Before the release of the Nintendo 3DS, I had already essentially purchased Street Fighter IV twice. The first time I picked up the special edition of its original release, while the second time I grabbed the vastly improved second iteration.

I didn’t really feel like I “needed” to buy a third version, but as an early adopter of the new system, I wanted a good showpiece for the more powerful handheld. Since the graphics of Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition are arguably the best looking of all the 3DS launch titles, it seemed like a natural choice. But as I got it home and spent the better portion of a week playing it, my feelings gravitated from buying it for lack of other games to falling in love with it all over again.

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Much like the increase in digital distribution over physical media, the injection of smartphones into the portable gaming ecosystem has quickly caused many to declare dedicated portable game systems officially dead. But is that really so?

I believe that each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. They can… no, they SHOULD coexist. To get rid of dedicated portable game systems in favor of touch screen phones would be to force an unnecessary limitation on ourselves.

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I have played a lot of fighting games over the years. I am by no means an expert, but I feel I have played enough to have a fairly broad view of the genre.

In every single fighting game I have ever played, I have yet to encounter a satisfying final boss fight. I am either completely underwhelmed or left completely pissed off. Why does the final boss fight have to suck?

You would think after all these years somebody would figure out how to make the last boss exciting without turning them into ridiculously cheap and unfair monsters.

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On a very special forty-eight episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, Jesse, Dave and Jonah discuss their top ten picks for game of the year.

It was a good discussion of our likes and dislikes and why we picked what we picked. We even give out a few honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the list at the end of the show.

I don’t want to give it away here, so hit up after the break to download the episode and hear for yourself.

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"Archive Footage"

2009 was a busy year for me. I had just started a new job, I launched WingDamage with my bro and suckered a few friends into writing for us. A ton of amazing games came out. Here I present to you my personal favorites. This is my top ten, and it doesn’t quite line up with the majority of other people’s that I have found online. That’s just fine with me.

Some releases, while I liked what I played, I just didn’t have enough time to get a good enough impressions to rank them one way or the other. That said, I give you my top ten games of the year.

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"WingDamage writer by day, Little Mac by night."

The first full year of WingDamage is officially over. Though we all played a lot of games, we’re also enthusiasts with full-time jobs outside of the site. While there’s just not enough time in the day to play every game that comes out, we do our best. Below is a list of my personal picks of the games I felt where a cut above the rest. Expect to see the picks of our other writers soon after. And don’t worry, you’ll probably agree with their picks more than mine anyway.

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"A very subjective list."

Some really fantastic soundtracks came out this year. There’s no way I could write about all of them, so I’ve chosen my ten favorites to share. I’m only counting soundtracks of games that were released in North America in 2009 (sorry, Bayonetta). As music is very subjective, these are just my personal picks.

Is you favorite not in the list? Let us know in the comments!

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If you are like me, then you love the Xbox 360, but hate the horrible D-pad on the controller. Sure, there are ways to crack open that bad boy and mod it to work better, but since this is me we’re talking about, I know the disaster that would likely follow.

Enter the Madcatz Street Fighter IV Fightpad.

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Click to see the gallery!

It actually came on the ship date despite the man on the phone telling me it wouldn’t come until the day after. I rushed on over to pick up the ps3 version of the collector’s edition with the Ryu headband preorder bonus. The line was literally frozen in front of me, not because of excitement, but because the person ahead of me was trading in an entire stack of games. Finally, I made it to the counter and, for what is probably the first time in history, left GameStop without being asked to preorder anything.

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