yangfeili

I'd buy a "Squaresoft Classics" collection for $20 with all their SNES games on it, like Capcom or Konami would put out. People allow themselves to buy into the whole "It's worth any price" mystique surrounding stuff like Chrono Trigger way too much, as if these were some sort of sacred holy treasures that S-E keeps locked in a magically sealed vault rather than just a couple megs of data which they could have slapped onto a compilation disc at any time.

I had the same problem when I played Morrowind: I set out to play a selfish jerk character, but I kept lapsing into "play the hero" mode. So for Oblivion, I resolved to play a truly evil character. I was basically a serial killer, and I'd pick out victims, every time I reached a new town follow them around, break into their house and wait for them... It was surprisingly and disturbingly fun. I was also running some mods that slowed down leveling and made the game a lot harder, which actually worked really well with the character concept since it meant I pretty much had to rely on killing weak defenseless victims in order to boost my skills. To restore the karmic balance, I probably need to play Fallout 3 as a grandma who wanders the wasteland, handing out cookies to children.

AIDs is kind of goofy in that it can very easily and cheaply be "cured" via behavioral modification. Actually getting everyone to go along with that behavioral modification, of course, is the hard part. So the "billions of dollars of research" route may, indeed, be easier.

Falcom demands a word with you! http://www.falcom.co.jp/mailorder/category/game.html The Ys series is pretty awesome, and a number of the games have English patches available. Ys I & II Complete are basically like SNES JRPGs in style, although they have more in common with the likes of Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma than Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. (Not surprising considering that Quintet was created by former Falcom employees.) Ys: Oath in Felghana is so action-packed and hardcore that it's barely an RPG at all. The whole series has awesome soundtracks which are sadly under-represented here. (Falcom in general is known for great music.) English patches are also in the works for Ys VI (already available in English on PS2 and PSP) and Ys Origin (which again is so action-heavy and gameplay-centric that I got through it fine without any translation). If you played Gurumin on the PSP, that also originally began as a PC game, as did the upcoming Zwei!! which is going to be hitting the PSP in Japan soon and might have a shot at a US release.

I'm curious about this as well, seeing as there were those "unlicensed" Tengen games actually be sold in stores back during the NES era. I distinctly remember buying the Tengen Pac-Man at Target when I was a kid.

I've heard that as well, but I think I've always taken at least one hit in all the fights, so I can't personally verify it. Taking no damage is definitely doable though, and seems to have been so much a part of the design philosophy of the boss fights that I have no trouble believing that they put in "No Hit" rewards. In fact, I think it's easier to take no damage in OoE than it has been in other Castlevanias. The difference is that in the other ones, you took a lot less damage when you got hit.

I'm doing all the bosses with no health items. It seems like while this game is harder in one sense, it's also easier in that it feels like it allows you to dodge EVERYTHING once you know what you're doing. Whereas some of the boss fights in previous games at times felt like they had a JRPG-style "let's wail on each other and occasionally heal" design philosophy.

The lighthouse boss can be beaten without taking a single hit once you learn the pattern. But I'm coming into this straight from playing the recent Ys games on Nightmare difficulty, so I might have the fortune of being in a mental "super tough pattern-based boss fight" mode right now.

Answered it for me. In fact, that's why I've really started to dislike turn-based traditional JRPGs. There's no allowance for me to use my skill to avoid an enemy attack -- I just have to take it. At least in an SRPG, I've got some control over the movement and formation of the characters. (I know the discussion is platformers, but I'm just mentioning it to explain why I've come to enjoy action/platformers more than JRPGs -- a complete reversal of what I used to like -- and why it annoys me when a platformer incorporates this JRPG-esque trait of unavoidable attacks.)

The original Thief did a great job of freaking me out for one specific reason: nowhere on the box or in the manual or during the early part of the game did it give me any indication there were horror elements to the game. So I dismissively walked past that conspicuously placed rotting corpse in the second mission... and then freaked the hell out when it stood up, and I ran to hide in the dark tunnels, freaked out again when another shadowy shape rose up off the ground right in front of me, jumped around like a madman as I tried to get away, stumbled down into a pit full of giant spiders, and died. I think the fact that the gameplay is based on hiding from enemies also helps things a bit. It's pretty tense in the non-horror missions when you're hiding behind a pile of boxes and you hear a guard open the door; it's downright terrifying in the undead missions when you're hiding behind the boxes and you hear insane blasphemous whispering all around you as footsteps draw closer and closer, and some kind of enemy you've never seen before -- a hooded figure with a skull-like visage and glowing red eyes -- pokes its head through the door and scans the room. Of course, you eventually learn the tricks to the game, you learn when to most effectively use your holy water to take out the maximum number of enemies possible, you learn that most undead can be killed by two flash bombs (mentioned nowhere in game -- I only found out on accident), you learn the unstoppable sword-fighting pattern which can even take down the super fast and powerful undead haunts without fear of reprisal... but even then there's still the atmosphere to enjoy, which the series piles on thick.

Part of the reason my brother loves zombie games/movies is because he's genuinely afraid of zombies.

One of the first remixes I ever downloaded was "Feena Flow" from Ys (I also think it's one of the oldest mixes on the site). At the time, I was only vaguely familiar with the name, having seen Ys III occasionally pop up in Nintendo Power magazines from the early SNES era. Fast forward to today, and it's pretty much my absolute favorite series.

The Ys series in general is awesome, but sadly the only games most people are familiar with are some of the more mediocre games in the series (Ys III: Wanders from Ys, and Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim -- although they're both decent). I've imported Ys I & II Complete (SNES-esque), Oath in Felghana (an overhauled remake of Ys III, turning it from the worst game in the series to the best), and Ys Origin (a prequel to the whole series), and they're all absolutely awesome (with translation patches available for the first three). Very action-packed and gameplay-centered, with a definite oldschool vibe to the challenging boss fights and awesome soundtracks (which need far more remixes!!!). If you particularly like stuff like Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, you should definitely check into Falcom's stuff, since Quintet was founded by former Falcom staff and definitely had a similar style and quality to their games. EDIT: I should just let this page do the talking http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ys/ys.htm

I'm about to start Legend of Heroes II, I, and III on the PSP (which are really III, IV, and V). The one thing every professional review I've ever read fails to mention (and thus possibly accounting for the low scores and criticisms that the games "add nothing new to the genre") is that they are remakes, and the original versions were released in the SNES era. Might be worth recommending...? Not sure, haven't actually started playing them yet.

I've only messed with animated gifs a bit, but I usually use a combination of Paint Shop Pro to create the frames and the included Animation Shop to put them together/apply transition effects to smooth things out. With stuff like that, it's usually just a matter of being very systematic. Although one thing worth noting, I created each of the separate components (marching Toads, tanks, Mario) as separate animations first, and then put them together on the background. That way, I can still go back and add more if I want to later (like some zeppelins up in the air... the tanks could also stand to be smoothed out a bit). Another trick worth mentioning, is that I sometimes create a separate layer of bright green or magenta dots and lines to serve as reference points -- to make sure that a certain character stays in the same spot from frame to frame, or moves a consistent distance with each frame. I of course delete this layer from the frames when I no longer need it. And one other thing that's kind of fun and easy to do (and thus makes good practice to get down the basics) is to use screenshots from games as your frames, resize them down, and then just experiment with the frame speeds to get a feel for how you can string things together. Although when using game screens, you especially run into the problems everyone has mentioned about color optimization, so it might take some tweaking to find an acceptable balance between color, image dimensions, and file size (looking at that one, I could probably crop the top and bottom of the screen a bit and thereby knock a significant amount off the file size). One of the many assassinations perpetrated by the mad bomber Ophidios on the nobility of Cyrodiil...

That reminds me a bit of a post I just made on GameFAQs with regards to the Gurumin soundtrack (which needs some mixes, now!!!): The more I listen to it, I think I'm starting to figure out what sets Falcom's soundtracks apart. A lot of other companies, while they do indeed have good soundtracks, they've drifted into sounding more and more like "movie style" soundtracks. Stuff like MGS, or Final Fantasy. Whereas Falcom has continued to practice and advance the style of "video game music," which has its own unique rules and requirements which are a bit different than soundtracks for the film medium. It's got to be short and loopable; it has to fulfill the paradox of being catchy while at the same time avoiding being distracting or annoying. Falcom has taken these "limitations" and perfected them into an art form.

Take it as a precisely worded written template, and feel free to apply the dialect which best suits your region, social class, level of familiarity, etc. e.g. "Why you be hatin' on my music, man," or "Thou wretched knave! Verily, mine game music doth rock." I write like a text book in order to avoid the ambiguities of meaning which can arise in a more conversational style.

I guess I'm imagining a whole scenario where you kind of have to trap them. When they express an interest and ask "Who is this by?", first respond with some questions of your own: "Do you like it?" And even more specifically: "What do you like about it?" Once you have these answers, only then tell them it's a game remix/from a game soundtrack. If they then nevertheless suddenly perform an about-face and express contempt/disinterest, move on to the next set of questions: "I thought you said you liked it? Specifically because of (insert reason given here)?" "Why has the context in which the music appeared suddenly altered your opinion of it? Does it still not sound exactly the same as when you told me you liked it?" "Why, in your view, does the fact that it was composed for a game negate the talent and skill of the composer, which you praised mere moments ago?"

Are you looking for Charles Martinent Mario or Lou Albano Mario? I can do either, though I very much prefer the latter, although it really doesn't matter since I don't have much in the way of decent recording equipment. Why am I even posting.

As a curious side-note, the Metroid "item get" and the Ys "item get" jingle are exactly the same. I'm pretty sure I've even heard it used in a third series, although I can't remember exactly what it was at the moment. Makes me wonder about the story behind it. (Is it some sort of public domain tune in Japan? A common doorbell chime? What?) EDIT: At about the 45 second mark, opening a chest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou62LDUfP-M

I was thinking something similar the other day, how a lot of shows tend to have a cast of characters where each person has their defined and distinctive role or personality. But I was thinking it would be kind of interesting to stick in two characters who both fill the same "niche," and see how they interact. Off the top of my head, the best example I could think of would be taking the original Star Trek, and having two "Captain Kirks" on the crew. Put one in a subordinate position to the other, and see what happens. Do they complement each other, do they clash, are they friends, or are they enemies?

Yeah, I just saw some trailer recently where they advertised the fact that it was by "the writers of Transformers." Wait, what, seriously? Is that something you really want to advertise? Are there people jumping up and in glee thinking "Oh, man, I've been waiting for something new from the writers of Transformers!!!"

I still kind of like Galneryus. Their vocalist is a bit hit-and-miss. He started out decent, went through a confused weird period on their second album where he at times sounded like Pee Wee Herman, and has consistently improved from there. The guitar solos are pretty good, especially on the first two albums. I just focused on the vocals because they seem to be the main thing people sometimes have trouble with. http://youtube.com/watch?v=5V4aeIohcnA I haven't been listening to them much lately after stumbling upon Onmyouza. They've got some pretty good solos here and there, and the vocals are damned awesome. http://youtube.com/watch?v=bJaXzRLh4sw

His thing against Gordon was that he had repeatedly been trying to get Gordon to do something about internal corruption within the police force, and it was the corrupt cops who acted as the Joker's inside-men which eventually led to Rachael getting killed. Oh, as for Batman killing Dent but not the Joker, I think it has something to do with the immediacy of the situation. Dent had a gun to the kid's head right then and there. It seems like most of the scenes where he directly encounters the Joker didn't involve that same sort of immediacy. Almost kind of like a police procedure thing with regards to deadly force: just because the suspect is wanted for murder doesn't mean you can just run out and kill him unless he's in the immediate act of murdering yet another victim.

If anything, with all of these superhero movies right now it's the perfect time for Watchmen, seeing as it really isn't so much a superhero story as it is a story about the superhero genre. Belive it or not, my first time reading the graphic novel was for a college American Literature course. Normally I would balk at that sort of thing, the efforts to try to make things "hip" or whatever, often to the detriment of the academic value of the course. But the professor had very much the same view on things, and wasn't just one of those teachers who tries to cram the course full of "alternative" voices to bury the "dead white guys" of classic literature. Most of the course was very strongly focused on the classics, but when we got up to more modern times, he included the graphic novel because he genuinely thought it had significant value as a new form of literature. And his analysis of the novel was indeed fascinating to listen to and discuss -- he's written books and articles on the history of comic books and the way they've both influenced and been influenced by cultural trends. Oh, if you're wondering why the heck he included a British graphic novel in an American course, it's because in his view, the novel falls into the category of literature about America, and I think he did a pretty good job of defending that decision.