G_D

Wow. I don't know if any of you care a lick about sales data, but I find this absolutely astonishing: I was just reading last week's hardware sales data from Japan, and the DS has almost outsold the GBA there. Next week it will certainly overtake it. 6,582,991(DSPhat) + 8,690,758(DSLite) = 15,273,749 8,823,554(GBA) + 5,927,930(GBSP) + 571,128(GBM) = 15,322,612 Amazing.

I still have at least half of the links from the old Freeware thread, if anyone is interested. It would take awhile to post them all, though, since there are almost two hundred.

It's Nintendo. They don't do calendars.

An overabundance of weddings.

A lot of people at my school hate items. I'm fine either way, but I think that items add a lot of fun to the game.

Fixed. They totally disappointed with PoR. They developed an incredibly awesome CGI style, then simply didn't use it. Oh well, I've always known that Intelligent Systems was lazy with the FE series (they still rock, though).

Meh, around here you have to book a reception place 12 months ahead. That's pretty much the limiter.

Eh? Where I'm at 12-18 months is pretty standard. It's very difficult to even plan a wedding (a traditional one at least) in less than 12 months.

congrats, and I'll be joining you in a few short months...

Some cool stuff from http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=42752&highlight=Mario: And Optimus Prime (there's a video and more pictures here): I think that's all I got for now.

This could take awhile. Here are some from the I, Mario project (there are better, but these two were easiest to find): And a couple more of Samus from DeviantArt:

Obviously you didn't catch the link in my edit.

For all of you thinking that they will release this game before Q4, you're on crack. Remember that this game was announced at E3 2006 (aka like 8 months ago), and the director (I don't remember his name) had only even found out about the game half a year before that*. There is no way they will get it done in less than a year and a half. *I am going off of memory, but I believe this is correct. EDIT: Well, I was a little off, but they didn't start development until late 2005 (THIS IS A LINK READ IT!). Still, even 2 years seems like a really short time for a game like this.

Heh, I forgot they even had those.

Dang, I can't keep them straight. I meant Tales of the Tempest. Tempest, Tempest, Tempest, not Eternia, you dolt...

Seeing as how I wasn't at all excited about DKR before, and now I'm hearing a lot of people say 'Meh' about it, I think I won't be getting this game. On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know of even the slightest rumor of plans to bring Tales of Eternia to the US?

Bah, he just wants his foot in the door for when Second Life takes over First Life. Then when the earth goes virtual, Sweden will already be in control. I, for one, welcome our new virtual Swedish overlords.

Well, at least it wouldn't be $600 if Nintendo made it

I have a few issues with the new forums. They seem like little things, but they all annoy the crap outta me. The first is that embedded URLs not only have no indication, but to my knowledge can't be formatted (i.e. you can't manually underline them). This really bugs me, as I use links a lot. The second is that when you type a word, highlight it and add a URL to it, once you start typing again it automatically includes everything following in the URL. You have to either leave a space (which I always forget to do) or write out your entire sentence before going back to add URLs. The other two, which I'm sure have been mentioned plenty of times, are the ten-character limit (which is small, so I can deal with it), and the four-picture limit. This would be ok if it didn't include all of the Smilies...seriously, what's up with that? Are these only annoyances to me? And is there a workaround for any of them?

"I wanna cast Magic Missle! I cast Magic Missle on the Darkness!" Ok, the critiques (hey, you asked for it). First, the lighting is a really big issue. You almost might as well have done an audio clip. But as you asked, I'll skip that. The next issue that I have is it is a little verbose, and moves rather slow. I would've liked the conversations to flow a little more naturally, with less empty space. I was also expecting the video to get more interesting when the girl came over, but that was unceremoniously skipped . The car crash audio was really bad; I'm sure you could find something better on a free sound-effects site if you just did a quick google search. I really like the concept, but there was a lot to this video that made it not enjoyable for me. I'm looking forward to your next, because I think you have potential, but you need a lot of polish. That being said, my favorite scene was the credits. Artistic and slightly abstract holds my interest more than talk about Ego and Superego. EDIT: Better car crash effect. It's only slightly better, but it was also only a 5-minute search. Next time, try SingingFish.com for your SF needs.

A monthly competition would likely break down into 2 weeks for writing and 1 week for voting. I don't believe there is any chance we could sustain that. We have yet to see a !00% turnout for voting, even when given three weeks. Not to mention what happens when those two weeks for writing fall at critical times (aka exams, holidays, etc). I just don't see how we could keep up with a comp every month. We can try if you really want.

In response to Smoke: The patent was applied for in 2001. It was received in June 2006. Also, I'm not soon going back on my prior decision that cellphones and video games don't mix.

Well, I think the problem for some people (myself included) is that there isn't enough time to enter more than one category at a time. This would help that. I would propose doing a competition every two months (i.e. 2 comps per category per year). Also, here are the sig badges for the winners. Thanks to Manic Cinq for making these!

I moved your story to the Writer's Thread, epinephrin. Hope you don't mind. Also, the RESULTS ARE IN! Short Story: First place --> Literary Technique by Wacky Runner-up --> The Blue-Tinged Angel by Old Man Time Poetry: First place --> "Of Starry Visions" by Zeality Runner-up --> "Untitled" by Leon K Congratulations guys, and good job to everyone who entered. This was an excellent competition. We'll get the winners' sig badges out soon for you. I'll also be adding your work to the list in the Writer's Thread, provided that you posted a link. If you didn't have a linked work but still would like to be in the list, just provide a link somehow, and I'll put it up. Here are some critiques by Zeality: One more thing before I'm done today. How would you guys feel about splitting the competitions? I'm proposing having separate poetry/short story/freeform competitions so that we can focus on a single type of writing. I know that I personally would like this because I never have time to do both a short story and a poem, and in the last three competitions we've had a total of three freeform pieces. If this were to happen, I'd probably hold them a little more often. Please post your thoughts on this, and again, congratulations to the winners of the Winter Writing Competition!

Heh, I have the votes tallied, but forgot who I voted for. I wrote it down on my computer before I counted votes so that I wouldn't be influenced, but I don't have access to my computer until tomorrow night late. I will post the results tomorrow night. Sorry about the delay.