Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Magician That’s excellent, really good you’re making a positive change in your life!

Yesterday marked one year since I created an account here, another positive change.

Y'know, if F Zero and Pikmin had more specific and loud fan communities, I wonder if they would like hate each other?

F Zero: Has vanished, with the only reason ever given is Miyamoto saying they couldn't figure out ways to innovate it.

Pikmin: Blatantly has only stayed alive all these years because of Miyamoto's support

Drastically different opinions of the man based on these two things.

Star Fox community would be incredibly divided on Miyamoto. The Tetsuya Nomura of Star Fox.

Guess who just received their performance review and is getting a 3% bump in salary?

<- This guy.

@Magician Nice! I got mine too today. A whole 10% Instantly ordered Monster Hunter Rise and Little Nightmares Complete Edition (Switch)

I tried to practice "pretend playing" Keyboardmania PS2 with upright piano as the fake controller and my handphone as the auto play video before i pick Keyboardmania bundle from Tokopedia next month.

@Tyranexx No, it was relatively deserved! It wasn't too painful so the punishment very much fitted the crime. I haven't broken any bones, save of course the swimming pool incident I mentioned a few weeks ago. A pretty superhuman effort though, to limp back that far with a dead leg. I'm far too careful for my own good, so I'm fairly confident I won't get into too much trouble...

I enjoy Sawano's musical style, at times it borderlines noise, and audio design genius. A bit like the Tenet soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson, which has very intricate sound design also, like playing forward and backward pieces together, and sampling everyday sounds. One of the songs uses a sampled and compressed fire truck siren as a bass track, and it's a beautiful thing to hear. “[I envisioned] a really heavy fire engine rumble as a bass track, and then something on top of that, that would symbolize fire alarms, using manipulation like side-chaining,” he said for Deadline.

Lemme know when you find the sampled alarm;

Rap in video games is a side effect of more lyrics in video games. Sawano's style has a lot of otherworldly elements mixed with such grounded, intrinsically human elements. When listening to Xenoblade X and Attack on Titan songs, both of which have frickin' German lyrics for crying out loud, it becomes very distinct. I also really like Black Tar, because it's a perfect fusion of synth, rock, and rap. Uncontrollable's very catchy, and the two leads have a lovely duel at the second chorus.

Noctilum starts with a funky guitar and builds fantastically, both day and night. Oblivia's awesome, but doesn't have anything intrinsically special, except for the synthesiser notes playing in the background between the string parts, that also show up in MONO X, the title theme. Wir Fliegen is probably my favourite song in the game, it has such a dreamy feeling. A friend described it as giving the impression you're on drugs, and considering the nature of Overdrive, they weren't too off the mark. The chorus (sang of course in German) is straight-up fantastic too.

For those reasons I recommend Attack on Titan. Seems that we both have similar thought processes when it comes to what media and video games we consider... but nonetheless the concept is really cool. The stakes are so unbelievably high every single episode, and some of the plot twists are very captivating. The lore is also very interesting. The animation quality for the anime is top-notch, and has a really clean, but gritty feel to it. This is only the second anime I've watched, first being Persona 4: The Animation, so I'm very new to the structure and pacing. Do let me know how you find it, however.

I have absolutely no idea where the suggestive themes marker can be applied in either Ocarina of Time, or Majora's Mask. If you're really trying to stretch the people playing may have been put on high alert when Cremia hugged Link after his escort mission, but that was completely misunderstood by many people. There isn't any innuendo at all in any Zelda games otherwise, apart from Breath of the Wild when the NPC Rola makes comments about Link. That's also stretching it so it's very dubious.

My view on Cyberpunk is limited because though I have the platforms to play the game on, I have no interest in playing it. The hype never really reached me in that respect. We'll just have to see how CDPR responds, because all they've done as of now is patch, stuff that should have been done three to six months ago. Good analogy, it's quite astute. Never underestimate the average gamer, they're very astute.

@MarioLover92 Ah, I see. I also hoped for Ninjara, I really like his colour scheme and overall design, so he could have been the second choice had Min Min... died or something. But she's excellent to represent the ARMS series, so I'm content with that. It must have been very nostalgic to see Banjo & Kazooie make it, so I'm glad you have that fighter at least to remind you of what I've gathered was a memorable and joyous gaming childhood!

Kinda why I rely on remakes and remasters, to bring games I can't play, to the consoles I do have. Final Fantasy VII, X, XII, all could have been lost to me if Square didn't remake and/or remaster them from the PS1/2 to the PS4 and Switch. Same with Super Mario 3D All-Stars, it brought three games I never owned, right back to me. In that I'm very excited to see what Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne feels like with an HD coat of paint. It looks quite cool, and the art style's very nice so it's a matter of time until I get into that.

The Ultimate History of Video Games is my favourite book of them all. I listened to the audiobook, read by Dan Woren (a dulcet tone with tons of experience), when I travelled to Spain about five years ago. It was a massively insightful book with so much useful data. The writing was clean, precise, and was organised perfectly.

Another book I can recommend is Phoenix IV: The History of the Videogame Industry, by Leonard Herman. It's very comprehensive, though Herman's writing is a bit sluggish. It clocks in at about 400,000 words, so about 1800 pages of pure videogame material. It has loads of pictures to supplement the writing, and is organised by year, so it's very easy to find something specific. There's also a free bonus chapter covering 2016 available on the Rolenta Press website, so here it is if you want to check that out. It's 24 pages, which speaks for the detail of the book.

http://www.rolentapress.com/Products/Phoenix/Phoenix%202016.pdf

I mentioned Console Wars as a weak material for my book, but conversely a book that was superbly insightful for my own personal reading, is Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier. It has so much story, and the interview depths are absolutely unreal. The development cycles of indie games like Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight, and AAA games like Diablo 3, The Witcher 3, and Uncharted 4 are all covered. The insight is invaluable and is worth reading at all costs.

And as for books I conversely imported from the US, I bought the Super Mario Bros Encyclopedia, The Art of Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia, The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Creating a Champion. I spent over two hundred dollars but it was worth it, the print quality is superb and the artwork itself is more than worthy of the weighted paper.

@Tyranexx There was a wasp nest next to your garage door? That must have been scary. Yeah, even though I have a crippling fear for bees, wasps, hornets - pretty much anything that attacks with venom - I didn't get stung that much either. Only twice throughout my life, actually - both by wasps. Seemingly out of nowhere, I got stung on the top of my foot once...and it wasn't pleasant. Seriously, what did I do to make that guy mad???

Ah all right, so quite a lot different from the plug-and-plays that I had. I know of those things as well, my younger brother had this SpongeBob plug-and-play back then. Scott The Woz made a really good YouTube video on plug-and-play consoles - it totally took me back to like 2004 or so, at least in the first half of the video, lol.

Finally made more progress on my Mario drawing! It's looking pretty decent. I was thinking of having pics of my progress work for my Twitter page and on the NL boards.

@TheJGG Yeah totally, the moment I saw that jiggy bounce along the floor, I knew I was in for a treat! Definitely understand where you're coming from in terms of remakes/remasters. Not everyone has their old consoles hooked up, and there are people who just didn't grow up with those games and would like to try them out. (Example: I didn't play the Genesis until around 2001. We had the SNES, then the N64 in the 90s.)

I have the Super Mario Odyssey art book and the Super Mario Bros. encyclopedia as well! I have the Hyrule Historia book too. I used to have this book called Supercade a long, long time ago. Used to love going through it and looking at all those cool pictures it had (such as old consoles like the Sega SG-1000 II and the Nintendo Famicom). I don't have it anymore, sadly.

Here's my weekly random animation

@MarioLover92 Supercade is also a really comprehensive book for the golden age of arcade gaming in the late seventies.

I admit, the more worthwhile purchases in terms of art books are the Zelda ones. The Super Mario art styles, apart from the kind of cartoon style you have for your profile banner, are quite uninspired and are very plain. The Zelda series artwork has transitioned to almost painting levels of quality. If anything the art direction since 2006 has been more or less painting style for all major Zelda console titles.

Twilight Princess had a realistic style, with a lot of darker, moody colours. It's really edgy, with fine brush strokes. Skyward Sword adopts an Impressionist style with a lot of bright colours, a smooth transition between colours, thick paint, and very clear brush strokes. Breath of the Wild has a lot of watercolours, and in character art, a lot of random brush strokes, with a lot of colour.

@Eel
Whenever i saw Shaggy face silhouette, it remind me of this DDR song AM-3P that coincidentally have similar silhouette.

Seems I’ve erased all of my books off my Kindle by complete accident. Oh well, back to Calibre I go...

@TheJGG huh. How? Like the local copies on your kindle, or literally wiped them from your account? It sounds kinda complicated to do accidentally.

@Eel It was my local copies, I managed to remove DRM on two or three books I’ve bought. I opened a book while I was out and nothing opened, saying they had been erased. Strange but I have backups.

the xbox indie showcase is showing me that nintendo and sony have much better understanding of how to make good showcases.

@TheJGG oh how odd. Did you have them as part of your kindle cloud-thing? (Sending them to your account via email? Something like that I think?)

I'd hate for that to happen to mine (the few ebooks I've bought from other stores), since I'd have to... Uh... Generate... Another set of DRM-free versions of those books.

Anyone other than @MarioLover92 read any of the aforementioned videogame books?

The Ultimate History of Video Games is my favourite book of them all [...] Another book I can recommend is Phoenix IV: The History of the Videogame Industry [...] I mentioned Console Wars as a weak material for my book, but conversely a book that was superbly insightful for my own personal reading, is Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.

@Eel I don't remember specifically, I tend to read a bit more on my laptop. I installed Calibre on it, so I'll be able to manage my books a bit better starting tomorrow. I'll be able to copy the new books over and maybe wipe the Kindle just to give it a nicer reset.

I've been saying for a few months now how much better Crunchyroll's website is than Funimation's. So what does CR do? Roll out a beta for a new layout that makes basically everything worse! I don't know what they were thinking! Their site right now is simple and highly effective. There's no reason to change it to the mess they are trying out in the beta. I hope they heavily rework the beta or scrap it altogether...

So yet another case of a service or big name "fixing" something that isn't broken in the names of "progress" and a new look....There's a time and place for such changes, but not always.

Congrats to @Magician and @Zuljaras for the raises! Always a good feeling. Don't celebrate TOO hard, now.

@TheJGG The leg wasn't completely dead, just gimped in the middle. I managed. Thankfully, the dog was also older at that point; she was quite a handful to control on a leash when she was a lot younger. She was a border collie/shepherd/lab mix, so she used to get pretty excited at...almost everything. It was a question of who walked who for awhile. XD Actually, I briefly experienced the sensation of actually having a dead leg for a minute or two a few years before that incident. Let's just say I don't advise getting zapped on the rear by an electric fence (not very high voltage, but enough that it definitely smarts).

I certainly like music that has various elements layered in. Trucks In Place is a very good track! Haven't seen Tenet yet either; another movie for the list. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Does the siren start at about 0:55, or 1:28? (Some traffic outside right now, so it might be messing with my ears a bit)

I think the rock and synths in Black Tar are why I like the track so much. I find Uncontrollable...energizing, powerful even. Which is fitting IMO, since it plays during Tyrant battles. Aesthetically, Noctilum's my favorite continent, and the music is a definite plus. Oblivia is my second favorite, though I much prefer the day theme over the night theme. You're completely on the mark with Wir Fliegen and why I like it so much! Though I never equated how uplifting I find it to drugs. XD I really do need to listen to the soundtrack again. Heck, Xenoblade Chronicles X deserves a second chance on the Switch; it was such an awesome, ambitious game. It'd be a shame to just leave it tied to the Wii U. I know Monolith has stated it would be difficult to port the game, however.

Part of the reason why I think I'd like actually watching Attack On Titan is due to some of the lore; I'm not aware of any recent developments, but I do know enough that the titans themselves seem to be made, not born. I've seen a few clips of earlier seasons and one brief one related to the most recent/final season, though it wasn't anything that significant. Some of the characters and their motivations certainly intrigue me. I first heard of it from someone I used to work with; he occasionally watched anime and is the same person who loaned me two Studio Ghibli films (My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) to watch at one point.

I think it's also a stretch that there's any innuendo in Zelda games until you get up to the very few rated T titles in the series (Twilight Princess I do get). That said, I'm also not as...shall we say...dirty-minded compared to some people. Or I'm just oblivious to some things that others may object to.

Glad that analogy didn't confuse you. Don't know how many people I've come across who don't realize pyrite and "fool's gold" are the same thing.

@MarioLover92 Next to the side/people-sized door to exit the garage, actually. They were taken care of not long after by Raid by my father. I'm not a big fan of pesticides, but I harbored little mercy towards the flying insects by that point. Not the first time I've sustained stings, but I've found wasps and hornets to be way more aggressive than bees; so long as you don't disturb the normal European honeybee and its nest, you can get pretty close and watch them go in and out of their hive. I've been within a foot of a hive that was once on our property and didn't have any issues....I was very careful.

2004 is probably about the time we had those. XD They were cheap entertainment. I much would've preferred an actual TV console, but they were too expensive. I had handheld systems from age 10 upward since they were cheaper overall.

I'd like to see progress pics of your drawing, but only if you're up for it.

Border Collie/ lab/ shepherd/ confused dog, @Tyranexx ....? Most puppies are a bit excitable, of course! & I strangely don't make a habit of getting zapped by electric fences, lol! Grew up in the countryside, so there were plenty of those around & I guess I learned quickly enough to not really remember any accidents with them

F1 and F2 are back baby and there's nothing ThanosReXXX can do about it! F1 practice has gone very smoothly, with some nice performances by Yuki Tsunoda, Lando Norris and Verstappen. But F2's been fantastic, and only after one of the three scheduled races.

First off, pole position was decided by 0.003s between first and second. If the two cars started at the same time there would be about 25cm between them by the end of the lap. Truly nail-biting stuff, but the top ten was reversed for the first race. The eventual winner suffered a lot of pressure from behind but he managed to win by just under a second.

Because it's a spec series, and everyone has the same cars, if you have a problem in qualifying it'll be hard to make up for it in races. One driver qualified fifth but was disqualified for a technical infringement, and started last. But he ended up going from 22nd on the grid to tenth by the end. And because the top ten finishers are reversed for the second race, he'll start first. Fabulous recovery indeed.

The guy who finished second to last gathered infamy when he did something awful, which he posted to Instagram. He was speeding at up to 300kph on public motorways, and at times one-handed. Seems the cars there were the only ones he'll pass in his career. And he's 26, very old for a racer in junior series.