Wierd console to PC ports

[mezrabad]

I found these games published for the PC here in S. Korea. Have any of them ever been released for the PC in the States?

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
King of Fighters Collection (Looks like all the KOF games up to 2000)
Metal Slug 3
Mario All Stars

Wierd, huh? It seems there's less of a console-culture here (excepting the PS2 which seems pretty big, though it's only been here for about 17 months) and much more of a PC one (witness the MMORPG mania). We (me and the voices inside my head) think it has something to do with the education-centric values here: a PC MIGHT have educational uses, where as a console, is usually just fun, or so goes the perception.

Discuss!

[GaijinPunch]

Yeah, PC-gaming is apparantly big in Korea. DIdn't you read about the guy that played an online game for like 70-hours straight in an internet cafe and died?

[AB Positive]

That was caused by Deep Vein Thrombosis (sp?), where blood clots form due to inactivity and not drinking enough fluid. Travellers on planes experience this most often, sometimes trains. heavy programmers that don't leave their seats for 18 hours at a time have been known to also die from this.


I remember seeing a special on the S. Korean gaming scene on G4. Is it still true that you have 4 gaming channels, but that only 1 is -not- dedicated to Starcraft tournament matches?

-AG

[mezrabad]

LOL! It's true!

Pretty much any time, day or night, we can turn on one of the four gaming channels (1 cable, 3 sattelite) and see a Starcraft match in progress. They also show Warcraft 3 and Age of Mythology, but mostly it's "Star" (which is what they tend to call it here). On the one hand, it's cool to be in a place where gaming seems so darned mainstream, on the other hand, it's a little creepy. The novelty of seeing a Starcraft match wears off pretty quickly and soon we were like. "Grrr, don't they show ANYthing else?" Yes, they do. Occasionally, instead of showing a Starcraft match, they sit around and talk about previous matches or they interview a few Starcraft players.

And as far as I can tell there are lots and lots of MMORPGs and shows about them as well. It's all in Korean, which is like some strange foreign language to me so I generally don't know what they heck they're saying.

Metal Slug 4 is out for PC too here, btw.

They have tiny little arcade cabinets outside grocery stores for little kids to play. Some of these tiny arcade cabinets contain GameCubes. I can't actually play these things because I can't crouch long enough. They're only about a dime per play, too. Lots of physical arcade games here, too. Ball kicking, bag punching and the obligatory Bemani stuff: keyboard games, guitar games, beat games (some with full sets of drums)

It's like we're living in some strange alternate dimension.

On an unrelated to gaming note, most of the women are drop dead, shut my slack jaw gorgeous. Most of them have had cosmetic surgery, but that doesn't change the overall effect. Actually, this *is* related to gaming, I've seen some of the prettiest females in arcades. Go figure.

[Jorpho]

Are those real ports, or are they just emulated arcade ROMs?

I once saw a really cool Korean scrolling fighter called Storm (published by something called Moov Generation) for the PC, but I haven't been able to find any information about it since.
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[calthaer]

Take pictures of these arcades and post them...preferably including some of the aforementioned specimens of pulchritudinous gamers.