Messages

76

Reader Reviews / Re: Project "Backlog Eradication" - Clearin' out the pile o' shame

« on: September 19, 2011, 06:13:37 PM »

The problem with that recommendation is that Mystic Quest isn't actually very good.  Unlike Chrono Trigger, which is very good indeed.  It's like saying "You tried filet mignon but still don't like red meat?  How about some puréed beef flavored baby mush?  It's even more tender, after all."

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TalkBack / Re: Iwata Says No to More Price Drops, Mobile Support

« on: September 16, 2011, 05:17:58 PM »

Oh, I don't expect it to happen.  At least not this gen.  But if Nintendo does ever decide they're in competition with smart phones whether they want to be or not, I think it's more likely they'll respond by adding phone features to their own machines than by hawking cruddy $.99 "games" on the others' app stores.  They may do something else entirely, of course.

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TalkBack / Re: Iwata Says No to More Price Drops, Mobile Support

« on: September 16, 2011, 04:06:57 PM »

I wouldn't mind seeing Nintendo partner with a cell phone company, say Motorola, and get Nintendo's chocolate in Motorola's peanut butter.

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TalkBack / Re: Skyward Sword Will Include More Than 100 Minutes of Cutscenes

« on: September 16, 2011, 03:51:51 PM »

The latest Extra Credits is pertinent.

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General Gaming / Re: Old pc games/nostalgia

« on: September 15, 2011, 07:25:57 PM »

The games I've bought on GoG run natively on a modern OS (well, Windows, which is close enough ). Maybe not all of them do, though. I still have to run them through CrossOver, but that's a lot simpler than booting up a full virtual machine in order to play them.

Are they on this list?  If so, then GoG is just futzing with the emulator for you like I said.    You might even get a performance boost by changing to a Mac build of DOSBox instead of using CrossOver.  Otherwise, I'd guess they aren't actually old enough to have compatibility problems, or at least none that CrossOver itself doesn't already deal with, if they're Windows games.

In checking that out, I found out that GoG has the Wing Commander games now!  Woohoo!

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General Gaming / Re: Games for adults

« on: September 15, 2011, 06:58:22 PM »

Regarding your price requirement, just wait and buy your games on clearance.  If you only want to play single player, then you don't need to get the game during the peak months of multiplayer activity.  That's what I usually do.  It makes it harder to jabber excitedly with everyone else about the latest games on forums, though.

Also, PC games are often better than console games for quick sessions.  Saving anywhere is simply how it's always been done on the PC, but it's rare on consoles.  It's usually easier to cheat in PC games, too, to avoid the lame parts.  Gaming PCs are a lot more expensive than consoles, but PC gaming fits my lifestyle a lot better than console gaming at this stage in my life.

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General Gaming / Re: Old pc games/nostalgia

« on: September 15, 2011, 06:43:24 PM »

I'm getting the urge to play either Sim City 2000 or Sim Tower. The one bad thing about Apple totally rewriting the operating system with OS X is that all my old games no longer run natively, but I've got a Classic Mac emulator running 9.1 that lets me play them. I'd gladly buy them on Steam or GoG if they'd release them there, though, as it would be less complicated to play them that way.

It's not like the Steam or GoG versions of old games are updated for new operating systems.  They'd still require the emulator.  Unless you just want someone else to futz with the emulator for you, which Steam at least does in some cases.  I think that's up to the publisher, though.

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TalkBack / Re: Skyward Sword Will Include More Than 100 Minutes of Cutscenes

« on: September 15, 2011, 05:31:26 PM »

I think Ceric's right.  And I sincerely hope these are not pre-rendered.  If I'm wearing a bunny hood, I want to see it in the cutscene, by Din's fire!

84

Reader Reviews / Re: Rate The Last Game You Played

« on: September 15, 2011, 03:06:01 PM »

NES Open Tournament Golf.  I hate this game, so why can't I stop playing it?  It's full of numbers with relationships I don't understand.  I feel like Gabe trying to play the weather.

Also, I hate hate hate that golf pro who keeps telling me "Try to play well."  YA THINK?  He's got to be a zombie, because there's no way someone so annoying has never been murdered.


Edit: Am I the only one who hears "We've got stacks and stacks of letters" in the music?  Does Letterman even still do that segment?

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General Chat / Re: Karma Thread: Wheel of Shame and Praise

« on: September 14, 2011, 07:29:28 PM »

I don't want to make a habit of revealing this kind of thing, since it kind of defeats the purpose, but it was probably this guy.  For keeping an annoying argument going, but mostly for coming back to rekindle it in an even more annoying way after I thought it was over.

I also applauded UncleBob's post after that for giving me a laugh.

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General Gaming / Re: PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) - previously known as NGP

« on: September 14, 2011, 07:07:26 PM »

Wait, are they actually going with a proprietary Vita memory card format and not Memory Stick?  Not that there's much practical difference for most people, but still.

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General Chat / Re: Karma Thread: Wheel of Shame and Praise

« on: September 14, 2011, 07:02:28 PM »

Your mom.  And I think you know why.

Actually, I'm fairly free with both applauds and smites, so I'm not sure exactly what that one was.  What time zone are you in?  That might help.

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TalkBack / Re: Roundtable Discussion: Star Fox vs. Star Fox 64

« on: September 14, 2011, 06:50:50 PM »

I played both a lot, but I have to say I liked 64 more.  Eventually.  When I first got it, there was a lot about it I hated.  The music wasn't merely not as good as the original's; it actively sucked.  The "brass" sounds made me want to stab out my ear drums.  I hated the stupid looking beach ball explosions.  I especially hated how the Attack Carrier's stupid beach ball appeared ABOVE it!  It just made me mad every time I saw it.  It wasn't until a year or more later that I was able to "forgive" the game for those faults.  That happens a lot with me.  I'll hate something in a game until the game is old enough in my estimation for me to excuse the things I don't like as quaint reminders of our less advanced technological past.

Anyway, I came back to the game later and concentrated on the balls to the wall action, and indeed I found therein some of the most exhilarating action ever to join wall to ball.  I managed to get every medal except the Sector Z expert mode one (I had to get there via warp to avoid the hit-stealing "help" of other characters, and just couldn't be bothered in the end).

On the other hand, as much as I liked the original, I never really was able to master it.  Specifically, I couldn't beat the boss at the end of the Venom space level on the hard route.  I flew past it over and over again, easily avoiding its shots, but I could never find a way to hurt it.  It showed me no glowing weak spots in which I could insert my massive damage causing laser beams.

Still, the original wins over the sequel for music if nothing else.  There are only a couple of music tracks in 64 that I can stand, let alone enjoy.  I like Zoness and Area 6, but I can only listen for a short time before the awful instrument sounds drive me away.  Most of the rest don't appeal to me even setting aside my pathological hatred for that brass sample.  I really hate the main theme in particular, and it gets played every, freaking, level.  In the original, on the other hand, darn near every track is excellent.  The instruments sound fine to me, too.  They're lo fi in a chip tune kind of way instead of a "someone make the pain stop" kind of way.  Maybe there's an uncanny valley effect in sound design.  I dunno.  The original has blood pumping rock action and space opera epicness and techno-ish stuff and a fantastically trippy "When the Saints Go Marching In."  I love it.

The question is which is the better game, though, and I simply got more game out of 64.

Wow, I kind of rambled there.  Sorry.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Mario Kart 7

« on: September 14, 2011, 05:13:31 PM »

Metal Mario is a missed opportunity.  The Metal Cap could have been an interesting new power up, especially since it would have obvious effects on the new gliding and water features.  I'd have liked to see the Mini Mushroom added, too, in that case.  How cool would it be to drive across the surface of the water?

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General Chat / Re: Verizon phones

« on: September 14, 2011, 04:54:31 PM »

I found out that I can, in fact, browse the web and talk on my phone (Droid X2) at the same time.  So what is AT&T on about in those commercials?

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: name changes

« on: September 14, 2011, 04:22:06 PM »

Dang man, you even went through the trouble of hitting the shift key to make the apostrophe.

Wat kind of key board are you using where you have to hold shifto make an apostrophe?

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Working on Xenoblade Chronicles Stock

« on: September 11, 2011, 10:49:48 PM »

There isn't a IGDB that tells the voice actors, producers, etc. for game.

It's beside the point, but Moby Games is like an IMDB for video games.  The IMDB itself stores video game credits, too.

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Reader Reviews / Re: Rate The Last Game You Played

« on: September 11, 2011, 10:32:57 PM »

Just want to say that the scripting never broke on me, and I didn't even notice the ammo thing.

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General Chat / Re: Spartacus has succumb to the Sands of the Arena. RIP.

« on: September 11, 2011, 10:16:50 PM »

I knew exactly who he meant.  That's a shame.  The guy was only a few years older than me, too.

Blood and Sand was the best acted porno I've ever seen.  I was looking forward to more of the Spartacus story, so I wonder if they'll recast the part now or just drop the whole thing.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: So what are you going to do on your Spyke vacation?

« on: September 11, 2011, 02:08:39 AM »

I might play some Gameboy games.

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TalkBack / Re: New 3DS Titles to Be Announced Next Week?

« on: September 10, 2011, 07:01:05 PM »

They don't tell you in that pic, but the buttons don't work and the screen was replaced (see Nintendo Power July 1991). Also, original Game Boys had serious screen degradation problems; I went through three screen replacements.

There was also a story of one that was tossed out of a car going across a bridge on a freeway.  The family stopped and managed to find it in the brush because they could hear the Tetris music still playing.

Of course, mine developed a weird splotch that looked like a burn near one corner, so I know what you mean about the screens.

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TalkBack / Re: Eiji Aonuma Never Completed Zelda 1

« on: September 10, 2011, 06:46:57 PM »

It was a great experience that I'd recommend to any Zelda fans. I'd even go so far to say that Zelda II is now my favorite in the series.

I'm glad you liked it, but I never thought I'd hear anyone say Zelda II is their favorite.  I could say it's my favorite NES Zelda, I suppose. 

Zelda 2 is just too weird for me, combat just feels wrong, like you "have" to get hit to be successful.

You're doing something wrong.  There are some hard to avoid things, but you don't have to get hit by anything.  I don't know what exactly you're doing wrong.  In two minutes, you couldn't have faced anything tougher than the weakest moblins.  I suppose since they're one of two kinds of bipedal enemy in the game with no AI -- they just keep running forward -- and they have long spears, trying to fight them could be confusing.  The combat system should make sense once you start fighting monsters smart enough to back away from you, so you have to close in while using your shield to protect yourself.  Most other monsters you just have to stab before they bump into you.

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TalkBack / Re: The Cameos of Solatorobo

« on: September 10, 2011, 06:15:51 PM »

I like how the artist gave Mamoru's father a tough old guy look with a Schnauzer style moustache.  That's actually pretty impressive.

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Reader Reviews / Re: Project "Backlog Eradication" - Clearin' out the pile o' shame

« on: September 10, 2011, 06:07:22 PM »

Masamune really is a pretty hard boss fight if you're not a little over leveled when you get there, but Chrono Trigger is still one of the best RPGs there is for not grinding, IF you don't avoid fights.  The game's much touted avoidable encounters make it easy to be under leveled instead.  It's an odd thing that two features the game is praised for so often run counter to each other like that.

I like to think the music is so good because the composer nearly killed himself pouring his soul into writing it.  Yasunori Mitsuda threatened to quit unless he was allowed to compose, so Square let him be the sole composer on Chrono Trigger.  He worked himself so hard he had to be hospitalized, and so Square's most famous composer, Nobuo Uematsu, finished for him.  Unfortunately, I don't know which tracks were written by Uematsu.

Mitsuda worked on Xenoblade, too, by the way.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Wii Sales Thread

« on: September 10, 2011, 05:48:34 PM »

I guess someone should hunt down Salesbot and charge his it's battery.

I'm gonna pretend applauding Salesbot will bring it back by adding +1 to that score.

Sort of like "Clap your hands if you believe?"  Hmm, maybe somebody said they didn't believe in Salesbot and killed it.

Edit: Some people have actually smited Salesbot.  That must have been what did it.  You heartless jerks.