I helped my friend pdx make this and it turned out pretty well, I think...

PixelBlocks rule. :D

-Myung

Now, I'm not going to say that the Capcom Debit Card is a horrible idea.  Just.... evaluate carefully the following fees and see if the rewards will make this card a wise investment for you:

• 
  To purchase the card, it’s $9.95. Then there’s a monthly fee of $4.95. If you want to put more money on the card, you have to pay the reload fee (a fee you would pay on any VISA cash card, including this one)–which is about $4.95 at participating retailers.


• 
  When you actually use the money on the card, you have to pay too, unless you only make signature based debit transactions…when you ask for credit after you swipe your card and sign for purchases. Otherwise, it’s another $0.25 when you put in your PIN. To get money from the ATM, it’s $1.50 (and maybe more if the ATM owner also charges you a fee).


• 
  You are charged if your card is declined or when you want to find out how much money is on the card. If the card is declined when you try to make a purchase or take money out at the ATM, it’s another $0.50.


• 
  You even get charged fees when you call customer service, $0.25 to call an automated line and $1.50 to speak with a representative.


• 
  What happens when there isn’t any money in your account, but the transaction went through? You’re on the hook for the amount spent and also $10 for every overdraft.

Cred goes to the Consumerist for this one.

-Myung

This is seriously everything you need to understand the banking crisis in 59 minutes:

This American Life: Bad Bank 

If you want to know how the mortgage meltdown happened, listen to this:

This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money

Give these a listen.  You'll thank me afterwards.

-Myung

My apologies for my long absence.  After a couple weeks of getting owned by work, I'm back with something interesting.  As many of the old timers here might remember, Capcom's first foray into videogames was actually in the arcades.  As an avid arcade enthusiast and collector, I've decided to try showing some of the old Capcom arcade hardware, along with any interesting bits about it.  

In the old old days of arcades, all the games came on custom arcade boards (i.e. each game had it's own completely dedicated hardware).  As the popularity of arcades started to take off, it became prohibitively expensive for arcades to buy a whole new setup (cabinet, monitor, circuit board, ect) for each game.  As such, the Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacturer's Association (JAMMA, for short) published a standard pin out that arcade circuit boards to follow, allowing any appropriately wired arcade cabinet (the cabinet consisting of the controls, the monitor, the power supply, and the housing) to receive any JAMMA game and play it.  

The approach of custom boards for every game was also a hassle for game developers as well.  It was expensive and each development cycle would take longer.  The obvious solution was a platform system.  Have one common set of hardware and make multiple games for that set (much like home videogame consoles).  One of the first of such systems was the Capcom Play System, or CPS.  

This platform was home to many timeless classics like Final Fight, Street Fighter II, UN Squadron, Knights of the Round, Mercs, and Strider, just to name a few.  This is the board for Street Fighter II Champion edition.  It has 3 sections, the base board, the rom bank board, and the daughter board.  The base board holds all the common hardware that all the CPS1 games primarily ran off of.

The main CPU is a Motorola 68000.

The main sound processing unit is the rather universal Zilog z80 chip.

This configuration, a 680000 CPU with a z80 sound processor, was a very common platform.  It was also used by Sega in many of its boards as well as the Neo Geo system from SNK.  Most importantly, the Sega Genesis had this very exact same setup (except the FM sound chip was a Yamaha YM2612, which was very similar to the YM2151 seen above the z80 chip on the CPS1 board).  This explains the high number of Capcom arcade games that were ported to the Genesis (Street Fighter, Saturday Night Slam Masters, Strider, Mercs, Ghouls n' Ghosts, The Punisher, ect).

Here's a close up of rombank.

And a close up of the daughter board.

You might notice a set of leads on the bottom left of the board, set around a circle.  This was the mounting point for the optional suicide battery.  The suicide battery was a counter-bootlegging measure that would wipe out some necessary data if the board was ever disconnected from the battery.  The downside of this is that over time, the battery will lose charge and die, killing your board.  This used to be fixable if you sent the board back to Capcom, however it seems Capcom no longer operates it's arcade division in the US, so you might just be hosed. :(

Well, that's all for this time.  If people like this enough, I might do a break down of some of the other arcade platforms that Capcom has published games on.  Until then.

-Myung

The next game to be covered in this series is the crown jewel of a somewhat forgotten genre.

The 2d beat-em-up genre saw its first big hit in the Taito game Double Dragon in 1987. Adding on to this success was the NES home port, one of the first decent home ports of an arcade game. Two years later, everyone and their grandmother was milling out Double Dragon clones when Capcom released the next big hit in the genre, Final Fight (on the venerable CPS system, to boot).

However, in 1994, Capcom blew away the competition with their CPS2 release, Alien Vs. Predator.  What made this game so good? They took everything you loved about beat-em-ups and gave you a double dose of it. Did you like weapons? You had a pulse rifle, a smart gun, grenades, pipes, swords, knives, flamethrowers (it is Aliens, after all :D ), and rocket launchers, just to name a few. Did you like multi player? The game supported up to 3 players, with 4 playable characters (protip: Only one of the two original characters in this game ever showed up in another game, and that was Lin in the background of Ken's stage in Alpha 2). Did you like the special moves? Every character had their own, very different (except the Predators) super move, which could be further enhanced with a power up item.

Many detractors of the genre cite the boring mechanics of such games, decrying its simple walk-and-mash-a-button-repetedly mechanics. While you certainly could try that in AvP, the game had much more to offer. There were slides, dash attacks, diving attacks, uppercuts, throws, even interrupts and combos! You almost had a fighting game engine in and of itself. I submit the following as proof:

Unfortunately, this game never got a home port. There was a home port announced for the ill-fated Sega 32X, but that was canceled before it could happen. This was a true gem of the CPS2 arcade system, and definitely worth plunking down some quarters if you ever find it. It would certainly be worth some Xbox Live points if it were to ever make it on XBLA. The kidney cooler is filled with ice and ready to go when you are, Seth.... :D

-Myung