Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@NEStalgia mine doesn't have a fancy mesh microphone 😔

@ThanosReXXX Haha, oh I have a big projector display for TV. The room size isn't the problem, my lousey eyeballs are Unless it's IMAX sized I need to be pressed up 2 feet away, or need glasses on (which I can't stand for gaming...for TV it's fine.) Anything larger than 25" is kind of ungainly.

Oh my displays are definitely high grade, it's just that they're geared more toward overall commercial reliability and general purpose performance than gaming performance, so their features are more productivity and 24/7 digital signage oriented than toward gaming refreshes, color, etc. I certainly don't buy cheap consumer displays 1080p though. They aren't making 4k HDR stuff in that size so far. Which is fine because I have a nest of HDMI switches that would need updating too.

Actually I've found most "gaming" displays to be cheap TN panels more times than not These are perfectly nice IPS panels.

@Eel Of course not, it's the Chinese knock-off after all

@NEStalgia Well, surely not the one in that video. That's an ASUS, and dedicated, so definitely not cheap by any means.

Forgot all about your eyesight, even though you've mentioned sitting close to your screen several times, or even having screens on a swivel? Either way, next time I come across a gaming grade screen with a built-in magnifier, I'll definitely think of you...

@NEStalgia was very pleased when the GameBoy Magnifier was released

@MarioLover92 Cool. Will say, the fun part of playing as characters I like, it encourages me to get better playing as them too.

I remember getting Metroid Prime for Christmas in 2002, along with Sonic Mega Collection and Metroid Fusion. Like you, I couldn't get into Prime when playing it the first time, though I did play a ton of Metroid Fusion and made it far in that game. Both were the first time I played Metroid games. Earlier this year, I did revisit Prime and managed to defeat the first boss.

@bimmy-Lee played a good hour of sword tonight with my daughter. It's nice since she's learning more and more how to read. Shes reading most of the text and doing half the battles. It's been a nice little experience for sure. So we're a girl, and our name is.....link. guess who picked that 😜. I really wanted grookey, that cute little monkey, but we settled on sobble, the water type. We decided on sobble, because it cries alot, and we both laughed and agreed, she cries alot too lol. It's a cool game so far being my first time. If anything, its great for her reading lessons.
Side note: a while back you recommended duck tales remastered on Wii u. After finished some big games in luigis mansion and resident evil 4, I have enough down time to finally take a stab at it. Will fire that up tonight and let you know how I like it. Prob play some escapists 2 as well that I just grabbed on sale..

Aw man...
This game trailer still stuck in my mind.
I'm curious to see the full game once it released.

@Sunsy That's cool. I dabbled into some Metroid games when I was younger, but I didn't truly get into the series until later. Although I wasn't around during the NES era, the first one I played was actually the NES original, and that was before the Wii was even a thing! I remember playing it for the first time, ran to the right while blasting some enemies, and then went to the wall with that small corridor. Like a lot of people, I thought "how do I get through???" Turns out I needed the Morph Ball that was just waiting for me on the left. It goes to show that it's quite different from all those Mario, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong games I played as a child, haha.

Speaking of Sonic Mega Collection, man I remember getting excited for that one. I started being in a Sonic phase when Sonic Adventure 2 Battle came out, and I previously played Sonic 1 and 2 a year earlier. I could finally own the Genesis Sonic games! I liked looking at the bonus content too, such as the comic books and the Sonic CD cutscenes.

@ThanosReXXX When did Asus become an expensive brand. To me it's still the default bog standard motherboard manufacturer that weirdly tries to make other things from time to time. Usually with awful driver support.

That said those displays aren't unwieldy in price, depending on size they range from $650-1300....seems fairly standard in the TV world. Not like that OLED display that's thousands....

Haha, yeah, I mean my eyes aren't THAT abnormal (I used to think I had such terrible vision and they keep telling me it's just normal correction range still...) But regardless wearing glasses to play games is just annoying and uncomfortable, so I do prefer the close monitor. At lest until I get too old and can't see near or far. Then I need the TLOZ braille edition.

@HobbitGamer Oh, I had the magnifier!! And the light!! (Though that was before I needed glasses, and it was only because the screens were so tiny that I wanted it. )

@MarioLover92 Y cant Metroid crawl?

@bimmy-lee @rjejr I was wondering since you guys are in that market, how exactly does toy shopping work in the oh so wonderful modern world (can't wait till someone nukes it) for Christmas? Toys R Us is gone. KB is gone. Kmart is (in most places) gone. Sears is (in most places) gone. Target has restructured to focus on soft lines for reasons I can't begin to imagine. Pretty much every place that was ever the default holiday toy shopping store is gone. Is it truly down to Walmart and only Walmart as the absolute only place to buy toys at Christmas?! And if so, is it going to become a federally regulated monopoly soon?

I picked up a glorious Santa blow mold last night as this year’s new Christmas decoration. He’s huge at over three and a half feet tall. He’s old, and his paint has been touched up in spots, but I liked him so much; I looked past it. I’ll post a pic when we get Frosty out after Thanksgiving.

@NintendoByNature - That’s all great to hear. The hour you two had last night was already worth the cost. Everything now is house money. Let me know how she keeps with it. Glad you decided to pick up Duck Tales, I think it had a big price reduction when you got it. I think you’ll really enjoy it. I can’t remember if you played the original NES version, but it’s a good one even without nostalgia. It’s incredibly pleasing to swim around in Scrooge’s growing pile of gold coins.

@Anti-Matter - Haha, that game looks crazy. I’d give it a try at the right price. It doesn’t look like one that would get a physical release, but I haven’t looked in to it to be sure.

@NEStalgia - For us, it’s a combination of Amazon, Costco, and a local teacher’s supply store for art supplies and games. My kids want everything ever, so it’s really just a matter of whittling down the list to items that fit within the budget, most of which need to present some sort of long term usability. The amount of plastic trash we purchase is minimal, and our families (mostly) respect that. I only go to Wal Mart once every five years or so for some fresh Dickies.

@bimmy-lee Eeeww, educational toys.....

I guess Costco's ok. I've never been there. The nearest one is not only far away, but also in the heart of the most trafficky traffic area (which is saying something....). I've been to Sam's Club....but I don't recall seeing much in the way of toys. Unless you count cash register drawers.

Amazon...that just seems so wrong for toys. When I was a kid half the fun was seeing it all larger than life on shelves before hand. Plus discovery...half of the toys I wanted I didn't know I wanted but I saw it on the shelf randomly and HAD TO HAVE IT! I really can't imagine being a kid today with, basically, not a single remaining store to look at toys but Walmart. One of the greatest things in kiddom doesn't even exist today.

I can't even imagine the amount of Zanex these kids are going to need to pop when they grow up and realize society stole their childhood.

@NEStalgia what is this Brexit article that I posted on the homepage?

@NEStalgia KB Toys were way overpriced tiny stores in malls that I never wanted to set foot in so avoiding them was pretty easy. And they were nearly out of business by the time I had kids anyway. TRU were usually overpriced as well. I've had my Target Red Card for over 20 years now, since back when I lived in KY, so I've always done a ton of shopping there. And Amazon the past decade or 2. (Just checked and the first order listed under my Amazon account was 2001 and there are orders for every single year since then.) Walmart is more evil than most so I try to avoid there. And as you know we're big gamers so I have done a lot of shopping in Gamestop. They're way overpriced as well but their BF ads aren't too bad sometimes. I also bought a lot of games at Kmart 1 year b/c they had a lot of deals and discounts.

This year however my biggest problem is teenage boys don't want much. My oldest wants Sword or Shield, still hasn't decided yet. The youngest just watches Youtube. I may buy the youngest a new video card but prices have skyrocketed the past few years and I've always had a hard ceiling of $100 on video cards - I'ma console gamer. I'm hoping Newegg has a BF deal on a 1030 or 1050. I actually have bought a few things on Newegg, they weren't collecting tax when Amazon started.

tl;dr Target and Amazon, if they don't have it, it ain't being bought.

I was making a comment about @NEStalgia who with the use of terms like "wannabes" came across with an attitude of generalising and dismissive of people who have criticism of the game to which I suggested actually engaging with them to get an understanding rather than simply complaining about complainers which is just another form of negatively. Their reply was along the lines I don't need to talk with them as I know already so I just let them carry on with it rather than getting into a debate of what the issue may or may not be.

If you're gonna make remarks and accusations about me I'd appreciate if you could at least @ me.

@antdickens That would be sometime in the last 4 months or so, though I can't remember or locate the article. I thought it might have been a review of "Battle Brexit", but I'm not finding a review on that, just Gavin's announcement post which isn't the article I'm thinking of, so that may not be it. if it helps, I believe it was weekend coverage, sometime from a Friday night to Sunday. There's a small chance it was in fact Damien and not you, but it's kind of burned into my brain that it was yours since it was so shocking to see you of all people going that far into hostile territory!

I just remember looking at that and thinking "If someone tried posting this in the forums they'd probably have been banned, and here's Ant (or Damien?) posting it on the front page!"

I know you were doing a few posts around that time - I'd tagged you in one of the reviews commenting that it was nice to see you doing reviews, it's not something we see often. But that Brexit thing was double face-palm grade. Some of the border-line articles have plausible deniability "It's not click/traffic-bait, honest! (snicker)" tones to them, but that one might as well have added "What are your thoughts on Brexit, post in the comments below!" at the end. The ship righted for a while after that though, but the low hanging fruit of Sword/Shield has been dragging things pretty low of late. I think yesterday it started righting again, which may or may not have been your doing - if so, it's nice to see!

@rjejr KB wasn't so overpriced, at least not in the 80's or so. There were plenty of sales, clearance items. And then was that awesome period where they were liquidating everything Sega as a middle finger for Sega's E3 Saturn Surprise. I loved that store. I miss the potato chip bags with the raccoon tail hanging out and the flipping barking dogs in the little corral near the entrance, too.

Does Target really have much in the way of toys anymore? (I was last in a Target probably 20 years ago, ironically. The "nearest" one is actually further than the already far Walmart and through a mini-beltway-like traffic log, and the "easier to get to" one is like an hour away in another state. Walmart is at the front of that mini-beltway-like traffic log in the worst designed shopping center I've ever had the misfortune to see (Imagine an urban center with no parking except metered parallel parking, pedestrians crossing, and tightly crisscrossing nests of streets.....now imagine building that for no reason as a shopping center minus the actual meters. They're into that now...they build that sort of thing everywhere....it's like an architectural ode to the poor design of cities just for the lulz, and then they declare it better.)

And yeah, Walmart is the reason no reasonably located stores exist at all. Their evil, on the inside, is a lot uglier than their evil on the outside. Their entire design was that "everyone should travel an hour to shop at one central store" and spent 30 years rigging the market into just that.

The nicest thing about Kmart at their height was that there was always one local pretty much everywhere. That alone made them the best store around - they were the only store around unless you feel like driving up-stream through rush-hour traffic long distances to anywhere else or dedicating a whole weekend day to shopping. It was great. Now we get the choice of journeying far and wide, or relying on Amazon which may get it there on the promised day, may not, may mis-deliver it, and if they didn't even bother to try to hit 2-day delivery they give themselves another 3 days to get it right. I sure miss having a fairly huge local store with just about every category....

But toys somehow took the biggest hit. Any place with toys vaporized. I was seeing one or two toy ads come in before Thanksgiving and realized "wow, all the stores with toys are gone!"

Since when do teenage boys not want stuff? This must be a new phenomenon. In my day it just meant I wanted more expensive stuff.

$100 video cards? Sheesh. When I FIRST got into PC gaming in the 90's $200 was the expensive minimum. By the latter years they were up to $450 min. People keep telling me "PC gaming is soooo cheap compared to overpriced consoles"....I still don't get it. The video card still costs more than a whole console and goes obsolete twice as fast.

Tell the kid mining Bitcoins is like Minecraft. Buy him a few video cards. ???? Profit.

Newegg and everyone else collects tax now. #ThanksWalAzon

sigh so it's true, the toy shopping really is dead. It's like Christmas died.

@NEStalgia I think your memory might be getting corrupted, I've not posted anything Brexit related and I haven't reviewed anything for 10 years. You can see on my staff profile everything that I've posted. I've only done a few stories outside of the download updates this year... maybe time to defrag your brain?

I feel the pain, too. I had to get new shoes about a week ago and it was hard cuz I used to get them from ShopKo. They went 6 feet under this year, so I had to find a new place. The specialty shoe store here in town is at least $100 a pair, and walmart shoes are cheapo trash. We used to have a Payless in our mall, but they are gone too. I had to go to Fleet Farm of all places to get something that was decent. It was still $50, but at least they are good quality.

@NEStalgia Well, that's apparently only in the US, then. Over here, Asus is a well-known, and well liked brand, and their gaming laptops and such are always considered to be top-notch, so that's where that statement of mine came from.

@jump I can understand the sentiment of wanting to be notified, but you see, we're actually trying our damnedest to keep the toxicity of the Pokémon discussion out of this particular thread, because here is the only place where we can meet like minds that simply respect each other's opinions, and not attack each other over liking or not liking what the other person does, so that's the reason for not tagging you in that specific comment of mine.

It wasn't meant as a personal insult/accusation or a sneaky way of talking about you behind your back, but if that was the impression that I gave off by doing that, then my bad. The intention was simply of using you as an example compared to @NEStalgia, where possibly inflammatory comments were concerned, but again: in the GENERAL sense, so it's nothing personal, far as I'm concerned.

On a side note: I see plenty of people both in here and in the comments section occasionally mentioning me without actually tagging me, and honestly, I just shrug it off. If I had to worry about every mention of my name without me being notified, I'd already be on the couch of some head doctor, so I'm not going to do that. But that's my personal opinion on the matter, so think of that what you will.

@bimmy-lee DOOD! Education toys rawk. There was a Smithsonian Store in the mall when I was little in VA Beach, place was off the chain. To this day I still remember all the beeps and boops my GeoSafari made, too.
Oh, and ZooBooks were great. The offshoot got history and military stuff was even better.