SecretAsianMan

I wish I had kept all my old stuff. I own or have owned every platform Nintendo put out in the US up to the Wii (with the exception of a few of the Gameboy variants like the Color or Advance SP). I even had a lot of the accessories like a Super Scope and Power Pad. I sold them when I went off to college. I wonder now if the current generation is worth hanging on to in the same way.

While we're on the topic of labels, has anyone else besides me felt (perhaps unnecessary) embarrassment at self identifying as a 'gamer'? Most of the people I see/work with on a daily basis are considerably older than I am and I know for a fact they don't play video games. When I get asked the question "What did you do over the weekend" and the answer mostly amounts to "I played a game", I feel very self conscious about it, even though I know I shouldn't. I've never gotten strange looks or ridiculed or anything like that, but I can't shake the feeling anyway.

Gabe over at Penny Arcade has been doing his own renditions of the Monaco characters. Here's the complete set:

I'm still not entirely convinced it isn't one.

I considered that too, but completely failed to bring any kind of recording device (apart from my phone which didn't have enough battery by the time we started playing).

It was one of the games played during the LucasArts Memories stream. It also includes Loom and Day of the Tentacle.

I once had an idea of getting a bunch of readers together at a PAX meetup or something and recording a 'reader cast' to send to the Thumbs, but I then convinced myself it was a terrible idea that would only end in calamity since we are likely to be nowhere near as brilliant and entertaining as the actual Thumbs.

I'm Asian (despite what my name might imply) and live in the United States and I've never found the term 'Oriental' to be offensive or racist.

Oh you silly Occidentals.

I think my favorite part of Futurama is all the stupid yet hilarious math/science jokes. Most of them are totally hidden and not referenced at all in the actual episode, but they make me laugh so hard when I find them.

I've met the Thumbs as a whole once and Chris twice, both at a PAX. I've also met several other people I previously only knew on the internet at PAX. To keep things consistant, we just refered to each other by our screennames instead of our real ones. Listening to the podcast is a strangely voyeuristic thing. I always told myself that if I ever met someone famous, I wouldn't gush all over them. Then I actually MET Famous and gushed all over him. It was gross. Now I'm doing creepy stuff like sending them candy and keeping track of how often they mention my name. It feels like when I was in high school and the cool kids would say hi to me, except now the cool kids are all video game nerds. I think I may have said too much.

"I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite pie on the Citadel"

Just out of curiosity, are you guys actually looking up the things you see to figure it out, or are you just guessing without any outside help?

Yeah, that stuff is the best. I figured one of mine out because I saw a tour bus which said "Kiwis" on it, which I knew to mean it was in or near New Zealand. Another I got because I saw the Overseas Highway, which I'm not too proud to admit I recognized by sight from the movie True Lies.

My best score Reminds me of something I did in college with some friends of mine. I took famous works of art, altered them slightly, then tried to see if my friends could figure out what they were. I also took famous pieces of classical music and movie scores and clipped sections that were not famous (such as any part of Beethoven's 5th that not the opening). Basically, my goal was to have them guess things that (at the time) couldn't be easily looked up with a quick Google search.

One of my favorite SNES games is Illusion of Gaia and it sort of has collectibles in it. Scattered throughout the game were 50 red jewels. If you collect them and bring them to a character in the game, he gives you rewards when you reach certain numbers, but if you get them all you can access a secret level and a hidden boss. The problem with collecting the jewels was 1) they aren't visible in the world, the only way to find them is to have a guide, or just check EVERYWHERE and 2) the beginning areas of the game are inaccessible after a certain point so if you miss any, you're screwed. I must have played the game 20 times trying to get them all. Luckily I really like the game but man getting those things was tedious.

More cool stuff from Corridor Digital

The first five seconds strangely sounded to me like the way Miss Piggy sounds when she gets angry and punches Kermit. I'm not even one minute into the cast and already the mental image of the Thumbs crew in my head has been replaced with Muppets.

If the post counter included things I typed in but then deleted and never posted because I convinced myself it was a stupid thought that everyone would laugh at or something obvious everyone's already thought of but no one is saying because it's so obvious or was complete incoherent gibberish, I'd be this forum's top poster. This post went through 2 3 4 5 drafts before I said screw it and hit post.

I was watching The Simpsons and I just noticed that when they eat dinner, the kids all sit on the same side of the table, as though they had to make room for a physical camera.

Wikis. For any given game, there's usually at least one. Even though most of them are extremely basic, terrible to navigate, full of ads, incredibly slow, and super ugly, I've found stupid yet useful information on a lot of them, enough that I go back despite how terrible an experience using the site actually is.

I've only ever had it in China. I've seen it for sale in various places in the US but I'd never buy it here. It isn't super sweet and doesn't even have that strong of a taste, but that's kind of what I like about it. I'm into things with subtle flavor. Also it looks crazy, almost like a cheezy future sci-fi fruit except it's real.

I like this stuff, known as Dragon Fruit to you westerners

I had a lot of crazy ideas for a house when I was a kid. My secret passages had secret passages (which had secret compartments). I wanted to make one room all white with a single light source directly overhead. The room would have a slight curvature to the walls so that when you sat in the center, it looked like an infinite space. Every room had a different theme (space, temple, medieval, etc). I wonder if I still have those blueprints around...

Thanks! I really REALLY want to do stuff like that, but as it stands right now, no. I do plan on turning the basement into a man cave, so maybe I can do some crazy stuff down there later.