I finally gave up on Baten Kaitos. The combat system was mildly interesting, but the rest of the game was...crap, to put it kindly. So with Tales of Symphonia that's two Namco RPG duds for me. I think the only reason these two get any attention is because they're on Gamecube.
Anyway, I bought Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube since it finally went Players Choice. Only played it two hours before losing interest. I hope I can go back and finish this game at some point. I had the same reaction to RE4 that I had to Half-Life 2: so much hype beforehand that I was underwhelmed when I started playing the game. The graphics weren't that impressive, and while the controls are improved over old RE games (anything would be an improvement), they're still pretty clunky.
Mostly I've been playing really old games emulated on Atari 8-bit, Colecovision, and Intellivision. I'm surprised by how much time I can spend on these archaic systems and still enjoy them more than playing the very modern RE4 on GC. I'm watching several auctions on eBay right now for another Atari 8-bit computer to replace my dead one. I'm also looking for an Intellivision, a system I never paid much attention to before, but damn if it doesn't have a really good port of Burgertime!
Anyway, here's what I've been playing on Atari 8-bit: Millipede, Crystal Castles, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Bros. (the one Atari did for the XEGS release, it's the best home port of Mario Bros. IMO), Frogger II, Gyruss, Pac-Man, Qix, Jungle Hunt, and Popeye. All of them are outstanding ports. It's a pity that Atari didn't release the 8-bit design as a console earlier than when they finally put out the 5200. Such a great game machine.
I got so nostalgic I broke out my 7800 too. Joust, Food Fight, Commando, Robotron 2084, and Ms. Pac-Man are all superb on the 7800. I am particularly fond of Food Fight, which I used to play tons of in the arcade. The 7800 port is excellent, and much better than the XE port, which is simply too slow.
Finally, I've been playing lots of Gals Panic in MAME. The "S" series, not the earlier Gals Panics, which I don't really care for (the ones where you have to be careful how much of the girl you uncover at a time lest the picture change to something like a frog). I always liked Qix as a kid, and the Gals Panic games are more interesting than Qix (for more reasons than the scantily clad girls! hehe).
