Input drops are part of the base game sometimes, for example there is one frame during the wall kick animation that will eat shot inputs, and X3 will drop any shot or jump input the frame after releasing a d-pad direction. Most likely more noticeable due to additional input delay from the collection (which is significant for the SNES games) making you more likely to hit those scenarios.

I've been playing Octopath a little bit too. The pace of the game is perfectly suited to my work commute, which is nice. I started with H'aanit and have been working my way around the world clockwise to pick up all the party members before doing any serious exploring; one minor disappointment is that as I'm about to pick up the last party member I still haven't encountered anything that really resembles difficulty, just a couple gotchas in boss fights that were easily snuffed out after reloading the save from literally right next to the boss.

 I do appreciate the ubiquity of save points as a strictly casual/commuter player, since they let me save precious battery power by always having an option to turn the console off. I also really enjoy the flow of battles, especially when encountering a mix of foes where you need to read the turn orders and plan a turn or two of attacks at once to optimally deny the opponent's turns. I just hope the game will eventually bare its teeth a little more.

I threw away most of my weekend playing the new Battletech game. As a guy who generally likes the idea of tabletop wargames but not the idea of collecting armies, setting up boards or rolling 30,000 dice for 3 hours, this game ticks all the right boxes for me. Games that would be an hour or two on a tabletop are resolved in a neat 20 minutes or so, and the campaign system, while it starts out slow, is rich in content and never grows stale. Definite recommend for anyone who likes stompy robots and tactics games.

Hopefully this set of repros won't be like the SF2 ones from the same company that set people's consoles on fire.

The most common breading method in restaurants I've worked at (AKA just two so take with a grain of salt) is flour, egg, crumbs. The flour and egg make a sort of batter which keeps the crumbs on remarkably well and tastes delicious and crispy, but of course that entails even more effort than just egg. Another benefit is you can season the flour instead of the meat and get a potentially more even coating of seasoning depending on how well the flour is mixed.

Mmm, you're right. I remember the rule, but when seeking appropriate performance benchmarks I guess I forgot this was probably heading into dangerous territory.

Based on how MM7 played in LC2, I expect XLC to behave somewhere in between ZSNES and snes9x for the SNES games -- more or less accurately for MMX but with inconsistencies in X2 and X3 -- and that game contents will be completely unchanged from original release. I really hope it isn't a port of the X Collection ports because those were even worse in terms of consistency.

If the challenge modes turn out to be significantly less lazy than the classic mega legacy collections, I might buy in. Otherwise, it's hard to justify buying Mega Man X again for the like fifth or sixth time between carts, collections and VC.

It's like a combination of a convention and a telethon, built around the hobby of video game speedruns. A bunch of nerds get together in a hotel for a week and showcase their skills live to raise money for charitable causes, like cancer charities or Doctors Without Borders.

Whoa, this place is positively humming with activity lately!

I don't really have a recent close-up photo but here's a shot of the Mega Man 1-3 relay crew from AGDQ this year. I'm just to the right of the middle of the group, wearing a Team Beat T-shirt.

People make mistakes and learn from them. It's a fact of life.

Welcome back to... whatever's left.

I was! I played through the game yesterday and enjoyed it quite a bit, and then did a little double-take when your name showed up on the credits. I was wondering '#####, did he tell us about this or is it a surprise?'

To what extent did you contribute to the project?

I booted up the first pre-alpha build of Star Citizen the other day and remain cautiously optimistic. My guess is still that I'm going to be at a permanent handicap for failing to give enough money at the start, though.

Other than that, I'm mostly looking forward to the new Smash Bros and Zelda. Have not seen a lot about Splatoon, but the idea seems fun and if Nintendo can pull it off with their signature flair I could imagine spending many hours with it... except that I hate playing F/TPS with anything but mouse and keyboard.

So far I still don't see any reason to get a PS4 or Xbone. If one of them develops a significant, worthwhile game library that isn't available for my monster desktop PC I guess I might get it a couple years down the line.

I've acquired a nasty habit of ordering in SNES and SFC carts, including replacements for some games I lost a couple years ago. This is mostly in service of my other nasty habit of obsessive speedrunning.

It's amazing how much money you can save by getting a SFC cart vs. a SNES one sometimes. For the amount of money I saved on Chrono Trigger alone, I could acquire all the tools I'd need to open up the cartridge, flash a new chip with the US version, and swap them out. X3 tends to hover around $150-200 these days and I got the JP cart for $30 (still a bit much, maybe, but not excessive). It helps that I am explicitly NOT a collector - I don't really care about the condition, region or rarity of the games, as long as they are playable. That said, there IS a certain degree of satisfaction to being able to play some of these games on original hardware for the first time.

The one I've been playing the most recently is X1. I've got a 32:51 in the fastest-completion category and am shooting for 32:30 or lower (for reference, the WR is 31:27).

After that, I'm moving back to a game nobody else runs, Front Mission: Gun Hazard. A few months ago I developed the route and came up with a half-optimized 3h7m time, but I'm confident in my ability to bring that below 3 hours given some more thought and practice.

EDIT: Oh yeah and I'm playing Mario Kart too. It's a blast - I hadn't really sunk my teeth into a Mario Kart game since MK64, so I was pleasantly surprised by how technical the game can be once you start pushing yourself.

I literally never would have predicted this, considering the trouble Capcom's been putting the poor guy through.

...Wait, does this mean the new Smash Bros. is going to get cancelled?

"Damn, that sounds fantastic!" he said belatedly.



Simon Collins (son of Phil) recently put together a really spaced-out rock band called Sound of Contact (you'll see what I mean) and released an album just a couple weeks ago called "Dimensionaut". I've been listening to it basically on repeat for the last couple of days. It's got a decent mix of styles, all down the rock spectrum from full-blown psychedelic jams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t1U3rFjQu8) to a somewhat reggae-flavoured collaboration with some lady I've never heard of before (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaIE1aLbQO0), to a couple of more straight-laced poppy tunes (my favourite of which: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QldJgDAjoo0), but everything has this wonderful, floaty, SPACEY feel to it - thanks in no small part to the brilliant sound design and arrangements. Well worth checking out, and if you like it, well worth buying.

I used to read it regularly, but I stopped around six months ago and probably won't start again for a while (when I can be reasonably sure that IT will be done when I am).

They're obviously just having fun with the game in their signature way.

If you're doing a competitive-ish 100% run, unless you're essentially the VERY BEST, typically your route is penguin > eagle > mammoth > kuwanger (ice sled for the heart) > chameleon (there's a really neat ice sled jump to get the heart without the water) > mandrill > armadillo > octopus. This skips the Mandrill revisit, since you already have Boomerang Cutter when you enter the level the first time.

The VERY best players go to Kuwanger after Penguin. You can do a pixel-perfect walljump to get up to the heart platform without the arm part.

That bread looks like it has approximately five different types of mold growing on it

Until just over a year ago I hadn't so much as had a full drink before - didn't see the point, since I almost exclusively spent my social time with other geeks and intellectuals who didn't consume alcohol. Also, most alcoholic stuff tastes like #####. But recently, I've started making friends who DO enjoy those things (including, for several months, a girlfriend who bordered on raging alcoholism), and I've found that joining in helps me to relax and not strangle them. Sometimes I'll have a few drinks when playing video games online as well, for similar reasons (although I can't strangle them over the Internet). My preference is for sweetened beers ('honey' in the description is a good sign in my book) and rum and cokes which are about 95% coke.

Also, ASR, I know a guy almost exactly like that, although it's less 'goofy' and more 'possibly mentally unbalanced'.

I think it is, but the avatar is so old that I couldn't tell you for sure.

Yes, Death circa CV4.

WISE FWOM YO GWAVE

So in the last couple years, I haven't done much digitally at all, but in an exciting turn of events, I was recently (summer) hired on to do a couple of soundtracks for my friend who designs video games. We're fast approaching delivery for the first game and I was having massive musical writer's block trying to figure out the last track, so I did this instead (with a combination of the sound sets I've developed for the two games):

Plok!

Akrillic: OGG


Tim Follin is as much the man as any 'the man' can be.

Canvas as the durable medium, could sustain for long and the photographs produced on it were not meant to fade away under any event.
Canvas as the durable medium, could experience for long and the photographs produced on it were not meant to fade away under any circumstance.

Someone's chaining algorithm failed spectacularly here.

I try not to generalize to that extent (what the ##### do words like 'modern' and 'contemporary' really mean anyway? In orchestral terms, 'contemporary' means anything from the last CENTURY). I do have little love for synth-pop or the notion of 'indie music' (again, too general, encompassing everything from arena rock and other '80s throwbacks to gentle folkish ballads, Sturgeon's Law applying equally to all of it), but my city's live music scene is actually doing pretty well from what I can hear.

As for my music, I suppose my latest love is Magma (not a new band by most definitions of the term, but NEW TO ME DAMMIT). The most truly operatic of rock opera, and Christian Vander is basically the greatest rock drummer ever.

Wow, this looks fantastic.

EDIT: Well, except for the boss designs.

Mostly money, which worked out well, but also floor tickets to Roger Waters' solo show of "The Wall", which is about as awesome as I could possibly imagine (even if I do have to wait another six months to actually go).

Jamestown is a cool vertizontal shmup in the vein of Giga Wing and Mars Matrix - probably the best of its kind to come from this side of the Pacific in years. I've had hours of fun at it, between improving my scores and bumping up the difficulty ever higher (disclaimer: I'm a bit of a shmup enthusiast) (other disclaimer: you'll have the most fun with this game if you have a good arcade stick).

Going in for the same two you mentioned, though.

Yeah, it looks pretty interpolated.

For $30, you'll DEFINITELY not be disappointed. Doubly so once the good mods come out.

It makes dash-jumping unreasonably difficult, and impossible when kicking off walls.

Anyways, I've had dash on R in MMX for years now, so I don't mind that particular aspect of Zero.

That was great. It also reminded me what a brilliant atmosphere MMX had (something that gets lost on you after the thousandth playthrough or whatever)

^Proven shop, I thought, anyway.

STOP MAKING ME WANT TO WATCH THIS MOVIE SO MUCH.

I think I've been on the internet too long. The first thing I thought was 'wow, that would take forever without a computer' - but then I remembered you're talking about the actual boardgame Game of Life, not Conway's Game of Life.

Most of the reasons are laid out in this thread.

Mind you, I think 'hate' is too strong for most people here (the exceptions should be obvious). I don't waste my time hating bad games - unless they're highly influential as well as bad (see Halo).

Also mind you, there are a few respected folks around here who did enjoy the games (although none I know of that prefer them to Classic/X/etc.)

Also also mind you, I can't list my own reasons in detail because I never spent more than 30 minutes on MMZ.

A dream the size of a tangerine?

Interesting that they're throwing so much in. They don't seem to be having too much difficulty getting money, so it makes me wonder.

The problem is that Thor didn't even have any decent action.

Ewww, arena shmup [/elitist]

But I'm sure it'll be worth a whirl anyway.

There were like three moments in Thor that had me doubled up in laughter; I spent the rest of the entire movie bored out of my skull. At no point was I genuinely excited or particularly involved.

VVVVVV is awesome and everyone should play it.

The other games looked good enough to warrant my purchase, so I did it.

If he invented lying, he'd probably be better at it.

First impression:

I like it, for the most part.

Some weird stuff, though, like referring to the generic reader as 'you' and 'one' interchangeably (since it's not formal prose I would just go with 'you' and do away with the awkward 'one' nonsense).

And this sentence:

The robot body leaned forward on one knee over its left arm in an awkward but as deep a bow as it could manage without falling over.

is almost as awkward as the bow you describe.

I'll read it again and try to do a more thoughtful edit tomorrow.

Can't the word "silent" mean both completely soundless and quiet sound? If not, I've been wrong since I started studying English at the age of 9.

I don't know about other people, but I would never say 'silent' when I mean 'quiet'. In general, it's best to make sure you're saying what you mean BEFORE you start to dress up the prose.

Actually, the comma works better there, as otherwise it's "right off the main road" as in "directly off the main road" rather than the directional right.

I thought that one over for a few minutes when making the original post, then decided that I would read it just as easily without the comma. Besides, the direction the trucks turn off doesn't really matter in this case, so even the incorrect reading would make plenty of sense.

It's been ages since I last did anything like a full edit, so bear with me and keep in mind that most of what I suggest is just opinion. I'll also try to help you clean up your sentence structure a bit.

General thoughts: The whole piece definitely reads as though English is your second language. A lot of redundant words, but also a lot of missing ones. I'll try to point them out as I go.

An Army convoy rolled through sandy Nevada deserts, leaving a large cloud of sand floating in the air behind them.

This is awkward. "The convoy rolled through the Nevada desert, leaving large clouds of sand in its wake" is how I'd have written it - it communicates all the important information, it gets rid of the repeated 'sand', and it implies the action 'floating in the air' (because that's what clouds of dust do) without dragging the sentence on by explicitly mentioning it (mind you, when I'm writing posts like this I tend to drag on. Do as I say, not as I do )

The leading Humvee with tinted windows turned right, off the main road, followed by four Army trucks.

The first comma is unnecessary. As far as other edits, they'd be total nitpicks (I don't quite like how you started the sentence, but it works).

Without any signs of hesitation, vehicles passed a large sign, which stated the following: “Warning – weapon testing area – unauthorized personnel will be apprehended”. The road led to a large compound surrounded by high-voltage iron fence.

"Which stated the following" is perhaps the most passive way you could have described the sign, but there's a lot more to do with this first sentence than just that. You're missing a 'the' before 'vehicles'. I'd also redivide these sentences: the first describing the sign, the second having the convoy roll past it to the compound.

Inside the fence there was a huge main building, which was a weird mixture of fortress and office complex, barracks, fighter jet hangars and a few helipads with Apache helicopters on them.

I would carefully rethink this whole description.

Outside the iron-fence gate, there was a small, green tent that held inside a squad of five unfortunate soldiers that were in guard post that day.

You keep using "there was". It's a fine combination of words, but using it more than once or twice a page is a little excessive. Try for more active descriptions, e.g. "Outside the iron-fence gate stood a small green tent, home to a squad of five soldiers on guard duty that day." Try not to mention the soldiers are "unfortunate" until you've already revealed why - it's too heavy-handed to be effective as foreshadowing.

Drinking soda, cracking puns and playing Texas Hold ‘Em, they were trying to survive the last three hours of their turn.

This is the best sentence so far from a prose standpoint (parallelism, appropriate vocabulary, Rule of Three), but you might want to rethink the soldiers' activities, because with the exception of the puns, those are some of the least Army-like things I can think of.

As the sound of the approaching convoy grew louder, the bored squad raised their heads and looked on each other.

I'd substitute "shrugged at" or some other similar expression of disinterest for "looked on". I'd assume that in a small tent packed with five people, raising their heads is tantamount to looking at each other anyway.

“Must be the supply trucks. Two hours ahead of schedule. Evans, go check their ID’s” said the officer.

Who's the officer? I understand he's prologue cannon fodder, but you should at least indicate his rank.

Youngest of the five let out a sigh of frustration when he dropped his cards and walked lazily out, leaving the comfortable shade of the tent.

This needs restructuring, as well as a 'the' before 'youngest'.

"Private Evans, the youngest of the five, heaved a frustrated sigh as he dropped his cards, leaving the comfortable shade of the tent." But honestly, I'd drop the whole 'youngest of the five' bit entirely. It's going to stop mattering pretty soon anyway.

The leading Humvee stopped right left to him

This is confusing on first glance. Replace "right left to" with "just left of" for clarity. Also, whose left? You should clarify that.

and the tinted window of the right front door opened a bit

Okay, so it was the driver's left, but you should explicitly mention that to avoid head-scratching on the part of the readers.

“Excuse me, Sir, I need to see your ID before I can let you in the compound”, Private said, raising his hand to a lazy salute.

Is his first name Private? I'm sorry to hear that - he must have been the butt of all the jokes in school. Also, "into" rather than "in".

He then gave a look to the rest of the convoy and started to wonder: if his memory served, there was supposed to be only two trucks.

"Looking to the rest of the convoy, he began to wonder: weren't there supposed to be only two trucks?"

Whirring voice of an opening window made him turn his head back to the car. Private was going to ask about the extra trucks, but the words got stuck in his uvula.

"The whir" is better than "whirring voice" in this case.

Instead of looking face to face with a strict-looking officer giving him an ID card, he was looking at nasty-looking smile of a man with crystal-decorated blue helmet – and most importantly, some sort of weapon that seemed to be an extend of his arm directed straight to the Private’s chest.

"the" before "nasty-looking".  "a" before "crystal-decorated". "extension" rather than "extend". "at" rather than "to" the Private's chest, but that one is more nitpicky than the other ones.

“My name is Gemini Man, and this is how I identify myself”, he said with a soft, silent voice

A voice can be soft or silent. It can't be both, since silence is the absence of sound.

and the thought of warning the others did merely have time to raise it’s head in poor Private’s mind, as the weird man fired his weapon.

"and the thought of warning the others barely came before the weird man fired his weapon."

A bright-blue laser beam emitted from the hand cannon and pierced Pirate John Evans’ chest, killing the man.

Oh sweet, he was a pirate too? Is there some sort of massive pirate-vs.-robot ultimate showdown later on? This is something that needs further exploration!

Also "Emerged", not emitted. The cannon emits the beam. The beam emerges from the cannon.

Private’s body fell in the ground, the look of surprise and the realisation of his impending death stuck on his young face.

"The private fell to the ground"

It’s 20XX.

You don't need to mention this.

Ps. The actual chapters are gonna have more lenght.

If so, then I'm not going to have time to go through them in detail like this one, but I'll still read them through and post my thoughts.

Ctrl+shift changes your keyboard's language. Keep cycling through until your apostrophes and / work properly.

From a genre fan:

There haven't been many FPS games truly worth playing in a long time (only something like 7-8 in the last ten years, compared to at least 15-20 in the five years before that). The genre's just stagnated.

I'll spare you the obnoxiously elitist anti-console-FPS tirade, but in short I blame Halo (there's more to it than that, but it's certainly the biggest target).

As for single-player vs. multiplayer in FPS games: that's something that's slowly degenerated over time as well. I think the biggest reason it started that degeneration is horrible enemy AI in the late '90s, right as the genre (as a whole, not just the really big games like Doom) was beginning to see a respectable player count. No challenge in SP -> take it online, find some people around your level -> much more fun, not to mention team modes (my favourite example: Starsiege Tribes CTF) bringing the competitive aspect to a whole new level.

It's sort of a shame losing most of the extended campaigns, but it's easy to see how it happened.

Me too.

The cases aren't identical, but very similar. Mine's a year and a half old though, so that may be a factor. Anyways, the big problem with those cases is the power supply being on the bottom rather than the top of the box. It makes the wiring unreasonably difficult.

I think you have the same case as I do. If I'm right, having it put together by experts is a good idea, because that case can become a cluttered mess VERY easily (and in fact I'm going to have to take my box apart and completely rewire it 'cause I screwed up the first time).