PLEASE READ: The NEW SHOP is separate and distinct from the OLD SHOP. If you place an order on the OLD SHOP, you will not be able to use the NEW SHOP to check on your order and vice versa. Unfortunately, we were not able to resolve the two shop databases in order to transfer customer histories and accounts. Both shops are fully operational and capable of taking orders.
 

Psyvariar 2

  DC Psyvariar 2: The Will to Fabricate - Shipping Today
   Psyvariar 2 brings back the buzz system from the original Psyvariar to reward adepts with mass bonus points when evading scads of shots spewed out from sputtering bosses. Occasionally, the maze of shots may seem nigh impermeable but that's where the beauty of the buzz system shines where hundreds of near nicks and cuts against your ship grant buzz bonuses and bump up firing power. There's a reason why there are 9 digits in the score holder...for hundreds of millions of points to accumulate and amass.
    A pair of Medium Drive Suits (read: mecha) driven by a male and female character are selectable at the outset of the game - the MDS Five Ascetics and the MDS Maitreya. New to the Psyvariar series is the "Rolling Input System" where the mechs "roll" in the direction that the joystick is pointed in continuous fashion and special attacks may be blasted out by morphing the mechs into new and exciting forms.
 
 

Firefighter F.D. 18

  PS2 Firefighter F.D. 18 - Shipping Today
   When a series of seemingly unrelated fires erupt across the city, a firefighter named Dean McGregor leaps into action as a superhero fireman of sorts. No fire is too daunting for Dean as he barrels into burning buildings and attacks the flames with a gushing hose and a mighty battle axe. Every burning building contains luckless victims who scream and call out for help as our hero makes his way through flickering infernos to the rescue. When victims come into view, they'll wave their arms to ensure that they're seen. On a floor filled with flames, water blasts may be pumped out in steady streams to stanch fires or blasted out in wider area sprays to snuff entire patches of burning floorboards. When Dean's path is blocked, the axe may be wielded with two hands to land powerful blows in order to clear the way. Dire straits may be countered with a call for help where a fellow firefighter comes to save the day with a powerful salvo of water.
   The missions are fairly straightforward where Dean is charged with the rescue and recovery of victims in various situations and locales. A swiveling map on the upper right corner of the screen captures every move one makes. It shakes when you shake and rotates when you turn. Victims are also shown on the map for easy tracking along with their remaining levels of vitality. Reach those desperate souls before they succumb to the smoke and flames...
 
 

Flight Stick v2.0

  PS2 Flight Stick v2.0 - Shipping Today
   Hori issues a new Flight Stick controller for use with games such as Energy Airforce and other flight combat simulators. The controller consists of two parts - a Main Stick and a Throttle Controller which are connected by a DIN cable - and the whole thing connects to the PS2 by USB cable. The sticks are coated with rubber to provide a healthy kung-fu grip when players are ruling the skies. The following PS2 flight combat simulators are compatible:
Vibration Mode Inactive:
Ace Combat 4
Sidewinder F
Aero Dancing 4
Energy Air Force
Sidewinder V		 Vibration Mode Active
Air Force Delta
Zero Pilot: Miracle in Lonely Air
 
 

Gain Ground

  PS2 Gain Ground - Sega Ages 2500 - Shipping Today
   On a simple battlefield, a trio of soldiers mount the attack against a group of armed opponents. The bald warrior wields mere spears, the female throws bombs and shoots from a pistol while the male whips out a rifle. Each weapon has advantages - for example, the spear is capable of arcing over barriers to hit enemies behind them while the firearms have a longer range. The most versatile warrior is probably the lady warrior who is armed with a gun for straight shooting as well as a bomb attack which arcs over barriers to reach enemies who are located above ground, on a platform, or other elevated position.

   Levels progressively scale in difficulty from the run and gun game of the early going to the busy blastathons of later levels. Gain Ground never reaches the rapid pace of arcade games such as Gauntlet or the adventuring depth of Baldur's and it sits somewhere far away. We'd liken it more to a stutter step action game where players move, shoot, retreat. Move, shoot, retreat. Do that a few hundred times and the gist of Gain Ground becomes clear. Similar to all other Sega Ages games, Gain Ground includes a history leaflet which may be bound into the Sega Ages 2500 binder that shipped inside the limited edition of Phantasy Star SA2500.  
 
 

Galaxy Angel

  PS2 Galaxy Angel: Moonlit Lovers - Shipping Today
   The girls of Galaxy Angel find themselves in yet another exciting adventure which spans the cosmos. Milfeulle Sakuraba serves as the leader the effervescent Galaxy Angel Squadron but players may choose any member of the Squad as a partner at the outset of the game.
 Once your little duo has been set up, the game sets up a unique storyline for each particular Angel. Engage in galactic interaction with your new cohort and the other members of the Galaxy Angel Squad while adventuring across the Milky Way. Treat your partner well and her affinity towards you will increase which helps to enhance battle skills and team cohesiveness. Botch the relationship and the team suffers for your folly. Broccoli hired the voice actors from the animation to give life, emotion and speech to the characters and created a new animated intro especially for the game. The first production of Galaxy Angel Moonlit Lovers includes a bonus soundtrack CD and a special variant cover. Normal cover to the right.

 
 

Initial D Special Stage

  PS2 Initial D Special Stage - Best Version - Shipping Today
   Powered by Naomi 2 in the coin-op, Sega chooses the PS2 to represent the home conversion of Inital D: Special Stage. Choose any one of the anime rocket racers as your protagonist and compete against rivals on four different mountain courses ranging from the beginner Myogi level to the expert Happogaharai night level. New tracks in Special Stage include Enna, Momiji Pass, Mount Myogi, Mount Usui and Shoumaru pass. All courses may be played in standard or reverse direction, during the day or night, and under wet or dry conditions. Vehicles from Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, Mazda and Subaru may be chosen as your mountain hugging ride.

 Initial D manga purists should be pleased with the Story Mode in Initial D which follows plot highlights and key races from the original storyline. Adopt the persona of Takumi Fujiwara and start the game with a Toyota AE86 GT Apex. Successful completion of chapters in the story mode unlocks car data and new songs for a total of 30 music tracks. The game engine in Initial D supports drifting, sort of, but we enjoy Initial D for it's overall merits, namely the excellent control, great coin-op to home conversion quality, and faithful Story Mode. Of course, the new lower price for the Best Version is also nice.
 
 

Kaido Battle 2

  PS2 Kaido Battle 2 - Shipping Today
   Oversteer your vehicle in a conventional race and you'll probably cause an accident and develop a reputation as a cowboy. Oversteer properly in the world of drift racing and you're a potential hero. The ingredients for the perfect drift are simple: winding roads and an able drifter. Throttle into curving roads with wild abandon and twist the vehicle into the corners so that the car is suddenly sideways and churning into the turn with squealing acceleration. When the curve levels out, wheel the car back to temporary forward thrust and prepare for the next curve. Chain those curves and sideways motion together in continuous flow and you're drifting, screeching and burning mass rubber. Oversteer like an amateur however, and you'll just spin out.
   That's the beauty of the Kaido Battle 2 racing engine where the physics of the car models obey the guidance of capable drifters as twisting mountain roads rush past. After a few sessions, the act of drifting becomes a ballet of physics and control over a hunk of metal and glass on wheels. It's all done very well in Kaido Battle 2 and Genki must be applauded for the top notch quality of the game. Players may drive uphill or downhill on the various mountain passes recreated from the Kaido range where the drifting scene sprouted in the towns of Hakone, Irohazaka, Nagano, and Rokkosan. Four seasons also provide a bit of color and change to the racing backdrops.
 
 

Taisen! Bakudan Poy Poy

  PS2 Taisen! Bakudan Poy Poy - Shipping Today
   Sometime in the year 20XX, a super computer goes awry and ordinary citizens are recruited into a virtual world where everyone hefts massive bombs. Once hefted, bombs may be hurled at opponents in a frenetic blast 'em up. Run around the digital landscape, gather a bomb and then time your attacks against roving combatants while being pursued by other bomb toting miscreants. Chain reactions may be linked together to force multiple bomb blasts against foes and seal their doom. Six characters are available at the outset of the game: a schoolgirl, a nurse, a drunken salaryman, a security guard and a couple of others culled from the populace. Four additional characters may be unlocked as players progress through the bombing action.
 
 

V.R.

  PS2 Virtua Racing - Sega Ages 2500 - Shipping Today
   Way back in the day, when bitmaps and sprites ruled the video game landscape, Sega dared to try a different tack. Although Atari's I, Robot, circa 1984, was the first arcade coin-op to utilize polygons and their Hard Drivin' (1991) followed up with a technically competent polygon racer, the technology did not catch fire until Sega's efforts in the early 90s. Polygons were the future and the company injected fresh blood into the racing genre with a game titled Virtua Racing (1992). Fast, sleek, and shiny, VR wowed arcade dwellers with its smooth visuals, refined gameplay and force-feedback racing wheel. Yu Suzuki had struck again.
   The premise in Virtua Racing is simple - slide behind the wheel of a formula racing vehicle, peer around at the competition and burn rubber at the color of green. The beauty of a polygon-based world lies the precision and sharpness of everything in a perfectly modeled environment. Crash into a rival vehicle or obstacle and watch as razor-like shards burst from the impact point. Screech into a turn and spot the perfectly rendered sparks ejecting from the rear of the stubby fat wheels. Even the skidmarks on the road are modeled to correspond to the tread width of each wheel. When it's time to visit the pit crew, the workers move like clockwork automatons, changing wheels and tuning the vehicle with meticulous flourishes and fine tuned fidelity.
 
 

Got 'em

Front of Box

Back of Box

  XBX Pure White Console Limited Edition - Shipping Today
   We pretty much received our entire order of Pure White Xbox consoles today except for three units that are still out there. Somewhere. We wanted one un-engraved Xbox consoles for our own collection, a console with www.ncsx.com engraved on it (for posterity), and a customer also requested an un-engraved console. Unfortunately, these three were not shipped to us and we're now waiting for an update on their status. There appears to be some surplus stock as we were offered a small quantity last night from another Japanese vendor but at a much higher price. We'll hold off on those for now in case our three missing units show up. We cannot accept any new orders for the Pure White console at this time but we may be able to offer some additional Kasumi Xbox consoles next month.

   We're fairly surprised at the fill rate for our preorder. With the exception of the three missing units, all of our other requests were filled without any hassles or high drama. We're feeling a little guilty this morning for taking a good chunk of the limited production, especially since Microsoft probably intended for these to generate interest from Japanese consumers and not exported to the States.

   Most customers who preordered the Pure White consoles asked us to engrave their proper names on the units but there were quite a few who asked for anime character names, movie titles, LOTR names such as Aragorn and Legolas, short poetic quotes, and a couple of "Bill Gates." All these were engraved to our specifications so we're pleased that the process was hassle-free. The engraving is located on the lower-right corner of the top of the Xbox. Underneath every engraving is another one which reads "Limited Edition of XXXX/1000." The center Xbox circle also reads "Limited Edition 2004" beneath the Xbox logo. While we're fairly certain that a console engraved with "Bill Gates" will fetch a pretty penny one of these days, some of the other ones may also do well should their owners decide to sell them off due to the rarity of the consoles. In case you're wondering, there were no requests for a "Steve Ballmer" engraving.
 
 
Summary of the Week
Monday DC Puyo Puyo Fever  PS2 Onimusha 3  NEWS DBZ Beach Sandals in June, Gundam Z-Gock Hand, Import Outlook - Psyvariar 2 expected on Wednesday
Tuesday NEWS Preorders open for GBA Zero One SP, PS2 Bomberman Kart DX, Super Robot Wars Controller Special Edition, Tantei Jinguuji Saburo Kind of Blue and TOY Rockman products
Wednesday PS2 Kikou Heidan J-Phoenix 2, Love Aerobics  NEWS Shipment delays
Thursday PS2 Nurse Witch Komugi-Chan Regular and Limited Edition, Onimusha 3 Memory Card, Snow First Limited Edition, Tentama 2 Wins Regular and Limited Edition, Ultraman Fighting Evolution 2  NEWS Shipment delays part 2
Friday DC Psyvariar 2  PS2 Firefighter F.D. 18, Flight Stick v2.0, Gain Ground - Sega Ages 2500, Galaxy Angel: Moonlit Lovers, Initial D Special Stage - Best Version, Kaido Battle 2, Taisen! Bakudan Poy Poy, Virtua Racing - Sega Ages 2500  XBX Pure White Xbox Console
National Console Support, Inc ° Your Import Specialist
Phone: (718) 523-5774  Fax: (718) 523-7069  Shop: www.ncsxshop.com  E-mail: ncsx@msn.com 
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