BardicKnowledge

With some luck, I've managed to beat the first two levels of Ikaruga's Hard Mode without dying -- and without firing a shot. I'm hoping to finish the rest of them that way also, but the remaining three levels are really damn difficult with the gun, let alone without. Also, for those curious about how I did level 2 -- you can fit exactly between the white,black,and red "boxes" as long as you don't shift horizontally while you're inside them. It makes for a much safer path that way!

Who here picked up Ikaruga HD for XBLA today? I certainly did -- the added ability to save replays is amazing, especially for Dot Eater.

^Thanks for making me feel special. But seriously, they need to release it right now -- easily the best game of its type on the system.

1) Earthbound Zero (NES) 2) Seiken Denetsu 3 (SNES) 3) Crystalis (NES) 4) Star Ocean (SNES) 5) Tales of Phantasia (SNES)

Donated $10 just now. I also bought Antigravity, but did it off of the OCR Amazon store earlier this morning before Andy posted his message. Sorry!

Does anyone else here own GripShift for XBLA? I'd describe it as a platformer more than a racer -- the midair control you have, for instance, is something that no other racing game I know of has. In any case, I'm about halfway through all of the challenges. Give the demo a shot the next time you need to kill 15 minutes. My current coolest moment: Beating "Moving Maze" on the Hard difficulty in 9.5 seconds (the game give you 9 minutes to finish the level, and the gold medal time is 30 seconds).

^How? And why would you take away from the (admittedly massive) pool of Brawl players?

Atma, can you elaborate? What's the new channel going to have?

"Next week, more stuff you foreign bastards have probably been playing for months". Brawl, anyone?

I can use the Internet channel, and even connect to Smash WFC to get the stage/replay of the day (some of the home-run videos are fun), but can't play multiplayer online because I lag too terribly bad. I'll have to wait until I leave the fraternity environment this summer, I guess...

That's pretty crazy -- but still, better the 12-year old kills a person than loses his mother while having to deal with the idea that he could have done something about it his whole life.

Is there any way to connect my 360 to my PC for media surfing if I have Vista Business? I lack the specific app MS wants me to use because the free copies of Business sucks...

^Thanks for letting us know -- what a great idea! Just joined a few minutes ago.

I shouldn't have quit the piano my junior year of high school. It would have saved me two semesters of college at least, and I'm still not as good as where I was. Also, I should have told my parents to figure out a way for me to go to Johns Hopkins for a double major in comp sci / music instead of taking the scholarship to Iowa State. I've had a good five years here, but because we have no graduate program and no funding, there's not been a lot of opportunity for me. And film score wannabes can forget it in Iowa

^That's the biggest BS I've ever seen -- if that happened to me, I'd put something through the wall.

I'll also pick it up, despite reservations. Still, we need F-Zero Wii. I'm yet to see a racing game I like better than GX...

BGC, I realized that before you posted it -- got a few more votes in for both Jill and Andy's albums... Congratulations to all!!

Well, I managed to get just over 360 votes in -- good luck to all three of you, and be sure to let us know the results when you find them out! Edit: Cyrus is really #2? I thought Sean Cox's piece in the Christian genre was most deserving after the OCR crowd. Also, I love the dulcimer in "People and Private Music". Though by far the funniest was the piece Jill warned me about earlier today -- the chipmunk rap song by "Invincible" -- a dumb artist name for someone who sounds like that.

Beatdrop, will it be able to interface with a computer so that ideas we have while we're out can be transferred to our other programs (not to mention uploading projects to the net for other people to laugh at)? Still, this looks amazing, and I'm probably going to get it when it comes to the States (I'm told that it's been announced).

Anyone have an opinion on Ninja Gaiden yet? I want to hear an actual person's opinion before I go spend precious money...

^Agreed -- hopefully that's fixed in the next installment...

Alright, I added a bunch of people into my Smash game. My number is registered online with Drack's database, but to save people time, it's 0044-2503-3545. I'm going to hop on IRC and check to see if my internet actually does work. Hope to see some of you soon!

This does look good -- if they deliver the quality of Rush to the (comparative) graphical powerhouse of the consoles, that'd be awesome. I wouldn't mind a few 3-d segments around long downward falls or loops even, as long as the core gameplay was 2-d goodness.

Below is Atma's stage-ban list. I don't agree with all of them (specifically Luigi's Mansion, Onett, and Brinstar Melee) but it's well thought out, and I understand the reasoning behind the decisions. In any case...here's the list! Btw, I'd love to participate but I don't think I'm able to -- I can't play over WFC from my fraternity house for some reason. I can connect to get the stage of the day (which usually sucks) and play spectator mode, but I can't actually play online yet. Until I get that fixed, I don't want to be a no-show for a tourney. EDIT: I forgot -- the fish _is_ a fag.

That's not the problem, but thanks for suggesting a solution. I can force a default font that fixes the issue that way -- when I check "Allow sites to choose a font for me", then it all goes back to italics.