Lemonectric

I'm especially pleased that the sound effects and music aren't running on the same channels. Easily my biggest complaint about old games and modern-retro games like Mega Man 9.

Currently thinking Lich Yard. Guess I'm doing a butt mode file.

Oh, thanks. I didn't realize it was consistent. Maybe because I kept dying early. Finished, anyway. Some of the feats look like the kind of thing that would make me throw a controller if I messed up once. I can handle one stage without dying, but to have that pressure hanging over me the whole game? Eesh. I enjoyed Yoshi's Island but knew from the trailers that Yoshi's New Island was just a sloppy attempt at nostalgia. Nobody ended up liking that game. Shovel Knight is not Yoshi's New Island. Its value doesn't come from nostalgia, even if some people phrase it that way. If you've watched some trailers and/or reviews and your first thought is "I don't like games that try to be 'retro,'" you're missing the part where it looks like an absolute blast to play.

I'm almost done with new game +. The second-to-last level is a nightmare for double-damage no-turkey mode. I'm crying. Anyway, they've done a fantastic job not explicitly tutorializing. Every level has new gameplay mechanics, but they're all introduced in a sort of safe, forced, and fluid way to make sure you know how it all works before you move on. There's a brilliant part of the Lich Yard where you step onto this new type of platform and it changes a bit graphically, but otherwise nothing happens. You keep moving and find yourself up against a wall, but you're close enough to get the attention of a skeleton on the other side. It walks onto the platform (which extends underneath the wall) and the platform starts moving down. Now you know that those platforms sink when there are two entities standing on them, and you can start solving problems and doing tricky platforming with this knowledge. It's great. Everything in the game is introduced like that. oh yeah and the music is sweeeeeet

You can use the gamepad as your main screen or as a map even while using a different controller. I play with the pro controller, but I have the map set up next to the monitor so I can occasionally check what everyone's up to. Still wish they would have put a map on the main screen... But yeah, I've used the gamepad as my racing screen once or twice when I was trying to keep up with a facebook chat session on the monitor.

Had a last night where wildfire dropped on top of me from the other path on Rainbow Road (you see her for a split second around 0:16), giving me a boost that startled me and sent me over the edge, where I then landed next to Adam further ahead on the path that she'd originally come from. It was like a terrifying accidental boost chain.Question: Should I change the tournament to a once-weekly deal? It's hard to get everyone together without using facebook chat, and I don't know everyone on facebook. Or should we leave it open every night but decide on one day where we'll try to get on together? Saturday night seems good to me, but let me know what works for you all.

Metroid Prime: Hunters - Beat several repetitive bosses. Maybe half of them. I never stopped hating the controls. When I came across a new enemy type that made my hands hurt even more, I just stopped playing for good. Tried it from the beginning recently and couldn't stand it for more than 30 minutes. Mega Man 3 - Got to the "remixed" robot master stages. I think it was Shadow Man's revisited stage that got me to stop. Major slowdown really ruined the platforms where you have to jump immediately upon landing. So much rage. Super Mario 64 (sort of) - Played up to the final Bowser battle when I was a kid. Couldn't beat him, so I stopped trying for years. Felt really good when I eventually came back to the game as a teenager and beat it without any trouble. There are definitely a lot of games that I don't finish when I'm replaying them (most recently SteamWorld Dig), but I usually finish my games the first time through, anyway. I don't actually buy many games, so I don't have a backlog to work through.

I have mixed feelings about the gamepad. It was comfortable enough for Wind Waker HD (and the quick inventory access is nice), but it's not great for Tropical Freeze or Mario Kart 8. The pro controller is really good, though. I would use the pro controller for Mario Bros U, but for some reason the spin jump is restricted to L and R instead of L, R, ZL, and ZR like on the gamepad. It's like constantly resting your finger on the Z button on a Gamecube controller. No thanks.

Aaaaahh, you beat me. I was just thinking about desperately trying to beat Vire in Oracle of Ages during an evening car ride when I was a kid. It was a race against the sun. I lost.

I don't think I'll be available tonight. Weekday night turnouts have been kind of sparse, too, so you might be better off getting some sleep. Crowbar might be on, at the very least. Any other players from outside the Americas? I could set the tournament to an earlier time on some days if you like. Sundays might be good for, say, 3PM CDT / 8PM GMT. Would be cool to have a time that worked for people in all kinds of time zones. (I'm setting this Sunday to 3PM CDT / 8PM GMT, ok?)

I've been doing so many online races, I've forgotten how angry the computer players can make me in 150cc and mirror mode. Two more cups left to get three-star rankings in! I've gone through them like five times each only to get ruined at the end. It's funny how comparatively not-angry I am when real players do the same thing to me.

The "no limit" setting means that it won't stop counting your points after you do a certain number of races. I was in one tournament that tells you you're done after you finish 8 races. For now, I'd say don't quit to change anything mid-tournament. Multiple people seem to have had problems with this. If you must, do what crowbar did and join back in through the friends page (if you aren't friends with any of us, there's a section for people you've recently raced).

If there's one thing I'm not satisfied with about the tournament setup, it's that it decides to split up a group of five people into two separate sets of races for no reason. We (Crowbar, wildfire, Mirby, jnWake, and me) got to race together as one group two or three times at the end, but most of the time we were separated. There are five of us, game. Put us together. It was fun, anyway. Frantic mode gets more frantic the more people you have playing, so the 2-player races weren't really any more interesting than usual in terms of items, but the 5-player races were absolute bloodbaths. Either way, lots of tense moments tonight.

Tournaments work kind of like the communities from Mario Kart 7. The main difference is that I can set a specific day and/or time for it to run. With the current settings, the game will count points from 9-10PM CDT daily. It's "open" 24/7, but it's unlikely you'll find anyone outside the scheduled time unless you arrange it outside the game. We don't have enough OCR Karters for random matches all day. Anyway. There aren't any brackets or long-term competitions; every night has separate point standings. Also of note: Usually it'll be 150cc racing, all items. Tonight, items are set to frantic mode. I could even set team nights or no-item nights or the equivalent of bob-omb blast battle mode if anyone's interested. I want to try to keep things fresh. Mostly it'll be pretty standard, though. Psst Crowbar Man, put the code in the first post already

I work tomorrow morning, so I won't be staying on beyond the tournament's open hour tonight. I'll be there at the usual time, though.

The game should tell you in your own time if you check the tournament details. I'm also making this post at 11:39PM my time. The tournament started two and a half hours ago. Check the timestamp, assuming your forum time is configured correctly.

Tomorrow night will be Frantic Friday. Powerful items will have a higher chance of appearing. I'm not sure how much higher, but I want to find out. We also need some people who are better than me! Maverickk put up a good fight when we raced earlier in the week. Mario Kart Wii, 7, and 8 all have similar drifting styles (especially compared to how drastically they used to change it from game to game). Are you trying different vehicles? There are a few bikes that I can't handle at all because the drifting is completely different. Way too tight for me. What a nice segue into our first highlight video: I'm gonna upload highlights as unlisted videos so I don't annoy my subscribers. I'll also post them to the tournament Miiverse community. If you do something awesome and/or horrifyingly cruel when I'm halfway around the track, you're probably on your own when it comes to highlighting it, though.

The highlight of Nintendo's presentation I'll get you

Yep, we had the time of our lives! The same sort of thing happened a couple times with Adam and me. I fell off the first corner of Shy Guy Falls (entirely my fault ) and couldn't quite catch up for the rest of the race, although I nearly made it by the end. In Mario Circuit, Adam ran into both of our green shells after we'd gotten like five alternating draft/anti-gravity boosts off each other, and he couldn't recover. Then there was Dolphin Shoals, in which I was the absolute worst driver (fell into the big pit twice with nothing to blame but myself), but the game decided to let me win with a crazy eight. Such is Mario Kart, I guess. I'm not really painting a very impressive picture of myself with all these stories about falling, am I?

Maverickk, Mirby and I had the time of our lives tonight. We boosted and hit each other with shells and everything. It was life-changing. It was also mostly outside the time range of the tournament. Be there tomorrow. Or some other day. (Crowbar Man, can you put the info in the opening post?)

I listened to this a lot while Lime of the Season was in production. The arrangement and performance complement each other so well. Great job, both of you, and thanks for your help with the album(s)!

Check it out. They have miiverse communities for individual tournaments. I can post updates to the rules/times there if you want to check them before turning on your Wii U. The tournament is currently active from 9-10PM US central time every day. I can change this at any time while it's inactive, so let me know if the time is preventing you from participating.

I set up an OCR group. Currently running 23 hours a day, but I'm going to narrow it down to one or two hours to encourage people to get online at the same time (the group can be used 24/7 anyway if you don't care about getting points). Let me know what time you like to play. This summer I'll be open mostly in the morning and evening (US central time). OverClocked Racing 0268-4142-9420 (add it now so it'll be in your favorites!) Current rules: 150cc race All items All vehicles All controls No teams No COM No using Roy unless you're Lemon Depending on how much use it gets, I can also mix it up every once in a while with a bob-omb day or a team day or something.

We had an OCR community for Mario Kart 7. Has anyone made an OCR tournament yet? The game doesn't seem as eager to drop me when I'm in a tournament as opposed to random worldwide/regional matches. Often, though, there's a period when everyone in the race gets nothing but coins and mushroom variants. Sometimes it lasts a whole race. Sometimes I suddenly get a banana and accidentally drop it because I was expecting another coin. It's odd. Anyone else experiencing that?

Favorite tracks: Shy Guy Falls, Cloudtop Cruise, Mount Wario, Electrodrome. As for the retro tracks, I like what they've done treating them more like OCR-style arrangements than straight covers. Makes me feel like I'm playing a new track. Seriously, though, Ribbon Road was begging to be in this game. Take a break from MK64 now that you've practically exhausted its tracks. I was caught off guard the first time the final lap jingle told me that I'd missed the lap 2 marker. Oh...and I'm really glad I can actually hear the music over the sound effects this time around. The balance was awful in Mario Kart Wii.