BardicKnowledge

Any advice on beating bosses on Hard in TWEWY? I can't get some of those reports, even if I crank my level high. Specifically, fighting (Beat) is terribly difficult for me and I don't know why. Any advice on pin setup etc would be helpful. Also, how do I get the 5th and 6th pin slots? I think (haven't played for a week now) I'm still stuck at 4.

I've got it, and it does a very good job of bringing back the nostalgia. A few moves (especially the backflip) make some puzzles easier now because you can jump a space further from a standing position than you were able to in the original. If only they'd release PoP 2 like this....it'd be amazing.

I've played the first two chapters of Ninja Gaiden, and I'm a little underimpressed. From what I've seen, it's almost all constant battles, with next to no "platforming" (jumping puzzles, cool agility things, etc). Not terrible, but not great either. The combat's pretty good though, so if that's what you're all about, by all means give it a shot.

I just graduated with my bachelor's in music, and am going onward to grad school in music composition. I knew I didn't want to teach at the high school level, but I can totally see myself as a music theory professor someday -- hopefully I get there. As far as lessons goes, I've had 10 years piano, 1 year of cello, but am primarily a vocalist. I also play tenor recorder, but the venues for that are few and far between.

^The truth. Some of the best English voice acting ever. Also you'll laugh for hours. "So educational..."

The article reads very well, Jam -- the likes and dislikes in Brawl were very interesting, as you said. It seems that I'm not the only person who thinks some social gap exists between regular tourney-goers and people who play to win but don't (or can't) attend the big tournaments. I suppose one way to lower this polarization is to encourage more people like me to actively participate in the community discussions (which I'm going to make an effort to do after reading this). Any other thoughts on the future of Brawl?

It's a quality book -- I bought it a few weeks ago. Thumb through it the next time you're at the store. At worst, it makes for a good gamer's coffee table book.

^Agreed -- the battle system was awesome. If only there was a way to learn certain skills a la FFV.... Oh, and congrats on all the coverage -- has it motivated you to start another video?

Well done -- and yet another reason why FFX was much, much better than FFX2.

I saw it last night, and was pleased. I'm still having a difficult time getting over the believability aspect (as mentioned above, it pushes the limits of belief even for an Indy film), but it was definitely a solid film. The thing I noticed is that the music isn't nearly as good -- the orchestrator is lacking Williams' talent with the brass section, and it shows.

Those of you that have My Life as a King -- how does the "Pay to Play" thing work? I understand that you've gotta pay for certain expansion packs / buildings a la Oblivion, but is it really a monthly thing?

I wrote a fugue using Kefka's theme as the subject (link here). I don't think it's long enough to stand alone as a remix, but I feel it's a good start. I will either write a toccata before it, or extend the coda into the chord sequence of Dancing Mad before returning to the fugue to close. In any case, let me know what you think -- especially you music theory people out there. I'm out of town for a while, but will be back in a week to check messages and advice. Oh, and while there's very little production work done, it's playing back through the GPO/Kontakt player in Finale 2008.

1) Since the week the 64 game came out, though I never owned a Gamecube to play Melee (I played at friends places and bought it the instant I got my Wii) 2) I've done fairly well at local, small tourneys (university related mostly), but nothing I would count as a professional level. I've only played Melee at tourneys, btw -- I had to miss this year's ISU Brawl tourney because of finals. 3) I always thought growing up that the ideal game would be simultaneous-play Megaman, and this gets us pretty close...complete with a montage of all of Nintendo's most memorable characters. I also like the fact that it's an easy game to bring new players into. 4) I dislike the large gap between people who play competitively at the professional level, and those of us who primarily play with friends casually. Note that my definition of casual play has nothing to do with items or lack of a solid battle strategy -- it's just that I enjoy a good beer with friends over Smash. I feel that the smashboards back room is the epitome of this schism between intelligent casual players and "professional" (let's face it, no one is playing smash as a profession) players. 5) This question seems to imply a "compared to Melee" after it, and so I'm going to assume that. I like the slightly slower combat engine, which I feel will allow a larger pool of players to make the strategic decisions only employable by people with very fast thumbs in Melee. I enjoy the mid-air dodge more than the wavedash -- this probably comes from not owning SSBM in its prime. I also enjoy the idea of cameo characters -- more companies should be open to this idea. Snake and Sonic's popularity are certainly only going to go up by having the kind of exposure that Brawl brings to the table. 6) I (like everyone else) dislike tripping. I also dislike the quicker hit recovery, which kills a lot of the combo options. 7) I'm moving to Minneapolis, which is a large enough city to have some sort of competitive scene, so I figure this is a great time to start. I want to go to local tourneys and have intelligent discussions with other Smash players who care about analyzing strategy and technique. In other words, talk about why move x works well in situation y unless countered by z, as opposed to talking about how damn awesome character A is because you grew up playing his videogames or because B is so cool, etc. 9) I'm pretty serious about my shmup playing, but other than that, I mostly play RPG's that don't allow for competition in this sense. 10) In a word, the Smash community is polarized. I see two different (but equally huge and negative) conflicts within the community right now: 10a) First is this feeling that people have to take a side with regards to preferring Melee to Brawl or vice versa. I hate this idea. I enjoy playing Melee -- and...I also enjoy playing Brawl. People need to let this drop before it creates even more hate and elitism within the community. Which leads me to.... 10b) Second, people (this especially referring to smashboards.com I suppose) need to realize that the key difference between people doesn't lie in how many tournaments they attend or organize. A big lurker (like myself) is more than capable of making relevant observations on a subject, and stating them in an intelligent manner. Not every first-timer's post is going to be made at the intellectual level of an excited 11 year-old. I have a feeling that this extends to the community at large as well -- the use of "casual" as an extremely negative term makes an assumption that isn't accurate. (My apologies for the long rant, btw) 11) My negative experiences at smashboards aside, most of the people I've actually talked to have been really great, and they are the folks that will keep me coming back (and in July when I get good wireless, will keep me playing online). Thanks for writing the article, Jam -- hopefully you find some of this helpful.

I just got The World Ends With You, and it's amazing. First of all, a Square RPG that has a completely original storyline? Awesome. Second, the combat is fiercely good, and completely original -- I find myself trying new things almost every fight. A question for the others who have it though: How much leveling is necessary? For the first three days, I killed every monster on every screen...which now in Day 4 seems crazy. I currently have all pins mastered except for the ice one, which is at level 3. Am I on pace or way ahead of the curve?

I got Professor Layton for my fiancee, and I'd never seen her completely plow through every detail of a game so quickly before -- it comes highly recommended. As I'm currently playing through The World Ends With You, I wouldn't give it to a casual gamer -- the combat is fairly involved, and it feels like a long term commitment in terms of actually seeing it through. Puzzle Quest, Brain Age (1 or 2, but not both), Kirby Canvas Curse, and Hotel Dusk all come highly recommended.

NP's picks are actually good also. Wily Wars would be a sweet piece of history to get, and Terranigma is in that group of SNES RPG's that we didn't get but should have (Tales of Phantasia, Seiken Denetsu 3, Star Ocean, Bahamut Lagoon, etc.) Speaking of which, is there any word on getting roms to work with the VC via some sort of homebrew? I ask specifically for the purpose of running games that just won't come to the States on my Wii -- I've dropped around $75 on VC games already, and will continue to do so for games that actually get released.

Congratulations, sgx! And thanks for letting everyone grab what music we haven't already bought...it's going to be a great weekend of UT2004 with all of the new tracks.

Best one was the "Don't move!" KO, where the guy actually stands there and takes it.

The first 75 of my votes are in, and I've got to get ready for counterpoint class (by making some progress on my Kefka fugue, yay!) So, robots in love....lol. Seriously though, what does everyone think of the non-OCR tracks this time around? Edit: The other funny one is "Come Over", only because the first 30 seconds or so sound like it's from a cheesy porn movie.

^That just brings me to a voting list -- is there a way to view a page of how all the semi-finalists are currently doing? I'm assuming it's a link that I just can't find. Also, Audix: If you don't win your category, it will be a travesty. Your track is by far and away the best there, and that's without an OCR bias that would have gotten my vote anyway. edit: Figured it out -- just had to click a different link to what I thought would be the same spot. Also, all semi-final voting has been done for all three categories. Good luck to all of you!

Is there a way for us (as listeners / judges, not artists) to check on the current status of events? I'm curious to know how the four of you are holding up. Also, I disliked having to choose between two artists I like in the Electronic category this time around...but good luck to both zirc and sgx!

^I love the "master" status for the GB Camera, Anso.

Failure in the MM4 video -- instead of using the Pharaoh Shot for the final boss, you should use the Ring Boomerang. It does exactly 1 line of the 28 total damage to him, and uses exactly that much ammo -- meaning that if you're perfect, it will exactly work. Other than that, it's good stuff, especially the MM7 final fight!

Thanks to everyone -- we managed to export / import the MIDI in and out of the two programs, and Finale manages the off-timings just fine that way. Thanks a bunch to everyone!

Anyone who can help me with this would be a livesaver. I am unable to get people to play two things for my recital tomorrow, and so I want to have the Garritan piano play them inbetween other sets as an interlude of sorts. However, Finale is not good at varying rhythms (dynamics it handled surprisingly well), and so I'm trying to get the Garritan sound into FL Studio. The catch is that I know next to nothing about the program, and am lost. My Garritan instruments come as .nki files, and my roomie's copy of FL Studio doesn't have the Soundfont plugin (though I'm told this shouldn't be an issue if we can do this in one sitting). Any advice for a crazed musician? I can try to tweak with Finale as best I can otherwise. Please feel free to e-mail me directly (in my profile) if you have a simple solution as I'm pressed for time (the recital is tomorrow evening!)