Thrik

Or you could just... not!

Yes, best to go into that one with expectations lowered. Even the pre-rendered art is pretty weak. I did actually encounter a weird animation but when I played through Grim Fandango in residual just a month or so ago. Manny put away his scythe and just went into a rigid standing pose, which he remained in even as I moved around. Switching scenes, reloading, making other animations occur, etc didn't help. Eventually it fixed itself when I entered a certain puzzle-related animation not too long afterwards. I guess that with these games being so old, it's wise to back up your saved games folder every so often so that if disaster strikes and wipes them all out you can just restore the folder.

Just to lower the tone for a moment, the guy in that art looks like he has a ginormous mechanical knob.

Finally got a merchandise store set up for my forum after having it on my agenda for like two years.

Oh, he did this did he? That's another incentive for me then because the Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack is definitely one of my favourites.

Copper theft has been a huge problem in the UK in the last few years. There are a bunch of massive wind turbines near where I live, and they've been shut down on numerous occasions because the copper they apparently use extensively was stripped from them — security was lax because who the fuck steals parts of a wind turbine? Nothing like impairing the region's energy capabilities for personal gain.

Could always just add a custom BBCode such as [inlinespoiler]. I can't remember how they were implemented before, but be aware that touch screen users (phones, tablets) can't highlight text particularly easily and on some devices it doesn't reveal the text in the same way that you'd expect on a desktop computer — so just tapping the black bar should toggle its visibility.

Dude, even the original SNES had a marked difference in handling between the big characters like Donkey Kong and Bowser, and the small characters like Koopa and Toad. If I remember correctly, each game has three main classes: light, medium, and heavy. Each has a higher top speed than the last but takes significantly longer to reach it, thus driving errors and weapon attacks can be far more damaging — they also get harder to handle due to a larger turning circle. I suspect that Mario Kart 8 will stick to more or less the same system, although it could make things more interesting if there were additional nuanced differences to both the things above plus some arbitrary character-specific attributes (e.g. Donkey Kong can throw bananas further).

Maybe you need 'a guy'. I would imagine that the movie industry is massively influenced by networking and having worked together before; if you're currently in a situation where you don't really know anyone in there, that's something to work on so that you're not just seen as an outsider with no credentials.

The Rainbow Road music kicking activated too many nostalgia buttons for me to care about anything else. I think that having plenty of characters and vehicles is a good thing. It provides a great incentive to beat tournaments and meet objectives, and assuming that Mario Kart 8 is online I'm guessing that there'll be a Team Fortress 2 hats-esque demand for ways to distinguish yourself. Hopefully some of the set-ups will be pretty difficult to unlock so that there's some actual status attached to, say, being Metal Mario. I doubt that I'll ever be able to summon the stamina required to do things like achieve the gold car like I did back in the Double Dash days, though. God damn.

When I hear other people talk about solving the puzzles in games like this, I really do wonder how the hell I ever figured these things out myself. Seriously, on paper the logic is absolutely hilarious, and seeing an insight into your thought processes while knowing the solution is fascinating. Just a reminder that this thread is great and appreciated. It would also make a great alternative walkthrough for the substantial overhaul that I'm giving the Grim Fandango Network.

There's no doubt that this trailer essentially sums up what I've been gagging for from Nintendo since 2006: a truly awesome-looking realisation of the Nintendo universe in HD. In all honesty other recent games like 3D World and Tropical Freeze have completely sold me, but we're now at the point where a historical Nintendo lover surely cannot resist this machine. It's a shame that we've had to wait so long because I could have really used this quite some years ago, but it should be worth it. If we can just get some new Zelda on the job, now...

I don't feel I'm any closer to knowing whether the word not being reclaimed would have had a significant effect on racism and black culture as a whole, which is the question that I was throwing into the air. I don't lean either way, it's just an academic curiosity. I guess this is just something I should look into more by myself, learn some history and such. It's definitely of note that the US isn't the only country where racism was once rampant but has become much less so with time, yet it's basically the only one where 'nigger' has become widely used in a different form. It's important to emphasise that this is a US phenomenon, not a worldwide one (although globalisation of media and entertainment has started causing the word to seep out in recent years). I'm not sure I like your implication that we (white guys) shouldn't be getting involved with the debate, though — racism at any level affects us all. While in a relationship with a black girl for a number of years I experienced racial hostilities at times from both blacks and whites. If I were to have mixed kids, I think that it would very much be my place to debate topics concerning racism, identity, and language. No group should be excluded from discussion of such things with the world becoming increasingly multi-cultural.

I think it is hard for me to understand it fully, but I do wonder what it'd be like in the US if the term were never 'retaken'. In the face of increasing intolerance for racism — which I believe is an entirely different phenomenon to any usage of that specific term — would it still be widely used, or would it be more like the UK where its usage has fallen out of favour without being supplanted by a re-purposed version? It seems to me like you're saying that the word has been an integral part of moving away from racism, blacks feeling empowered to embrace their culture, live a normal life, etc. But would that have not happened anyway, allowing the word to just fade away apart from occasional use by truly racist arse holes (who still use it in such a way anyway)? I do appreciate that there are historical differences between the countries, so I'm not suggesting that things would go the same way — just pondering the possibility.

I can't say that I see the value in it either. People still use the term 'nigger' in a highly pejorative way, and when they do it still causes great hurt and/or anger. All that normalising its identical-sounding offshoot has accomplished is introducing it into the day-to-day vocabulary of countless people around the world, including kids who've been brought up in an environment relatively devoid of racism and who only use the term because they've seen the older dudes using it as a fraternal term. It is a noteworthy aside that this is largely a US phenomenon. The word isn't really heard in the UK unless it is indeed the racist version, at least not in any town or city I've lived in. As such, it's very uncommon to hear it in either form — which is just fine with me.

Splendid. Nintendo is ticking boxes.

Do they hold up on the big screen? I assume there's no smoothing or whatever like you get with an emulator? That's my only problem with some of these Virtual Console releases: certain SNES games in particular look absolutely awesome with the special filters — Yoshi's Island jumps to mind as it's art style is particularly suited to the brush stroke-esque filtering. I guess that a massive ace the Wii U has in this regard is the fact that handheld games could be played on the handheld controller. That is an option, right?

A side-effect of this line of thinking is that it ends up used by people of all races — including white — because its widespread casual use has normalised it as a generic term for a bro and caused it to be picked up by kids at school who would never have otherwise done so. There's a point where attempts to reclaim a term actually just extend its life rather than let it die. Is that the goal?

Guy on my forum made a really cool scene in Unreal Engine based upon a piece of Deus Ex: Human Revolution concept art. Really interesting seeing how a game I love could look in a different engine, I'd like to see more fan scenes created in this way where the original concept art is referred to. Anyway, the thing I'm plugging here is the fact that we interviewed him about it straight after he finished it last week: http://www.mapcore.org/page/features/_/interviews/deus-ex-human-revolution-scene-interview%e2%80%8f-with-r37

I am so blessed to have friends who Photoshop.

I'm not at the peak of fitness right now after letting myself go a bit during my last relationship, but I lost about 42 pounds with relative ease a few years ago just by controlling my food intake — virtually no exercise at all beyond 30–60 minutes of walking a day (if you're not even doing that you have problems). I'm not saying exercise is bad, but in all honesty I'll only do it if it's something I want to do anyway (martial arts can be EXHAUSTING). I think that the 'done thing' of spending hours on treadmills and exercise bikes is unnecessary if not destructive to sustainable weight loss. It essentially comes down to this: you can spend like an hour running, or just skip one pizza a week. The result is more or less the same because — unlike with lifting weights — you don't get meaningful continued loss between sessions. You either burn 600 calories or you avoid eating 600 calories. Extend that to your whole lifestyle and you should discover that you can eat great things, lose weight, and only do exercise that you enjoy. Oh, and for Christ's sake: get a calorie counting app (I recommend Macros) and use it for everything. Yes, that includes drinks and that 100-calories-per-teaspoon mayo.

Well, that's me sold!

After you guys got me thinking about all the gender-orientated words, I caught myself using the word 'gash' earlier on to describe something shitty. As in, 'that's a bit gash'. There are two things this word can refer to: Wound Vagina I think that it's clear how the second likely evolved from the first. It's very widely used (here) as a stand-in for 'shit', 'crap', 'rubbish', etc. Am I bastard for using it in this way? I can't really say that I'd associate the word with either definition in this particular context, but I'm conscious that there's sensitivity to use the term for either gender's genitalia as some kind of derogative. Clearly avoiding the term altogether is the easiest course of action, but — and I realise this sounds kind of stupid — I like the word. I'm re-evaluating terms that make their way into my everyday conversation and it's quite interesting thinking about the possible connotations of some of them. Is it going too far to use words like 'bollocks', 'dick', and any other gender-specific term? Should such sensitivity be reserved for when that gender is female, so what we're saying isn't so much 'avoid gender-specific terms' but more 'avoid female-specific terms'?

Hee. The above posts alone make me want to play this.