Moseph

Great news. I hope this sets a precedent for Nintendo's future games.

I was quite shocked to find that the velocity editing in Sonar 6 was inferior to that of Reason 3.0, despite the fact that almost everything else about the note editing is better.

I've pretty much given up on playing new games until I have the money to buy a desktop to replace/supplement my laptop. And that's not gonna be any time soon. It's not so bad, though, because there are plenty of older games I still haven't played. At the rate I'm going, I figure I'll probably be playing Bioshock in about 5 years.

They're also different in Lost Levels.

Call me crazy, but I kind of like the physics in the original Super Mario Bros/Lost Levels. It's floaty and imprecise, sure, but the way the momentum works is just so much fun -- on levels you're really familiar with, you can just hold down the run button, hold down D-pad right, jump in the appropriate places, make tiny course adjustments with D-pad left, and just breeze effortlessly through the level. And FYI I'm more familiar with the original than with Mario 3 and SMW, so that could be why I like it so much.

..... fixed

If this is indeed a sequel and not a port/update, it may be enough to finally get me to buy a DS.

Pursuing the line of reasoning that says companies with close relationships to Nintendo are more likely ... It's possible we'll see a Hudson Soft character -- probably would be Bomberman. Hudson's in charge of the Mario Party Games, so the background is there. Or Namco. They did stuff with Star Fox and the Mario Kart arcade game -- which had Pac-Man as a playable character. I think he'd be the most likely Namco character, although I can't imagine his special moves being very interesting. Personally, I want to see classic Mega Man. Although I'd settle for Chun-Li, too. It would be fun to see a character from a traditional fighting game in SSB.

Actually, I've never understood why people have been saying third-party characters won't be involved in the story. The whole SSB universe is basically one great big parody (as the Metal Gear codec clips have demonstrated) -- any character can be made to fit very easily. I also can't see why the mere fact of being third-party would make a difference. If the characters' original companies had some sort of problem with what Nintendo was doing with the characters in SSB, they wouldn't have licensed the characters to Nintendo in the first place.

I always preferred playing Sonic Adventure 2 with the Japanese voices. Presumably the existence of Sonic in Brawl means we can also look forward to some Sonic items ... shields, perhaps?

ZOMGWTFSONIC!!!1 That's all I have to say.

I'm using an M-Audio Radium 49. It's a very basic 49-key MIDI controller with 8 faders, 8 potentiometers, and pitch bend/mod wheels. My high B-flat key gets stuck occasionally and the drivers insist on continually reinstalling themselves if I plug it in through a USB hub, but other than that, I haven't had any problems with it. I think I got it for around $120, although it may be cheaper now. Actually, checking M-Audio's website, it looks like my model has been replaced by the Oxygen 49. Also, the Keystation 49e is similar but without the faders and potentiometers.

What I hate is when I buy a used game that doesn't have the manual and then discover that, oops, I need the manual to run it properly. Google-fu can usually resolve this, but license transfers would be so much simpler if original licensees kept track of their stuff. It would also be nice if companies would print on the CDs "Manual needed for copy protection" so I'd at least know ahead of time and could consider not buying it. I guess that's what I get for shopping at thrift stores and pawn shops.

Mario Tennis YES -- My initial impression of this game was "Wow! This is a whole lot better than the Virtual Boy Mario's Tennis!" This is up there with Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart as one of the best multi-player experiences on the N64. Curse of Monkey Island YES -- If you've never played this, you absolutely need to. In my opinion, it surpasses the greatness of even the original Secret of Monkey Island. Great 2D graphics (which, sadly, were abandoned in the final installment of the series), great voice acting, great Lucas Arts humor, Murray the Demonic Talking Skull, and insult-based sword fighting ("You're as repulsive as a monkey in a negligee!"). It's all there, and it's all done extremely well. Lemmings YES -- Guide the oblivious Lemmings through bizarre and hostile landscapes while killing as few as possible. Some stages are laughably easy, many are fist-through-the-screen difficult, but none are boring. Like the original Tetris, this is one of those classic puzzle games which is still better than most of what's on the market today. Pilotwings 64 NO -- Like Wave Race 64, this was an impressive release-time demonstration of what the N64 could do. For me, the biggest draw was the gigantic and detailed landscapes. Now that that sort of thing is much more common in video games, I can't justify listing Pilotwings as a must-have. (Same reason I didn't nominate Midtown Madness for the PC). Metroid Fusion YES (borderline) -- I haven't played Zero Mission so I can't compare the two, but Fusion is a good example of what an action/exploration game should be. My YES is borderline because of the annoying computer that tells you what to do all the time. Because of that stinkin' help system, purists of the genre should go with a GBA Castlevania game -- everyone else (and, yeah, probably even purists) will have a blast.

I forgot to mention -- when you see a C where the time signature should be, it means 4/4. When the C has a vertical line through it, it means 2/2. (These two instances are known as common time and cut time, respectively.)

I don't know how iPods work, but I have a Toshiba Gigabeat which doesn't show up as a USB drive if it's connected through the cradle, but does show up as a drive if it's connected without the cradle.

With time signatures, the top number refers to the number of beats in every measure, and the bottom number refers to the length of each beat (with some exceptions, which I'll mention below***). For the bottom numbers, 2 = half note and 4 = quarter note. For example, if you have the time signature 2 4 (which I will write as 2/4 for convenience), it means that there are 2 beats per measure, and each beat has the length of a quarter note. 3/4 means 3 beats per measure, and each beat has the length of a quarter note. 2/2 means 2 beats per measure, and each beat has the length of a half note. And so on. ***exceptions: The time signatures 3/8, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 are different. It looks like all of these indicate an eighth-note beat, but that's not the case. For these, the beat is actually the length of a dotted quarter note. (3/8 = 1 dotted-quarter-note beat per measure, 6/8 = 2 dotted-quarter-note beats per measure, 9/8 = 3 dotted-quarter-note beats per measure, 12/8 = 4 dotted-quarter-note beats per measure). It's kind of confusing, but it's done this way because there's no number that can be used on the bottom to represent a dotted note. If it doesn't make sense, don't worry too much about it. Just count the beat like it looks like it ought to be counted -- with, say, 6/8 meaning 6 eighth-note beats -- and it should become fairly obvious where the actual beat is. ---------------- For practicing with a metronome, you usually want to start learning the piece with the metronome set at a much lower tempo than whatever the piece calls for. When you can play so that all your beats line up with the metronome's clicks, you increase the metronome's tempo and gradually work up to the desired tempo.

Wikipedia to the rescue! The Wiki page for Adobe Flash mentions a couple of Flash creation utilities including KToon (free) and SWiSH Max (shareware). Dunno if they're any good. It's also possible to do 2D animation in Blender, but it's a little inconvenient.

Bah, no voting for me on this round either.

You could try loading the sample into the NN-XT or NN-19 and setting the release in the amplitude envelope as high as it will go. At least for long-ish short samples, that results in a sample that doesn't need to be held, but I don't know how it will work for something really long.

If they follow tradition, the Great Fox will be a stage. Which would make a final smash that involved it rather interesting.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance YES -- The story may be meh, but it could have no story and still be a good game. The combat system combines all of the strong points of Fire Emblem -style strategy games and traditional RPGs, creating something as good as or better than either. The number of different character-types you can put together gives the game a very customized feel. Also, good graphics and music for a GBA game.

It was post- Diddy Kong Racing -- and also a Game Boy Color game -- but Conker's Pocket Tales is another game to check out if you want to see just how much Rare changed the character for BFD.

Wave Race 64 NO -- Impressive water for a first-gen N64 game, and a good game overall, but just not special enough to be a must-have. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind YES -- The only way this could conceivably not be a YES is if there was a one-game-per-series rule and Oblivion was chosen instead of it. Huge, open-ended game world, lots of stuff to do, tons of user mods, etc, etc. Fire Emblem YES -- Simply the best turn-based strategy game on GBA. Highly recommended. Seeing Wave Race up for voting reminds me of my favorite racing game ever... ADDITIONAL NOMINATION N64 -- Beetle Adventure Racing

This might be of interest. The introduction is overly academic, but the article deals with how video games substitute simpler ideas for more complicated real-life ideas (for example, experience points simplify the real-world acquisition of knowledge) and it argues that the basic substitutions that games make haven't changed in about 20 years even though current hardware is capable of much more complicated/realistic substitutions. Or something like that. It's been a while since I read it.