Imagist

I can forgive what a terrible mock-up this is just because it's based on William Carlos Williams. (he is heroic and possibly to me in particular more than some)

I really don't know what to make of your new avatar. is like, who darksworde? sum nub?

And then I went and invented a plumber named "Maro."

Nice ninja edit. I totally saw when you claimed there were 150 stars in Mario 64.

Go with the e280 if you don't really care about video playback--its extra battery life and smaller size are big pluses. Go with the View if video playback is useful to you--its larger, better-quality screen will defeinitely be a bonus. If those don't stay so cheap before someone buys one of them for you, go with the Creative ZEN to get a player that costs less than that e280 at retail for the same storage space and that has much better design, features, and overall quality.

Excellent. Just so everyone's aware of the time constraints here, there's about a week left in this competition.

But it is a handy trick to learn regardless. I do it all the time. It's saved one of my lives when taking a fall many times, even when I didn't expect to pull it off.

This can be accomplished with one of my favorite maneuvers: First, stand next to the Thwomp and backflip just as he comes down. Second, wall jump off of him as soon as you land against him at the top of the flip. Third, at the apex of your wall jump, spin and jam on the control stick in the direction you need Mario to float in order to get on top of the Thwomp. If you don't make it on top quite yet and wind up landing against him able to do another wall jump, repeat the process. It's really quite handy for making any number of seemingly impossible jumps, and creating some ridiculous (non-glitch) shortcuts for speed runs. I can't remember if it's the only real way to get on top of the Thwomp, but it's probably the most effective.

It's not about people visiting playing on your console. It's about multiple people in the same household playing on the same console and wanting to keep track of their stats/records/customizations/whatever associated with each game separate from each other. Come on, this concept really isn't that far-fetched--it's in basically every 360 game I've ever played. The only difference is creating gamer profiles in, say, Halo 3 is infinitely easier and less intuitively backward than 16-digit friend codes. Seriously; the whole idea is just the natural online evolution of offline saved games anyway. And I think you bloody well know it--you've just gotten so used to playing the disgruntled cynic for the past while that you really can't get on any more unless you invent something to complain about. Get over yourself. Maybe try again if you can come up with a legitimate issue.

Perhaps because multiple people can play the same game on the same console? The reasoning is virtually the same as that of Live's gamertags. The only difference is that Xbox doesn't have a console ID, but this makes sense because Live is subscription-based so there's no reason to integrate a messaging system into the console when you're only online if you pay for your gamertag to be online.

I just don't see why so many people are having so much trouble with the daredevil run on that lava galaxy. It took me one try. On the other hand, I blew ten lives on Luigi's bloody purple coins. I only got it by calling over a buddy to co-star so I could have more time to plan and execute my manuevers.

So, Luigi is a butt and a half to control. He skids something awful, and the higher/longer jumps aren't even very useful because I'm too used to making do with Mario's manuevers (especially the "backflip against a wall -> wall jump -> spin, then float backward even higher than the original jump -> lather/rinse/repeat" procedure) to use them for any new shortcuts or whatever. I can't foresee myself having the patience to finish the game again with him.

guys this thread is made of roffle it's roffle waffles to be precise

As someone who highly values Mr. Pratchett and all his works, I find it pretty much retarded that you imply Ender's Game isn't a "real" book.

This is what Nintendo does to me non-stop. I get repeats of "Wii System Update 3.1 is now available!" and "The Everybody Votes Channel has been updated to function with Wii Menu version 3.1!" and "Nintendo is proud to announce the Check Mii Out channel!" every day for week(s) straight.

I'm just going to echo the idea of vertical ads below the left sidebar. Unobtrusive, but still visible.

The French government is behind anything that doesn't invade them and install a traitorous Reich.

So after playing through most of GH2 on Hard, GH3 on Hard is a lot easier. It took a lot of practice to get past the intro of "Story of My Life", but then I had no problems until the battle with Tom Morello (took one failure and one restart before I got him in the first third of the song). And before I quit for the night because my fingers were aching, I 4-starred "Bulls on Parade" and five-starred "When You Were Young." This all makes me so happy.

Placeholding for current and past submissions...

Placeholding for current and past submissions...

Current Submissions for the September short story competition: Persistence of Memory by TheHands Revelations by Darklink42 The Night's Apprentice by Opterion The Golden Zither by ubernym Classified Glow by just64helpin At Last, Atlantis by ZeaLitY How to Fail at Practicing Good Kendo by GA Jedi Knight (Each title is a link; follow it to read the corresponding entry.) Results for the September short story competition: Runner-Up: GA Jedi Knight 1st Place: Ubernym Here's the vote spread: TheHands - 5 Darklink42 - 2 Opterion - 3 Ubernym - 14 just64helpin - 5 ZeaLitY - 5 GA Jedi Knight - 10

The Writing Competition Thread News 10/30/08: The results are in! Thanks to everyone who participated, not just in September's short story competition, but in all the competitions of the last year. It's been a fun ride, so it is with mixed pleasure and sorrow that I officially turn the competition over to GA Jedi Knight, who will be running it from here on out. I will miss everyone who has come, stayed and/or gone in my time with the competition. I have only one more word for you: write. Write your little hearts out! Current Stage: SHORT STORY RESULTS Contest Dates: -->Submission: 12:00am PDT 6 September, 2008 - 11:59pm PDT 11 October, 2008 -->Voting: 12:00am PDT 12 October, 2008 - 11:59pm PDT 28 October, 2008 -->Judging: 12:00am PDT 29 October, 2008 - 11:59 pm PDT 31 October, 2008 General Info: The Writing Competition Thread holds competitions starting at the beginning of every other month, with the submission, voting and judging stages usually lasting six weeks followed by a short break. There are three categories that our competitions fall under: short story, poetry, and freeform. Each competition focuses on one of these categories. We aim to be a non-threatening competition, and to help our entrants improve their creative writing skills. If you are interested, please enter regardless of your skill level. We try to give feedback and helpful tips for entered works once each contest is over. Submission Rules: - Late submissions will not be counted. - Entries should reflect the category of the competition. If an entry is deemed to not fit into the correct category, it will be ignored. - Instead of submitting old material, please write something new within the time frame of the submission stage. After all, the idea behind the competition is partially to promote creativity, and inherent in the idea of creativity is the act of creation. - Only one entry per person is allowed. - Finish your work before you post your submission, or if you make a revision, identify it clearly and do so before the submission deadline. Edits of submissions after the voting phase begins will be ignored. - Remember to include a title, or at least something for people to call your work during the voting phase. - Please post your piece directly into this thread! Otherwise, it may get overlooked. - If your piece is too long to fit conveniently into a forum post, please find some alternate form of hosting such as Google Docs or fictionpress.com and link us to it instead. Category - Short Story: - No fanfiction. Fanfiction will belong in the Freeform category. Why? Because creating and developing your own characters in a limited amount of space is a significant challenge. Working with existing characters in existing universes is like remixed music; it's one thing to remix a song, but something completely different to make it from scratch. - Fiction and nonfiction are both welcome. - Please limit your submissions in this category to 2500 words. - Feel free to label your work according to its genre, style, etc. This will help people understand and better judge your piece. Category - Poetry: - No fanpoetry. That is, nothing that qualifies as fanfiction, but in verse form. See above for the reasoning behind this. Also note that allusion is one thing; basing the majority of your work on another person's creative product is another. - Poetry can be almost anything. You need not adhere to a particular form unless you wish to. Anything from sonnets to haikus to free-verse belongs here. - Please limit your submissions in this category to 1000 words. - Feel free to label your work according to its form, e.g., ballad, villanelle, palindrome, limerick, free-verse, acrostic, etc. Category - Freeform: - If it has words, it belongs here. Examples could be Maddox-style rants, journalistic articles, how-to documents, or really whatever creative idea you can come up with. - Please limit your submissions in this category to 3000 words. - Feel free to label your work if you think it will help. Voting Rules: - Early or late votes will not be accepted. - Anyone may vote, even if he or she does not have a current submission. If foul play is suspected (i.e., an entrant finding a bunch of friends or alt accounts to artificially support their entry) an investigation will occur. - When voting, you will award your allotted points to any two or more entries as you choose. Note: this means you may not award all of your points to one and only one entry. - Scoring: If the voter has submitted an entry this round, he or she will be allotted 6 points to distribute. If the voter has NOT submitted this round, he or she will be allotted 3 points. - A voter may allot up to one point to his or her own entry if he or she so chooses. - Please submit all votes via PM to me (Imagery). Judging Rules: - After the deadline for voting has passed, I (Imagery) will tally the votes for each submission and post the results no later than the end of the judging stage. - The submission with the most points will be declared the winner, and the submission with the second most points will be declared the runner-up. - Winner and runner-up will both receive a custom signature badge so you can show off your achievement!

After talking with Doulifee, it's become apparent that with the change of hands the easiest course of action in keeping the thread up to date in the first few posts is for me to start a new thread. As such, the competition will be continuing in the new thread, and the past competitions will remain archived here for reference, with a lock to avoid potential confusion between the two threads. Also, I invite everyone to plug the competition as much as possible. We can always use more participation!

It wouldn't have been so bad if A) there were spare guitars available so people on Wii and PS3 didn't have to either cheat or have someone play with a normal controller and the co-op encores weren't so ridiculously awesome like, say, "Reptilia" and "Helicopter."

That's been around for a while. It doesn't show up all the time. I still can't figure out what makes it show up and what doesn't, or whether it's just random.