twiztor

i was once told that a fantastic way to get to know someone is to ask this question, so i now pose it to you: how would you say you've changed since childhood?

i get the new Nintendo Force issues when they are released every other month or so. Otherwise, all my gaming news comes from the web.

i was introduced to SmashTV thru the NES, where it would regularly be one of the games i would rent (it and Contra were the two most popular, followed by Little Nemo in Slumberland). i knew it had been an arcade before that, but have never seen a cabinet for it. this story is awesome, and i had never heard it before. thanks for sharing.

there's a locally owned video game store here where i live that sells opened ones for >$10, so hopefully there's one around where you live that does the same. can't wait for Cloud from FFVII myself. wish there was a released date, but everything i've come across just says "2016". i'm thinking late june or july.

congrats Areala!

i wrote to Capcom way back in the day with suggestions for future Mega Man games. obviously, i was like 6 and my ideas were terrible, but somewhere i've still got a form letter from them thanking me for my ideas but they legally couldn't use any user-submitted ideas. came with a cool flyer for whatever the next MM game was (4 or 5 maybe?) that is also lost in my closet.

stop tempting me to buy/read this book with a review like "it's terrible and gets worse and worse" because i now feel i need to experience it firsthand. luckily, i've got 3-4 books i already bought that i'll probably never get around to reading, so i can safely forget about this one.

i'm not really sure how to answer this question (you know what? i'm starting to feel like this is a habit and that i tend to get off on my own tangent. i'm oddly OK with this.) i don't read many "books" or "novels" or what have you. instead, i'm just going to tell you all ("y'all" if i was a bit more cowboy) what i have enjoyed and what i haven't: -as a youngster, my favorite books were "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli and "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen. i haven't revisited either in YEARS AND YEARS. -in high school, i was challenged to read "Tarzan of the Apes" (the first Tarzan novel) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. i thoroughly enjoyed it, and it thusly made me hate the Disney animated film and any later incarnations of said character. -like i said, i don't read many novels. an exception i made was "Dracula" by Bram Stoker (shout out to kitsunebi!) i knew nothing of this book going in, and was surprised by the fact that it was written diary-style. it actually provided a new experience for me, and i REALLY enjoyed it. there were some parts that i was bored during, and would put off reading because i wasn't interested, but there were plenty more parts that i couldn't but the book down and HAD to see what was going to happen. Highly recommended. -i started reading a comprehensive anthology of all of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. honestly, i'm only a handful of stories in (and we're talking well over a year, real-time), but they've all been quite enjoyable. i believe the collection i have is put into chronological written order, although i'm not 100% sure on that. i'd also suggest reading these, especially if detective work is your thing, although you honestly won't be able to decypher the clues given as that's not really the point. A fun read nonetheless. -my wife is a HUGE Harry Potter fan. i've never read any of the books, nor seen any of the movies. She regularly recommends them, but i'm holding strong against them. Not because i think they won't be good, but mainly to annoy her. It's totally working. mainly i'm a big comic book fan. i did a full read-through of Batman (from 1939-2011) a couple years ago and just began a 'full' X-Men run (1966-2001). i'm currently outlining a post about comics, due on Free Comic Book Day (first Saturday of May). stay tuned.

in general, i'd be happy with the one i got. if there were extenuating circumstances, my viewpoint would change. in your example, i would prefer to have the Sonic cover, since he's known for being a video game character. if i had a subscription and had received the Bugs cover, i'd be ok with it, but likely would pick up the Sonic cover if i could find it for cheap. if a mag shipped covering one of my favorite games, but i got an alternate cover with something i cared less about, i would absolutely seek out the other version. if it was a version with 4 covers of the same game, but with different scenes (i'm thinking the Nintendo Power that featured Star Wars: Episode I on the cover) then i'd just stick with what i got, since none of them are really that important anyway.

sorry, Invisi-Boy, our own Areala is already hitched! but i give you bonus points for mentioning the girls' locker room, as that is always my first thought when this question is brought up. it always gets trumped later on, but it will 100% of the time, spring to mind.

Freakazoid! an after-school cartoon that aired alongside Animaniacs and Pinky & the Brain. zany stuff.

thanks again Mike. first i ordered some MUSCLE Men off eBay thanks to this thread (at least, i think it was you that posted it) and now i finally got a Mr. Big candy bar. i convinced my Canadian friend to pick one up and mail it to me. It took some pleading (and maybe even a little begging!), but he finally said he would. this was months ago. to be honest, i had forgotten about it, but lo and behold i get a package from him in the mail today. it contains a fantastic (and huge!) candy bar, straight from our friends to the north. gotta say, this was pretty damn good. i wouldn't say it's the greatest candy bar ever (Shout out to Mr. Goodbar!) but it was quite tasty.

man, at this rate i'd be happy if my superpower would be that i could remember things. i'm just talking about remembering things like a regular person. my memory is complete shit. i will regularly know that i've read a story/watched a movie/gone to a certain place, but i have no recollections about what the details are. but for the sake of this thread, i'm going with a super photographic memory. no details can escape my mind!

that is quite an accomplishment in Mario64. collecting all 100 coins can be a real chore in some of those levels. and that fucking penguin slide. i don't know how i beat that in 1996, but i sure can't in 2016.

Atari2600: i inherited this from my mom and it came with a pretty good collection of games (40ish i think?) River Raid has always been my favorite. Actually, the first game i picked up myself to add to the collection was Dig Dug, so in a weird way it might win. the earliest memory i have of the NES is Legend of Zelda and also SMB2. now, obviously we had the first one, as it came with the set that we owned, but i remember playing 2 first. damn faulty memory. SNES: i never owned a Super Nintendo as a kid. never had the money. funnily enough, a couple of my cousins had one, so i picked up Zelda: Link to the Past. so it was my first SNES game, despite not owning the system itself for another 12 or so years. when i did finally buy a system, by first pick up was Super Mario World. GameBoy: i don't remember how a got a gameboy, or from whom, but i only had a single game for the longest time. WWF King of the Ring. not even that great of a game, but i played the shit out of it. N64: Super Mario 64. bought on launch day. i couldn't actually open the system until christmas, tho, and by that time my mom surprised me with MK Trilogy, so i guess it's a tie. GameCube: Luigi's Mansion. bought on day one. i wasn't really in love with any of the launch titles and figured this would hold me over the month or so until Smash Bros. came out. it didn't. NHL Hitz 2002 became the first game that mattered. Wii: i bought a Wii the first day that a black console was released in America. if you remember, it launched in only white for the first year or two. [edit: i just looked it up. it was 3 1/2 years later] by then, i had quite a few choice games available. i believe i bought 3 that day: New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart, and Wii Play (is that the one that came with a controller?) Wii-U: Super Mario 3D World. i knew i'd buy this system eventually, but i figured that i could hold out until the new Legend of Zelda came out. Glad i didn't, since it's 3 years later and still no Zelda game. Mario 3d World convinced me that i needed to own this. right now! X-Box 360: UFC Undisputed 3. i don't think i've mentioned it here, but i'm a HUGE fan of the UFC. a friend picked up this game, and i was at his place playing it so much, i finally broke down and bought a used XBOX360 and this game and sunk countless hours into it. i sold it off a year or more ago, but sometimes i wish i could still play this game.... 3ds: Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds. i bought the system specifically to play that game. the system still doesn't get much use, but it's not like i'm gonna get rid of it or anything. past that, i couldn't tell you. i've owned a PS2 for years but can't remember what my "must own game" was that made me buy it. ditto for Genesis. probably Sonic 1 tho.

i am floored that someone is arguing that the Phantom Menace was not only the best of the prequel films, but actually GOOD. i can't wrap my head around it. i found the prequels overall to be decent, or good enough, and think they generally get an unfair rap. that being said, TPM was freaking terrible and i see very little redeemable about it. Obi-Wan was pretty good, Qui-Gon was serviceable, and the final lightsaber battle was great. the kid that played Anakin was pure shit, Jar Jar obviously was garbage, and the pod race (what most people point to as being the highlight) was ten times longer than it needed to be. back to the topic at hand, in an armageddon scenario, i forsee some worldwide electromagnetic pulse. it renders every electrical device completely worthless. and i don't mean for an hour, or a day, or a month. i mean practically forever. let's say that the aftereffects wear off in 100 years. nothing that uses electricity is usable, anything that uses batteries is highly disrupted and also dead after a day. we may as well be cavemen. i don't think most people can function without a smart phone these days. Hell, most of my friends can't read a map or follow directions. my sister-in-law (she's like 22) doesn't understand phone books. no microwaves, no vehicles, no iPads. this leads to one of three things happening. 1: everybody just loses their goddamn minds and murders each other whilst looting and robbing all of these worthless items. 2: the world finds a way to cope and adapt. this probably leads to the all-too-popular steampunk idea becoming a reality. 3: (my personal favorite) it is like the middle ages again. torches, traveling by horseback, and suits of armor and swords. now, i'd probably be fucking in this situation because i've never ridden a horse or had a swordfight, but man, it would be awesome.

interesting read, even if i skimmed thru most of it. i've never heard of "Poison", being familiar with Final Fight thru the SNES (and later, GBA) versions. didn't know there were censorship issues at hand. i do have to debate the line "Poison quickly shot to popularity and is arguably one of the most well-known fighting game characters in history" as i find that to be completely untrue. 'arguably' or not, there's no way that a character who didn't actually become playable until 2012, and only in two games (one of which is in an update pack, not part of the roster-at-large) could even be considered in the running. no offense to her or anything, and if the article states that she's a trailblazer i'll certainly concede that, but that one quote is factually inaccurate.

i own it, and have played it before, but never in depth. it is for sure on my list to attempt to conquer this year tho.

finally finished up Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3ds. 9 hours, 13 minutes of playtime, spread out over about 6 weeks. When i bought this game, my buddy told me that he called it "Hand Crampicus" because of the awkward way you have to hold the 3ds to play. He was 100% correct. I wasn't able to play more than one "chapter" at a time, and thus it would usually sit for a few days to a week between levels. There are a total of 25 chapters. the gameplay was pretty neat, as there are two different control schemes, and you use both in each level. Pretty novel, and rather fun too. The game itself was quite easy. there's a sliding difficulty scale that you can set each time you start a level. i played at 3.5 ("advanced" or something) and didn't have much trouble. what i DIDN'T like was that if/when you died in a level, the difficulty automatically got easier and you started practically at the point you perished. i felt it cheapened the challenge too much. on the other hand, the only thing the difficulty does is make the enemies take more hits and you take less before death. One thing that really stood out is the fact that the main character, Pit, is CONSTANTLY talking to whatever various gods are involved. like, non-stop. every single level, every waking moment. just jabbering on and on and on. it leaves the game very little time to "breathe" because there's a constant assault on your senses. on a scale of 10, i'd probably give it a 5 1/2. nothing worth going out of your way to play, but a fun use of time.

you know what? in 1999, Nintendo made Super Smash Bros. for the n64. i would say that they got it right. but man, other that that? there's not much that Nintendo did at all that year.

i'm really sorry that i can't add more to this topic, but i've worked almost exclusively retail until recently. that being said, the "creepiest" job i ever did for money (cue the porn music with that quote) was to help set up a stage and some stuff for the county fair one summer night. i was working thru a temp agency and this was literally the first job they offered me. i was quite afraid that i might run into a bunch of carnies or something (or worse, become one!) but most of the people there were just normal folks. i'm a bit saddened that this isn't a better story.

so, someone spoil it for me: is 1999 the year that Nintendo gets it right?

Mr. T is a guy i grew up looking up to (probably for all the wrong reasons, since i watched the A-Team religiously) but as i grow older i absolutely respect the attitude and ideology he presents. he was almost in my list of three, but *just* missed tbe cut

pizza. getting back on topic, i've got a variety of answers, depending on the occasion. i'll list them in order of preference, with the first one being the person i'd most like to meet. if i could sit down and have a meal with one person, it would be Stan Lee. he had such a creative mind in the '60s and single-handedly* changed the comic book forevermore. if i could go to one performer's concert (thus excluding festival shows), it would be Jimi Hendrix. his music is so powerful, and i'm sad that he died over a decade before i was born. if i could go out to the bars for a beer with one person, it would be Jack Burton. from 'Big Trouble in Little China'. Hijinks would ensue. i know he's a fictional character, but too bad i'm picking him anyway. *not really single-handedly. Lots of credit also goes to the artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and many others.

off the top of my head: Atari 2600 IntelliVision NES SNES Virtual Boy N64 GameCube Wii Wii-U Game Boy (+ Color) (+Advance) 3ds (never the original ds, oddly enough) Sega Genesis (+32x) (+CD) Sega Game Gear Sega Dreamcast Sony Playstation PS2 PS3 PSP Microsoft X-Box X-Box 360 TurboGrafx-16 Neo Geo (not sure which version, a friend owns one) Vectrex the Nintendo family of systems will always be my favorites.