miffy495

If there's ninja rope hi-jinks, I'd be down.

I'm going to throw in some support for Wii fit here. Every few months I get on a bit of a fitness kick and use it daily for a month and a half or so, then fall out of it again. For that month and a half, it feels great and is really entertaining. The girl loves to join in when she's over as well, and I think I'd stay committed to it a lot better if I lived with someone else who did it with me. If I've been going to her place for a couple of weeks and she hasn't signed in, the board asks me to remind her to get back to it. If you're planning on getting it just for the wife, it may not be that great. If you participate with her (don't be ashamed. It's actually way more fun than I would have thought before I tried it) and try to keep each other into it, I'd think it would be fantastic. Really, it's nothing more than an electronic device that will occasionally guilt you into doing some pushups or running in place for a while (the game parts ARE shit) but there are far worse ways to spend your time. The strength training bits will tire you out, specifically things like the higher levels of side plank, and the cardio will make you sweat. In addition, the Yoga is surprisingly relaxing. I never would have tried yoga if it hadn't been for the game, as I'm a 6'3" reasonably fit but definitely not that flexible dude and fear bending around in front of a class, but in the privacy of my living room it's very enjoyable. The one thing it certainly is not though, is a game. The balance games are shit. Just ignore that entire menu screen. As a yoga/cardio/mild strength training aid though, it's a lot of fun and is very good at gentle motivation.

Fair enough. I don't remember any particular things directed at me, although I do remember that a few forum members over there had some animosity to you. If it helps, I was an early teen at the time as well, and did my "growing up" on Mixnmojo, the Sam and Max forums, and The Scumm Bar. Let us be ashamed of our irritating former internet selves together!

Joystiq isn't Gawker, that's Kotaku.

Sorry, man. I'm just not really up for it today. I needed some non-social comfort food gaming. Stayed in bed til 3, then a spot of Rock Band. Now off to work. Just that kind of day.

I had a pretty devastating day yesterday, so depending on how I feel when game time comes around, I'll either be drunk and asleep or really needing to blow things up and take my mind off shit. So yeah, we'll see.

When I downloaded Narbacular Drop it was free from the developer. Is this what you mean? Good for a freebie? Or is there somewhere I can get it for a reasonable price now that the hard drive that free download was on has ceased to be and I'd like to try it again.

I still use an MX1000 myself. I've had it for 5 years and it still works great. Of course, with my laptop I just use the crappy mouse that came bundled with it, but it got me through 50 hours of both Mass Effects last month, so it's doing ok.

I picked up a guide with a game once. It was LittleBigPlanet. I figured that the fact that half the guide was dedicated to teaching you how to use the level-making tools made it worth it if/when I decided to dabble in creation. Never created anything worthwhile, but at least the guide helped me fuck up in style.

So Mother 3 sorts of things then? What do you make of LittleBigContra, where fandom of two things gets blended together to form one product? I think it's especially interesting when fans take it upon themselves to recreate one game using the tools of another. A less interesting example would be that Mario Kart level for Team Fortress 2. People do some weird shit.

Yeah, I think I remember that. I have such fond memories of those games, but honestly I was only about 3 or 4 and my tolerance for shit was pretty high. I had no aspirations of getting past the third screen, so when I'd die by some cheap mechanic it never frustrated me.

It's on the Wii now, actually. I have it for Virtual Console. Great game.

Understood. I thought Arkham was very good, and certainly stood out just by virtue of being a very well executed Batman game, but your points are fair. I wouldn't call it my goty either. It had a few things going in its favour. First, it's BATMAN. Second, it's GOOD Batman. Third, it was a summer release, so got more attention. I think if it had been released in say, October or November, it may have been lost in the shuffle. I enjoyed it a lot, and would give it a myself (thus my initial surprise), but share your criticisms with one exception. I thought that the combat was wonderfully executed. It was possible to get through simply and never getting long combos or anything, but once you worked out batarang and grapple integration and started getting strings of 20+ hits, it began to take on a life of its own. Great stuff, it just took some exploring to dig it up.

A for Arkham? Care to qualify that? I'm interested in what brought it down for you, as my own experience and the general reaction to the game both seemed to have been very positive.

I too intend to start out on my DA adventure shortly, having completed ME2 and got the itch for some more RPGin'. Regarding the mage, does the class have a decent melee option as well, or is it all spells? I like me some healing spells, but at the same time I'd rather play a melee class most of the time and leave the support up to the characters I recruited to, y'know, support me.

If we're not counting "Snoopy vs the Red Baron: Teaches Spelling" on my dad's VIC20, then here's mine: First off, I'm with Squid Division on console gaming. I was over at my friend Christina's house when I was 4 years old and she had this amazing thing that let you shoot the TV. Duck hunt for hours. Never owned my own NES until I got a cheap one used first year of Uni, but that memory stuck with me forever. What really popped my gaming cherry though, was this: Hugo's House of Horrors, bitches. That game's text parser taught me spelling and grammar when all the other kids my age were learning that square and round were not the same thing. I always got killed by the damn werewolf in the dining room, but fuck if I cared. I also had that sequel where Hugo's plane crash lands in the jungle and he stumbles upon some mystery, but House of Horrors was the shit.

Easily my favourite. Fuck. Yes. EA Presents: Tristram Shanties (a prequel to Diablo) EA Presents: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Pit EA Presents: Get Shotty

If your complaints hold through more play, I'd recommend picking up one of the GBA games on the cheap sometime. Like lobotomy42 with the Gamecube ones, the only entries in the series I have played are the two GBA ones (I believe the first was simply "Fire Emblem" and the second "The Sacred Stones" or something similar). I loved both of them though, and have been meaning to try the DS one for a while now. I had to pick between that and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin a while back though, and picked Advance Wars (also a great game) for my Intelligent Systems fix. What he said about the gamecube version applies to the GBA ones as well. The characters are much more fleshed out. The Sacred Stones adds the affinity system (which sounds like the "bonus stats and conversations" thing that lobotomy mentioned in the GCN versions) and both have a lot of talk between characters. It's too bad, because based on my love for the series I have recommended in the past that friends play Shadow Dragon. From what you're saying the fact that it's a remake of the first game means that many of the systems that made the series so engaging for me just didn't exist in the original and weren't added. Pity. Still, I'd like to give it a shot sometime. Let us know if it improves, eh?

I would be playing this right now if I hadn't just spent all my money on a much needed vacation. I promise I'll talk to you about it eventually.

Wait, weren't you on mixnmojo back in the day? I thought I remembered you from the Sam and Max forums, specifically? Have I been confusing you with someone with a similar username all this time? I was a member of the Scumm Bar, and by extension the Mixnmojo and general Lucasarts adventure fan community. Hell, it was how I made it here. Is scummbar.com something that you would consider a "rabid" fansite, or is there a far worse group that I missed out on? Granted, I haven't visited that site since about 2005 (y'know what? I'm going to surf over there as soon as this post is done) but to my high-school aged mind, they never seemed that bad. EDIT: Hmm... Kroms, I see that you are a heavy contributor to the Scumm Bar nowadays, and may well have been back when I visited there a ton under a different name. I guess I can assume you're not talking about them.

Listened to it, laughed a bunch. Didn't go as in depth as I'm used to from you guys, which is a bit of a disappointment, but goddamn it was good to hear some genuinely new discussion from you. The "Two Hot Scoops of Steve" thing had me attracting puzzled looks from other passengers on my flight as I started laughing way too hard. What say for the next one you have a callback to "going way over an hour" and cobble together a nice hour and a half podcast for us? What with the sporadic release schedule, something a bit meatier would be nice to tide us over.

Damn, I'm meeting my supervisor Wednesday. I'll try to get the cars for the classes you suggested by the next time I'm in, Pat. Looks like I missed a great one this week. Can't wait to get back into the mix.

Goddamn. I missed the real 50 AND a ton of ME2 discussion? All of you that missed GTA50 take one suck...

HAPPY! I have a 7 hour plane trip tomorrow and was sad that the new cast would likely come out after it was too late for me to put it on my ipod. I'll be listening while flying to Orlando for reading week tomorrow. Thank you so much for getting this out before the weekend, Thumbs!

But then what will we do with the subtitle "We've officially outlasted the podcast?"