selection of computer components? How about a review of a new children's game? If you are not the target demographic, but almost "above" the demographic - chances are pretty good that you aren't going to get a whole lot out of whatever you're doing. People who run emulators for old console games, and people who only play current console games =//= target demographic.

[...]

Your system? Almost a really good system. Almost. If you didn't have a video card from 2001 with 64MB, you would have a really decent system. Even the low-end 7800's PCIe are going for a pretty good price - they aren't DX10 compatible - but Vista is worthless until (at least) SP1, so you should be safe.

 

»» Read the full response!

I'm not sure how the fact that you can pirate many of the games and play them in an emulator is a legit argument against getting gametap. If it is, then its also a legit argument against buying any game at all (although I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have the mind of a 10 year old and still consider pirating software to be totally ok).

 

That said, I tried the service and thought it really sucked.

The argument was that pirated emulation does what gametap does BETTER and for FREE. And it isn't done by a company, but people who code just for fun.

 

And there's always Nintendo's WiiStore. Once you buy it there, you can always own it.

 

And it isn't like buying a game from way back in the day benefits the software makers in any way. If I buy Zelda 1 for NES from a secondhand shop, noe of that money goes to Nintendo. Now that the big N offers old games for purchase, there's an argument for them. Of course they don't give credit because I already purchased it for the NES, but that's neither here or there.

 

The point is that Gametap sucks for what it does: playing old games.

This is easily the worst "review" I've ever read. Kid leave your message board threads where they started... on your message board.

As far as legitimate emulation, Wii Virtual Console is the only way to go (they even get N64 emulation right, a feat that current PC emulators like 1964 still haven't got).

 

If you don't mind mild "copyright infringement" (or you want to play abandoned games that are simply no longer available anywhere else, or translated JP-only stuff) then go with the free emulators and ROM downloads.

 

There's really no room for GameTap and its buggy, crappy, web-based, Windows-only emulation "service."

I recently signed up for the 99 cent trial - for my 12 year old son - and canceled after the trial since he thought all of the games were "old and boring". I was told, OK, your account is canceled - but after checking my credit card, I noticed they charged me the same day I called to cancel. That's quite a coincidence! Had to call them, sit on hold for more than a half hour, before having to talk to a manager, and BARELY convinced them to refund my money.

 

Moral of the story: If you sign up for the trial, be very careful about canceling right away.

I think this review is unduly harsh. Gametap might not have the best selection of console games, but it has some really great PC titles (Beyond Good and Evil, Far Cry, Uplink)

This review is horribly written. Excessive use of caps and foul language. Don't get me wrong I am all for bad language. But, when you write a review, it makes it sound childish and one sided. Let me sum the review up for you: Yo bro, this crap sucks.

I signed up for one month. Their [GameTap's] junk won't even work if you have more than one partition on your hard drive. That put me out. All my systems have AT LEAST three, so it was a big no go for me.

To read all the feedback, see the Digg post.

To read the 1Emulation feedback and review from Shiba, Read the Review.