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....

Duel Masters:The Red-Headed Stepchild

Has anyone heard of the card game Duel Masters? Not as cloyingly cute and childish as Pokemon, nor as mind-boggingly confusing as Yu-Gi-Oh, Duel Masters is a fun game which shares a lot with Magic:The Gathering, which is a good thing IMO. Actually, I have never played the physical card game, but I do have three very fun video game versions of the game:Duel Masters Sempai Legends Limited Edition and Duel Masters Kaijudo Showdown for the GameBoy Advance, and Duel Masters Limited Edition for the Playstation 2.

Very recently I stole...ummm bought Duel Masters Sempai Legends for 50 cents at FYE. Yes, 50 cents brand new. I could not remember if I already had the game (it was Kaijudo Showdown I had), but figured at 50 cents I'd get it anyway. That's less than a candy bar, for cryin out loud.

Anyway, I got all three games for very cheap, and if you have a GBA, DS Lite and/or Playstation 2, you can get a all three of these games for less than 5 bucks, I'm sure. And if you like card games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic:The Gathering, you will probably like Duel Masters. I know I do.

As I mentioned, Duel Masters plays out a lot like Magic:TG. You have a deck of 40 cards consisting of spells and creatures from 5 alignments:nature (green), light (yellow), water (blue), darkness (grey), and red (fire). Each alignments has it's own strenghs and weaknesses. When you duel someone, you sacrifice cards in your hand to build up mana of each of the five colors. This mana is permenent, and when you have enough, you can tap the mana to summon creatures to battle for you and spells to cast. Creatures have defensive and offensive stats which are compared when two creatures battle. Sounds a lot like M:TG so far, right? Well, instead of hit points, your duelist has five shields for protection which need to be broken. Once that is done, your duelist only needs to be hit once and it's lights out. Also, like M:TG, there are creatures that block attacks and ones that attack only. Duel Masters also has creatures called slayers which win the fight no matter the stats of the creatures.

In the games you play this spikey-haired kid who basically goes around towns and challenges random passerby to duels. You can also enter tournaments and buy or trade new cards. There are 'stories', but I don't pay much attention to them. I'm here to duel.

The creatures are extremely imaginative; light years better than the teletubby like Pokemon and at least on par with the creatures populating the Yu-Gi-Oh world. You get to see them battle it out on the field with different attacks, although obviously the PS2 version has much better graphics for monsters and spells.

It is unfortunate that Duel Masters never became more popular than it did. The game was created by Wizards of the Coast, and the games were put out by Atari. Still, for anyone who likes stratagic card games in video form, starring creatures with strange but also awesome sounding names, I highly recommend Duel Masters. The price is certainly right.