Tendo City

Okay, faggots. It's time to share with me what games you're playing. So stop slouching and listen up. Here's what I've been playing:

<b>Mario 64</b>: All this Mario DS commotion has got me playing Mario 64 again... it's such a wonderful game. It's absolutely eternal... a game you never get tired of, even though you take long breaks from, and it's in that category of games you wouldn't give up even if your delicates were at stake. If such an odd occasion arose, that is...

<b>Star Fox 64</b>: This is an awesome game... I've beaten it around 10 times or so, and I just keep on playing through it. It's another great game with endless replay value.

<b>Castlevania: Circle of the Moon</b>: I haven't played this and beaten it in about a year... so I played it for a week or so, and I quickly got to Dracula. I just have to beat his ass to win... and the Arena. I never beat the Arena before, so I've got that challenge, at least.

<b>Body Harvest</b>: Yeah... I'm only on America... and sorta stuck. It's a pretty hard level.

<b>Final Fantasy VII</b>: Yeah... pretty much the only reason I was playing this is because I brought my N64 to my apartment with me, and when I stayed at my parents house, all I had was a Playstation to play. I brought the N64 back, though (since we don't even have a fucking TV... we have to play through his computer), and so I haven't played this much since. It was mildly interesting, though, so maybe I'll keep playing.


<u>Want to be playing</u>

<b>Tales of Symphonia</b>: This game has looked awesome to me ever since I saw a trailer that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Unfortunately, money's tight with me, so I can't pick it up just yet... hopefully, I'll be finished with my project (I'm writing a program for a company)

<b>Mario 64: DS</b>: I'm definately not getting the DS at launch... I'll probably wait until it drops to $150 or $100. That Mario 64 game looks awesome, though... besides its ugly graphics. An extension of Mario 64, one of my favorite games of all time, is nonetheless really attractive.

Now YOU talk. Jerks.

Final Fantasy VII was my favorite game for a very long time, and I played it to death. It's been close to five years since I gave it a good playthrough though, so I spent the last week reacquainting myself with it.

Seriously, this game just gets better with age. I still love it, and now I actually understand some of the game's mechanics a little better... Also, being five years older and wiser, I understood the game's storyline much better too... it was almost like playing it again for the first time. Some people say the series started going downhill with this game, I seriously disagree (it started going downhill with 8, in my opinion).

The only downside I can gather from it is that the game seems to be much easier than I remember... I'm at the final boss, I have the gold chocobo and I've mastered almost every major materia... all in about five days. Even still, it's the most fun I've had gaming in so long, I can't remember when.

The game is fun, but I'm not all into RPGs, especially ones that have invisible enemies. That's mainly what turns me off.

FF7 is fun. I will say there's a lot of stuff people are convinced FF7 started that in fact go to FF6. For example, the extreme emphasis on technology and magic combined, the lack of the elemental crystals, and the fact that both are really really easy. Sure, not the first time, but when you play it again a few times, you see the truth, those games are pretty easy. Also, both have these incredibly cheap tactics. FF6 has Vanish/doom, and FF7 has... Knights of the Round. Both have very good stories though. Honestly, I still put FF6 above FF7.

Well....

<b>Fire Emblem</b> - I've had it for months, but only discovered how much fun it is a couple weeks ago. Ever since then, it's been an addiction. I've even taken my SP to work to squeeze in a few battles here and there when I can.

<b>Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door</b> - Just got it yesterday and so far I'm enjoying it. The combination of 3D environments and 2D sprites works in a way that only Nintendo could acheive. It's also pretty damn funny.

<b>Soul Calibur II</b> - They need to make a 12-step program to get off of this damn game. I've been popping it into my GameCube on a regular basis for over a year now. I own the official arcade stick, my character at the actual arcade SCII machine has well over 1000 wins, and I see no end to the soul-stealin' fun. Someone, please, shoot me.

<b>Mega Man Anniversary Collection</b> - Off and on since I got MMAC, I've been reliving those carefree days of piloting a little blue robot through fortresses of endless danger and mystery. Oh, and I've played the old Mega Man games a lot too.

<b>The Sims 2</b> - Lord help me, I can't not love The Sims. The sequel just adds so much to the game that only the basic principle remains. I can't think of anything besides the underlying concept, needs, and career system that HASN'T changed, for the better, at that.

<b>Final Fantasy X</b> - Yeah yeah, save your comments on what you think of my favorite game. I've been playing it here and there again for about a week now, although all the games listed above seem to be getting preference. I'm not even to Kilika yet. Normally by now I'm AT LEAST to the Thunder Plains!

So, there you have it, my current menu of selections.

Wow, when's that GBA MM collection finally coming out anyway? Then, the blue bomer's various exploits shall all be MINE to... well, exploit.

Starwars Rogue Leader 3 - Rebel Strike
Pikmin 2

Want:
Metroid Prime 2
Paper Mario 2
Prince of Persia 2
Second Sight

It's the sequel wishlist!

Right now, I'm only playing Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I played through FF7 for the second time last year. I found the plot much easier to understand the second time through. (For one thing, I paid more attention this time.) It's a damn good game, but I don't see how the series would "go downhill" after this one. This is when the series reached its peak. Yes, it went down starting with 8, even though FF8 is also a damn good game IMO.

I also played through Chrono Trigger for the first time in about three years. I used to play it all the time, went through the game from beginning to end five times, and just a month or two ago, I went through it for a sixth time. Damn, that game rules. I beat Wind Waker earlier this year and accidentally saved over my file with that stupid file record thing or whatever that they give you at the end of the game... so yeah, I haven't touched the game since.

What am I playing... well, given too many choices and lacking the ability to stick with any one game right now to the end, I'm playing lots of things and often not the same game for two days in a row...

For instance, yesterday I played two of my new games, true --Tribes: Vengeance and Lady Sia -- but I also played Lords of the Realm and Raptor... in the past week I've played a bunch of other stuff. Beneath a Steel Sky, Goemon's Great Adventure, Lords of the Realm II, Wizardry VI, XGRA, Quest for Glory IV...

If I had to make a short list however, right now it'd probably be this.

-Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge -- discovered a bit over a week ago that I've had it for eight years and never played it, so I was interested in trying... it's fun. Even if I do have to use graph paper to map everything out.

-Tribes: Vengeance -- New game. Quite good. Jetpacks are fun! It's a great twist on the standard FPS that makes it play very differently... and it's got a pretty good and well told story as well.

-Lady Sia -- GBA platformer (and actually a GBA platformer and not a SNES port!)... heard it was good and it was $10 so I got it. It's fun and was worth the money, I'd say.

-Raptor I have kept going back to over the past month... and I finally, a day or two ago, beat the whole first sector (Bravo Sector) in a new game set on the hardest difficulty setting without saving! Quite tough, and something I'd been stuck on for quite some time, but a great accomplishment... so I saved and now I have to try to get through sector two also without saving. Ouch.

-As for the rest... I have no idea. I mean, I should probably play Baldur's Gate II: ToB and Quest for Glory IV, as they are great and I want to progress in them, but for some reason I haven't... if I had to choose games I should play those would be them. Don't know how much I actually will in the near future however... I'm spending too much time on Wizardry VI and Tribes. :)

Xenogears: I've had it for nearly 6 years, but I've never gotten very in it. It's a fun game and one that's difficult at times. One of the top PSX RPGs, no doubt about that.

Katamari Damacy: Pure, unadulterated fun on a little plastic disc.

Tales of Symphonia: I finally got around to playing ToS and I've found why Darunia loves it so much. The battles system is quick and fun to use and the graphics are amazing.

Morrowind: The go-anywhere, do-anything, completly non-linear, I'm-lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere RPG. Recommended for exploration enthusiasts only.

Playing- Mario Kart Double Dash (like crazy. I own on Wario Coliseum)
-NHL 2004
-Madden 2005

Katamari Damacy, Katamari Damacy, and Katamari Damacy. This game is just insane.

Yes it is. And very fun!

I don't know why they changed the end of the name, though. It's originally "Katamari Damashii", which is how I pronounce it. They could have just spelled it like "Damashy".

-shii isn't the same as -shy though... remember that each syllable is pronounced seperately so you don't blend together the two i's. shi-i. Two syllables. So -cy is probably better...

That's not true, actually.

In Japanese two i's make for one long "eeee" sound. It's not "eeh-eeh". "Damashii" is pronounced like "Dah-mah-sheeee". If there are two adjacent vowels like "ii" or "aa" then it's pronounced like a slightly longer version of the first vowel. That applies to aa, ii, uu, ei, and ou. Any other vowel combination will give you two syllables, like "ai".

It's not two adjacent vowels, though... it's shi and i. I'm not certain how you pronounce it, but I sure thought that the way it works is that each vowel is always pronounced the same way... which would mean combine the pronunciation of shi and then the pronunciation of i to form the (half of a) word...

By that rule, damashee(maybe extend with more e's) probably is the correct pronunciation. she and then e...

Either way, it's not damashy... at least, not unless you pronounce it damasheeee that is.

Quote:It's not two adjacent vowels, though... it's shi and i. I'm not certain how you pronounce it, but I sure thought that the way it works is that each vowel is always pronounced the same way... which would mean combine the pronunciation of shi and then the pronunciation of i to form the (half of a) word...

You never pronounce two ii's as separate vowels in Japanese, Brian. They're adjacent vowels. Do you know what adjacent means? It doesn't mean that there can't be other letters around them, silly.

Quote:By that rule, damashee(maybe extend with more e's) probably is the correct pronunciation. she and then e...

Either way, it's not damashy... at least, not unless you pronounce it damasheeee that is.

You pronounce it like Damasheeee. ii= two beats in length. Like Mamoru Oshii. Really there's no way of spelling it correctly in English unless you know how to pronounce things in Japanese, but "Damashy" would be more accurate than "Damacy", since there's no "c" sound in the name.

Also, they say the name in the opening song.

Quote:You never pronounce two ii's as separate vowels in Japanese, Brian. They're adjacent vowels. Do you know what adjacent means? It doesn't mean that there can't be other letters around them, silly.

My point was that that first 'i' wasn't a solo vowel, it was part of the syllable 'shi'. The difference matters! Yes, it does end up as sheeee, but you need to remember how Japanese is syllabic, not alphabetic.

Quote:My point was that that first 'i' wasn't a solo vowel, it was part of the syllable 'shi'. The difference matters! Yes, it does end up as sheeee, but you need to remember how Japanese is syllabic, not alphabetic.

Uh, you said "shi-i. Two syllables". That was false, it is one long syllable.

When people started to spell Japanese words with roman characters they pretty much spelled things phonetically so that it would be easy for westerners to read them correctly. Some strange rules were made, but once you learn what those rules are it is pretty easy to pronounce Japanese words using our alphabet. Well, granted that you know how to roll your r's correctly, something most Americans can't do because of how "soft" our accent is.

Quote:Uh, you said "shi-i. Two syllables". That was false, it is one long syllable.

One long syllable? I don't know all the rules, could be... I know that 'shi' is a syllable and 'i' is a syllable and 'shii' isn't one of the base syllables, anyway. For pronunciation of course I was saying i but thinking that we both knew that it's pronounced e.

Quote:When people started to spell Japanese words with roman characters they pretty much spelled things phonetically so that it would be easy for westerners to read them correctly. Some strange rules were made, but once you learn what those rules are it is pretty easy to pronounce Japanese words using our alphabet. Well, granted that you know how to roll your r's correctly, something most Americans can't do because of how "soft" our accent is.

Yeah, I know it's simple once you learn that (not all that complex) rules... with the Roman alphabet it's not a very hard language at all. And it seems to phonetically fit in it pretty well... the problem for us comes from the character writing system. :)

As for rolling r's, I can do that... you have to be able to do that in Spanish as well.

Quote:One long syllable? I don't know all the rules, could be... I know that 'shi' is a syllable and 'i' is a syllable and 'shii' isn't one of the base syllables, anyway. For pronunciation of course I was saying i but thinking that we both knew that it's pronounced e.

Like how you would say "e", not how you would pronounce it, yes. And what I'm saying is true, you can look it up for yourself. Shii is one long syllable.

Quote:Yeah, I know it's simple once you learn that (not all that complex) rules... with the Roman alphabet it's not a very hard language at all. And it seems to phonetically fit in it pretty well... the problem for us comes from the character writing system.

As for rolling r's, I can do that... you have to be able to do that in Spanish as well.

Yeah, or any slavic language. Thankfully I inherited my language skills from my mom and not my dad, who has the worst American accent you can imagine. :)

Quote:Like how you would say "e", not how you would pronounce it, yes. And what I'm saying is true, you can look it up for yourself. Shii is one long syllable.

Say e, yeah. Like most other languages that never went through English's i-e shift.

Quote:Yeah, or any slavic language. Thankfully I inherited my language skills from my mom and not my dad, who has the worst American accent you can imagine.

Then you are probably lucky. :)

Quote:Say e, yeah. Like most other languages that never went through English's i-e shift.

Yeah, English is weird.

Quote:Then you are probably lucky.

Very.

At the moment, I'm pretty much just playing Tekken Tag Tournament at the arcades.

It's been years since I played TTT on my PS2, so a few weeks ago when I started playing on the arcades it was a tough transition. But I'm getting much better. It's a pity that I only get to play against good players once or twice a week for about half an hour at a time, but oh well. It's definately my favorite fighting game to this day. The balance is just incredible. Any person can be competitive against any one using any character (provided that they know the character well enough, of course. :))

Burnout 3 I haven't really touched too much recently, due to the fact that my XBox is at my girlfriends house. I'm still tossing up between all the good games out now and coming out soon. Money is tight. Fable just came out, KotoR has been out for a while, Halo 2 soon, Killzone, Silent Hill 4, Half-Life 2, Pikmin 2! Gah! The list goes on!!

I can't believe you two bickering old ladies went on THAT long over pronunciation.

Shyeah, right. Of course I believe it!

According to a Japanese language book I own the word "gakkoo" would be divided like this: ga-k-ko-o.

But consider how accurate those English to Japanese books were when Miyamoto had to name Donkey Kong :D. Consider Zero Wing, or the endless Engrish of Engrish.com . Can we honestly say our books are any good at all, really? At the very least, I'd need their accuracy to be proven to me.

Great Rumbler Wrote:According to a Japanese language book I own the word "gakkoo" would be divided like this: ga-k-ko-o.

Yeah two's oo's make for two syllables. Only aa, ii, uu, ei, and ou are said as one long syllable.

It's weird, I know.

Ryan Wrote:I can't believe you two bickering old ladies went on THAT long over pronunciation.

Shyeah, right. Of course I believe it!

It's worth the effort though because it's always best when you try to pronounce things correctly...

Yes.

Now some languages are definitely harder for Americans to say than others, but at least if the other language isn't too hard to pronounce you definitely should try... and if it is (like, say, when I was in Denmark...), my opinion at least is that I doubt I'd say anything... I never tried to speak any Danish for sure.

If you think Danish is weird, try Flemmish.

Quote:But consider how accurate those English to Japanese books were when Miyamoto had to name Donkey Kong . Consider Zero Wing, or the endless Engrish of Engrish.com . Can we honestly say our books are any good at all, really? At the very least, I'd need their accuracy to be proven to me.

Well, considering that it's actually a book that you read in order to learn Japanese and not just a Japanese-English dictionary [which I also have] I'd imagine that it's fairly accurate.

Did you see my reply?

Quote:Well, considering that it's actually a book that you read in order to learn Japanese and not just a Japanese-English dictionary [which I also have] I'd imagine that it's fairly accurate.

I have a book that teaches Japanese too... I've read like the first couple of pages, but enough to get a few of the basics. :)

Quote:If you think Danish is weird, try Flemmish.

I don't think I've heard spoken Flemish... haven't been to Belgium for sure.

One m or two? Whatever. Yeah I knew a bunch of people from Belgium and I'd always crack up when they spoke in their native tongue.

And then they all speak perfect English, right? Everyone seemed to in Denmark... mostly with Danish or English accents, but a few sounded more American.

Not the Belgium people, but some of the Dutch people I knew sounded like Americans.

The French pilots (Air France, the airline we were on both ways) sure didn't sound American. Or English. Definite accents there... :)

Yeah the French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and any Slavic natives usually have strong accents.

I just got Paper Mario in the mail yesterday from eBay. I hadn't realized that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's graphics had improved so much over those of its predecessor. I thought they looked pretty much the same when I first played PM2, but now that I've played PM again for the first time in about three years, I can see that there has been quite a bit of change. The music and sound effects are also much better in PM2, but that's just one of the many advantages of CDs over carts. (Damn, I am so contradicting myself from five years ago.)

They're not CDs though. :p

Close enough, OB1, close enough...

And as for CDs vs. carts, both have advantages. Load times were Nintendo's main reason for using carts in the N64 and given how slow 1x or 2x CD-ROM drives are, they had a very good point. And I like how N64 games have no loading... so I can't criticize them very hard for making that choice. It also means the N64 can run quieter and look nicer... now these days of course CDs are fast, etc, so they are the obvious choice. And yes, CD soundtracks and voices in games are nice additions you get as a result of CDs... and I like such features, certainly... eh, I don't know.

As for Paper Mario, the N64 game still looks fantastic.

Don't get me wrong, Paper Mario has...

:graphics:

...but Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an improvement. And yes, cartridges do load a lot faster. I've noticed that saving on the cartridge is a lot faster. It takes a couple seconds on the Gamecube version, but it saves immediately on the N64 version.

Loading was one of the N64ers' main arguments in ye olden days. The other one? Basically, it was something along the lines of, "If you throw a CD against a wall like a complete idiot, it'll break. Nintendo throws their cartridges off of their roof to test durability! Nintendo Power said so!"

:shake:

I remember those days.

Quote:but Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an improvement.

Yeah, and you really need to play PM1 again just to how how big the difference is.

Yes, you do. I didn't notice the difference until I played PM1 again. Note how I just said that PM2 is an improvement... not a big improvement, but an improvement nevertheless.

I want to buy F-Zero GX! That game is friggin' awesome, and I can get it used for about $20. *wishes he had money*

you can get it new for about $20