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Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

Posts 44,301 to 44,320 of 96,529

Heavyarms55

@Tyranexx US train lines like Amtrack are honestly not even a joke compared to Japan lines, and forget the big ones like JR, even small local lines are just completely superior in every way. It's embarassing to be honest that the nation that built the transcontinental railroad now has train lines that are, at best, 40 years obsolete.

Edited on by Heavyarms55

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BruceCM

Well, it'll still be great whenever it arrives, @Tyranexx .... What you playing now? Looking forward to Origami King, too?

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Steam: Bruce_CM

ThanosReXXX

@Vinny That guy is either so mad that he lost his grammar skills, or he isn't a native English speaker. Either way, he's a massive tool. And I've been playing games FAR longer than him. I've seen it ALL, ever since I played Pong on a Pong console on a portable black & white CRT TV, so if there's one true gamer, then it's this guy. (points at own chest)

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

A portable b/w TV, @ThanosReXXX .... Must have been a 12 inch screen? & weighed a tonne!

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Steam: Bruce_CM

Anti-Matter

Actually i have posted this picture on article about Pikachu proto design.
But if you want to see again...
Untitled

Anti-Matter

NEStalgia

@Vinny Shame he is true grown person that apparently spend all time getting drunk and doing whatever. All that time freed up by non gaming was clearly not spent reading or doing anything informative given that remarkable writing skill demonstrated in that post. I'd rather have nothing to do but bash pads and be literate than be involved in the real world and illiterate.

I bash pads all day to avoid the rest of the world because the rest of the world is filled with insufferable holes like himself, and given the choice between being exposed to them and therefore necessitating murdering them, or bashing pads, I just bash pads. Literately.

@Heavyarms55 Uh oh, @ThanosReXXX....Amtrak was mentioned. You may want to go in another thread and talk to Anti about DDR or something.....imma' be a while...

Seriously, though, your point is right, but there's basically two different Amtraks. There's the Northeast Corridor which is a real railroad, kinda. And then there's the rest of it. NEC is modern. Modern coaches, modern rails, concrete ties, funded, they just rebuilt the rails in the past decade, etc, heavy traffic. It's the only part of the system that actually turns a profit and funds the rest of it. Then there's the rest of it, like out mid-west. they don't actually own any rails there. They just lease time on freight rails. So the outdated ancient rails you're talking about are owned, operated, and maintained by, probably in your area, CN (largely owned by Bill Gates.....) and BNSF (largely owned by Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett). It's "just good enough" for freight trains to get by. If Amtrak wants to pay to use it, fine by them....but Amtrak has zip all control over the rail condition....they're just using someone else's road. And there's less than zip all chance the government would actually build new railroads when a highway and airport can be built. And honestly it's hard to blame them because nobody rides the things anyway.....every single passenger line outside the Northeast Corridor loses money. Heck, even before Amtrak in the waning days of the mighty PRR (think of them as Google of the 19th century) most of the passenger lines were losing money. They went bankrupt in part because they wanted to cut nearly all passenger service and go mostly freight and infrequent stops (like current Amtrak) and the government wouldn't let them. And that was the 60's!

Worse, after the plague, Amtrak estimates radical ridership drop, they just got rid of 30+ percent of their total staff, and are shutting down a lot of routes to operate just once a day, some just once a week. With that, they're essentially gone. They exist as a name. But basically passenger rail in the US outside inter-city commuting and some of the Boston-DC route, we've basically just ended the last of passenger rail in the US. And we'll give another 3 trillion to airlines....heaven forbid we lose the airlines. I want to see airlines and cars vanish from the earth. I still don't get this world where everyone flies all the time. When I was a kid flight was a rare thing for mostly rich people for unusual events like a rare vacation or high powered business people, celebrities, leaders. I don't know how or when it became the new Grayhound. It existed, it was commercial, but it wasn't common. It certainly wasn't a normal part of life...it was something someone might do a few times in a lifetime if they had the money. I still can't comprehend what it's become and still can't believe post-plague people actually want it to continue.

And I was hoping we'd gradually move beyond the car at this point, but instead with the plague we're doubling down on it. It's like 1955 all over again but endless gridlock because back in 1955 every family had one and only one car, and mostly only men drove, and there was 1/10 the current total population.....so population * .10 (/ 2) and cut that in half per family....and there were a LOT less cars on the road. Cars are sentence of unending misery. That we're stuck with them is like an unending nightmare. If they would do the automated cars it would be ok....the routes could be planned and managed and a much better organized system could get things where they need to go. Things would move smoothly, the machines would move in diciplined, organized fashion, and you wouldn't have to dedicate your life to operating this ridiculous turn of last century machine while everyone tries to guess what everyone else is going to do next. Or if they actually enforced the laws. 45mph means 45.000000000 or below. PERIOD. Not this ridiculous "I go what speed I want to go, I won't get caught!" that rules the road now. If nothing else, install governors in every car and sensors on every road. What good is a LIMIT a.k.a maximum if people treat it as a MINIMUM? If you're going to do that why not eliminate limits entirely and let everyone do whatever they want for real...which is the same thing they do now, except the people that try to follow the rules to the letter no longer get crushed underfoot...everything is fair game rather than only being fair for the abusers. The people that do follow the rules get crushed under foot. It's like the plague and masks. What people call "freedom" is really "the ability to ignore the rules and do as you please to others, so long as you're the one getting the advantage out of it."

Heck, legalize murder. We can make the whole thing Carmageddon which is what the public really wants anyway. The only difference between Forza Horizon and real life is there's no gridlock in Forza. But you get points for near misses and sideswipes in both.

NEStalgia

BabyYoda71

ThanosReXXX wrote:

@Vinny That guy is either so mad that he lost his grammar skills, or he isn't a native English speaker. Either way, he's a massive tool. And I've been playing games FAR longer than him. I've seen it ALL, ever since I played Pong on a Pong console on a portable black & white CRT TV, so if there's one true gamer, then it's this guy. (points at own chest)

I played Pong once. It was on an iPad though... hey, I’m a relatively young gamer, okay!? Wait, was there actually a console called Pong, though?

Edited on by BabyYoda71

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho. It’s off to work (from home) I go.

ThanosReXXX

@BruceCM Yup, and it was an absolute b**** to find the channels/picture on, with all these turning knobs and wheels. All analog and SUPER-sensitive. But we still had a blast, even though it was just Pong. But it was the 70s, so to us, this was all new and exciting, because computer games were something entirely new. Up until then, all we had was board games and outdoor play activities.

To give you an idea of what it looked like, here's two Pong home consoles that came closest in design to the actual device we used, in regards to similar design aspects that they shared with the ACTUAL Pong console we had (which I annoyingly couldn't find, even after an hour of Googling images):
Untitled
Untitled
The actual controllers looked more like the first picture, but the mid section of the second example comes closest to that of the console we had, albeit on our console, that mid section had all the text and so on displayed on an aluminium/aluminum plate, as a lot of these consoles had, back then. Well, either that, or wood veneer paneling, although that became more prevalent in the eighties, such as with the Atari 2600.

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

Yeah, I had a Binatone around that era, @ThanosReXXX .... Our colour TV a bit later had the fake veneer shell (& it lasted about 30 years, too)

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ThanosReXXX

@BabyYoshi12 Yes there was, or actually: there were. Dozens of them. Supposedly, the Atari Pong home console was the original, which was in turn inspired by the Pong Arcade machine, which was the very first arcade cabinet (it came out in 1972):
Untitled
Untitled
It was available in a range of colors, probably to make up for the actual screen being black & white...
Untitled

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

& what's the iPad version like, @BabyYoshi12 .... ? I can't really imagine playing something like that now, in all honesty

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Steam: Bruce_CM

ThanosReXXX

@NEStalgia Haha, no. I'm good. Anything is better than having to look at yet another samey chibi kick-boxer picture...

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

Oh but that one looks not much like Pikachu, other than being yellow, @ThanosReXXX .... So different from his previous ones!

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Steam: Bruce_CM

ThanosReXXX

@BruceCM Yeah, back then, they did actually build things to last. You could also slam or kick the side or top of the box, to improve the image, or just out of frustration, without having to fear that you've instantly wrecked your newly acquired priceless screen, such as is the case with today's wafer-thin TV's.

As for Pong on a touch screen: that just doesn't fly with me. You need the controllers with the turning knobs. Swiping your finger across the screen to place the bat where it should be to hit the ball almost feels like cheating to me. Same as how some people I know used to play Duck Hunt on the NES by literally pressing the point of the gun directly onto the TV screen, to get perfect scores...

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BabyYoda71

@BruceCM Well, it’s an updated version with better graphics. You use the touchscreen to control the paddles.

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho. It’s off to work (from home) I go.

BruceCM

Yeah but we looked after our stuff, @ThanosReXXX .... But I can't say I'm interested in Pong now, so I'm certainly not looking for it on my phone, @BabyYoshi12 That colour one was better, having a tray with tuning wheels for each channel but it was still a bit tedious & needed little tweaks every now & then

Edited on by BruceCM

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ThanosReXXX

@Zuljaras Well, that was putting it mildly...

@BruceCM If by different you mean "ugly as f*** Pikachu impression", then I'd agree...
All these kick boxer images are exactly the same, save for the colors and different heads or on the odd occasion some other limbs or attributes. It's starting to feel a bit like a one-trick pony thing. (although: starting... )

Concerning look after your stuff: even if you do, especially with TV's and other bigger electrical appliances around the house, you'll be lucky if any of them will last for longer than 5 years. As you already mentioned, those old TV's were like a brick house. Not just in weight, but also in longevity.

Edited on by ThanosReXXX

'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.'

Nintendo Network ID: ThanosReXX

BruceCM

Oh, yeah, they were well-built, @ThanosReXXX .... Mind you, my parents still have their 1st flat-screen TV upstairs & that must be 15 years old now I'm not even too sure exactly why they got a new one for downstairs, since it obviously still works fine but I think it was some deal with a dvd player/ recorder or something

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Zuljaras

@ThanosReXXX "All these kick boxer images are exactly the same, save for the colors and different heads or on the odd occasion some other limbs or attributes. It's starting to feel a bit like a one-trick pony thing. (although: starting... )"

... this is EXACTLY how it is in my mind but I did not want to say it out loud.

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