tegan

Chris, I recognize at least some of what you read in French as a string of French-Canadian profanity.

It's probably just that I'm a baby who plays baby games. (I will try that next time it comes up though)

I absolutely can't do first-person games at all, especially using analog controls. I couldn't do the escape sequence in Descent, the other kids at school laughed at me when I tried to play Goldeneye, and I could barely use the bow in Ocarina of Time. Then one day I picked up the Metroid Prime trilogy on the Wii on a whim, having skipped the Gamecube releases; and a combination of using the Wiimote along with the sheer strength of the first Prime was enough to make me power through (a feat that took me something like thirty hours and gave me some crazy neck cramps because I kept moving my head around in the real world). I eventually made it through all three Prime games, and last fall I decided to try out Portal on PC for the first time. It took me eight hours and made me so sick I had to lie down a few times, but I still consider it something of a personal accomplishment. Incidentally, I know everybody seems to rag on the recent trend of motion controls being added to games, but I couldn't be happier about finally being able to aim the bow where I want in Ocarina of Time 3D.

truly Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing will be the marble that tomorrow's greatest artists shall hew their masterpieces from

I remember once stumbling upon the edit history for the Wikipedia page for Princess Peach. Hilarity ensued.

I just finished Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, having previously only played Unwound Future. I feel like in both cases, I was missing a lot of information when I got to the ending, but especially with this one. Is it easier to understand if you've played the first games, or what?

I think that playing bad games can be as educational as playing good ones, which is why I recommended Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That game's whole thing is that its systems are completely opaque. Things are constantly happening and no player could ever discern what any of it is supposed to mean. Also, adding Super Metroid and Frog Fractions.

So that weird life sim thing Tomodachi Collection for the 3DS is remarkably progressive in that you can have two male characters have a relationship, up to and including getting married and having children together. Nintendo's response: "that's a bug and we're patching it out." Booooooo.

I'm really confused by the question at hand. Are we looking for a list of games based on historical importance, exceptional quality, or potential for facilitating the understanding of the medium? Because I've been treating it like the latter but maybe I'm supposed to be treating it like one of the former? In any case, I nominate at least one Pokémon game for all three.

I've heard it said that everyone should have to play Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES, because it so poetically explains what elements are necessary to the player's understanding of a game by having none of those elements present.

The first two levels of Super Mario Bros. and the opening stage from Mega Man X, because they're absolutely perfect examples of teaching a player everything they need to know without a single piece of text appearing on the screen.

Tegan and Sera are playing at the casino here in July and I'm gonna' miss iiiiiit.

No joke, shortly after that video started going around I bought a pack of Pokémon cards* and saw this on the very top when I opened it. I immediately burst out laughing. *shut up

It's funny, because I learned the correct way to eat a banana through observations of chimpanzee behaviour.

Going to be at least another week or so before I have money again, and I'm pretty much out of food. As of right now I've scraped up all the loose change in the house and still only have a few dollars. I really hate to ask, but if anyone wants to help me out a little, my Paypal is under teganrobichaud at gmail dot com (it was set up by a family member, so I don't think it displays my name, but it's definitely linked to my bank account. I've been meaning to fix that). I can do a doodle for you or something if you want.

I think that if GRRM were actively deciding to portray a sexist world, I think he would probably want to at least be clever enough to do it in a way besides making it work exactly the way sexist things work in all other media with absolutely no surprised whatsoever.

I wish. As much as I'm leaving myself open for a "staying in the closet" joke, in retrospect I actually liked sitting in that first hidden room sometimes. There were a bunch of old toys back there and sometimes I miss my stuffed animals.

I'm glad that Nintendo at least realizes that they have to start marketing the thing better. The other day all online Wiis got a post on their message boards that was basically an ad for the Wii U. That's pretty clever, and likely didn't even cost them anything to do.

My parents' house had secret rooms. My dad built the place, but didn't design it particularly well and included some major redundancies. There was a fairly sizable room hidden behind a bathroom that you could only get to by going through a tiny door in the back of a closet, plus a few others hidden behind similar doors in my parents closet, a short passage that could take you from one room in the basement out the closet of another room (because the back wall of the closet was never built) and an alleged attic behind a cubbyhole that I've never been in. Come to think of it, there would also have to be a significant slice of the house that's completely hollow with no connections to any other rooms. My house was fucking weird is what I'm saying.

The weird cyclical logic that's cropped up in recent years of "I want this Nintendo-exclusive game, but I don't want to buy a Nintendo console, because they don't have any games I want" is staggering to me. (on the other hand I kind of do it myself with the Vita)

But are you aware of the secret correct way to eat a banana?

I guess there's a Virtual Boy emulator for this thing already. Sweet.

It's a Japan-only Nintendo-published DS title meant to help teach simple English to Japanese people for travel purposes.. Every screenshot I've ever seen is hilarious, and primarily seem to involve teaching people how to shop for condoms and swear at baseball games.

I think that language might get tied to our thoughts at least a little; it's not uncommon for someone to have some difficulty understanding a concept that their language has no word for.