shammack

You should definitely go to the Müséé Mécãnįqûé. Lots of cool historical arcade-machine-like devices. Admission is free; you just need quarters for whatever machines you want to play. That's basically the only thing I've ever done in San Francisco so I don't have any other suggestions. Except if you want to tour Alcatraz you should plan ahead because I hear it tends to sell out days in advance.

I do! That's probably it.

Is anybody else having problems with the style sheet intermittently not loading or something? Sometimes when I'm viewing a thread, I get the text of the posts, but no avatars, site navigation stuff, or reply box. It doesn't happen every time, but it's pretty frequent.

I've gotten old and I can't beat Ridley anymore. Anyone got any pro tips? The worst part is that the nearest save point is pretty far away from his room, so every time I die I have to go all the way back and fight those annoying ninja pirates you can only hit when they turn gold again. (Also: I love this game but the whole Maridia section is kind of bullshit.)

I can tell you that in my case it was because I had been waiting to see what Sony and Microsoft had coming up that looked interesting, and that turned out to be absolutely nothing.

I finally bought a Wii U a few days ago and I have to say I really don't understand why everyone is pooping on this console so much. Miiverse is fun; being able to play on the gamepad or the TV is great; the games that I've played that use the gamepad and TV in tandem are mostly interesting and it seems like there's potential there; using the gamepad as a TV remote is handy; the UI is nice and doesn't barf ads all over the place. The internet browser is actually worth using -- I was playing Super Metroid and needed a reminder of where to get the grapple beam, so I just paused the game and brought up the browser and it had already auto-filled "Super Metroid" into the search field. I watched a quick Youtube video of a dude getting the grapple beam and then dropped right back into the game. It's not anything revolutionary, but it all just works nicely. Complaints: the range on the gamepad isn't as far as I'd like; I can't take it into another room. I wish that all the old virtual console games were just already on there (it's kind of ridiculous that each game requires its own separate emulator). Gamepad battery life is less than optimal; I wish I could just turn off the screen when I don't need it, like when I'm watching Netflix or playing a game where I only need to look at the TV (there is an option to turn off the screen, but it only stays off until you press any button, which seems kind of pointless). For the most part, though, I really like this thing. It's frustrating that it's failing and there once again won't be any third-party support, because if I had the option I'd prefer to play my games on the Wii U just from a usability standpoint. I hope they're at least pursuing indie eShop stuff aggressively (although the fact that you only have 32 GB of storage will probably keep the eShop from being as big a thing as it should be).

I finally got one of these contraptions. My ID is CroutonZircon. I'm attempting to add you both.

That's a bit extreme. The result of my "dilemma" was that I decided the trading card system wasn't much fun and wasn't motivated to participate in it any further. I'm not losing any sleep over not being able to complete my set of imaginary trading cards. I brought it up because I think it could potentially be fun but I have some criticisms about the design.

I feel the same way. Like, I own Half-Life 2, Portal 2, and Don't Starve because I like those games, so ideally I'd like to complete all the card sets for those games. But there's no way I can ever do that unless I buy the cards directly (which will never happen) or trade something for them. I can't trade any cards for them, because the only cards I can get as drops are from sets that I want to keep. So I have to either buy and play a game I don't care about just to get the cards, or buy other stuff I don't want just to trade it away for cards (also not going to happen). I almost wish that card drops weren't tied to specific games, and playing any game would just get you random cards from any of the supported games. Then maybe there'd be a chance that I'd get a card for Counterstrike and trade with somebody for a Don't Starve or something. The way it works now, even if I wanted to trade with somebody to try to complete a set, I don't have anything to trade.

Well, I played Don't Starve for an hour and a half and got my three card drops. Two of them were the same card, so I put one of them up on the community market for $0.50 and to my surprise somebody bought it within like a minute. So now I have $0.44 in my Steam wallet. This is a weird thing.

I wouldn't mind an invite if anybody's looking to get rid of them. http://steamcommunity.com/id/czircon is me. Got one, thanks!

I really want to. I keep trying to justify it with the fact that our cat chewed through the cable for my Wii's sensor bar, so instead of buying a new sensor bar, I should just buy a Wii U since it comes with one. Unfortunately subbes keeps talking sense into me.

I'm happy to make fun of the people on Miiverse because my secret shame is that I was like them when the game first came out. I remember renting it and being confused by the control scheme defaulting to X to shoot and A to jump (all the games I was used to used Y and B, respectively), then landing on Zebes and wandering around a bit, not knowing what I was meant to be doing and getting frustrated that I couldn't get anywhere. I don't know if I ever even found the morph ball before giving up on it. It wasn't until I was in college and Metroid Prime was announced that I gave Super Metroid another shot and found out that it's possibly the best game. I still have my SNES cartridge and also own it on Wii virtual console, but now I'm seriously considering spending $350 on a Wii U just so I can buy it again for $0.30. It's that good.

Has this ever happened? Can it actually happen? I've never heard of it. My understanding is that copyright lasts seventy years past the death of the author, period. I feel like he's confusing copyrights with trademarks.

Yeah, if they're missing documents, you have to go into the discrepancy thing and click on the counter and the rule in the rulebook that says a passport is required or whatever.

At the IF Demo Fair at PAX East 2011, Sarah Morayati was demoing some sort of text-adventure-as-journalism thing that was kind of interesting (it basically tried to recreate a real place and let you explore it and learn about its history). I don't remember many details or know what it was called or if it's online anywhere, but you could probably ask her about it.

Hey, I'm only 29.

I'm the fat schlub on camera right.

I think the island layout is procedurally generated, but it's always made up of the same components. There are a few hidden easter egg sort of things that you may not have seen, though.

I felt the same way, except I didn't think the game was that great without it. It felt like they had what seemed like a really cool premise with the rotating the world mechanic, but then it turned out not to be as interesting as expected because you could basically just brute-force your way through all the platforming by just rotating until a path appears, so they panicked and threw in a bunch of obtuse puzzles where you don't know what information is relevant or even what problem you're meant to be solving. That is my least favorite kind of puzzle; I feel it's very disrespectful of the player's time.

I met Chris, Jake, and Sean at a Thumbs meetup at PAX East in 2011. Then when I started working with Jake and Sean, I didn't know if they would remember who I was, so I didn't know if I should introduce myself, so I didn't, and it was really awkward whenever they were around. Eventually they hand-delivered my Kickstarter rewards and I think that mostly sorted it out. But I still don't actually have that much direct interaction with them at work and know them better as Thumbs than as coworkers, so it's still pretty awkward. (Also I have pretty bad social phobia to begin with, so that doesn't really help.) Also I saw Chris and J.P. LeBreton at a party one time and I was wearing an Idle Thumbs shirt and Chris was like "nice shirt" and again I didn't know what to do because he probably didn't remember that we'd met before. I think I just said something about a funicular.

Yeah, I feel like I played this completely wrong. I started out by doing basically nothing but lollipop farming until I was producing 100 lollipops per second, and had my sword fully upgraded by the time I was in the underwater level, but hadn't eaten a single candy because I didn't know it had any effect. I found out that it increased your HP just as it started to not matter because I was fighting ghosts that halve your HP regardless of how much you have. So now, unless I'm missing something, it seems like it's just a matter of acquiring enough potions to get through a level, then wait around until I can afford more.

I think I found the secret agent game. It was Teenagent. Realms of the Hunting does sound similar, but the game I have a false memory of had current-era graphics. It looked a bit like Gone Home with monsters. I'm pretty sure I just invented it in my dreams.

I need help determining whether a game really exists or whether I dreamed it. It's a first-person horror adventure game that plays similarly to Amnesia, but in a more contemporary setting. You're exploring a house and trying to get onto the roof by solving adventure game-style puzzles, but sometimes you also get attacked by large beetle-like insects. You can kill them, but it's better to take them alive and bring them to an altar to sacrifice them, which will eventually get you some kind of item that will help you in the final section of the game. That last area is sectioned off by a set of French windows with a sign next to them that's written in a Courier-like font warning you to make sure you're prepared before entering because once you're in there, you can't save or turn back. Since I'm pretty sure I dreamed that, here's a bonus question of a game that I'm pretty sure actually does exist: a 2D point-and-click adventure game from the early/mid-90s. Probably VGA graphics. I think the premise was that you play as a secret agent or something, but I might be wrong about that. But it had a demo that I think came on a floppy or CD included with an issue of PC Gamer, or possibly was downloaded from AOL. In that demo, there was a brick wall, and if you examined it, your guy would say something like, "The bricklayer must have been a Pink Floyd fan." That's all I remember.

This is the best justification I've seen yet for the existence of this device.