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Topics - R^2

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LP Hell / Who Needs the Fight Command, Anyway? Let's Play Final Fantasy 6 Advance!

« on: September 27, 2013, 01:58:37 PM »

Music: Omen, movement 1

When the game starts with dark, rolling thunderstorm and the game title is backlit by fire, you can pretty well guess that things are going to get pretty bad before they get better. Sure enough, some parts of 6 make the events of Final Fantasy 2 look bright and cheery by comparison.

Music: Omen, movement 2

We're off to a great start!

Who, like that guy in the blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo down in the bottom right? That guy?

Biggs: Bah! Probably just another wild goose chase.

Yes, Biggs just replied to himself.

Wedge: I don't know. They wouldn't have let us use her unless they were confident that the information was good.
Biggs: Ah, yes...our witch. I hear she fried fifty of our Magitek armored soldiers in three minutes... Kinda makes your skin crawl, don't it?
Wedge: Relax. With that thing on her head, she's a mindless puppet. The girl won't even breathe unless we tell her to.

LP Hell / Enough expository banter! Now Let's Play Final Fantasy V Advance!

« on: August 17, 2013, 07:48:36 AM »

You can pretend you didn't know I was going to do this, but I don't believe you.

In the first game, the peace and prosperity of the world depended on the crystals, and they were corrupted. In the third game, the peace and prosperity of the world depended on the balance between the crystals, which got unbalanced. In the fourth game, the peace and prosperity of the world depended on the crystals, which were stolen as a means of teleporting a massive superweapon from the moon to the Earth. So... let's just assume things do not augur well for this set either, shall we?

An asteroid, looking rather less like an overgrown potato in this version, flies by the screen and into the void of space. Thus begins...

One of the several Final Fantasy games that wasn't released in the USA when it was new, Final Fantasy 5 was glossed over for reasons Square hasn't exactly made widely known. Final Fantasy 2 was passed over because repeated references to hell and the creatures therein wouldn't have flown in the USA, Final Fantasy 3 because it was late in the NES's life and focus was shifting to the SNES. Final Fantasy 4 came over as Final Fantasy 2, and Final Fantasy 5 wasn't brought over or given an official English translation until that really terrible PlayStation Anthology release.

Final Fantasy 5 Advance does things quite a bit better than Anthology. So off we go.

LP Hell / We're cute! We're scary! We love to LP Final Fantasy IV Advance!

« on: July 15, 2013, 10:49:37 AM »

Final Fantasy 4 Advance Music - Prologue

The man in bed glimmers slightly, before...

...erupting from the sheets.

It's an awkward screenshot, but as boulders fall from the mountaintop, the armored man leaps into the air and smashes them all before they hit the ground.

LP Hell / The GBA was good to this franchise: Let's Play Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls!

« on: June 21, 2013, 12:07:34 PM »

The game was groundbreaking in Japan, back when all there was to compare it to was Dragon Quest. It came to the USA a bit late in the NES's life, but you'd be surprised what a full-issue spread in Nintendo Power can do for a game's notoriety. But despite all its popularity, Final Fantasy was two things: 1) a flagrant rip-off of Dungeons & Dragons, in many cases without even the serial numbers filed off, and 2) a terrible, bug-ridden mess.

But Final Fantasy seems like one of the most often-rereleased video games out there, behind Tetris and Pac-Man but not a whole lot else. The GBA port is itself more or less the same as the Wonderswan port that came out a little before it, but to its credit it at least addresses one of the two issues hindering the NES version.

Squeenix did a lot of combination rereleases of the Final Fantasy franchise, at one point combining Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger together. This is... one of those, and Dawn of Souls is the first time Final Fantasy 2 was released in the USA. You know Final Fantasy 2, it's the one that eventually spun off the SaGa series, for better or worse.

But -- for now, at least -- I'm sticking with what I sort-of know. I've played the NES version through a few times, but not this one.

Warriors are the game's easymode. Having trouble with the game? Start over with more Warriors. (At least, this is true of the NES version.) They can take hits like a champ thanks to their heavy armor, and they can use the game's best weapons. Their damage output isn't as great as the dedicated strikers, but to their credit, swords swings aren't limited by Vancian magic spell slots. (And the Warrior gets white magic too, later in the game.) If the Warrior were a Pokemon, he would be Snorlax.

Thieves get some of the biggest benefits from the GBA remake, because now they work as intended. See, Thieves are supposed to be good at running away, keeping your party out of trouble in hazardous dungeons. But since the NES version was hacked together, fleeing a battle didn't work right, and everyone was as good at it as everyone else. The Thief lost his specialty and basically became a Warrior without the heavy weapons and armor.

In the GBA version, Theives are indeed better at running away than anyone else, and I suspect they keep your party from getting ambushed as often. Once they promote, they can wear heavier armor and wield better weapons and some black magic. They start out weak, and eventually gain power to get... still outclassed by other options. If the Thief were a Pokemon, he would be Magikarp.

Monks are like Warriors in that they just brawl enemies to death without the aid of magic. But while Warriors are the slow-and-solid tank, Monks are agile death-of-a-thousand-punches sorts of fighters. They can wear limited weapons and armor but are almost always better off without it, moreso in the GBA version than the original NES game (where nunchaku were somewhat useful in early levels). Later in the game, they get even better at punching things and dodging hits. That said, if the Monk can't dodge a hit, his sturdy training is only going to do so much to keep him standing. If the Monk were a Pokemon, he would be Charizard.

The Red Mage is the first casting class, and not a dedicated one. Red Mages are better fighters than the other mages and can cast better spells than the Warrior, Thief, or Monk. There are some spells that Red Mages just can't learn, however, including some of the most useful and powerful ones. Nonetheless, they can do a little bit of everything. If the Red Mage were a Pokemon, he would be Clefable.

The white mage is a healer and defender. They make their allies hard to hit, and restore their HP once they're hurt. In the NES version, they're a little superfluous because having another Fighter on the team instead means you take so little damage overall you never have to cast a healing spell. Not sure if that remains the case in this version. If the White Mage were a Pokemon, it'd be one of the ones with a healing move, but not Chansey because they don't have that kind of staying power. They're Final Fantasy mages, they're kind of fragile!

The black mage sucks at fighting and can't take a hit, but commands elemental blasts and has some useful utility magic. In the NES version, they're made obsolete by spellcasting equipment thanks to, yes, more bugs. In this version, they remain useful as the casters with the highest raw damage output. If the Black Mage was a Pokemon, he would be Alakazam.

Normally this is the part where I'd open up the team composition to a vote, but ah, screw it. I roll four dice and take the classes in order. 1, 3, 4, 6 means...

Rock on, food theme naming.

LP Hell / Celebration for your bravery! Let's play E.V.O. The Search for Eden!

« on: April 12, 2013, 11:06:10 AM »

Let's do something a little lighter and breezier than a Playstation-era Square RPG, shall we?

This one takes me back, man. I read the review in Nintendo Power back... well, when the game was new. I bugged my mother about it until she, longsuffering as she was, drove across town to some video rental place to get it for me for the weekend. It was the nineties, we had things like print magazines and video rental stores back then.

Several years later, replaying the game had me wondering exactly what all the evolutions did. The original game had a pack-in poster that told you, but I didn't have it -- so I did things the hard way, evolving and tracking each stat in turn.

The end result was one of the first game guides I wrote, which in turn has led more or less directly into all these Let's Plays I've been doing.

History, man.

Anyway.

This was back before papa Sol put his youngest child up for adoption for crossing over Neptune's orbit one time too many.

Most of the planets are whirling around, but Gaia just sits at the bottom like a useless sixteen-septillion-ton lump of semimolten iron.

The Sun: From this time forward, every 1 billion years, you will have children called "Life". One of them will be able to help you to build a new era. Each child must endure a difficult trial. You might think it's too severe, but it is necessary.

Because you do things the Sun's ways and you like it, girl.

The Sun: The trial is a test of Nature: "The survival of the fittest". If he passes, I will allow him to be your partner and to enter Eden.

If this were an LP of SimEarth, the process of turning from a barren ball of rock into a hospitable planet would probably take the first several pages of Let's Play to complete. Here it's part of the intro.

Anyway, Let's Play

LP Hell / Plots to Make Fun Of: Seven of 'Em! -- Let's Play Saga Frontier!

« on: March 06, 2013, 07:38:46 AM »

It all started with Final Fantasy 2 -- the NES version, mind you, not the one we got on the SNES that was for reals Final Fantasy 4. It was a radical departure from the even-by-that-time established kill-monsters-for-experience-points game mechanics.

A few more refinements (on the Game Boy, no less) and we have the SaGa series. And the first game in that series to be released under that name was...

In 1998, for the PlayStation.

Those seven people? Well, five people, a robot, and a little fuzzy-tailed critter of some sort. Those are seven plotlines of varying quality, each one of them a... well, protagonist. I hesitate to use the word "hero".

We're starting with this one, for the purposes of game mechanics I'm gonna explain.

For each quest, you're prompted to create a set of System Data on your memory card so the game can keep track of what you've accomplished overall. More on this... much later.

Well, let's get started.

LP Hell / Guys, I think I might have a problem -- Anyway, Let's Play SimCity 4!

« on: December 30, 2012, 05:21:02 PM »

It's like I can't mess around and learn a new game without wanting to take screencaps and talk about it at length. It's weird and vaguely unnerving. But who cares, it's time to

Build some cities!

SimCity, for those not up to speed on one of the most well-known game franchises in history, is a game about building a simulated city. That's why it's called that. There's no victory condition, you just build and handle civic problems as they arise until you decide you're done. You handle zoning and municipal services like electric power, water, and garbage disposal; while balancing the city budget.

yes it's more fun than it sounds shut up

I haven't played a SimCity game since 2000, and even that in passing. The most experience I have with the series was the SNES launch title. I have a lot of catching up to do.

So let's reticulate some splines!

One of the first new concepts in SimCity 4 (which was introduced in a previous version but it's new to me goldurnit) is that of region play. You aren't limited to just one city, you can control several scattered across a rather large swath of land called a "region".

You can load pregenerated regions or even download them off the Internet and load them up, but eh. We'll start from scratch whynot

Oddly, there's no way to randomly-generate a landscape. You start with a wide, flat prairie or an ocean, and build up from there.

So I've got these open, verdant fields, stretching as far as the eye can see. Know what that reminds me of?

The first level of every other video game, ever. Welcome to World 1-1.

Let's zoom in on one of the larger tiles to start our first city, yeah?

Terraforming lets you raise or lower then land -- lower it enough and it'll fill with water. You can plant trees and stuff, too.

Not bad, not bad. A big plateau in one corner, a few steppes leading to a more-or-less flat-bottomed valley. This reminds me of something, too...

Right. Off we go.

LP Hell / I'm in the mood for some Mining and some Crafting. Let's Play... Terraria!

« on: November 28, 2012, 07:03:23 AM »

So I tried downloading the Minecraft demo because I want to be merely late to the party and not miss out on what I gather some of you cool kids are still doing.

Turns out Minecraft runs at about .3 to .5 fps on my computer. I've seen $200 budget machines at Wal-Mart with better specs than what I've got, so this is no great surprise, but still.

So I'm all like "Minecraft why u no have any low-resource options" and Minecraft is all

But there's a game that's pretty well close to the same thing, only in nice 2D.

So first we generate a character. Stoic bald black men are rather underrepresented in video games, don't you think?

Then we randomly generate a world. I'll stick with a small one for now.

I ran the game and dicked around for a couple hours to make sure everything worked okay, but beyond finding some basic copper and iron ores, I didn't accomplish much. This is a blind LP, I'm avoiding spoilers and game guides in the spirit of exploration.

Generation takes a while.

That doesn't sound good. Also listed are "Making world evil", and on a lighter note, both "Putting rocks in dirt" and shortly after, "Putting dirt in rocks".

And here we are! A small patch of bare stone, a bunch of trees, and an NPC walking back and forth.

LP Hell / I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING - Let's Play Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword!

« on: November 19, 2012, 02:53:38 PM »

y'all ready for this?

Because I'm not entirely sure I am.

So I've played my share of Civ 4, but eventually it got a little stale. So after an inordinately long search, I found the expansions and downloaded and applied them. So now my Civ 4 game is bigger than I'm used to, and will likely require some new strategies to win.

So this is my first game with my new expansion, playing half-blind against unknown opponents, with new resources at my command.

If you're not familiar with the series (you must be new here), Civilization is a 4X game: you eXplore the world, eXpand your empire, eXploit any resources you can find, and eXterminate all other nations as the need arises.

Yes, every one of those words starts with E. I know. I didn't coin the term.

To explain further would take a stupidly long time, so I'll do my best to fill you in as we go.

I'll be playing as this guy, Sitting Bull of the Native Americans. He's one of the new leaders in this expansion, so I want to try him out.

Each nation has a unique unit, a unique building, and at least one leader associated with it, some up to three leaders (America has Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt; England has Victoria, Elizabeth, and Churchill; and so on). Each leader has two attributes chosen from a short list: some are naturally Aggressive with a powerful offensive military, some are Charismatic and keep the citizenry happy, others Organized and save money on upkeep costs.

The Native American unit is the Dog Warrior, which replaces the earlygame military unit Axeman. They have lower attack power than Axemen but don't require any bronze or iron to craft the axes out of, which is nice. They make up for their lower power with a huge bonus against other melee units, though.

The Native American building is the Totem Pole, which replaces the Monument (which itself replaces the Obelisk from the vanilla Civ 4 game -- Obelisk is now the Egyptian empire's replacement for the Monument). Monuments increase the culture of the city they're in a little; Totem Poles do that and give extra experience points to Archery units: Archers, Longbowmen, and Crossbowmen. Since archery units are the core of your city's defenses, having those guys more powerful than usual is a nice touch.

Sitting Bull's attributes are Philosophical and Protective. Philosophical doubles the number of Great People points that are accrued each turn; more on that later. Protective grants all Archery units (and later, Gunpowder units) two free promotions without spending any experience points: City Garrison makes the unit more powerful than its base strength indicates when they're defending a city; Drill 1 gives them an extra chance to hit an enemy attacking them.

So Sitting Bull is one hell of an earlygame defensive powerhouse, once he can get Archers and Totem Poles up. So there's that.

I almost hate to call attention to my playing on Warlord difficulty instead of my usual Noble, but it's my first game and will probably need a little mercy.

Then we randomly generate a world and put a bunch of randomly-selected civs in it. Let's rock.

LP Hell / Looking at chicks makes you happy. Let's Play Earthbound!

« on: July 22, 2012, 12:59:18 PM »

Oh dear.

Yep, another one.

Earthbound - 001 - Opening Credits

As one of the more underrated video game music compositions plays in the background, we get a few montage shots of some kids wandering around all sorts of places.

Dark swamps...

City buses...

Cycling through a park...

Some sort of... uh... murder scene... surrounded by gawping onlookers...

A giant footprint...

SNES - Earthbound - 002 - Title Screen

Right!

First up, we name our entire party.

EarthBound OST - What's Your Name

Hat kid!

Blonde kid!

Glasses kid!

Karate gi kid!

Air Bud!

Exploitable!

Magic power!

Six-letter limit. Voting open until it isn't anymore.

LP Hell / No bald kids or blue cat-people -- Let's Play Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar!

« on: July 13, 2012, 01:56:16 PM »

Every once in a while I get a wild hair to replay this game -- it's like Nethack in that respect, I suppose. Unlike Nethack it's such a slog I've never actually finished it before! So get the Let's Play rolling while I still have some desire to play this, while I try out some new screencap methods that will hopefully keep my files in better shape.

But to make it less of a slog, I'm going to do the NES version, rather than the original PC version.

Mostly because it streamlines the dialog: in the PC version, you ask everyone you meet keywords by typing them in -- NAME and JOB and so on --
leaving you fumbling around to ask the right questions. In the NES version you just walk up to people and hit A to talk to them, and they tell you anything relevant they know.

That said, I'm going to play this game as though I didn't have foreknowledge about it -- I won't be collecting items until NPCs tell me where they are, and so on.

So here's the deal. The world of Sossaria was threatened by evil sorceror dude Mondain, so Lord British summoned a guy from a different realm -- IRL Earth --to beat him. He did.

Then his student/lover Minax tried to avenge him. She didn't.

Then it turns out Mondain and Minax had some sort of offspring/creation, later revealed to be a demonic computer sort of thing, named Exodus. It got closest to destroying Sossaria -- leveling about three-quarters of it -- but too was defeated.

So without any villains left to defeat, and with only Britannia remaining as the inhabitable section of the world, Lord British summons yet another person from Earth. This time it's not to fight against a threat, but to become a moral leader of the people -- the Avatar.

Upon arriving in Britannia, you're awarded a class! At least I assume that's what happens, since you're probably not a Mage or a Tinker on modern-day Earth but your character starts as one in the game. So let's pick a class! Vote in-thread, voting will continue until it doesn't anymore.

Representing the virtue of Compassion, Bards are generalists, although they lean more towards spellcasting than fighting. They're good with ranged weapons, though, and that's not to be understated.

Representing the virtue of Justice, the Druid is a second-string spellcaster. They're not as good at slinging spells as the Mage, but have a bit more staying power and better armor. They can use the Wand, which is the best ranged weapon in the game.

Representing the virtue of Valor, the Fighter is good at fighting. He has no magic capability at all, but can use the best not-Avatar-only melee weapon in the game.

Representing the virtue of Honesty, the Mage is the dedicated spellcaster. Their weapons and armor are sticks and clothes (until you find a Wand), but their MP growth is unmatched. Their main problem is running out of herbs to cast their spells, and running out of money to buy more.

Representing the virtue of Honor, Paladins are more or less like Fighters, but geared more toward defense than offense. Whereas Fighters get the best weapon in the game, Paladins get the best armor. Paladins also have a little spellcasting ability.

Representing the virtue of Spirituality, Rangers are... pretty much the same as Bards. They're geared slightly more towards physical might than spellcasting prowess, but they're not as good at fighting as Fighters or Paladins.

Representing the virtue of ~~Magikarp~~ Humility, the Shepherd... kind of sucks. Her stats are crazy-low and her starting equipment is terrible, but she can equip and use some of the best stuff in the game. She cannot use magic.

Representing the virtue of Sacrifice, the Tinker sucks.

Multiple votes OK, I'll just pick whatever has the most votes overall.

LP Hell / For certain values of "Advanced"... Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance!

« on: June 12, 2012, 07:04:12 PM »

Yep, here we go again.

A day where R2 started another Let's Play.

It says Press Start, so I do. Our scene opens...

With a snow-covered schoolyard, children playing. A whistle blows!

The children line up!

These bullies are just full of cutting remarks, but to be fair, if you bring a teddy bear to grade school you're kind of asking for it.

A valiant defender of the weak and easily-targeted steps forth!

This girl immediately chooses words that introduce her as a precocious brat.

I'll show you.

LP Hell / Lay down your arms or die clutching them! Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics!

« on: April 29, 2012, 11:24:16 AM »

haha wait what is this

That made... almost no sense. But the swirling lights and zodiac symbols were awfully pretty. Let's NEW GAME

Hullo, Arazlam.

Wait, shouldn't you be Alazlam what is going on?

Well see, the original translation of Final Fantasy Tactics was... kind of awful. Really awful. So I'm playing with a patch that pastes the PSP rerelease's script (or something like it) over the original game. It's a bit pretentious but at least it's understandable. You can't tell from the opening cinematic because apparently FMVs aren't included in the translation patch. But that's okay!

Anyway.

Yeppers.
It was a bitter war of succession that rent the land of Ivalice in two. Here we first find mention of Delita Heiral, a theretofore unknown young man, the hero would would draw the curtain on this dark act of our history.
His is a heroism of great renown -- a story familiar to all who dwell within our land.
Ah, but what the eye sees is oftentimes a mere fragment of the truth.

There was another young man, the youngest of House Beoulve, long famed for producing leaders of knights and men.

Female knights and regular men, I suppose.

There is no official record of the role he played on history's stage.
However, according to the Durai Papers, the existence of which became known to the public only this last year -- they had long lain concealed in Church archives -- this forgotten young man is in fact the true hero.

With dat ass, who wouldn't be incited to unrest? I know my peace is disturbed, if you know what I mean.

Which account is to be believed?
Join me in my search to uncover the answer.
Ah, but before we begin, might I ask you to share with me your name and the date of your birth?

That's my name, don't wear it out.

Lazy answer.

And so our story begins!

Real Life / Help Me Escape the American South

« on: April 04, 2011, 07:00:43 AM »

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Drive In Snow

With the changes to my culinary school program cutting my number of needed credit-hours for my degree from 112 to 90, I have two quarters left before I'm done. Six classes, four of which I'm taking over the next eleven weeks. I'm almost done, almost a certified chef.

This means I'm almost eligible for student career services to actually, you know, help me find a job. The resources of the entire Art Institute school network are at my disposal, so from what they tell me they can place me fairly easily almost anywhere in the country. So I'm going to go ahead and get started on that, aside from the temporary job in Nashville I'll be getting to make ends meet while I'm here.

I don't like living in Atlanta much, and Nashville is even worse. I've driven through enough of North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas to be pretty sure when I say: I'd like to find somewhere to go either north of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi.

So, Brontos, where do you live? Do you like it there? Why? Would you recommend it to someone pulling up and moving to a place he's never been before? How's the weather? How's the job market in the hospitality industry? How's the cost of living? How's the traffic, and are there sufficient mass-transit options to get around it if I need to get downtown?

Options
Champaign, IL:
+ Lots of trendy restaurants that are hiring. Good mass transit.
- Not as big a city as I'd like (mitigation? Near Indianapolis and Chicago).
? Illinois weather
~ Lots of college kids, lots of young Republicans (e.g. lots of people to try my best to ignore)
Who's there: Lottel, nearby

Boston, MA:
+ Jobs available, not a bad city for reasons undefined
- Winters are no fun. I'm pretty sure I have Seasonal Affective Disorder or something like it. Being shut in all winter long would be pretty terrible.
~ Lack of nightlife isn't really an issue.
Who's there: Mothra

Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Plymoth, and/or Novi, MI:
- Wait, Michigan? Isn't it basically impossible to find a job anywhere statewide?
Who's there: Silversong, [spoilers?]

Madison, WI:
+ Thriving restaurant scene, not-entirely-insufferable political outlook
- Weak MT, Holy balls Wisconsin gets cold
Who's there: Misha, Joxam and presumably Malikial across the state.

Seattle, WA:
+ Generally pleasant, people don't actually kill themselves too much.
- High CoL, I will possibly never see the sun again (hotly debated).
? There are either a lot of jobs to be had, or very few jobs to be had.

Olympia, WA:
+ Just around Puget Sound from Seattle, so presumably most of the pros still more or less apply. Better job options.
- Close enough to still have a high CoL and the same sort of weather.

Portland, OR:
+ People are friendly, is apparently nice despite...
- When everyone is hipsters.
- Also an "utter lack of jobs".

Californ-eye-aye in general:
+ It's so nice, lots of people want to live there despite the horrible economy and state debt, and the catastrophic cost of living.
- Did I mention the horrible economy, state debt, and catastrophic cost of living?
Who's There: Brentai, probably a few others I don't remember right now, like half of Talking Time

Troy, NY:
+ It will make me a man or kill me.
- I am already so manly any additional manliness would be superfluous

Baltimore, MD:
- All I got here is an ominous warning.
Who's there: Doom's still somewhere in the area, right? (Hmm...)

Carrboro/Chapel Hill, NC:
+ Fantastic opportunities for career growth. Free transit. Low CoL.
- My family is from NC. I've been. My personal experiences with the state do not mirror this praise.
Who's there: Ocksi. And if I move there first, probably my father.

Assorted Creations / Art^2

« on: September 08, 2010, 08:12:03 AM »

How I did draw many things by R2 (yes this is an aggregate thread)

Doubtless you have already read my Nuzlocke challenge comics and the HARD MODE thread that started said comics, which according to my karma are possibly the greatest achievement in the history of me. Watch my art style, if it can even be called that, evolve!

Semirelated is my scathing editorial on how shittily broken the Pokemon games are, set to showtunes.

And then there's this bit of oddness.

I did a bunch of stuff in Make Mine Doodles, which I'll just repost here rather than linking to. Most of them are quick cartoons drawn in my class notebooks while I'm bored out of my skull in class.

My dog likes chicken.

Bulbasaur used Growl.

Kabbage's avatar.

To my Nutrition instructor: It's "iodized". With a D.

Also from Nutrition class.

World's Most Scientific Institute / C'mon, I really need this powerup!

« on: August 22, 2010, 02:42:54 PM »

n/t

High-Context Discourse / State of the Wurst

« on: July 11, 2010, 02:39:00 PM »

I think it's Wisconsin.

LP Hell / Nuzlocke Challenge: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

« on: June 21, 2010, 12:05:17 PM »

Yeah, I'm splitting this off from the HARD MODE thread that spawned it.

I'm going to play some (more) Pokemans. And you're going to help me.

Da Rulez:

1) I'll be catching the first thing I meet in a random encounter any given route (cave, dungeon, area, or whatever) and that's it for that route, etc. forever.

2) If it faints, it's gone forever and may no longer be used. If the whole party wipes, I have to get six fresh guys out of the PC box and use them instead. If the party wipes and there's no one left in PC storage,

.

3) No active duplicates. If I have a Zubat, either in the party or PC storage, I'll skip over any random wild Zubats (or Golbats) for the purposes of determining what I'll catch to satisfy rule 1. If I catch a Zubat and it faints (and is thus

), any later Zubats I run into may be caught.

4) I'll take and use freebies. These are mons that are found via scripted encounters or the ones people trade or give you, e.g. Wynaut eggs, Fighting Dojo prizes, Voltorbs pretending to be items. Since part of the challenge is having a limited number of mons available, freebies that are offered in an unlimited amount (like the Celadon Game Corner selling Abras and Dratinis) will only be used once. Freebies offered in limited amounts (like a Kecleon blocking the road) may be replaced if they faint.

5) Once I have seven mons captured, and again after each leg of the story/Pokemon Gym/whatever, I'll be asking YOU THE VIEWER to vote on which mons make up my team. I'll also ask for votes when a choice comes up, like how to evolve an Eevee or which Fighting Dojo prize to take. Voting will remain open until I get around to this thread again to tally it, but will always be open for at least 24 hours. I'll take the team of the six mons who have the most votes, so things like "I don't care who else you take as long as you keep Dustox and Snorlax in the party" will count for those two.

6) Updates will be posted as those MSPaint comics you kids like so much.

So, first up...

WHICH VERSION WILL I BE PLAYING

You can choose from Emerald or Leaf Green, because those are the ones I have. Emerald will probably make for a longer LP because I'm pretty sure it's a longer game, but LeafGreen will make it more likely I actually succeed thanks to better type diversity. Yes, Kanto has no Dark-types and only one Steel-type, but it's also not HALF SURFING ROUTES and has better freebies.

Also

WHICH STARTER WILL I BE TAKING ALONG

Vote for both versions if you want. ("Play Leaf Green and take Squirtle. But if you play Emerald, take Treecko because I openly hate you.") For the uninitiated or those of you who lose track of which mons are in which game, the Leaf Green starters are Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Charmander. The Emerald starters are Treecko, Mudkip, and Torchic.

Voting is open for game version and starter.

Online Hookers / The Worst Pokemon Tournament Ever

« on: April 03, 2008, 05:52:43 PM »

I'm willing to run another Pokemon D/P tournament if there's enough giveashit left about the game in the new era of BRAWL BRAWL BRAWL. Likely level 50 set Doubles, at some nebulous point in the future allowing the people who missed out on the first tournament because they didn't have a team ready to get the lead out.

Discuss. If enough people express interest, I'll start a signup/rules thread.

Gaming Discussion / Captain McGrandpa

« on: April 01, 2008, 06:09:21 AM »

Captain McGrandpa: Memories of the Forgotten is an April-Fools-ish interactive text adventure running off the GameTap forums. While it requires registration for a (free) GameTap account to participate I figure this is the kind of thing someone around here would enjoy.