Drack

When you're a kid, you have huge amounts of time and patience, since you don't see yourself as having other things to do than play your (probably limited) game collection. I beat a lot of hard NES games as a kid. Never beat Marble Madness though, as you had to be perfect all the way through, merely passing the beginning stages is a sure way to lose on the later ones (leftover time carries over).

Companies sometimes reuse their own music in games of different series. Nintendo is guilty Super Mario Bros. World 3 Map and Legend of Zelda's File Select and Great Fairy Fountain music Capcom is guilty - My friend spotted this when I introduced him to Street Fighter II after he somehow avoided it for all these years! Street Fighter II Character Select and of all things,

Well, if you get a stick with good switches and a good board, and you don't mind American-style knockoff parts, the X-arcade is certainly a durable piece of equipment. Edit to avoid double post: You can import a panel from Japan! Check out Akihabarashop (worldwide shipping). They're offering a 2-player panel, Sega button layout, 100% Seimitsu parts. All you need to do is connect it to a board. The panel is $150 equivalent in yen. To connect it to a board, you can buy an assembled Cthulhu board, no soldering required (It uses screw terminals), or you could take the board out of some $20 logitech pad, as long as it's common ground, and solder it to that.

The stick you linked is pretty good. Here's what you should know about it. -Gear advertised for PS3 will usually work on PCs, and most of it works without any drivers, so it will be fine for a mame cab. Zero hassle and no software-level lag. Gear for 360 will work with Microsoft's drivers. All the joysticks I tried with my PC were simple plug and play. -Hori sticks don't have hardware lag either. I haven't heard cases of bad boards with them. They use the similar boards in all their joysticks, so that's one area definitely not skimped on -A more expensive but higher quality alternative are Hori's "Real Arcade Pro" sticks ... However, they probably won't fit your requirements because their cases are so huge! The stick you linked has a much more compact design, which some people like but others think doesn't have enough space to rest your wrists while playing. Not an issue if you play your cab standing up. -Another alternative is Mad Catz. Their Tournament Edition sticks use true Sanwa parts, but there have been reported problems with their PS3 sticks working on PCs with certain USB chipsets. It's one of the exceptions to what I said above about most PS3 gear working well with Windows. However, even if this problem affects your PC, a $9 pci card will give you USB ports with the "right" chipset for mad catz PS3 sticks. More info (1) (2) .. Or you could just get their Xbox 360 sticks instead. -That particular joystick you linked uses Hori's own brand for the buttons and the stick, which is an imitation of Sanwa's stuff. It's a knockoff, but it's a decent knockoff. Now, I always use true Sanwa (or Seimitsu) parts, but consider the cost. A true Sanwa joystick + 8 action buttons would be $52 alone, more than the entire stick you linked costs (and double it for two players!). -(CORRECTION) Unlike Hori's Real Arcade Pro line, Hori's Fighting Sticks don't use quick disconnects to connect the buttons to the board. This means that it's not easy to mod true Sanwa or Seimitsu parts into it if you're not satisfied with Hori's own parts. -The stick used here is a Japanese-style joystick. These use square restrictor gates, round tops, and usually low-tension springs for quick easy motions. For comparison, American-style joysticks use circular gates, bat-shaped tops, and heavy springs requiring a bit more force to move around. It's a matter of preference, but most enthusiasts (myself included) like the Japanese sticks a lot better. -The button layout Hori uses is the one Sega used in their old arcade machines, commonly referred to as the "Astro City" or "Blast City" layout. It's the most comfortable layout for me, but it's all personal preference as to which one fits you best. -For further information, I recommend registering for the Shoryuken.com forums, to check out their Trading Outlet (registration required) and Tech Talk forums. There's a huge wealth of information there concerning joysticks. Also, Slagcoin, which I linked earlier, has just about everything there is to know about arcade controls neatly organized. Don't dismiss the idea of having sticks custom-built. SRK is crawling with stick builders who would love to help out with a project like yours.

X-Arcade joysticks have a number of problems you should be aware of. -X-Arcade uses Happ knockoffs for the joystick and buttons (Happ is the main producer of parts for American arcades). This means you can mod them with real Happ parts, but there's no easy way to fit Sanwa or Seimitsu parts into their hardware. You're limited to the low quality buttons and stick it comes with, or you can at best upgrade to the parts used in American arcades, which frankly aren't nearly as good as those in Japanese arcades in just about everyone's opinion. -Put your hands on your desk and air-joystick a bit. See how your fingertips over your air-buttons don't form a straight line with wide spaces between them? The button layout X-Arcade uses, widely spaced buttons in a square grid, is uncomfortable and unnatural to the human hand. It'll give you cramps. -The microswitches in the joystick (these get pressed to send what direction you are pressing) are often inconsistent. I've seen a couple X-Arcade sticks hit a switch when you're not even touching the stick, or miss the switch if you push it in a certain way. -Some of the PCBs (printed circuit boards) X-Arcade uses in their sticks have a bit of lag, meaning the signals of your motions and buttons will be sent some milliseconds later than they happened. You're right about one thing though. For a 2-player MAME cabinet, X-Arcade is the easiest and most convenient solution. Most of the 2-player panels I've seen with sanwa or seimitsu parts are custom-made. Don't be afraid to commission one (There are MANY stick builders at shoryuken.com forums who would gladly take your order), but be aware that a 2-player panel with quality parts will easily cost about $160 in materials alone, add labor shipping and a little profit, and $200 is about the cheapest you'll ever see for a quality 2-player panel.

The one thing your plan needs is a better control scheme. Pads? X-Arcade? You need to read up on joysticks. If you want a top quality experience, don't skimp on the input. Get something with Sanwa/Seimitsu parts and a comfortable button layout (I like the Sega "Astro City" layout, personally). If you don't want to build a stick, you can buy sticks with Sanwa parts from Hori or Mad Catz. Or you can check the shoryuken.com forums for custom builds.

So console gamers don't like games?

Finally a meetup in Atlanta, and no one's showing any interest? Shame. There must not be much of an OCR presence around here.

I'll be playing the Japanese Soul Silver when it hits. Having spent six weeks of this summer in Japan, my skill in the language has dramatically improved, so I don't think that will be an issue, considering how easy it is to play Platinum in Japanese now (only significant stumbling block is the move names). So I'll have info straight outta the game very close to the Japanese release. By the way, the part of the commercial that referenced Arceus, here's a rough translation The movie is coming out this summer, and the games are coming out in the fall (the commercial made a big deal about how that they're now taking preorders, though), so my guess is that you HAVE to trade Arceus from D/P/P to get it into HG/SS unless they do more promos after the launch.

This game is awesome. Played it in arcades months ago, played some more the past week. Highly recommended, especially for those who like Guilty Gear. Want some advanced strategy? Try Dustloop. Me, I play Noel and Nu, thinking of picking up Taokaka.

Well, a remix on DBB would essentially be a midi file, but I'm all for more music being available for the games. Just added loads of songs to my flashcart'd DBB DX (via BDX file). Among them... Native Faith from Touhou 10 (And I got an 87% on Master difficulty! .. on bass) Pollyanna (Ness's House) from Earthbound Lots of songs from anime... It even has karaoke features if you're into that. Truly a gem lost to the non-Japanese population (though be prepared to read kana if you want to karaoke with the built in songs). Glad I got the opportunity to travel to Japan this summer, or I probably would have never heard of this game.

I just came across this Japan-only gem. It's a rhythm game by Nintendo, but it's very different from how other rhythm games work. As a clarinetist, I feel like Band Bros approximates playing an instrument much closer than any other rhythm game I've played. It's MIDI based, and (on the highest difficulty) you have 2 octaves of the chromatic scale playable depending on what buttons you press. But what REALLY sets it apart is the editor. You can make your own songs within the game, save them, share them online using wifi, and download available songs others have uploaded. If you use a flashcart or other means for save editing, there are tools available to import midis into the game. Take a look at what some people have done with songs like . Amazing.

Yeah, EVs, Natures, IVs. Really annoying and time consuming. I can see arguments for and against including the system altogether. +Natures are decent: Is my Lucario Jolly (Higher speed, but unboosted attack) or Adamant (bootested attack, unboosted speed)? Or did I pull a fast one and train a special-attack based lucario with a Modest (boosted special attack) nature because everyone expects a physical attacker? Natures are probably the best thign to keep as it has a significant impact (+/- 10%) on stats, doesn't require training, and they're pretty easy to breed for. +IVs are stupid. They are annoying and most of the time you want all of them maxed (exception being gyro ball bronzong who benefits from low speed). They're hard to breed for and you can't change them later like EVs. I think they're a terrible idea. The only thing they're good for is determining Hidden Power type, and just one random number would be sufficient for that. +EVs allow further customization but are a pain in the ass to train, especially if you fuck up and need the stupid berries to remove unwanted EVs. IMO, this whole problem would be solved if there were a "No nature/IV/EV" mode. Casuals could use it without having to worry about this garbage and the super serious competitive types would just use the regular mode and customize to their hearts content. By the way, I lost my Diamond save (but have been building up - slowly - a team in platinum. Already post hall of fame now) so I don't have that team I built before, and no record other than what I remember. I do now know its greatest weakness though - If the opponent leads with someone with taunt (like the popular Azelf with stealth rock // taunt // psychic // explosion @ focus sash) my old team would be destroyed. It relied on passing speed boosts to slow but massive stat'd pokemon like rhyperior using a protect // baton pass // substitute ninjask lead. If you used a taunt (or a choice+trick) lead, you probably could have won against my team. Also, blissey would have completely countered my choice specs salamence. Also, to respond to the rest of your post .. No one should fault you for EV training or using UU/NU/BL. That's just plain silly. There's nothing unfair about it.

Finally, a meetup in Atlanta! Count me in. Being a Georgia Tech student, how could I pass up this opportunity?

I beat that game back in the day! The difficulty is actually pretty high towards the end .. damn yellow spikes! (White spikes just damage you; yellow spikes were instant death!)

One of my best pics Taken in Atlanta. Turned off auto white balance because my camera wanted to take all the yellow hue out. My only regret is that I didn't have a tripod handy and it's a little blurred because of shaky hands. If it doesn't show up, see it here

If you want a very easy program to use, and cheap too ($40 with free demo) I have had good experience with Noteworthy Composer. Be aware, though, that it's MIDI only (in the strictest sense - any sounds you want it to play must conform to General MIDI) so the best sounds will be from soundfonts.

One of the problems here is that everyone seems to have a different issue and a different way to get around it. JACK looks simple but is really quite complex to work with, which is why a lot of apps that play sounds don't even bother with JACK and just use ALSA or OSS (web browsers, I'm looking at you). Would you believe that the version of Audacious in Debian had JACK support turned off? I had to compile it from source to get it to use my good sound card instead of my crappy one. If you really want to run Mac OSX on generic hardware, google for "osx86" and "insanelymac" .. however, these approaches are highly illegal, as Mac is a commercial OS, just like windows piracy. I can't in good conscience recommend it. Also, chances are it has poor hardware compatibility, as all drivers for non-Apple stuff had to be written from scratch. However, I will say that if you buy a Mac, you won't be disappointed by the audio software (and even hardware) available for it. I tested my Audiofire 4 in a Mac and it worked perfectly. Cubase has a Mac port, and Apple releases their own Logic software suite as well. Expensive, but it's a DAMN good audio production environment, and you can use VSTs too. For your specific problem, try posting in forums for the software you're using, reading documentation, etc. If nothing works, PM me in detail and I'll see if I can duplicate the bug on my machine.

I considered running CentOS or Fedora on my desktop for the purpose of testing Planet CCRMA. I'm more of a Debian user though, and I quickly tired of CentOS's RHEL roots, so I only ran it for a while. Planet CCRMA is a fantastic repository, though, and even has somewhat obscure/beta things in there like firewire audio drivers (ffado+jack+realtime is very difficult to set up perperly on a Debian system, and that was why I was looking for alternatives). If you're comfortable with CentOS and all the things it brings (such as yum), Planet CCRMA is a great source for audio. Me? I just compile from source everything that needs to use my Audiofire 4 instead of the crappy onboard ALSA-compatible "Intel HD audio." This means I run a custom kernel, JACK, ffado, audacious, lmms, etc. Takes quite a while and skill to set up, and I can't use a package manager to update it. Yes, it's inconvenient for me instead of using a repos like Planet CCRMA. But I can't live without aptitude. Once you use the best package manager, anything else just doesn't live up to expectations. And *buntu freezes on my hardware due to the kernel version they use, so Debian it is for me.

This non-story about this VERY old TF2 map got posted on Kotaku as well. What's the big deal about it? Yeah, it's loosely Mario Kart themed. Yeah, it has loads of 4chan references and one of the BGMs is an OCRemix. But is this newsworthy?

I'm staying with my Lite. It does everything I want it to, and I have other gadgets that do the DSi's stuff better.

These games run at 60 frames per second. One frame is 1/60th of a second. If something has a one-frame input window, it means that the button must be pressed on that 1/60th of a second, not before, not after.

Just so you know, FRCs in Guilty Gear have 2-frame input windows, and all good Guilty Gear players can reliably hit FRCs. I can hit my FRCs about 60-70% of the time. A few charcaters have FRCs that are only useful on one of those 2 frames, so they're basically one-frame windows. And yes, people hit those 1-frame windows in tournaments. It's not so outlandish as you may think.

And you know what's really stupid? Fei Long has an infinite (requiring 1-frame links) on Abel and Seth. Haha.

If you and your friends are hardcore gamers and you have 2 classic controllers... Guilty Gear XX Accent Core