yangfeili

I always thought Smash should be about classic characters with a history on Nintendo systems, so Pac-Man would be perfectly fine. I remember playing at least three Pac-Man games on the NES alone. (Same went for Snake: if you look at old Nintendo Power magazines, Metal Gear regularly showed up on the NES charts, and at one point hit the No. 3 spot. It was a pretty well known and popular game, on the same level as Castlevania or Mega Man. Sonic, however, had no business being on the roster.) So as for other Namco characters, I'm thinking of looking to games more like Tower of Druaga or Dig Dug first rather than Tekken or the Tales series.

There needs to be a Minesweeper album project.

Question about Rule #1: If you accidentally defeat the first Pokemon you encounter in an area, are you allowed to catch the next one of that type you encounter? Or did you totally blow your chance and have to leave that area empty-handed? Also, what defines an "area"? (I haven't played a Pokemon game since the original Blue, and that was at release.)

Upon further reflection, "Post-Apocalyptic Ancient Egypt" is now my preferred theme.

They have "First-Person Shooter" and "Shoot'em Up" as separate categories, so I assumed "Shoot'em Up" would be more like Gradius/Contra. So perhaps a roguelike where you find Gradius-style power-ups, for example. I guess that's basically what The Binding of Isaac is, now that I think about it. EDIT: Whoops, my bad. I was thinking you meant "Return to Castle Wolfenstein."

More people need to vote for "Shoot'em up" so that "Beat'em up" drops into last place. An RTS/Beat'em Up sounds way more interesting and original than an RTS/Shoot'em Up. Alternatively, more votes for "Dungeon Crawler" would give us a Dungeon Crawler/Shoot'em Up, which could be fun if not quite as innovative. Regardless, the Steampunk/Ancient Egypt theme is pretty cool.

And once out of office, he gets a cushy lobbyist job, pushing other legislators to write up the same sort of laws. ("If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine!")

I've purchased every Humble Bundle since they started, so I had quite a few games for the giveaway, plus I slogged my way through some of those awful, awful free games. (CrimeCraft, uuuughhhhh.) Came away with 15 coal (keeping them for the prize drawing), 9 coupons (a few of which I might actually use), and a free game (Monday Night Combat, which looks kind of cool). Not bad. I heard that the developers said that Steam put up the wrong achievement for the SMB Holiday Objective. You're supposed to just have to beat one of the Xmas levels rather than all of them. But the tougher achievement stuck. :\

Monster Party?

Don't know anything about the legal issues, but just wanted to say that that sounds like a cool project and I'd definitely pick up a copy. Reminds me of this one time I was at a LAN party with a bunch of friends. Someone said something that reminded us of a line from an old church hymn from our days together at a Catholic grade school, and though hardly any of us were still particularly religious, we all simultaneously broke into song (as we continued our deathmatch).

I guess it might be an issue of timing. Sooner or later, there had to be an Elder Scrolls game set in Skyrim, which from the very beginning of the series we've all known is a rocky snow-covered place. The fact that the game in question had to come in an era where everyone is kind of burned out on grey wastelands is just an unfortunate coincidence. Maybe they'll go with Summerset Isle or Akavir for the sixth game.

I probably need to go anything-but-Argonian, since I put in well over 100 hours in Oblivion on my Argonian serial killer character. Never even started the main quest, instead pursuing the Dark Brotherhood and Shivering Isles questlines, and then ultimately becoming the "Mad Bomber" on my own unofficial quest to assassinate the nobility. Mods make Elder Scrolls so great.

I had one that went bad a few years ago. It would power on, but it would come up with a black screen. I thought maybe it was something wrong with the video output, but the screen would flash as it powered on or off, and would occasionally get garbled nonsense rather than just black. I ended up just buying a new one, but as an experiment, I put the pin connector from the old one into the new one to see if that what's the problem had been. It worked fine, so it must have been something else.

I always give it all to the developers. There's plenty of people giving money to plenty of charities out there in world. Indie game developers deserve some attention.

Nobuo Uematsu is a pretty cool dude.

Hasn't there been a translation patch for a while? We can only hope that she knew of the joys of emulation.

I thought this was going to be about the dichotomy between male characters (who generally sound good) and female characters (who are generally unbearable except for the select few who sound like Kuroneko of Onmyouza rather than the usual SQUEEEEEEEE, but I think that's more of a problem with Japanese female character design than voice-acting itself). EDIT: Also, after having watched loads of American animated productions throughout my life, I know there are good English voice-actors out there. The problem is that the gaming industry seems to keep drawing on the same group of people who do anime dubs, which is definitly NOT where most of the good actors congregate.

Am I the only one who always (ALWAYS) customized my controls in that game? Yeah, the default scheme does suck, but I never used it for more than like a minute on accident. Y = Shoot B = Jump A = Run X = Weapon Switch Generally you don't need to use the run button much other than for the speed booster, but if you insist, I recently tried an experiment in which I used L to run. Sort of messes with your ability to aim while standing still, but it does make it very easy to run, jump, and shoot simultaneously. Really, what the game needs is a Playstation controller, but a perfectly functional layout can be done an SNES controller.

Hmm, the music is nice, reminds me of Ys a little bit. And the art direction is certainly more tasteful and appealing than anything seen in Final Fantasy for a long while. But unless the gameplay is more than the usual "linear story + a battle system" JRPG standard, it's going to be a pass for me.

I always thought it would be cool to build a car where the interior is flipped. You know, so it looks like you're driving down the highway in reverse. Probably get pulled over a lot.

I think this would be a great theme for a first enemy-free puzzle-centric dungeon: And then at the end, you revisit the first dungeon and open a deeper level, which is the final dungeon:

I grabbed Atomic Robo and Mouse Guard. They also were clearing out their manga for $3 each, so I grabbed the two copies of Blame Vol. 6 which were mysteriously in the box and not being sold on ebay (out of print, potentially sells for a helluva lot). I hear you on that, sometimes I like to attempt to read random wiki articles on some particular superhero and see how far I can get before I am a hit by a massive WAT. I find the bulk of manga to be horrendously obnoxious, but I do think there's something to be said for the Japanese "one author/artist" method of comic production, especially those that tell their story and then end. I definitely prefer single-volume stuff when it comes to graphic novels, something with a nice, neat, thought-out, self-contained story.

On that note, I really wish JRPGs would get out of this "an RPG is a battle system and nothing more" rut. WRPGs still tend to be fairly combat-centric, but they usually at least incorporate some other gameplay styles.

I've been watching Dwarf Fortress for a while and love reading stories like this, but I've held off on diving into the game myself. Not sure if I'm just waiting until I've got the time, or until further development progress, or what, but I don't think I've ever been so entertained by a game I've never played.