Dreamcast

Game Description: If you love Japanese anime films featuring giant, crushing robots, here's your chance to control a massive mechanoid of your own. Tech Romancer brings larger-than-life robot fighting to the Dreamcast with slick 3-D animated characters set in beautifully rendered three-dimensional worlds. Graphically stimulating and insanely whimsical, this fighting game features an original animation movie, multiple hidden characters, and VMU minigames.

I was looking forward to this particular title for two reasons: it would be exciting to see my favorite SNK characters rendered with more powerful hardware and, seeing as SNK has filed for bankruptcy, Capcom Versus SNK could be the last game featuring SNK characters. As an SNK nut, I needed to get this game.

Game Description: Capcom vs. SNK Pro enlists a host of characters, more than 30 in all, from Capcom's Street Fighter line and SNK's King of Fighters series. The game features two different fighting styles and various modes of play. You can set up dream matches like Ryu vs. Kyo or Zangief vs. Raiden.

Capcom vs. SNK looks stunning. If anyone out there thinks 2D gaming is dead, they'd be well advised to look at this title, which will almost assuredly make them re-evaluate their stance on the power of sprite-based graphics.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence, Suggestive Themes

Game Description: B-movie horror-film producer Michael Reynolds offers a million dollars to anyone who can survive his terrifying movie-themed park, Illbleed. Four teenage horror fans—Eriko Christy, Kevin Kertsman, Randy Fairbanks, and Michel Waters—receive invitations to the ghastly park. Filled with enthusiasm, Kevin, Randy, and Michel carelessly rush to Illbleed, leaving behind young Eriko, the main star of the game. Eriko eventually heads to Illbleed to search for her now-missing friends. As Eriko, you must find your friends and survive the horrors of Illbleed. Will you make it out alive?

Becoming frightened by videogames always seemed like a strange prospect to me when I first started playing them, mainly because gaming technology just didn't allow developers to create realistic enough images to invoke fear. Now that I've experienced genuinely spooky games like Silent Hill 2, which mixed cutting-edge graphics with disturbing imagery and storytelling, I've started to actually seek out these kinds of games. After all, getting spooked every now and again is great fun and videogames are getting better and better at provoking those emotions.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood and Gore, Mature Sexual Themes, Violence

I think Brad's assessment of the game is generally accurate, but I cannot match his enthusiasm for Headhunter. When he claims it is the videogame equivalent of a Van Damme or Steven Segal movie, hes right. I, however, don't consider that a compliment.

Game Description: Can you rescue the world from a group of high-tech terrorists? As part of the Confidential Mission Forces, it's up to you to seek out and kill the Agares terrorists, and recapture the technology and prisoners they've taken.