Thylacine

There was a lot of conversation and interest about Second Life at my university. A guy was trying to make it playable for blind people (not sure how it'd work, but cool idea), and it was seen as a vehicle for online marketing in the business school. Not sure how much of a return you'd get on that. I tried it, ended up in a foreign language district, and could think of nothing I wanted to do in my second life that I didn't want to do more in my first (except visit a beach and a jungle, and the jungle crashed my weak computer). It was also a little creepy talking to people whom I shared no interest with. It's hard to lurk there without being creepy. I never thought to look for "video game" settings, but probably wouldn't like talking with people there, either. The more private rooms seemed to only have 5 people in them anyway.

I haven't bought a game in a while (My parents need gift ideas and I enjoy having money), so I have yet to see these. Really, since I keep my games in the cases, I'd rather have what we have now. They'll be finding these cases next to my corpse in 30 years, if I have a say in the matter. Or, you know, longer. Since I'd like to live a while past retirement age and catch up on my ridiculous backlog. And it'd be awesome if my cases were intact and such. So me tossing them in a dumpster shouldn't be an immediate concern. A way to effectively process these when I do kick off, though, I would support.

It sounded like the sore throat he had in his first review on the site. I'm not calling conspiracy on this. If it WAS someone doing a Yahtzee impersonation, they did a good enough job for people to think it was just new equipment (another possibility - he's had the thing for at least two years now and probably needed to get a new one regardless due to its frequent use). It's Yahtzee's writing style, and it felt more like a classic episode than some of the recent ones. He gradually slipped into other reading habits and this feels more true to form. The past week, he could have looked back to how he originally did the reviews (talked softer and faster, used clever turns of phrases, ended trains of thought abruptly) and attempted to go back to the reading style that gained him the massive popularity in the first place. I really enjoyed this one. Sorry to hear other people didn't so much.

We have had threads like this before, but I don't mind mentioning it again. Majora's Mask, when you play the Song of Healing at the Goron warrior Darmani's grave. You see the townsfolk cheering for him, and he starts crying because he has to leave all these other Gorons who love him and depended on him. I think it's one of the few games that portrayed death and loss in a competent way (others being mentioned in this thread).

When I was first learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, I remember practicing and finding it was really impractical to use paper. I had limited desk space and I needed to cover the correct answers while I practiced. Then I remembered Pictochat had Hiragana/Katakana keyboards, and I could flip between those and English. It was primitive, but it was the first time that thing was actively useful for me. It was an excellent practice tool. Not quite what you had in mind, I'm sure, but if you're just starting out, it's a nice first step. I've wanted to try My Chinese Coach, but I want to buy a physical copy rather than pre-order/online order. The less I'm on the grid about my gaming purchase habits, the better.

They did this for Apollo Justice, too. You got to play through the first portion of the first trial. This looks like an awesome game! It's a slightly different format than the Phoenix Wright/Apollo Justice games, but if you've never tried this before, it's worth a go.

I play as a dude and I'm secretly gay, so your logic is flawed.Playing as a girl just feels weird to me unless it's a specific girl, like Lara Croft or Joanna Dark. In those cases, you're SUPPOSED to be a female and you're playing out a specific story. But if it's a character that's supposed to be an extension of one's self, then I'm always male. I don't think poorly on it. The guys who play as females do it for reasons that make perfect sense - either visual interest, or simply more admiration for a female character who doesn't adhere to stereotypes. It'd be like faulting a guy for always hanging out with a girlfriend because he "only likes doing things with girls." If I ever did play WoW, I always thought I would play a Tauren female. That's more because I had come up with a cow character that I had never had opportunity to play as before (given the sad lack of player-run cows in MMOs nowadays). I'd specifically write a backstory where I'm married, though, to hopefully prevent guys (playing as guys, assumedly) from hitting on me. This is the only situation I could see myself "cross-gaming." So, yeah, dudes for me. Take that as you will.

I was personally creeped out that she got the Cali one spot-on (I'm from around there and people from there have that manner of speaking), and the southern one... well, anyone can do that, I suppose. Even the ones that weren't totally right illustrate the point.

Have you seen this video before? (Amy Walker, if you're wary of clicking strange Youtube links.) Old, yes, but it makes a good point: there is ALWAYS an accent. There is no "plain" English, so going with the most likely thing (yes, we got our fill of it in Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's still the best choice we have) is the safest choice. Anything else would sound considerably stranger, even "no accent" from the Midwest U.S.

Okay, so they have a love plot that looks decent, the Prince displaying agility, and it looks like they aren't catering to the fanbase too heavily/lightly. Considering Prince of Persia isn't a child of "movie plot regurgitation" that has resulted in 80% of our VG franchises (Castlevania, Metroid, Donkey Kong - I can go on, and you know I can go on), AND considering we have a real actor, director, and company all at the same time, we MIGHT have a video game movie that doesn't suck. One that could potentially turn into the next trilogy a la PotC. Fingers crossed, everyone.

FF6 does have great background music for lots of random stuff. It's probably why, years later, the game still sticks with me. The Empire theme always makes me think of fire and post-destruction (for obvious reasons). I've fortunately never had need for it personally, but if I were ever in a situation where I or my loved ones/treasured things weren't threatened directly, I'm sure the image would be invoked. Whenever I learn something new, I always get this strange feeling that I'm in a video game tutorial. Oddly enough, I never felt it in school.

The song "I'll Be The One" by the Backstreet Boys reminds me of the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Nintendo had this whole campaign behind Majora's Mask, and it revolved around "The One" stopping the moon from falling, and the song came out around that time, too. The early autumn (i.e. this time of year) reminds me of the game, as well. Also, if I'm driving (or riding) through the mountains and it's raining heavily, it reminds me of Advance Wars. When I was playing the training level concerning weather conditions, it was when I was in the car and it was misty and stormy all around us. For the musically-inclined among us (I'm sure there's one or two), when it's freezing cold, I think of either the overworld music for 600 A.D. in Chrono Trigger or the Frozen Forest (Ice Country) music from Secret of Mana. Somehow, it makes walking in really uncomfortable temperatures a little bit more epic. It'd be cool if I could have actually listened to songs like that during my icy winter school days. Remix ideas, hint hint.

This.I'm a little nervous for who's next. And MJ is officially "killed" now, whereas Swayze (Like Farrah Fawcett) had a clock on him for a good while now. There's no way this detracts from someone that big who died that way.

I seem to enjoy the reviews more when I'm familiar with the game being discussed. Although I probably would have enjoyed the fake Irish accent regardless.

Interesting. A Hollywood court case I would have liked to hear about for a change. Good to know. Thank you.

Yeah, the name thing has been throwing me off, too. I knew M. Night was directing Avatar (Airbender version), then I heard James Cameron was directing it and there was all of a sudden a great excitement for it. It was confusing until I saw the E3 conference and realized he was talking about something completely different from Airbending when he mentioned "vehicles." If the E3 conference is to be believed, the video game for this movie is being developed concurrently with the movie itself so it won't suck like 99% of other movie-license games (Goldeneye manages to snag the 1%, as always). Either there's a good marketing department at work or people are looking forward to Cameron doing something really awesome. --- As for the Airbender version, M. Night Shyamalan is good when his talents are kept in check. There are areas where M. Night excels as a director (treating children as "young people," for example; Spielberg is the only one I recall doing a better job at this) and places where he sucks pretty hard (suspense is a biggie; he got lucky in Sixth Sense and Signs and has wrecked later movies with poorly-done moments of "tension" that are a little boring). I think he could make a great kid's film, significantly better than what's coming out now. Since the Fire Nation is a very concrete "bad guy," the issues we've been seeing in other Shyamalan films will hopefully be less troublesome.

I recently left a group of friends (graduation does that) who would play Rock Band ritualistically once a week for the entire day. Whenever I listen to music now, I imagine playing the drums or singing it in Rock Band. Every now and then, guitar will creep in. It even happens on songs that would likely never be suitable in Rock Band, like piano-based stuff from The Fray or whatever happens to be on the radio with unusual instruments. I see the visualizations of the song.

I think Scooby Doo's popularity was more about the risque nature of the show while still remaining kid-friendly. After all, it's accepted that Shaggy (and, to a lesser extent, Scooby) was a champion stoner, Daphne and Fred had sex in the haunted mansions, and Velma...Well, SOMEONE had to solve the mysteries! But there's a very adult element behind the silliness of watching Shaggy and Scooby fleeing in terror from a monster, knowing full well they could avoid harm because they ran just fast enough. Walt Disney once lamented that amusement parks weren't fun because, among other things, "there's nothing for Daddy." The popular cartoons of yesteryear have a mass appeal, just naughty enough for adults to get, yet tame enough for the kids not to get the adult stuff. All parties walk away satisfied. Now, factor in a few years of market segmentation, parents protesting violence exposure to kids, and whatever else nonsense you wish to toss in that separates Gen X from Gen Y, and we don't have shows that grow up quite as well. Spongebob Squarepants, I have to credit, manages to be clever enough where I (and a handful of my friends) can laugh at jokes even though I'm much older than who it's being marketed towards. I haven't had the pleasure of watching Flapjack, but I've heard from both this post and others that it's good. I don't doubt that it has a similar appeal. ...So yeah, that's why Scooby Doo is still popular whereas other cartoons have fallen by the wayside. I haven't seen Ren and Stimpy on in reruns. Have you?

Yeah, I know. I've seen Coca-Cola advertised in the Cowboy Bebop movie, and it fits rather nicely with the scene. It was very organically done in that one, whereas in something like Spongebob or Flapjack - two cartoons very much in their own universe - it would be a little weird no matter how they did it.Reality TV works out nicer. It also costs considerably less to hire the "actors" for those shows than real VAs or people to do scenes for things like Tim and Eric. Which is not an awesome show.

I'd imagine it's a few factors.1. Not a lot of returns on investment, i.e. nobody's watching the damn shows. This could be because kids are too invested in Spongebob to commit elsewhere, they don't like waking up early on a weekend (I know I didn't - Reboot was the only show that could coerce me from my sheets), or they aren't watching TV on Saturday morning altogether. In any case, Wimbledon is a better investment for NBC than some syndicated cartoon. It's more in tune with its target market, too. 2. High expenses. There's a reason the 3D-animated crap we see nowadays has defeated 2D "classic" films. While an artist has to painstakingly render each frame of a scene and re-draw each cel, a computer animator creates a 3D model and then manipulates that model. Easier, cheaper, and a lot more free-form than figuring out storyboards as well as animation. 3. Advertising revenue. I'm not talking commercials, either. Whereas cartoons would seem awkward with Samurai Jack drinking a Pepsi, and even the 3D fanfares would be a bit off with a billboard for Halo, reality TV (especially for kids) is the perfect vehicle for product placement. I mentioned "Brain Rush" in my last post. They used three different roller coasters for the game show, and they were secretly advertising said coasters right in front of everyone's faces. It's obvious when the Powerpuff Girls are using a copyrighted product. It's weird if a regular kid does not. THAT'S the beauty of product placement. Money, plain and simple.

Oh good, it's not just me. I watched one episode of Brain Rush, and while the concept is okay (easy questions in a stressful environment, in the same vein as Cash Cab), it's just not the right channel and not very original. I saw a preview for these shows when I went to see "Up," and all four (right?) new shows are just too close in concept with other (better) shows, only with a "starring kids" tacked onto the end.

I had mused to myself that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince would be "Sweeney Todd 2" sans Depp. I think this movie just took that title. It'll be great art, but we're not going to sleep pleasantly for a few weeks after seeing it. Makes me wonder why Johnny Depp is in almost all of the same ones.

I could see that having business (cooperation of units), computer programming (RTS, specifically), anthropology and other human studies (net culture) applied to it. I would think that, if the wrong teacher taught it, it could ruin the game for some people.

Well, like all amateur Phoenix Wright stuff I've seen, it's not bad considering that it's people doing it in their spare time. I listed to "A Guy You Can Trust," and Gumshoe's my favorite character from the series. They really need to have someone else write these lyrics. :\ The singing is okay, and it sounds like it's Turnabout Goodbyes that the story focuses on. So, good but not great, and it needs to be great.

...Y'all know he acted in the post-review zinger of "The Witcher," right? I mean, the voices WERE him, right? He DOES have vocal talent. I wouldn't expect anything less for someone who is literally hired for making videos like this where the voice is half of the talent.