The House of the Dead 2 trifecta

A lot of video games have their own spinoffs; not sequels exactly but games that have the same characters and sometimes plot points. The Kingdom Hearts series, for example, has only two real games in the series but about 20 different spinoffs (give or take.) Actually, I think KH3 is just a myth created by SquareExix, a carrot to drive the horse so that the company can make spinoffs forever.
Nintendo is master of the video game spinoff, so much so that they have gotten it down to an art form. Mario has been whored out to so many different games that don't require jumping and butt stomping goombas that it boggles the mind. Me, I'm waiting for Cooking Mario. It will happen soon, trust me.
No video game has had spinoffs as eclectic as The House of the Dead 2 for the Dreamcast, however. To date there has been only two, although Zombie Revenge could be a gaiden (side) story for The House of the Dead 2. That's never been proven, however.
Mind you, the spinoffs I am about to mention are both based on HotD 2. There is the original House of the Dead for the Saturn, which most people of would rather forget about, as well as House of the Dead 3 for the Xbox and House of the Dead Overkill for the Wii and Playstation 3.
Several pinball games have been 'spun off' from different series, such as Sonic Spinball and Metriod Prime Pinball. And so too does The House of the Dead 2 have Pinball of the Dead for the Gameboy Advance. A light shooting game with zombies having it's own pinball game? Yes, and a pretty good one too.
This game reminds me of the the old Turbographx chestnuts Alien Crush and Devils Crush, and since I adored these games, that is a very good thing. There are three tables to chose from, all loosely based on a chapter from HotD 2, including Boss battles. There are sound bites taken from the game too, complete with horrible voice acting, but they do add to the game. I was lucky enough to get this rare game for 10.50 from amazon, and if you have a GBA, like a pinball and are a fan of HofD 2, then it's highly recommended.
Can there be anything more different than shooting zombies and typing...never mind typing so that you can shoot zombies? Well, that's what you do in The Typing of the Dead for the Dreamcast. Also based on The House of the Dead, instead of using a gun, you use a keyboard to type out letters and phrases to get rid of the zombies. It doesn't sound like that much fun...but it is, as well as being hilarious. Your in game character has a keyboard strapped to his chest instead of packing a gun, and some of the zombies, instead of bloody axes, have toy hammers as weapons. Typing of the Dead is almost a direct port of The House of the Dead 2, except that words can kill. Also recommended, but both the game and the Dreamcast keyboard are hard to find. If you can though, learning to type has never been so much fun.
So from The House of the Dead 2 comes two unlikely but ultimately fun games. Got to hand it to Sega, making these instead of the usual kart racer. Wait a minute, has there ever been a cart racer made that has zombie drivers? And why hasn't that been made yet, with every other video game featuring zombies? Perhaps The House of the Dead 2 well has not dried up just yet....

Enough is Enough

I was digging through the huge amount of video games I own so that i could find a bunch to play instead of just buying game after bloody game, and found so many that I had barely played...I mean only 5 minutes so I could see if the game actually work (the bulk of the games I have are used since I have last generation systems, although they are a hell of a lot cheaper than current gen games). I was throughly disgusted with myself, and promised myself I would not get another game for quite some time. I mean, I have these great, wonderful games stacked atop each other and what do I do? Buy more games that I don't bother to play.

I like to fancy myself a collector of video games, but I also love to play the damn things. If I comtinue this way, I will have stacks of games taller than myself, and one day they will collapse on me and I will be unable to free myself and die of starvation. I can see the headline now: "Idiot man dies after his collection of video games falls on him. What a bloody git." That, or I'll end up on the show Hoarders.

So I'm going to bucke down and FINISH some games before I buy more. This is also the reason I will not buy any new consoles for awhile, I am really, really far behind. Like 2005 behind. Probably for the better anyway. More systems means more games that I can't afford and don't have the room for anyway.

So if you will excuse me, I am going to play this interesting looking game call Halo:Combat Evolved. I heard it was quite good.