@NintendoByNature - When is the KOC update, and do you have Shovel Knight on Switch or WiiU? I have it on the latter, and with my current backlog; I’m thinking about downloading the update and packing it away for quite a while. Maybe it will give me another reason to pull it out of storage and hook it up some rainy day in the future.
@NintendoByNature - Dang, maybe you’re right. I’ll keep it out a while and see if I get to it. The game and every expansion has been great. Wish I had it on Switch, but I’ve never been much of a double dipper. If anyone deserves it though, it’s Yacht Club.
@NintendoByNature That’s what I thought too. I bought Shovel Knight and Plague of Shadows probably 3-4 years ago on Steam, but I’m curious about the new update and I’d like to play it on Switch.
I’ll admit I was disappointed by Plague of Shadows and it kept me from purchasing Spectre of Torment. I heard that one was better though.
It’s not being advertised but I noticed the first 3 Samurai Shodown games are 3.99 on the US Eshop. Might be worth a purchase since those particular NeoGeo games are never on sale.
@NotTelevision I think we talked about this at some point lol( our distaste for plague of shadows). I'm 100% With you on plague on it being hard to get into. It's still a decent shovel knight game, but it's inferior to both shovel of hope and spectre. If it were me and I didn't own treasure trove on switch yet( and only played hope and plague on different systems), id go ahead and get it pending the cash flow is there. You have 3 games you haven't touched then in spectre which is probably my favorite. If not, real close to shovel of hope. The new king of cards update, and showdown. For $25 bucks, it's more than worth it for the 3 games you havent played,imo. But, usually it goes on sale, maybe wait a little bit to see if it hits a sale when the new updates drop?
@NintendoByNature Ohh for sure man. I actually didn’t realize future updates were included when purchasing Treasure Trove, so that’s a hell of a good deal. I remember it being like 14.99 at one point so I’ll definitely scoop that up in due time. There’s also some fighting game included in the new update that might be interesting.
I thought of a funny scenario where I take my talent in Vs. mode in Double Dragon on the NES to those fighting game conventions. I’ll set up the NES in the corner of the convention center and challenge the Street Fighter and Tekken players. My main strategy will be spamming the jump kick excessively until the other player either loses or fatigues.
@NotTelevision - That would be amazing. Just you, a NES, and a 13” CRT in a corner at a big fighting convention, talking at every passerby like, “You think Heihachi is tough? Have you ever defended 35 straight jump kicks from Abobo? What’cha gonna do Ryu, when Roper runs wild on youuuuu?!?”
I played Vs mode all the time with my brother. We’d usually play it a bit after a two player run in the main game. It was rage inducing, and never ended well between us.
@NintendoByNature - In reading your last few posts, I just realized I didn’t play the last expansion either. Maybe I’ll grab Treasure Trove for Switch in a sale.
@LetsGoSwitch Yes, I have. I only missed the first day, but I have been competing ever since. Not that I'm REALLY expecting to win something, what with only 20 download code giveaways per day, and probably millions of people joining in, but you never know, and not competing at all will definitely not result in any prices...
@ThanosReXXX Belated reply from the other day that went missing:
Oh, yeah, I thought your legal system was adversarial/common law as well, but it's apparently inquisitorial/civil law as well. Ultimately the two systems are equally balanced and derived from the same source. They have different mechanisms, different ways to corrupt them, and similar strengths. Everyone defends their own, but IMO, neither system is inherently worse than the other. Like every system from the competing legal systems to the competing economic systems from free market through command economies, I think the system design itself is almost irrelevant. They're all designed with a "good faith" mentality toward working. The problem is they're all equally based on the honor system and are only as good as the integrity of the actors involved, and over time, the integrity of the institutions themselves. The US system has become corrupted to the point of a tin pot island republic, not because the system design is any worse than yours but because the people that comprise it have been compromised for 50 years to the point of institutionalizing the corruption as the underlying system. But your system isn't immune to that either. Remember, PRC has the same system as you.....I'd not like to be caught in that legal system any time in the next 100 lifetimes....I'll take the worst circuit court in the US before that.
Well when it comes to building codes, certainly they haven't really built a residential building (other than high density apartments that are "commercial" buildings) out of anything but wood & plastic since 1950. I've always thought it stupid, plus the disposability of buildings, there seems to be a mentality here that a building is only good for 30-40 years and then it should be torn down and replaced because it basically wears out as a disposable good and should be modernized like the latest phone. Probably because it's made of wood & plastic. Coincidentally, mortgages are generally 30 year terms. I'm sure it's just a coincidence though....
That said, the "retail apocalypse" has nothing to do with the structures, it's about the industry in a state of open rapid collapse, in more countries than here, just not sure if it's in NED or not.
Here, retail is disappearing at an alarming rate with several thousand stores closing annually, and the number exponentially rising annually. Soon the very CONCEPT of going to a non-food store to buy something will be as obsolete as a knitted rotary phone on a wire. Retail purchasing offline will simply not exist at all outside high luxury goods with pampering/experience service to sell it. Anything you need, will always be 2 days away (maybe) for $130+/yr.)
More alarming, though, is that they bankers like to talk about it as an "industry correction" because "America has been over-retailed for a long, long time." - they like to point to the statistic that the US had 27 sq ft of retail space per capita, while EU and the rest of the world has 6 sq feet per capita. But what they fail to point out is due to the fact that America is built in a far less centralized way, the more frequent store availability is required because centralizing it creates unrealistic distances to travel to purchase anything.
It also neglects that a considerable portion of that square footage is due to a penchant here for using the stores as warehouses rather than having separate warehouses and display stores, so they build them large so that they don't have additional warehouse space to lease as well - meaning a good deal of the square footage they talk about here also exists in Europe, but it's not classified as retail square footage because the warehouse is in an industrial district apart from the store. And now that they're trying to consolidate and centralize (positively not social engineering, we swears on the precious) it basically puts retail out of reach of practicality for most people's shopping, forcing them online, and then they can't figure out why everyone's only shopping online.....
More alarmingly they point out that it's also a "correction" because a lot of stores "became redundant" - I find this the most interesting, revealing, and alarming point. Redundant stores are considered a "flaw to correct" in the system.
Let that sink in a moment.
Redundant stores are a product of competition. Competition is a central function of free market "capitalism." The statement that redundant stores, and therefore, competition, is a flaw that needs correction so as to only have one designated offering per category per area, is an accidental open declaration that competition, and therefore, capitalism, is not the goal, capitalism/competition is seen by the bank-rollers of society as a problem that needs to be eliminated for optimum efficiency, and therefore they are actively social-engineering a planned/command economy a.k.a Socialism or Communism, actively designed and engineered to replace all hallmarks of a free market system.
The "retail apocalypse", combined with the market bifurcation, a.k.a. "death of the middle class" that is one of the driving factors, is an overt, physical symptom of the fact that they are actively ending any pretense of a free market system and switching to a planned economy. But they distract everyone by pointing to Amazon as the source of the problem. A company that loses money by selling retail below cost to deliver and makes up most of the difference by selling data storage to everyone including the US government as a pseudo-monopoly.
It's not just a "retail apocalypse" - it's the demise of the entire post-Magna Carta Western system, rapidly accelerating over the course of a few years.
@NEStalgia Well, derived from the same source only in that respect that it's supposed to be based upon a democratic judicial system, but other than that, the two couldn't be more different. Dutch law is more based upon the more traditional, English method, with only professional jurors, and lawyers/barristers in black robes. No flashy lawyers that look like they're performing a solo act on Broadway...
As for the differences: yes, both have their pros and cons, like I already admitted earlier, but the cons of the European system seem considerably less worse to me. What I really dislike about the American system are the completely open and "out there" media coverage, exposing any and all accused to millions of viewers, whether they're actually guilty or not, and I also don't approve of the people's jury. The lawyers can take MASSIVE advantage of that, in their selection process, which in my view, is almost always detrimental to true justice. These kinds of decisions need to be made according to strict rules, and as objective as possible, without all the emotions that can (and will be) evoked in a people's jury. And of course the perspective of having to fight your way back out of already being seen as guilty, until proven innocent, whereas the burden of proof should be on the party that actually made the case against the accused, which is how it is done over here.
What we have in common is the right of the accused to remain silent, or plead the fifth, or whatever it's called again. An in my strong opinion annoying rule that both systems share, and which to this day still sounds insane to me, because why would you not speak freely if you're not guilty (also to help parents/family/friends of a victim), and how on Earth is it possible that people who DID do these things, are allowed to stay silent and leave parents, family and friends of a victim in constant insecurity and doubt? That doesn't sound like justice to me at all. It should always be victims first, and not something that looks like a "criminals are people too" campaign...
As for the retail apocalypse: yeah, we have that over here too. Brick and mortar disappearing entirely, or being taken over by another brand, subsequently closing down a third of the locations, to consolidate or whatever, and some even disappearing from the street entirely. In fact, just yesterday, I wanted to look up prices for a replacement hard drive for my PC, from one of my regular go to stores, so I went to the site and was presented with a notice that the store and brand was taken over by another company, and that they are now an online-only shop...
On a side note: the reason why I mentioned those disposable American "wood frame and stone strip" houses is because of a certain part or sentence in your previous comment, that I mistakenly interpreted as being about houses being able to be taken down easily, and of course that's far easier with these wood frame houses than with a full-on brick and mortar or rebar-mesh reinforced concrete house. So, I wasn't really replying directly to the retail apocalypse thing with that specific part of my comment, just making a side note/going on a bit of a tangent concerning the in my view inferior construction methods of a large part of private housing construction in America...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX Eh, American lawyers all wear the same gray/black/navy business suit, Italian leather shoes, and Swiss wristwatch. Flashier than black robes but still essentially a uniform. I'm not a fan of American lawyers, but still...
Both do have equal advantages though. I'm not one to defend the US way of doing things often, but the system here, as designed, is perfectly good. It just fell into total institutional corruption where yours as not yet. And once it does that there's really no way to fix it at all short of total and sudden cancellation of the entire thing and restarting a brand new one from scratch with all new people. A not so small part of that process was set into motion in the 60's as part of a known, specific Soviet program to infiltrate our courts and institutions (not conspiracy theory, they openly announced it)....so a lot of the internal collapse of our systems can really be chalked up to casualties of a cold war that might be worse in terms of enduring damage than if they'd just bombed some cities. The cities can be rebuilt, the populations memorialized and remembered....but institutional corruption deals damage forever and tears the actual societal fabric apart. It's the most insidious of weapons.
The media on the other hand..... Technically that doesn't involve the system at all and has corrupted the functioning of the system at a civil and societal level. Our court system, the design of it is fine. The implementation is corrupt. But the media....it's entire existence isn't just a dumpster fire, it's a landfill fire in an oil field.
And I do agree about the manipulation of jury selection. It's actually MUCH worse than you probably even think it is. Yes, juries are cherry picked and beyond easy to manipulation. That, again, is the corruption, not the design. The idea was so that it was a trial by peers - a.k.a. people who are familiar with the situation and conditions of the accused, and arguably know the accused but are not personally directly connected to the accused (back in the 18th century.) The modern system of lawyers picking the "right" jury is one of those modern corruptions mentioned above.
You do have one thing a little wrong though: We also are based on "innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt" as the absolute most sanctified core of our system. It's the civil/inquisitorial law that most of the EU has that is the other way around, guilty until proven innocent.. NED sounds like a hybrid of the civil/inquisitional and the common/adversarial systems, actually, not quite fully in either camp. France, Germany, Japan, etc follows "guilty until proven innocent" - So it sounds like both the US and NED has the "innocent until proven guilty" basis, thankfully. That's the technicalities that such famous acquittals as OJ Simpson was awarded a not guilty verdict. Everyone may "know he did it", but there was a shadow of a doubt, and thus he was innocent in the eyes of the courts. Until, of course, he assaulted someone else and got locked away anyway.
Right to remain silent makes sense when lawyers are around. Not everyone is eloquent with writing textwalls, or speaking them Some people may make themselves sound guilty with clumsy or situational language, even if they're innocent, or may be afraid of ramifications of speaking the truth (think mob trials), or are maybe trying to protect someone else, etc, or may be easily tricked/badgered by clever silver tongued lawyers to say things that make themselves look guilty even though they aren't. There's a lot of reasons for a lot of people that speaking is a poor choice, and the facts, evidence, and salesmen laywers should speak for them.
Ahh, yeah, so it's hitting you guys too. Guaranteed that's going to be a nightmare. Online isn't going to be cheap and convenient forever. VERY few companies, not even the big ones, actually make money with online retail, and the mailman is not set up to be your daily retail point of sale. It's going to come back to bite VERY hard in the not so distant future. It's all fun and games until your replacement toilet flapper takes 4 days to get there and costs $20 after shipping. Online is all the rage because people still browse the real stores and then order from online for less. Without the retail stores acting as showrooms, guaranteed, sales go down across the board, too. And then there's returns.... It can eat brick and mortar so long as they're willing to sell at a loss and float on investor largess. Next recession, pop go the weasels. And then the real retail land will be long gone and turned into housing and can't return either.
Also, on reinforced concrete, I can't believe that's so common there. I mentioned before I'm a fan of brutalism, especially at it's height in the 70's, but I thought that was passe now, especially since it tends to stain and decay in ugly ways over time. I miss it, personally. I guess here they'd call it "mall architecture" now since most of them were designed that way and become kind of iconic.
Guys I did my first thing with polymer clay. I call it "Post-apocalyptic Piece" as it is like a tile of a place.
It is creepy and I did it to see how the clay is baked and how it is painted.
Now I want to do a one Pokémon work. Does anyone here like Drowzee?
@NEStalgia Ah, my bad then. All we ever see over here is when some court case happens in America, people are basically already "it" before the trial has even started, so that was a misconception on my part. But lawyers with flashy suits and ties is something ENTIRELY different from men in black robes and a white collar, almost making them look like court vicars or wizards, so that really doesn't compare...
And besides what you mentioned, which I'll assume is true since you say it's proven, so I'll take your word for it, there's still the FAR too big media coverage, and the no anonymity policy for the accused, so everybody in the States who watches these trials knows the names and faces of these people. Over here, surnames are unknown, faces are covered, and there's very little live footage shot in court, so you're not witness to the entire trial while sitting in front of your TV.
And even if they do broadcast it, you'll only ever hear the voice of the defendant, often times also digitally altered, so that makes a BIG difference towards not slandering/labeling people in case they are ultimately proven innocent, so they can still attempt to live a relatively normal life afterwards, instead of being pointed and shouted at after having been on TV for weeks on end or longer. And don't get me started on how media pressure has so often resulted in convictions of completely innocent people, some of which spent decades in jail. I always admire how most of these aren't even angry when they're finally released and reinstated. I'd probably completely destroy and sue the hell out of the person that put me behind bars, but I suppose that's just how I look at it now, from my perspective. They themselves will probably think it's not even worth it...
You've not convinced me of the jury system either. I firmly believe that this should simply not consist of ordinary citizens, peers or not. Hardly any of them, if any at all, have studied law, and more often than not, they act upon emotions, and obviously, the majority rules, which influences the "impartial" judgment. Over here, it's just facts and figures and testimonies. And depending on how well or complete those things are presented/used, someone is either convicted or acquitted. And yes, that does mean that here too, criminals can dodge a bullet thanks to technicalities, but it's still a better system in my opinion.
As for the accused individual potentially not being eloquent enough to speak: they could also inform their lawyer (or counsel/counsel man as they are more often called over here) and then he or she could give the judge the eloquent version of the simpleton's statement, so I see no excuse there in any kind of scenario for that not to happen. Over here right now, we have a couple of big court cases running, and in two of them, the accused are guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Now, one of these cases involves a young boy scout who was taken, abused and then killed, and the defendant continuously answers every question from the judge with "I call upon my right to remain silent", and other than that, he keeps saying he's innocent, but he can't or won't give any kind of clarification that could even remotely explain as to why he was where he was when the boy disappeared, and/or how his DNA ended up being found on the body and clothes of the victim, instead constantly invoking his "rights" to stay silent and not explaining anything. Which, if he truly IS innocent, should be SO easy to do, and also the logical and decent thing to do, because what he's doing now, is causing unnecessary and prolonged anguish, hurt and rage in the parents, who are also present at every hearing, having to listen to this piece of trash repeatedly denying everything, or when talked into a corner he can't get out of, constantly invoking his right to remain silent instead of even ever so slightly alleviating these poor people's pain.
Just imagine what that must be like... Talking about letting something sink in...
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