syntheticgerbil

Hah, wow Ben, kind of gutsy you said that on his video. I'm really curious now why this individual scene was made and Anson Jew is not credited on Hit the Road. He should respond to you comment, even if it was four years ago. Also on a similar note, if I recall correctly I read an interview where Steve Purcell's nearly full screen animation in Monkey Island 2 of Rapp Scallion being resurrected from ash took up nearly one whole disk. Luckily it was brilliant enough that it had to stay since that is one of my most favorite pieces of animation ever. Too bad the HD crew decided they needed to cut half of the frames of that animation so that they didn't have to redraw as many.

Yus. I actually can't confirm it's on the CD version only having only ever played that version, but I feel like I've read multiple times that it was. Maybe someone who experienced the floppy version knows better? I can't seem to turn up anything on a Google search. Basically my problem with that scene is not that it's animated that terribly, the foam darts going in to Sam's head are particularly good bits of animation, but that the characters are way too off model and the timing is a bit strange and slow. Also when Max's hands go up to his face, they look disembodied and not a part of his body. And the background is mostly just a solid gaudy orange. Just always struck me as somewhat cheap even though there is a lot of frame by frame animation going on there, taking up precious megabytes. My guess is since Mobygames does not list a credit for Anson Jew for anything on Sam and Max Hit the Road, he may have done this scene as something on the side near the end of the game and therefore was not experienced enough with the characters to match a lot of the other solid and well constructed close ups in game. It definitely feels like something done by someone outside the main production pipeline. This is assuming if the scene was only released on the CD version since it could spare the extra space.

He only gets that much teeth when bumped with a butt.

I finished Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction a few nights ago. I feel like I keep wanting to make a thread on the Ratchet and Clank series since I've played from Going Commando in order to Tools of Destruction this year, but the game series tends to just be a typical cartoony platformer except very well made. This is not a bad thing for some games, but the series has tended to repeat itself a bit much in some cases. Other than that I don't know what I can really say about the series in terms of highs and lows, they are just pretty addicting and I 100% everything and move on to the next. Tools however is the first time I was fully on board with the art style, so there's that. I think I have five more to play. I finished the Walking Dead DLC but I'm pretty annoyed about it and don't feel like ranting in that thread just yet.

Holy shit, I've never seen that. I always thought that Sam and Max scene added to the CD version was complete ass, but the rest of his reel is full of awesome scenes. Looks like everything he animated for The Dig didn't make the cut.

Were they busting any myths at the time?

Yeah I definitely agree with you that The Dig is harder because of some design faults more than trickier puzzles themselves.

The sad thing is I watched that video at least 10 times. I was really in to the whole cartoon mashup thing and hardly understood what the fuck was going on with the drugs.

Are you playing the updated version? It adds checkpoints if you are doing that branching portion in a certain order. Otherwise it's more difficult in the original version.

Glad you enjoyed it, it's definitely one of the top tier LA games. I would say it's also the most difficult of the "can't die, can't get stuck" games outside of The Dig. Also cool that you experienced the bad ending as I didn't realize you could turn Indy into an angry god until a much later playthrough. You also reminded me how ridiculously creepy I originally found it when you talk to Sophia while she is possessed. So great.

For the past two weeks, the dreams I can vaguely remember have all involved various people trying to kill me, usually through stabbing. It's a bit upsetting.

I can hardly think of any cartoon I liked in the 80s and 90s that stands up to my adult mind as quality entertainment. This includes a lot of cartoons already listed. Usually if the writing and characters were not already complete shit, the animation was terrible, derivative, and inconsistent. Usually this was from outsourcing to Korea and just poor quality control in general. The outsourcing part annoys me in a moral manner, especially now that it is more predominant than ever for animators in games, film, and TV. Funny how DiC usually had some top animators working on the intro and everything following was of poor quality. This actually bugged me as a child, as I completely saw through their shit of presenting only good animation for 30 seconds just to hook you in. So out of the U.S. productions, the only ones I watched religiously as a child and feel hold up in my adulthood are Ren and Stimpy, The Simpsons, and Rocko's Modern Life. There's probably a few others I have forgotten, but those were the main ones. I don't count the later Ren and Stimpy and Simpsons in that category. I actually got a lot of mileage out of watching the anime imported on Nickelodeon by Saban. I remember loving Grimm's Fairy Tales and a few months ago I got bored and started finding the old episodes on Youtube. Figures a few of the episodes were cut for violence, but a lot of the cartoons were straight tellings of Grimm tales and were appropriarity scary some times as a child. I feel like outside of the cheesy dub, these cartoons still hold up for moral tales and fun adventures. The drawings are solid and the ideas are clear. That's how to do limited TV animation correctly. The Lil' Bits was pretty good too and I found a few episodes on Youtube as well, but not as good. Score one for the constantly drunk uncle who was never actually drunk in the dub, but "sleepy." I remember Count Duckula being very spooky, funny, and stylish, but I don't think I have seen that show since I was 6. I should probably check out that one too. I don't think it was produced in the U.S. though. I think the Beetlejuice cartoon may be pretty good? I certainly have gotten more enjoyment in life out of that than the actual movie. The rest of my cartoon diet as a child consisted of a ton of Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons shown on various channels. Come to think of it, a percentage of cartoons I hated as a child was probably only slightly less than the large percentage I hate now. One last thing I remember from my Nickelodeon childhood days are the Sports Cartoons shorts they would show between other cartoons. These are some lovely pieces of Canadian animation. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL05FfjoM6s

Sophia was the best girl for Indy, forget all the movie ones.

Earthbound WiiU is actually doing very well: http://earthboundcentral.com/?p=11519 It makes me think this will lead to them releasing Mother 3 in English at some point. There's this recent blurb from Reggie about it, and while some fans seem to think this was a definite no, to me this read as a very standard PR "maybe." http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/19711/20130830/mother-3-release-date-north-america-earthbound.htm

I'm really annoyed by the straight line they went for with her genie panties legging holder underwear thing. It's really bothering me that that line is not curved in any way like the other Shantae designs.

What you need to do is exile all of their friends to another country, prison, or dimension, then delete all the trance music from their computers and ipods.

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I feel like all girlfriends stalk.

I feel like the website needs more pictures of women stalking their prey in nature then, luring the gamer from out of the brush with a Playstation gift card which is delicately balanced atop a bear trap. BUT I really get the feeling that someone just just formatted the text wrong and went with "All Women Stalk" instead. I found the about page and there is no mention of why "stalk" and not "talk." I am going to e-mail them now. I will post the response in this thread for all of those as frustrated as myself.

Ah okay, thanks for the explanation Mr. Remo!

I just imagine moving to another state is the most expensive and shocking thing to get used to ever. Is it only for people with not too many belongings?

Hahaha, yes! The keep the noise down lady must start cropping up in to everything! But seriously... Why do all women stalk? This site doesn't even have a fucking about page explaining what's going on here!

Hmm on that note, my dad found a manual for Mario World in a dumpster that I kept for over a decade despite not ever owning a SNES until college time. I think that says more about my father than me though.

Haha, what's wrong with the Parks and Rec intro?

I was a bit confused about the "leak" they spoke of in the documentary. The first I heard the news of the game's delay and split into two parts was through the Kickstarter update. Did news sites find this first and then the Kickstarter update happened because of damage control? I don't read the forums, so I can't tell what the exact time line of events was supposed to be.