This is not new; I used to build the pictured construct then "wreck it" and add the pieces to my collection while I had a friend who would built his models and then leave them assembled indefinitely.

I preferred the space series so I could build bigger and bigger ships, he liked the Robin Hood (Forrestmen) series because those kits looked really neat assembled and sitting on a shelf.

The Street Fighter series has transitioned well in the last few years, The competitive SFIV scene is still very large with 25th anniversary tournaments being held across the world.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix have been released on PSN and Xbox360.

I do not think the "lost their luster in HD" comment is actually the direct comparison you are implying.

There are "obsessive completionists" who are not "professional players". I know people who have played the heck out of this game for a couple years and have saved up enough of the free "IP" to buy every champion in the game without spending any actual money. If they also want to spend actual money to get Riot Points so they can then buy totally unneeded (but perhaps cool) alternate skins for those champs then that is their business.

From your comment I am not sure if you are referring to the "obsessive completionists" or actual "professional players."

There are actual pro players, some who get money from streaming, and other who are on a sponsored team getting paid 5 figures + prize money and who live as a team in a house where they practice all day and stream all night. There are about 6-10 popular NA/Eur teams right now, and then a few that come over from China/Korea for the big events. Many of the weekly tournaments have 10k+ prizes (which have to be shared between the 5 players) and the larger events have much larger prizes (season2 championships had a $2,000,000 prize pool with 1mil going to winning team.)

http://leaguepedia.com/wiki/Season_2_World_Championship

During the LoL Season 2 World Championships a couple months ago the event stream made up 5% of NA internet bandwidth.

Casual events streamed on twitch.tv tend to break 40,00 viewers and large events break 100,000

I like having the option to play new games or whatever games I stumble upon.

I do not know "what games I cannot live without" but in the last few months I have been playing:

Borderlands2
Diablo3
League of Legends
Cockatrice (free online magic the gathering program)
Terraria

And I have FTL and XCOM Enemy Unkonwn installed and ready to check out when I have free time.

The Lego game series (Lego Harry Potter for example) is a 3rd party cross-platform game series where imo the Wii version was excellent if not superior due to the fact that the wiimote allowed for the most innovative/natural method to stack blocks on top of each other and move built objects around on the screen.

Resident Evil 4 on the Wii is considered the best version of that multi-platform game.

One thing to mention is that the WiiU will take advantage of the fact that you are already a original Wii owner/supporter.

Many people (maybe yourself included) bought WiiFit then a year later bought WiiFit Plus. Because you already have the Wii Balance Board and you played the heck out of the original, right?

So maybe you are not a day1 adopter but at some point you will probably justify buying the WiiU to get the next generation of first party titles that make use of the components you already own (Balance Board, Wiimotes, Motion+ accessories, Classic Controller Pro, etc)

The hard drive is very tiny; I use shared folder on a 1TB external hard drive streamed over wireless via a win7 desktop.

Of course these days it is better to run XBMC via other platforms but if you grab what you want in the correct resolution the original Xbox still plays it very well.

On a modded original Xbox I use the unleashX dashboard and from it I launch XBMC as well as "a couple of emulators" and other standard stuff. XBMC as created on the original Xbox is a homebrewing accomplishment I have greatly appreciated.

The "finals stage" Los Vegas episodes that started running this week are much different than the preliminary regionals stages.
In the preliminary stages contestants were competing against each other and bumped each other out of contention.
For the Los Vegas episodes they are starting over again on Stage1. They are using actual obstacle blue prints from Sauske.
Contestants are running against the clock, not against each other.
It is very possible that not a single person will get to the top of Stage4.
They have not announced "who gets the $500,000" if no one gets to the top of Stage4. Longtime Sauske fans would expect the prize to not be given, but this this is the USA it is likely they will give it to "the person who goes the furthest the fastest". In the Japanese version there have only been 3 winners in the 27 previous events (events are usually run twice a year).

Normally there is a limited "American Ninja Warrior" competition and the 2-4 winners get sponsored by G4 to go to Japan and participate in the actual tournament. The reason why we are getting such a large event this year (3-4 eps for each of the 6 regions and 6+ episodes for the finals, all hour long) might be due to the company that produces Sauske (Monster 9, who also produce Kunoichi, Ultimate Banzuke, and Muscle Musical) filed for bankruptcy Nov 2011. It seems that this postponed Sauske 28 so in the interim Tokyo Broadcasting System decided to work with NBC to run this event in USA.

The regionals suffered from massive redundancy because you had everyone run a version of stage1, then the top 30 would run a slightly longer version of stage1. This led to seeing the same competitor profiles multiple times in back-to-back episodes and seeing the same people run mostly the same obstacles over and over for almost 20 hours/episodes.

But now that they are on the Vegas episodes, running off of a course built using Sauske blueprints, and running against the clock instead of against each other, I am happy to watch all these profile vids one last time since this is pretty close to actual Sauske.

Yes, I am offended at the idea of DLC and will strongly resist any impulse to buy content that pushes microtransactions.
I just recently got into Rock Band (wife decided she thought it was fun) and we did go and get RB2 and the full set for $40, and Beatles + Green Day for $5 each. I will buy no DLC for those games and the fact that DLC exists for the games annoys me. I do not like the fact that the "retail game" comes will less than 100% of "the total game".

from your line:
  "and more that can be purchased and downloaded for a dollar apiece"

I see my main concern for this game has not been resolved. I might get this game when and if they release a "Deluxe Edition" that has all the songs. Until then I do not like the idea that there are songs for the game that do not come with the game. I love FF and enjoyed Elite Beat Agents but do not want to encourage developers to nickel and time customers with DLC micro-transactions.

I did a double take when I noticed that the art was done by the Foglios (artists behind some of the oldest and iconic magic the gathering cards like Mishra's Factory, Mirror Universe, Eureka).

P. Foglio also had a comic strip run in Dragon magazine and Deulist magazine