Lyrai

Dear everyone who is on my team. If you see me playing Sniper, yes, I am probably going to be one of the lower people on the scoreboards, and I am sorry. I'm trying ot learn it, but I seem to have hit this wall. My mind keeps wanting to fire one second after it's too late.

Really can't say anything not already said by Nekofrog. He echos what I've long thought - Jackson wasn't a pedophile. He was the product of one of the most fucked up childhoods anyone could have, and never was able to 'grow up'. He honestly had no concept that what he was doing was 'wrong.' Thanks for the music, Michael.

Seconded. I was expecting a little thing to stitch onto my jacket but christ this thing is big enough to use as a frisbee.

Gravel, probably.

God that was the most hilarious round of TF2 I've ever played. "Hey guys, we should do Engineer, Melee only" "No, Medic, melee only" "OKAY"

[blade, Leader] We finally have our own server (IP is 174.34.141.102 if you care to join us tuesday/saturday/sunday nights) which we play on when we have enough people to get it kickstarted. Otherwise we'll continue to try to hop on OCR when we play. [blade] Also, what're the names of all the plug-ins you use? Some of them are pretty good. Links would be greatly appreciated [Mewtroid] Like that "Can kill team while waiting in spawn"

I'll...I'll take a patch? I am decent Engineer. I had fun with my sentry & bahamut that one map.

...oh. Whoops. Fixed that! I've still yet to go out and buy & watch Roots, so I can't really give a judgment call on it. I'm told that they sort of fixed the problem they had with //SIGN, and also threw in a catgirl with a huge bust for no real reason other than fanservice.

OH yes there is a difference. The first games play combat much closer to an actual MMO, not to mention the aformentioned Skills/Techs tied to whatever weapons you have equipped. In //GU, The fighting system is a lot more actiony, not to mention you're not stuck with Twin Blades the entire games. Boss fights are done in a completely new way as well.

Speaking as a diehard fan, //SIGN was about as exciting to sit down and watch as C-Span at times. It could have been condensed SO much. I strongly recommend doing it in pieces, or flat out just fast fowarding between the long still shots with talking. It IS a pretty big thing to look at if you've never done it before. Sorry for confusing you! I'll answer #4 here as well Timeline wise (As in, the events in the media, not the order they were made): Special) AI Buster 2 (Novel) > This is tricky, as it's a collection of short stories, each of which happens in their own place in the timeline. To make matters worse, it's rife with translation errors, up to and including swapping the names of main characters. None of it is VITAL - if you want to simply skip things for time, this can be skipped first, with no real loss. Special, #2) - Episode 27 (INTERMEZZO) of //SIGN details Mimiru's actions in the anime before she met Tsukasa, and Episode 28 (UNION) happens after the games, and it's basically "Party with everyone from the games & anime." 1) //AI Buster 1 (Novel) 2) //SIGN (Anime) 3a& First 4 Games (PS2) And //Liminality (An OVA that comes packed with the games) happen at the same time. The games are what's inside The World, and //Liminality is events in the real world. 3c) Another Birth (Novel Series, 4 books) > These are the events of the games from BlackRose's point of view, so timewise, they're also happening at the same time. If you are looking for things to skip or cut down, Another Birth should be second to skip, after AI Buster 2. 4) Legend of the Twilight (Manga, 3 Volumes) - This happens 3 years after the events of the games, and are meant as...a post-script, of sorts. It's own miniadventure, it's just sort of meant to show the characters from the main story having grown up a bit. While cute, you mentioned you dislike manga - LotD can be skipped, and you won't be in the dark for anything in //GU, except for one of the extra emails you get by transferring save data over, and that's merely meant as a wink and a nod at people who read it. 5) End Of The World - Now we get tricky. Between the first series and second series, a lot of stuff went down, and only the Terminal Disc, a special PS2 Disc that came packed with //GU 1 Special Edition, explains it in great detail. If you can find a friend or whatnot with it, that's GREAT. If not, A kind soul at GameFAQs has transcribed the entire thing. Broken up into several segments, I actually strongly suggest watching/reading this -after- completing everything else, as it drops a few very heavy spoilers as far as the //GU Games go. (What happens is that you insert the disc into your PS2, and it reads your //GU Save file, and unlocks a few videos accordingly) 6) //Roots (Anime) > Both the first bit of roots and the GU games are the same events. Roots continues on, the game timeskips past the whole events of roots 7) The //GU Games OTHER PRODUCTS THAT CAN BE SKIPPED ENTIRELY DUE TO NON-CANON: //Legend of the Twilight anime - Is not canon at all! .hack//XXXX (Manga) > Alternate version of the games. Passable. //GU+ > Manga, alternate retelling of the //GU Games. //GU Novel > See above. The games assume you have played the previous one in the series - and even give you the option to dump your leveled Kite or Haseo from the previous game into the new one. Storywise, it assumes you know everything, and are playing them in sequence. Your milage may vary! I found the gameplay of the first game to be trudging (And yet I did the extra dungeon of quarantine, whoo), and //GU's gameplay to be a breath of fresh air. As for exploring...you can, to a certain degree. As you trod along, you'll get emails and news updates on your 'desktop' - the news updates provide you with backstory, allowing you to read them and learn more at your leisure. //GU is much more friendly with this, splicing in video clips with the news reports, and even a mini TV series that serves only to deepen the world and flesh it out more. The clips are all done by Production IG (Ghost in the Shell: SAC), so they look -really- slick. //GU's desktop outside the game proper also has forums which, if nothing else, are good for a few laughs. Answered in question 2! Again, this looks like a huge overwhelming behemoth to try and get into at this point in time, but I found the story engrossing and wonderful, and the entire thing a blast to watch, listen, read, and play through.

Heavy Spoiler Warning (Highlight the text after the colon to read): It's hard to explain without going through huge walls of text that are explained in the Terminal Disc, but the short version is the data of the 8 Phases buried itself in select PCs. Why did Skeith bury itself in Haseo? Because Haseo's operator was Sora's operator. Sora being coma'd (And your subsequent rescue of him from Skeith's Wand) gave him complete amnesia of all of the events. His parents kept him away from THE WORLD, and when he struck out on his own, he got dragged back in Again, heavy spoilers (Highlight the text after the colon to read): The Kite in GU is two things: A) an AI, and Not Tri-Edge. Him and 'feral' versions of Balmung and Orca serve as protectors, knights, if you will, destroying all corruption of the world. (Hackers, AIDA, etc) They do this since Aura herself is not around to do the cleansing. Which is why they go after Haseo, due to events in //Roots (Even if it was against his wishes/without his knowledge, it was done to his PC) Should you still care: Watch //SIGN Play Games (OR: Find the 'Terminal Disc' packed in with Special Edition of //GU1, which explains quite succinctly the events of the games, plus other things) Read //Another Birth (The events of the games from Black Rose's perspective) Read //Legend of the Twilight Bracelet (Set 3 years after the events) Read //AI Buster 1 & 2 (Snippets & stories from around the timeline that flesh things out) Skip Legend of the Twilight Bracelet anime (Non-canon, and turns on the pedophilia aspect) Watch .hack//Roots Play //GU (In //GU, the "Eight Months Later" timeskip = the events of Roots.)

The Squad Nova ([Nova]) guys want to thank you all for letting them raid the OCR server and play with people who aren't mouthbreathing idiots. I AM A GOOD W+M1ER

So, hearing Mother 3 was out, I decided to play through Earthbound Zero / Mother 1 before heading to Mother 3. Uggggh. Bad idea. Mother 1 suffers HARD from "early NES syndrome", in that the technical limitations of the NES hamper it hard. There are random battles everywhere. Enemies are brutal and relentless right out of the gate, and EXP is miniscule, forcing a grind that puts MMOs to shame. Even with a 2x EXP patch, it's still pretty tedious. Not to mention that there are a few spots where you need a specific item to proceed, and if your inventory is full, you don't get it...but the game registers as you already getting it, forcing you to reset or reload. But alas, I trudged on through to the end. Below is the entire story of Mother 1, for those who wish to know more, but don't want to suffer through what is a game that has aged extremely poorly. Ninten woke up one day with the objects in his house attacking him. He defeated them, then found his Great Grandfather's Diary, who said that he was a destined child. He found part of an old melody in a music box. He found another part from a bird in a cemetary. Ninten then came across the magical land of Magicant, where he was welcome. There, Queen Mary told him to find all 8 parts of the melody, because she couldn't sing it, and wanted to hear it again. He found a third part of the melody from a singing monkey. He came across a nerd everyone picked on called Lloyd, whom he made friends with. He came across a girl called Ann who simply knew it was her destiny to travel with Ninten. The trio found the fourth melody in a piano in a haunted house. They found the fifth melody in a cactus in the desert. The sixth melody was given to them by a dragon in Magicant. They traveled to the city of Ellay where they beat down a gang called the BBs, and their boss, Teddy, asked to travel with them to avenge his parents, whom were murdered. Teddy told Lloyd to take a break, he'd take over for him. In the city of Youngstown, children everywhere beg and plead for you to get their moms and dads back, who are being held at Mt Itoi. At Mt Itoi, you are assaulted by a gigantic robot. Lloyd comes with a tank and saves you. Teddy is wounded, so Lloyd takes his place. You go to the lake on Mt Itoi, where you find your great grandfather's lab, and a robot named EVE who is sworn to protect you. You climd Mt Itoi where the robot from earlier attacks you. It destroys EVE, but EVE's explosion kills it. EVE gives you the seventh melody, it's mission fufilled. The 8th Melody is given to you from a strange stone that has "XX" carved in it that speaks telepathically to you. You return to Magicant and sing the melody to Queen Mary. Queen Mary is your Great Grandmother, who begins sobbing, saying that Giegue is behind the whole mess, and that she raised Giegue when it was a child. The Eight Melodies are the song Mary sang to him when he was younger. Magicant dissolves. It was nothing more than an illusion held together by the ghost of your Great Grandmother Mary. You return to the XX Stone, which is revealed to be your Great Grandfather's gravestone. It was him who spoke to you earlier. You go foward to confront Giegue, who attacks you in an incomprehensible nature. He says he will wipe out all of humanity, and then offers Ninten a place in his ship, spared from the slaughter. Ninten refuses. You sing the melody to Giegue, forcing him to retreat as he can't reconcile the pleasant memories of his 'youth' with the desire to kill everyone. He swears to return one day. Giygas is Giegue after he has lost what little humanity remains in him.

I AM HELPING I AM HELPING. I also basically went with "which one have I listened to the most" for the 'best remix' question, despite there being a ton of them that are awesome.

One's US, one's PAL, one's Japanese. See attached picture. The Japanese one & the manual there were a gift from a friend. And I will defend them to the death

Oh god what. NOOOO. MY PERFECT SAVE FILE. I HAD EVERYTHING. BEST ARMOR, L99 NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I already have three copies of SoM in cartridge form, but like a good mindless fan drone I will be buying this. PLEASE SQUARE-ENIX. MAY I HAVE ANOTHER.

Dig around in the bowels of the internet, it was one of the ideas they were suggesting that they wanted to do with the PS3 before it launched. Make each game "register" to the system it played on, so it wouldn't work on any other system. Pissed Gamestop off something fierce, as well, as every single gamer.

And Sony went on record as saying that they'd love to make PS3 games only playable on the first system they were played on. Relax, folks. Let's see what actually happens first.

Multiplayer will ship with Wings of Liberty for all 3 races.

I still have my GBA SP so I don't even give a shit about the removed GBA port on the DSi. Also, so far the only DSi exclusive software (aka the region locked stuff) is downloadable versions of Brain Age 1 & 2.

http://kotaku.com/5057870/nintendo-announce-new-ds-the-nintendo-dsi SD slot, camera, MP3 player, no GBA slot. Hm.

I'm seeing it as well. Flipping through old ones, everything except the Shirt things are gone. Perhaps they realized that no one was watching them?