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 CLOUDBOND007 |
Game Progress Topic 2007 |
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Posts: 9847 (01/01/07 2:14 AM) Lunitari Mage |
Happy New Year and such. Would be happier if I didn't have to get up at 6AM tomorrow (actually today!), but it was still somewhat enjoyable. I feel like the last year was one of the most eventful of my entire life. Maybe that's why I feel so worn out. Here's hoping that 2007 is nice and mundane.
I am not getting anywhere in terms of gaming lately. |
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 TWEETER911 |
Re: Game Progress Topic 2007 | |||||
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Posts: 4834 (01/01/07 2:25 AM) Phantom King |
I downloaded the Shin Sangoku Musou BB OST (JPN only Dynasty Warriors online...). Its full of kick ass remixes of old tracks!
 "RRRRRENDING SSSABER!!!" |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
Re: Game Progress Topic 2007 | |||||
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Posts: 10475 (01/01/07 10:49 PM) "Here I Come to Save the Day!"
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We're most of the way through the Zelda cartoon series.
Of course it's coincidence, but there's stuff in these episodes that became part of the game series. Link spends some time swimming under water. There was a little of that in Link's Awakening, more in Ocarina of Time, and a lot in Majora's Mask. Link wants to go fishing A Hitch in the Works. That could have inspired the minigame in Ocarina of Time. The fairy is an obvious foreshadowing of Navi. What's in the series that's not in the games? One funny thing about videogames is that supposedly the newer ones give more freedom than the older ones, but that isn't really true. Combat in Wind Waker is pretty one dimensional: Hold the "L" button, wait for the green button to change, press it. A big deal was made about all the violent things Kratos can do in God of War, but there's no freedom to it. He has one fatality per species. He can tear the wings off Harpies, or heads off medusas, but can't kill enemies any way he wants. In the cartoon, however, Link -- and the enemies! -- improvise all sorts of bizarre fighting techinques. One of Link's favorite moves is riding on his shield like a surfboard, which doesn't actually make any sense, though that didn't stop Peter Jackson from appropriating that move for Legolas in Two Towers. |
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TaroSH |
Re: Game Progress Topic 2007 | |||||
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Posts: 2047 (01/01/07 11:50 PM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
I turned on my Atari Flashback 2 and beat all three difficulty settings of Adventure in under an hour, maybe about fourty minutes (I had to keep resetting because my game kept getting screwed by glitches and that damn bat)... when FO said all three difficulty settings can be beaten in a matter of minutes, she meant once you solved them, right?
The great thing about Level 3's "It's so clever of us to create this algorithm that randomizes the placement of the items!" is that it can get set up in a way that could make it easier than Level 2. I didn't even have to go to the White castle. Then I did some crap in Drakengard. Fought a battle where I killed about 2,000 enemies, Caim got five levelups and the Dragon got 10 Attack boosts. Then the world got nuked, and I had to fight some really annoying ghost enemies that rapid-hit you for some insane damage. They're magic resistant, but they don't reflect it, and I could have beaten them by circling with the dragon but that would have taken forever. I don't get something. I did the desert stage where the seal got broken. Then suddenly, one of the prologues said all three seals were broken. At first I thought somebody had been playing my game. But I guess somebody decided that stages where Caim and the dragon try to race to save each seal were going to be too long, boring, and predictable, so they just broke all three seals at once Can anybody guess what happens at the Apocalypse in Drakengard? That's right, a flying fortress appears! |
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/02/07 12:30 AM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
I think The Legend of Zelda is the best videogame-to-cartoon adaptation I've seen. You can't really take the stories seriously and some episodes are better than others, but generally it's got a lot of humor and likable characters.
The main reason it seems that this show worked better than a lot of other "advertisement" cartoons is that they basically only had the two games to worry about getting in stuff from. So they really only had a few main characters to work with, which gave them more time to develop them. They didn't have to worry about adding new characters each time a new toy was released. The only things they really had to worry about working in were all the different monsters and items from the games, but that actually turned out to be an advantage - they don't just fight the same enemies over and over again and beat them the same ways over and over again. Contrast that to Captain N where they have an episode that seems to be based more on The Fantastic Voyage than any NES game, but in order to squeeze in an advertisement for Faxanadu, they insert a pointless scene where the dog and the freakin' Gameboy dress up in armor to retrieve an elixir from the World Tree, which is like a moment of jawdropping desecration for anyone who is a fan of that game.** Or Seasons 3 and 4 of Transformers which saw so many new characters added that the show became a complete train wreck. ** - On a related note, I hate, hate, hate the Captain N version of Link's character design. I'm glad they kept the same voice actor, but the design was really (and I hate to use this word, but I can't think of anything else more appropriate) gay. On an even less-related note, I once mentioned that I saw Zelda's voice actor, Cyndi Preston, on some TV show about a year after the Legend of Zelda cartoons were made, and that she looked exactly like Zelda, minus the pointy ears and costume. I surmised it couldn't be coincidence and that the show must've been casted before it was drawn and the character must've been modeled after her. Well, I finally saw pictures of Jonathan Potts, the actor who played Link, and while his hair is much thinner and he also lacks the pointed ears, he does look like him in the face. He also looks a little like ice skater Kurt Browning, which is funny, because I thought once or twice that the cartoon Link looked a little like a young Kurt Browning, too. (The Captain N version of Link doesn't look one iota like Mr. Potts.)
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/02/07 1:43 AM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
All hell's broken loose in Drakengard. Both in the actual game, and it's jumped the shark.
The head priestess of the Cult of Watchers is a little girl who was spinning around, throwing confetti and going "Lalalalala!" when the final seal was broken. |
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TWEETER911 |
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Posts: 4834 (01/02/07 1:51 AM) Phantom King |
I wonder which of the 5 endings you'll get. They all suck though.
"RRRRRENDING SSSABER!!!" |
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/02/07 3:07 AM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
I love manuals that contain spoilers.
In the manual of Drakengard 2*, they say what happens at the end of Drakengard. * I bought it when I noticed it was down to $20 and had no idea Drakengard was so bad. But even if I did know the first one sucked I probably still would have bought it. I mean, I still bought Castlevania: Curse of Darkness when it came down to $20 |
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Facilitypro |
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Posts: 2343 (01/02/07 3:36 PM) Slow Daddy |
I started Portrait of Ruin.
Aside from the usual DS complaints (and two new ones: my arms go numb after 20 minutes and it's impossible to play in any sort of light). I'm about 3 hours in, but I only have one comment: "JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE!" |
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/02/07 5:14 PM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
I only used Charolette when I absolutely needed her.
[Edit: I suck.] |
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sethrashnoo |
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Posts: 2446 (01/02/07 5:35 PM) I Look Like an Egg |
Quote: Well, there was another full episode based on Faxanadu, but it was an arguably worse desecration. The Elf King was a (really bad) Elvis impersonator and the Dwarf Queen (which doesn't even exist in the game) was a Bette Midler knockoff. And the final boss (just called "The Evil One" in both the show and the game) looked nothing like it does in the game. And they get the Ruby Ring not by healing the fountains but by running a race against a guy with a Bobcat Goldthwait voice. Speaking of Captain N, I just recently thought of something when I was rereading that article by writer Mark Evanier (of Garfield & Friends) about how he had to keep that character Eric in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that he didn't like: I wonder if that's the same reason they had to make Simon Belmont be the way he was in Season 1. Maybe the reason they lightened up on him in Season 2 is because those special interest groups no longer had as much control over things. Still, I thought Captain N was a good show in its day, but I agree that that's mostly based on Season 2. The only Season 1 episode I liked was the Dragon Warrior one, and Season 3 was complete crap. Damn budget cuts! |
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/02/07 5:42 PM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
Is that a Season 1 episode? Because I have absolutely no memory of that. If so, thanks for reconfirming that I have no reason to buy that DVD set.
Quote: You know, I'm getting the suspicious feeling that the way they wrote these episodes is that they made up some random story about some random crap with a random setting and characters, and then approximated it to the closest NES game plot they could find. Writer #1: So tell me what game is this based on again? Writer #2: Well, it's not, but maybe we could say it's based on...on...hmm...how about Faxanadu? Wrtier #1: Faxanadu? What's this got to do with Faxanadu? Writer #2: Uh, well, the king could be the Elf King. Yeah! THat's it! And the ring they won from that dude...that could be the Ring of Ruby! And um...the Bette Midler chick could be the Dwarf Queen! Yeah! Writer #1: There is no Dwarf Queen. Writer #2: Shhhh! They won't know that if they haven't gotten that far yet.
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sethrashnoo |
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Posts: 2446 (01/02/07 6:34 PM) I Look Like an Egg |
I thought it was Season 2 but I could be wrong.
You know...another thing from that episode that might support your theory is that the Evil One was after a crystal made from the elements of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. That doesn't exist in the game either. |
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Magical Yard Gnome |
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Posts: 2225 (01/02/07 6:54 PM) Heavy Metal Chainsaw |
Quote: Didn't the Evil One look kind of like Chaos in that episode, though differently colored? Maybe they had trouble deciding between Faxanadu and Final Fantasy. Caution children! Happy ice cream dancing for you!
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/02/07 7:24 PM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
Well, if it did, it would be the first time anything on Captain N looked like what it was supposed to look like.
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/02/07 8:54 PM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
There actually was a Final Fantasy episode. They had Matoya and the dark elf, and that was it. Matoya looked like a typical Halloween witch complete with a wart on her nose and wasn't even blind.
Does anyone else remember the Potion of Power episode where Ganon was a little baby pig, then he drinks the Potion and turns into freaking Godzilla? Plus, I swear he says "dwink" in that episode. Anyway, I played FF3 DS to that mountain I have to climb for that girl's lover. I might quit though; when I said I wanted another game to juggle with Drakengard, I really didn't want another RPG, especially another RPG from Square/Enix/Square-Enix. |
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/02/07 9:30 PM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
Quote: I vaguely remember that episode but it wasn't as bad as the "other" Zelda episode of Captain N in which King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard stole one of the Triforce pieces and for some reason, that made Zelda get sick and start dying. This is pretty much entirely inconsistent with the Legend of Zelda cartoon series when considering that the Triforce was separated all throughout that series and it never once made her ill.
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/02/07 9:36 PM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
Oh yeah, the episode where they were stuck to a wooden chair that was sitting out in the open.
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/03/07 8:20 PM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
I started Mega Man 4, and beat Toad, Drill, and Pharaoh Man, all with the Mega Buster because Drill wasn't weak against Toad and Pharaoh wasn't weak against Toad or Drill.
Oh man, Drill Man's stage music sounds like something out of Rescue Rangers. And the password screen music is irritating too. |
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/04/07 12:20 AM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
In Drakengard I beat the Wyrm, did another aerial mission where I got killed by a pair of those damn reapers, some ground mission, then some optional crap.
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/04/07 12:34 AM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
Quote: Wait until you hear the desecrated Mega Man 2 Title/Ending music at the end of the credits sequence. The only songs in Mega Man 4 I really like are the Pharoah Man theme, the Bright Man theme, the final boss theme, and the train ride part of the ending sequence. It seems that the songs I like in that game are really, really good, but the rest range from bad to forgettable. That's the way it is with Mega Man 5 and 6 for me, too. 5 had Charge Man's theme. 6 had Flame Man's theme. The rest, I can't remember.
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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Posts: 10475 (01/04/07 12:39 AM) "Here I Come to Save the Day!"
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/04/07 12:50 AM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
While eBaying for Mega Man 6, I just now found out there were three NES Contra games, not just two.
Do I suck? |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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Posts: 10475 (01/04/07 12:56 AM) "Here I Come to Save the Day!"
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No, Contra Force is apocryphal.
That's why the SNES game is Contra 3 (though -- trivia! -- it was planned to be called Contra 4. I have a poster that came with Castlevania 4 that says Contra 4 is coming soon. Also, Final Fight on the Super NES was called Street Fighter in a Nintendo Power SNES preview) |
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Flying Omelette |
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Posts: 17126 (01/04/07 1:03 AM) Shy, my Oni Brass! |
Secret of Mana was originally going to be called "Final Fantasy Adventure 2". Somewhere, I have an NP issue that shows previews of a game with that title, but the screenshots are all from Secret of Mana.
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CLOUDBOND007 |
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Posts: 9847 (01/04/07 2:08 AM) Lunitari Mage |
I just played a bunch of Trauma Center's chapter 3. I'm up to the mission I hated on the DS where it's like a puzzle with interlocked triangular GUILT that can only be removed a certain way. And I've forgotten how. Anyway, the game makes an excellent transition to the Wii aside from the unreliability of using the left analog to select your items.
I played through the part where you perform "surgery" on a bomb to disarm it, and it's completely different from the DS, and a whole lot more fun. I thought it was going to be that the main story missions carried over from the DS version would be the normal gameplay and the bonus missions would involve a lot of Wii features, like twisting the remote. But this one broke the chain. You had to turn the remote to turn the screws on the outer part of the bomb. Then you had to use the remote to grab these push-pin type things out of one hole and put them into different slots, actually moving the remote away from you and towards you to do the motions. Then you get to blast away at a sphere with a bunch of panels on it and try not to hit the ones that are lit up. And finally, you have to attack the core of the bomb without hitting any of the stuff that's rotating around it in every direction. Exciting stuff. I played Super Mario Bros. on the Wii today but got a Game Over without clearing the game. I actually did make it to Bowser in 8-4, but didn't time my run underneath him correctly. A shame, because the hammer brother was actually easy to get by. |
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TaroSH |
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Posts: 2047 (01/04/07 3:06 AM) I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost |
In Mega Man 4, I'm down to Dive and Skull Man. I've attempted each of their stages once, but didn't even make it to Skull Man and Dive Man killed me on my last life.
I know why I this happens, I just don't know why this happens; whenever I see a stingray in a video game, it's all I can think about. |
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CLOUDBOND007 |
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Posts: 9847 (01/04/07 4:17 AM) Lunitari Mage |
I'm trying Gametap again for a couple months because I'm a moron. That is, because they've added a whole bunch of really interesting PC games from the past 5 years, some that I didn't have the specs to run before.
The interface is cleaned up a lot from the early days, and this PC runs the Gametap software so much better. The Xbox 360 controller is a perfect fit. Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Beyond Good & Evil Deus Ex Grandia II Icewind Dale 1 & 2 Apparently near every Might & Magic and Heroes of Might & Magic game Serious Sam II Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow Tony Hawk 3 and 4 (are they good ones, I don't know) Uplink And that's just skimming the list and doesn't include titles I haven't heard of before. And that's just the PC section. They've added a couple more Dreamcast games, lots of great arcade games (I know MAME is free, but it's a hassle sometimes). There's really old DOS PC stuff that I don't kniow how I'd run otherwise, but I'm not sure if there's much in there I'd want to play anyway, aside from the already mentioned M&M. And then you've got the more mundane stuff, Genesis, Atari, and such. I'd like to just try a little of this, a little of that, and see how it goes. First month back is only 99 cents anyway. |
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Facilitypro |
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Posts: 2343 (01/04/07 5:35 AM) Slow Daddy |
OK, so I got the bad ending to PoR, then I did the spell thing and got access to the next 4 portraits.
If this is the hardest of the modern CV games, that's not saying much for the recent CV entries. I've faced like 3 bosses that killed me a handfull of times, and I've died outside of bosses rarely. The level design is entirely unspectacular. I'm no fan of SotN, but at least it was interesting to navigate around the castle. In PoR, getting a nnw move just opens up a few rooms instead of entire parts of a castle. But this just means that sicne so much of the castle is accessible without abilities, the enemies are really easy and don't get stronger as you do. PoR is another "slap some rectangles together" entry of CV lore. It's empty corridors littered with enemies. Sometimes you might have to zigzag your way up for down. There's maybe 2 or 3 rooms of clock tower, and even that's not good. The enemies are pretty lame, uninspired, and generally don't require much strategy. There's quests you can get or do, but mostly they are either retardedly easy ("give me this item you already have!"; "Do this move in front of me!") or impossible, and you need a player's guide to find what he wants. I'm still playing, but it's pretty mediocre. And it cuts off the circulation to my arms. Good old DS. |
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Crawl and 1OOO |
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Posts: 10475 (01/04/07 8:33 AM) "Here I Come to Save the Day!"
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Quote: My mother knew a crazy guy who thought he was from Earth, Wind and Fire. That could have been cool, but he also thought he was Jesus. You can only be one or the other! |
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sethrashnoo |
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Posts: 2446 (01/04/07 2:02 PM) I Look Like an Egg |
I finished Mega Man X1, 2 and 3 on the collection. I gave Kingsley another attempt, but at this point I'm beginning to think that underground castle is impossible and I have no idea how FO survived it. It's like the world's longest endurance test. I did go back to some earlier areas and look for extra lives. I found a place that had one, plus enough money to earn another one. But even with 5 lives, I still can't make it to the end of that thing.
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