miketheratguy

On 4/3/2023 at 9:51 PM, RetroChiGuy1212 said:

Great April Fools! 

I should have known once I downloaded one of these mags just to read the articles and happened to unavoidably notice that all the nudie bits were censored with a sweaty troll emoji. XD

16 hours ago, E-Day said:

It was not.

Yes it was! I'm not insane, you are!

Wait, this was just up a few weeks ago wasn't it? I'm confused. Did something about it change?

I love video games!

21 hours ago, JHD said:

I was surprised how very many advertisements there were for various brands of cigarettes.

Man, back in the 80s you couldn't get AWAY from cigarettes. I remember that my family's favorite restaurant used to have a cigarette vending machine right next to the door. She'd often hand me change and ask if I'd go grab her favorites. A six or seven year old kid getting cigarettes out of a vending machine. Which my mom would proceed to smoke. In a restaurant. Then we'd go home and they'd watch the local news on their 20-inch 13-channel rotary dial UHF television.

Times have changed.

A "Protip spectacular" about a wrestling game that contained no special maneuvers thus rendering each of its characters functionally identical.

On 3/8/2023 at 11:02 AM, CastleVanity said:

Randomizers is not my field. I never touch any of those. It looks interesting but never invest into them. Zelda randomizers are always fun to watch.

The pure experience is always the best one but I LOVE the idea of a game having more or less infinite replay value due to the rearranging of various features. Every time there's a new release of FFIV I play through it so these randomizers really have my interest.

33 minutes ago, CastleVanity said:

and yet I'm still learning from that game and i been playing this game for 30 years. ^_^

Every now and then I also learn something new about the game, which I still go back and mess with every couple of years. I recently learned that there are some free randomizers out there that completely shuffle all kinds of things about the game, from character skills to gear and item stats to even dungeon layouts (to an extent), all individually selectable by the player. I've been wanting to dive into such a thing but to be honest I almost think that I'm intimidated, lol.

Was that the guide? I NEED CLOSURE!!!

Just browsing the review scores for various games is SUPER interesting. Also very easy and very handy, just go to the platform, pick the game, and there's the average score across multiple magazines PLUS the individualized scores with just a couple clicks. Awesome, thank you for this!

Street Hockey '95.

On 1/10/2023 at 10:48 PM, tcaud said:

As a child I remember having Consumer Guide's Hot Tips for Nintendo strategy guide, which I got at the Scholastic Book Fair. Also I remember umpteen Final Fantasy VII guides by various authors, and in the 80s I remember reading a strategy guide for Zelda 2 and Kid Icarus (among other games) which had hand drawn maps instead of screenshots. Anyone remember it / what it was called?

This is an old post so you probably found your answer already but it sounds like you're talking about the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, it's a black book that covers several dozen classic NES games with loads of item and enemy descriptions, maps, etc. It's basically the precursor to both NP and Nintendo's own strategy guides. While it doesn't have Zelda II (that I recall) it does contain Kid Icarus, the only guide I can think of that does, as well as lots of other older games for the system.

The only alternative I can think of is the NES Atlas, that one covers Zelda II and MIGHT also cover Kid Icarus, I don't quite recall.

On 2/6/2023 at 4:28 PM, CastleVanity said:

Just finished final fantasy IV (Super Famicom) What a nostalgia trip.

That's my favorite one in the series, I must have gone through FFIV a dozen times. I LOVE that game.

Sorry to resurrect an ancient thread, but I just found out that the European version of Ninja Gaiden was censored even worse than the W.o.P. book.  Not only can Ryu not hold a weapon in his hand, he can't wear a mask or be referred to as a ninja, either.

 

I knew about the whole "no ninjas" policy that brought about things like Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, but I'm still not really clear on why.  Was there a rash of ninja assassinations in the UK in the late 80s?

I've often wondered the same. Leonardo's swords and Raphael's sai are okay but nunchucks are bad. Soldiers and guns and Mortal Kombat is fine but ninjitsu is against the law. Even the original TMNT film has a bunch of goofball cartoon sound effects to dull the "violence" in the UK dvd release. You London boys have some odd sensibilities, I tell you.

...I like that Ryu has gone from having a sword to having no sword and resorting to a friendly bro fist to finally being so befuddled by his lack of anything resembling a defensive weapon that he has no choice but to confuse his foes by taking off his mask and twirling around like a ballerina.

I haven't been able to look at technology the same way ever since learning that Information Society embedded a text message in a vinyl record.

Has anyone mentioned Ys yet? More specifically, the much-maligned third game?

I remember playing this... and Liking it.

You self-flagellating liar!

Yeah I heard that SH2 (I'm sorry, "Silent Hill: Revelations") was an absolute mess. I was pretty disheartened to hear this, especially since I was one of the few strong supporters of the first film, but even my fellow SH nuts said "no dude, just stay away".

I do love the fact that Ned Stark and Jon Snow are reunited in the film, though.

If you're trying to make ebooks that are text-only, you could just lay them on a flatbed to scan and have an OCR program turn them into a PDF or whatever.  Although if you're talking paperbacks, that'll still probably ruin the spine.

Hmm, that's worth looking into. Many of the books that I'd be looking to convert would be text only.

I agree with the comments about Mortal Kombat. Aside from the PG-13 rating, that movie delivered pretty much everything that a movie based on Mortal Kombat needed to have. The game was basically a thinly-veiled Enter the Dragon ripoff so the movie followed suit and it did so with humor and (most importantly) well-choreographed martial arts scenes. It wasn't perfect, but it was one of the few video game adaptations that actually stuck to the source material. Who would have imagined that this would be so difficult? (Though, to be fair, the second Mortal Kombat movie stuck pretty close to the source material as well and that one was, legitimately, among the worst films ever made).

Still, having said all this, of all the video game adaptations I think that Silent Hill is the best standalone "film".

I'd be curious about either. I suppose, worst-case scenario, I could always still keep the original book and just hole-punch everything to put it into some kind of binder once I'm done scanning. That way I could continue to keep a physical copy after creating the digital one. Or just buy second copies of whatever I scan, I guess. They're mostly old books that aren't particularly rare.

Thanks for the info. Again, I think I figured that the book would be a mangled mess once everything was said and done but I was trying to hold out the hope that the pros had a way of doing it that would leave the book in a still-readable state. Bummer!

Hmm. So probably no real shot at having the pages shuffled into a nice, neat pile, reheating the glue, and cramming the pack of pages back into the glue with anything resembling grace or neatness.

Interesting. I'd assumed that full destruction of the book was necessary in order to properly scan it, I was just hoping that it wouldn't be.

So the pages don't retain any stickiness that would allow them to be packed back together? The glue remains inside the spine of the cover?

Wasn't sure if this was the right section or not since it's not directly related to the site, but it's still a "how do I" subject so I figured I'd give it a try.

So anyway I just got a scanner over the weekend. It's nothing industrial or even expensive. It's a basic Canon all-in one scanner / printer / copier from Wal-Mart. I should point out that I probably wouldn't be using it to contribute anything to the site. Not that I'd be against the idea - in fact I think it would be cool to help out - but rather because I'm sure that it doesn't come close to the site's professional-quality standards.

I bought it primarily to make backup copies of my photos, drawings and documents but then I started thinking about how fun it would be to make my own ebooks (the resolution limits won't matter as much on a small screen). I have no idea how to cleanly go about doing this though, so I figured that I'd ask you guys. In short, how do you go about de-binding a book that uses glue other than staples, and does the book have to be completely destroyed or is it at all salvageable in the process? Is there a way to get it back together once you're finished? I'd love to hear your advice as I take my first amateur steps towards book preservation.