Imagist

you just really don't like the idea of me sleeping do you hey guys I heard they make pc gamepads that are reworked NES controllers and they cost about $230 less than a Wii and I am obsessed with just how crisp my pixelated 8-bit graphics are (remember we are talking about mega man games) hey remember when I said that thing like "remember we are talking about mega man games" yeah also I heard that if you walk up to Inafune and hand him $100 and caress his privates you are a bigger fan than anyone else (remember in this hypothetical situation that calls for emulation he already owns the games once)

this is almost as fun as that one time I picked fights with arek when we were bored but I get the feeling you're not in on the ironic nature of it all anyway as I said we're now getting into the same kind of circlejerking territory that the chrono trigger ds thread already covered pretty thoroughly so I think I am going to sleep

Okay, folks, the submission stage is over. We have a total of eleven entries. Here's the list: SoulinEther - "The Banister" Random Hajile - "Walk" thesim - "The Pencil Wrote Its Own Story" Darklink42 - "Indecision" Washington Maverick - "No Blues in Derry" Chickenwarlord - "Distraction" Contricity - "Shinespiking 101" just64helpin - "Prologue" GA Jedi Knight - "Rain on Twenty-Nine Shuffles" Mechasonic4ever - "Journals of a Lost Soul" Imagery - "Capturing Truths" I'll be updating the first posts momentarily. Oh, and also, I had difficulty figuring out the titles of some of your pieces, so I had to infer from the information I had. If you have any corrections to make as far as the title goes, just let me know.

Are you as retarded as your pseudo-villain namesake? If he owns the NES games but the games or the NES done got broked then just play the freaking ROMs. The only reasons to buy the game at all (much less a second time) are if you don't already own it and you object to breakin' the law. You don't know what it's like Breaking the law, breaking the law...

In that case I wouldn't see the logic behind paying again to play something he already owns, or even considering paying for it. But crap, this is getting into the same trap as the Chrono Trigger DS thread now. Didn't I say I was retreating into the writing thread like forever ago?...

But he's talking about the Mega Man games. The Mega Man games were never officially licensed as ROMs, outside being emulated for the Anniversary Collection. And if he owns the original games, why is he talking about buying them on the Virtual Console, anyway? My "Um..." still stands.

Um... And besides, I don't think anyone bought a Wii solely for the Virtual Console. That would just be silly.

Yes, it seems so. And please remember to have it up by the end of the night. Anyway, I think I am temporarily satisfied with my ending. Here goes: Capturing Truths The digital 2 on the clock morphs into a 3. It is now 6:33 A.M. Voxtrot bursts from the speakers: “I know that you’re in love with her; I can tell by the way you never touch her or look at her.” It incites thought. Was it wrong to make you love me if you’d never know love on your own? A soft click wipes her off the screen. It is almost a noticeable progression, as first the sheen of her deep red hair, then the line where her crooked smile meets her dimple, then the mole on her chin fade into a shot of shadow-casting clouds outside an airplane porthole. In reality all is instantaneous, but instants rarely seem “real” in that sense, anyway. What good is capturing a moment when it’s a posed lie? If you don’t want the truth, why try remembering at all? Several more images captured through that narrow window pass by, all with equally fascinating and landless landscapes. One appears as a floating glacial plateau, another as a dark, stormy tsunami overtaking a bright, calm ocean. We aren’t meant to fly, but when we do, we might as well make the most of it. Many more are nothing but blurs of light and shadow. In sight they would send a man into a stupor, but in memory they are flat and lifeless. Something of the immediate impression is lost in the eternal incarceration. It is difficult to place. I always preferred Monet’s take to photorealism anyway. If I wanted to see how things looked I’d go look at them. It’s the impression that lasts long enough to care about. The skyline of San Francisco from the bay now looms in the distance, with Pier 39 engulfing the foreground like an overgrown gull. The scene appropriately reflects in a half-empty glass of water, the only visible body on the large vacant desk other than the luminous screen itself, as a vague and hazy notion of the city rather than the city itself. Within the reflection is something faint, an almost-echo of the sea lions undoubtedly barking off stage left, but no—it is nothing more than Meric Long's haunting cries as The Dodos’ “The Season” breaks down into its conclusion. For the sea lions there's a time and a season; why can’t we be the same? The pop of uncapping the bottle, the gulp of swallowing aspirin with a sip of water, the clink of setting the glass back down. The errant twang of a guitar as The Dodos bang out the beginning of “Walking.” A quick succession leading to, “You can fight the fire that’s in your head...” But it would take hydrant or two... Suddenly the brilliance of the screen dims as the next shot portrays the city under cover of night—and of fog. The viewpoint is reversed, looking out on the bay from an intersection of roads somewhere nearby, but with the misty, gray veil lying thick, hardly the light from the streetlamps is distinct, much less the flash of fireworks in the distance. Only she is clear; her back turned as she studies the sky in wonder, bundled up heavily in the leather jacket that isn’t hers, her skirt swaying slightly to her right as the breeze complicates the calculations for the show over the water. And something else—a slight gleam to the left, as of light reflecting off metal, a metal that shouldn’t be there in the cordoned-off street. A car? Wait... The car? The bumper and a portion of the front hood are a blur of motion, but still clearly visible, inching their way into the picture. But with all eyes focused elsewhere, and not even gunfire audible under the din of bursting rockets echoing in all directions, there was no notice that a jet-black sports car had broken the police blockade, and even less chance that its frantic and distracted driver would spot the girl directly in front of him. Maybe there are some truths worth forgetting, some lies worth remembering. The digital 5 on the clock morphs into a 6. It is now 6:36 A.M. A dialogue box appears. It warns that to continue with the action of cropping could result in a loss of information. As a dotted line intended for selection outlines a slender portion of the left-hand side of the screen, the dialogue box questions whether this is really the intention. The cursor hovers over the button marked “Yes.” ----- EDIT: "Temporarily satisfied," indeed. I've already made several edits and will probably be making more right up until the deadline.

I hate using the Gamecube controller for NES games. Hate hate hate hate it. I already have working copies of the last two. No need to buy those. I don't really like each and every one of the first six. No need to buy them all. There are more emulation/port issues with that version than I care to count.

Great! Something new to finally make me use the Wii Points card I bought over a month ago.

Continuing the trend of my declarations of unending hate: I hate the current state of capitalism in America. And (according to my corporate superiors in the retail food chain) by extension, I hate bunnies, puppies, and sunshine. Anyway. Contricity, my problem with the entry is less whether you wrote it (a point on which I would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt) and more whether you read any of the guidelines in submitting it. You pretty explicity did not write or even heavily revise it to the point of a rewrite within the time frame of the competition, which presents a problem to me. I am going to have to disqualify it. However, feel free to submit the thing you posted earlier which, as far as I know (and that is the key) was written since the competition began.

So, I hate AT&T. Not an hour after my last post, the DSL goes down (as it often does at regular intervals, but it's usually fixed by rebooting our router) and no matter what I try I cannot get it to come back up. Finally I get AT&T to agree to send someone out here ASAP this morning, and after doing who knows what to "test" the connection he basically tells me the problem must be our router because it couldn't be any fault on their side. So he has me connect my computer directly (while he fiddles with the modem) and voila, it's working. Even though it was working just fine with our router for over a year. Whatever, I'll plug it back in later and I guarantee it'll be working. So, since I am both a selfish and a just Judge, and I lost a good four hours of critical writing time, and I am now getting ready to go to work for who knows how long (I hate inventory), I am going to extend the submission deadline through the end of the weekend. If you have any changes you would like to make, or you didn't quite finish your piece already, you've got until 11:59 PM (PDT) Sunday.

GAJK. You know how some people try to pronounce acronyms like words? Well try doing it to that one. Also, arrrrgh! I am having such an awful time trying to wrap up my entry in a satisfactory manner. I always do this when I do nonconventional freeform. I start with an idea I'm really excited about, and it begins to execute well, but then I trip just before the finish line and can't get myself to stand back up. Well, I am trying. I will have something to post, for sure.

If they have stopped being sold "as of July 23rd," why are we still selling them at Target, where I work? I have a hard time believing this would actually blow over and not be huge news, at least at places like Penny Arcade. Unless I have been cluelessly not reading for the last two weeks?

Thanks. Also: Contricity, I feel like I've seen your new entry before (copypasta you wrote? Where?). As a judging official I think I liked your other piece better simply because I didn't wonder if I'd have to disqualify it every time I saw it. Also: Nine hours to go!

Okay, eight. We've got eight entries with just over forty-nine hours to go (or less, for GAJK (yes, try pronouncing that! (yes, I am putting parentheses inside parentheses!) Muhahaha!) and... others?). Two more will put us into new record levels of participation and whatnot! And after that? The sky is the limit. What the heck. I probably won't be writing any more of mine until Friday (my day off) but I've got a pretty good idea where I'm headed now. But you don't care about that. You care about interesting things! Like the fact that Doulifee and I are working on getting some kind of archive page up and running! And that we are now featured in the A-Z of OCR Competitions thread, which is stickied at the top of the forums! These are the things you care about! If you don't care about them I will make you care about them. I need to stop staying awake after work. Or maybe just stop staying awake.

Er... actually, I think the one I forgot was you. Well, anyway, seven entries, folks. Let's see if we can beat last competition's total of nine!

I was going to chastise everyone on how dead the thread is (does discussing religion scare everyone off or something? ) but then I realized we already have seven entries! I guess I could still berate all you veterans for being silent, because all but one of those entries are from newcomers, but then I'd have to get back to work on my own piece. Grrr, work! Work is always my enemy! Why can't life be lollipops and crisps? I am having a sort of night sickness. It makes me stay up past healthy hours and act crazy. I will take this break of sanity to remind everyone who is planning on submitting that there are just less than four whole days left. If you're having trouble writing what you want to then you'd at least better write a darn good plea for an extension of the submission deadline! Hot months are hot.

Not accounting for elemental weaknesses, Cid was my heaviest hitter in the Tower of Zot. If he had more options for equipment and had as much HP as Cecil and Yang I would probably say he was the best at that point in the game.

I don't understand this. Just don't attack her so much and she's probably the easiest boss this side of the Magus Sisters (broken AI lol). Basically, Haste Yang and keep him using Focus until he's fully charged then hit her whenever she's unravelled, have Kain Jump as necessary, and leave everyone else defending/healing. She goes down in four or five hits from Yang and barely counters, so at most you have to be careful of an occasional Tornado or whatever. Seriously, once I figured out Yang with 3 Focuses and an appropriate elemental claw does more damage than attacking four times and has the added benefit of only actually touching the enemy once, all these bosses with overpowered counterattacks became easier than a lot of random encounters.

This pissed me off more than anything. I was like, seriously? If you don't defend it basically auto-wipes your party? I mean, I figured the warning was to heal up or something, not defend now or you will take a quadrillion times more damage than you should. Gay.

Wow, for all the people saying they have problems with the Dark Elf, I found him ridiculously easy. The first phase is nothing (as others have said, cast Silence and he can't do much to you) but the key is to draw it out long enough to prepare yourself for the second phase. I made sure everyone had Haste so they could act before the Dragon could, and I pumped up Yang with Focus (I made sure he had the fire-based claws on, because for some reason I still remember all the bosses' weaknesses by heart) while Cid and Cecil whittle him down. Once he transforms, unleash Yang's charged attack and have Tellah cast Firaga. If the Dragon isn't already dead, Cecil and Cid's regular attacks (with Cecil's holy paladin sword and Cid's mythril hammer) should be enough to do it. The Tower of Zot, on the other hand, is handing mine to me.

God some of the counterattacks these bosses have are driving me crazy. I finally figured out how to avoid Scarmiglione's absolutely crazy status onslaught after going almost the whole fight using nothing but potions, and when I got to Cagnazzo his nasty habit of silencing everything that moves combined with the oh-so-frequent target-all Slow spells almost got me Tsunami'd a couple of times. About to head into the Dark Elf fight now.

Mechasonic: Write whatever you feel will challenge you the most to produce your best work. That is all the advice I can give. Chickenwarlord: Thanks for the submission! Do you have a title (even "Untitled", or the first line perhaps?) that we can refer to your piece by? It would help a bunch come voting time. Washington Maverick: Yeah, everything you need to know about voting (including dates) should be in the first post. If you can't find it, or you read it and still have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll be happy to explain. Speaking of dates: I'm going to be returning the days I previously cut out of the submission and voting stages. This is because the original reason I cut them out is now void. Basically, I was applying to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which would mean two years of full-time dedication to serving the Lord wherever I was called. I anticipated the possibility of being called to leave sometime before the end of August, so I wanted to make sure the contest would be completed before I skipped out on everyone. However, when I got a letter in the mail today saying I would be expected to report on November 5th, I realized it would be kind of silly to rob everyone of the extra days to write and vote. For those of you not good with dates, this means don't panic! This is not me telling you that once this competition is over I am gone for good. This is me saying I've got one more competition left in me than I thought (September's short story comp.) and I hope it'll be one for the history books. But since we're still in this competition, we might as well make history with it, too! tl;dr version: dates changed check the first post

lol .