Desbreko

[color=#4B0082]I haven't gotten it to work that way but I guess I'll give it another try. Though even if I could do it every time like that it would still be impractical at the start of matches since there's no way my opponent would let me do three taunts in a row without interruption. I'd have to wait until they were recovering from far off the edge or after getting a KO. I really need to be able to do it with only one taunt animation for it to be completely practical.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]So I've been trying to master Samus's taunt transformation, for changing into ZS Samus mid-match. It's freaking retarded, to the point where I actually gave myself a blister while practicing. I'm pretty sure the Dojo lies when it simply says to quickly input up-down-up taunts. Never have I gotten it to work with only that. I think it requires no less than seven inputs, alternating between up and down with no other input breaking the sequence, in about half the time of an up-taunt's animation. (I've never gotten it to happen towards the end of the animation.) You also don't have to start with an up-taunt since I've gotten it to happen during a down-taunt's animation. The best method I've found so far is to hold my left thumb on the center on the GCN controller's control cross while lightly gripping the left handle with the other fingers to keep my thumb in place. Then using my right hand on the right handle to waggle the controller back and forth really fast so my left thumb moves over the up and down directions. If I get the positioning and direction of the waggling just right I can usually transform within one or two taunts but it's still far from reliable right now. If I can get this down I think it'll help a lot in situations where I pick Samus, start the match, and see my opponent has picked a really fast character that Samus has trouble fighting.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]New character rankings for me. [b]1st tier:[/b] Marth [b]2nd tier:[/b] Samus/ZS Samus, Link, Ike, Pikachu [b]3rd tier:[/b] Mario, Zelda, Snake, Kirby [b]4th tier:[/b] Ganondorf I've dropped a few characters, at least for now, and have been focusing most of my attention on Marth and Samus. On Marth I'm very close to being back up to my previous skill level in Melee, I just need to get better with grabs again. And even if she's not as good in Brawl anymore, I really love playing on Samus so I've been looking for ways to work around her weaknesses. Pikachu is not quite as good as I thought. He's hard to deal with because his electric attacks are fast, have pretty high priority, and can be hard to shield but that's about his only trick. I've been trying to come up with new combos and leading attacks but not much seems to be working. If you can avoid his forward-air and down-smash Pikachu stops being so great. I fell in love with Snake as soon as I learned how to mortar slide. And with more practice he'll easily climb into my second tier. He's very hard to learn but he's incredibly good once you do. Ganondorf remains fun to play even if he kind of sucks. I still love punishing predictable behavior with him. :catgirl: I want to come back to Lucario some time because I've seen some really good players use him and I have a hard time fighting him myself. His range is deceptively long. By the way, Treble, it's starting to get a little eerie how often we keep getting into Ike vs Sonic matches. I think we've had that match up more times than any other.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]That sounds like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust-A-Move][u]Bust-a-Move[/u][/url].[/color]

[center][img]http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/1735/zeldasecretqd1.png[/img][/center]

[color=#4B0082]I was homeschooled so I didn't have to deal with anything like that. I spent my days playing videos games, reading, and hanging out with a few also-homeschooled friends who were also-not idiots. It was blissfully free of drama and some of the funnest days of my childhood. Feel free to be jealous.[/color]

[quote name='Dagger']The second one's from [b]Shugo Chara[/b]. I'm surprised we haven't seen more out-of-context Shugo Chara, actually... or maybe it's because everything you could twist around from that show is already pretty twisty [i]in[/i] context. :animeswea ~Dagger~[/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]Yeah, the thing is, most of it doesn't have to be taken out of context. Half the time I'm just waiting for someone else to post in here so I can share my latest shots, though. :catgirl: I think it's time for a big batch with some backlogged shots. [center][b]Lucky Star [img]http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/4897/luckystarlittlegirlszr3.jpg[/img] Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei [img]http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/2871/zetsubousensei2007chartpx1.jpg[/img] Shugo Chara! [img]http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6476/shugocharaadulthoodbr1.jpg[/img] The Tower of Druaga [img]http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4344/druagahipmovementcd8.jpg[/img] Maria-sama ga Miteru [img]http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7034/marimiteuniformsfy8.jpg[/img][/b][/center][/color]

[quote name='The13thMan']I've got ssbb for a little while, anybody want to play?[/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]Sure, I'll register you the next time I play. My FC is in the Arcade Online thread. By the way, peoples, if your PC is near your Wii I recommend signing on to AIM while you play SSBB. Otherwise others have no way of contacting you to say, "Hey, join the match I have set up!" (Which is complete fail on Nintendo's part, but that's another issue.) There've been a few times that I've seen people online in SSBB but since they were playing With Anyone and they weren't on AIM I couldn't let them know I was also online. Myself, whenever I'm playing SSBB and available to play online I'll be on AIM with an away message saying to IM me if you'd like to play.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I've been splitting my time between SSB Brawl and Guitar Hero II lately. For Brawl I've been playing online against Treble. (What's with all these people being on my friends list but no one else ever being online, by the way? I have, like, eighteen registered friends.) It's been really fun and we've had some awesome 1v1 matches. We both hate fighting each other's main characters though; his Kirby always floating away after every hit pisses me off and my Marth's counters piss him off. :catgirl: I started learning to play as Snake tonight. He's really hard to use?he's not intuitive [i]at all[/i]?but I saw him totally kicking *** in some videos on YouTube and decided I wanted a piece of that action. It's so awesome to use all his explosives to corner your opponent and then blow them away. In Guitar Hero II I play the songs that I enjoy on hard and have stopped caring about moving up to expert difficulty. I just don't play often enough to get good on expert. But at least I've five-starred most of the main tracks on hard.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I'm pretty sure there were indeed hacks to do this on older versions of vB. (It might've been 3.5, I can't remember.) After we upgraded from 3.0 I remember going and looking for it and being disappointed that I couldn't find it for 3.6. I checked again when this thread was posted and still nothing. Maybe there'll be one for 3.7.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]No, it isn't. I haven't been able to find a hack for vB 3.6 to do this, either. It's been a long requested feature.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I eat it every now and then, more as a quick snack than an actual meal. Just one of those packets isn't very filling, after all. There've been periods where I've eaten more of it and others where I've gone months without eating any, so it varies. I prefer the Maruchan brand chicken flavor, though the beef is pretty good too. (Top Ramen's noodles are kinda bleh and the flavoring seems the same.) I also boil the noodles and then drain the water completely, like Aceburner does, but in my case I put the flavor packet in at the same time as the noodles to let them simmer in it. I like it a lot better that way but I have to be careful not to use too much water or else the flavor gets too diluted?this is especially tricky when cooking two packets at once.[/color]

[quote name='Allamorph'][FONT=Arial]I [I]did[/I] initially start posting in Tahoma, but I switched to Arial really quick because [FONT=Tahoma]Tahoma is just fat.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]Same thing with Verdana.[/FONT][/FONT][/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]Your mom is fat! :o I joined when I was 13 and I'm now 20 so you can imagine how different my oldest posts are compared to now. Though there was a sharp improvement a month or so after I joined, coinciding with the deletion of the Padded Room Party?its removal may have actually been one of the best moderation decisions ever made on this site. It made me decide to stop being lazy, type correctly, and start contributing worthwhile posts. It was actually a sort of, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," sort of thing. I was originally annoyed that the mods deleted the PRP but then I ended up becoming one a few months later.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I think the earliest you can find Beach Plugs and learn Big Guard is on the beaches near Costa Del Sol. Which, funnily enough, is earlier than you can get Time or Barrier materia to cast the spells separately. By the way, you can also steal Adaman Bangles from the Adamantaimai turtles which, if I remember correctly, are decent pieces of armor at that point in the game.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I got the logs, thanks. :) Wasn't tehsillycircus2006 a different chat, though? The original tehsillycircus took place in January 2004.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Final Fantasy III is good if you like classic FF?meaning there's more of an emphasis on dungeon crawling than storyline. They barely changed anything in regards to the battle system and character/monster stats so it's really true to the original. I haven't actually bought much on the DS lately either; FFIII and then Zelda: Phantom Hourglass are my two latest games. I'm a bit apprehensive about recommending Phantom Hourglass. It's okay but overall a very simplified game compared to other Zeldas and it also has a couple other annoying flaws. Though it does use the DS's features in some pretty cool ways. It feels like they were trying to please both the legions of casual DS players and the long time fans of the series and it didn't quite work on the latter end.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I had another reply all written up when I remembered that this is an FFVII thread. I guess we should probably try to stay a little more on topic. :animeswea To come back to something about my first post comparing FFIV and FFVII that I think I was a little unclear about, when I said I found FFIV's characters more interesting than FFVII's I meant it in the context of the battle system. I already explained why a couple posts ago so I won't go back over that. FFVII's characters are obviously better developed in personality than FFIV's, though, so I'll agree with you there Sandy.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The job system can work really well. I loved it in Tactics Advance, though I never did play very much of the first Tactics and I still need to finish FFIII on the DS some time. But I've heard that in the original versions of FFIII and FFV you only end up using two jobs (one fighter type and one magic user, I forget their names) late in the game because they're just blatantly better than the rest. So even the job system has to be balanced correctly or things get stale. And it sounds like someone needs to watch my [url=http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E3C54EAFFAEBA7FA][u]FFIV Advance boss videos[/u][/url]. :p Here's Zeromus beaten on active ATB at the fastest speed with my party's levels ranging from 55 to 58. I never leveled up at all during the game.[/color] [center][youtube=Final Fantasy IV Advance - Zeromus]GiNOiB7eHoE[/youtube][/center]

[color=#4B0082]I didn't follow any of the hype, other than the bits about it being streamed online legally, so I can't really say if the series lives up to it. But you're right, I've barely seen anyone talking about it lately. Druaga's fantasy/adventure/comedy mix makes it similar to Slayers but it's not exactly the same—Slayers is heavier on the comedy, not counting Druaga ep1. A better comparison might be the Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia OAVs. (They were also based on games, as I'm sure most people know.) But I'd recommend Druaga to people who liked any of those three.[/color]

[quote name='DeathKnight'][color=crimson]Careful guys. If he's played Torment he can argue you out of existence.[/color][/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]I actually have too, though not a lot. My brother owns it.[/color] [quote name='Sandy']Now, the gameplay... I understand that some people are bothered by the possibilities of the customization, or by the fact that there's a best combination of materia with which you can beat whatever you encounter (then again, what game [I]doesn't[/I] have something like that?). But I prefer this choice to the restriction of the playable characters into certain jobs. Honestly, the gameplay of FF VI was as simple as it could get: Cecil always attacks, Rosa casts Curaja, Kain jumps, Rydia casts Bahamut and Edge throws shurikens. No Limit Breaks, no variation, no support skills. Where's the superiority in that, I ask? (They added a lot of that stuff to the DS-version, though.)[/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]The thing is, there's customization with materia but every character is otherwise the same. You can build a character who's a good fighter, a powerful user of both black and white magic, [i]and[/i] a summoner, no matter who you choose. (This wouldn't be so bad if speccing heavily into one area at least lowered their abilities in others enough to matter.) The only real differences come in limit breaks, which make up a tiny fraction of their actions. The result is that it actually promotes less variety than a class-based system and every character ends up being the same in battle. It doesn't matter when you get hit, anyone can heal next. It doesn't matter if an enemy is only weak against magic, everyone can use it. There's no reason for the back row to even exist, other than to make long range characters even more overpowered. Because of all this, very little of the game requires any planning, strategy, or MP conservation. There's a reason you only get three characters in your party in FFVII and it's because everyone can do everything all at once. If they had given you four they might as well put in an, "I win," button to automatically kill every enemy in any fight instantly. In FFIV every character has one thing they do well but you get five of them in the party that you have to manage. You get once chance to heal per round, one chance to cast black magic or summon, and then some smaller variations among your physical attackers. But even those smaller variations are important; putting Cecil's cover, Kain's jump, and Edge's ninjitsu to good use makes a world of difference. (And no, contrary to popular belief, it is [i]not[/i] always best to have Kain jump every round, especially not in random battles. One simple reason is that if Kain is in the air when the battle ends, you've wasted a turn and probably gotten hit once more than necessary.) This requires you to actually think about what you're doing because every character can't just destroy random baddies with physical attacks while using three large MP pools to power out cure spells, then summon and magic their way to victory against bosses. FFIV also likes to throw in bosses built to destroy people who always use the standard actions that you mentioned. Asura, for example, requires you to cast Reflect on her and then be very careful with your physical attacks because she counter-attacks after every single one. In that fight it's more important for Rosa to maintain Blink on people than it is for her to heal. Or Dark Bahamut, who casts Reflect on himself and then counters with Mega Flare whenever you hit him with a summon.[/color]

[quote name='Matt']I think that is inaccurate. RPG stands for [B]R[/B]ole [B]P[/B]laying [B]G[/B]ame. The Final Fantasy series has the last acronym correct, but I have to ask, where is the Role Playing in Final Fantasy? You are very strictly told what to do in terms of character development and narrative choices. You are not playing a role - you are not an actor. You are more like a puppet. Thus, FF is not a RPG, just because it does not follow the definitions of 2/3 of the genre. We really need to differentiate games like FF from RPGs - Linear Narratives are accurate, but they feel too robotic. Moving on, no, FF7 was not an introduction to RPGs. It was an introduction to a 'somewhat' interactive story telling format. I could give you a list of true RPGs - RPGs that have you deciding on a role, characterizing your character as you see fit, exploring a massive world. These games fit the description. Oh, and all of them have better developed characters, much more intriguing worlds, and more intricate plots than FF7 can even dream of. :)[/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]Simply controlling a character's actions in a video game is, by definition, role playing since you are playing the role of that character. Video game RPGs are more restrictive than table top RPGs due to the fact that they're computer programs and thus things like dialogue and the plot cannot be made up on the fly but they're still a form of role playing. Really, that applies to almost every video game where you assume control of a character or group of characters. It's just that the use of simulated dice rolls to determine the outcomes of actions, similar to most table top RPG rule sets, is used as another qualifier to separate RPGs from the other video game genres. But, back to Final Fantasy in particular: I've long since given up playing the games for their story or characters. Most of them are just not that great and I'd rather go read a book if I want a deep or interesting story. I play games for the gameplay so the main thing I look at in RPGs is the battle system. FFVII's battle system is pretty shallow. For one, freaking everyone is both a good fighter and a good magic user (well, besides Aeris, but she's a moot point anyway). I used completely different characters the second time I played the game (or at least as much as I was allowed) and I could not tell any difference other than the attack animations. You can go through the whole game and never have to pay any attention to your characters' stats other than HP and MP. The penalties for loading up a character with materia are not nearly harsh enough, which lets you breeze through the entire game if you're at all smart with your materia setups. As long as you put put a Restore/All combo on all three characters you're practically invincible for most of the game because, no matter when you get hit, you can always immediately heal with your next action and continue healing with every action after that until you're back in shape. And then if you should happen to learn the enemy skill Big Guard you can just forget about ever dying again because you'll have a spell that casts Haste, Barrier, and MBarrier on the entire party for a stupidly low MP cost. Sure, you can go wild and twink out your materia setups to achieve insanely powerful combos. I did plenty of that. But there's hardly any point. Restore/All + Big Guard + physical attacks will get you through 90% of the game.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]FFVII was one of the major titles responsible for popularizing RPGs in the US. For a lot of people who started playing video games during the N64/PS1 generation, and even some who started earlier such as myself, it was their first RPG. So I think a lot of people look back on it nolstalgically and don't quite compare it objectively with other games. Personally, even though FFVII was my first RPG, I find FFIV's battle system to be far superior and its characters much more interesting than FFVII's. (Not to mention Chrono Trigger and other games outside the FF series.) I still like FFVII well enough but I also have a hard time seeing why so many people think it's the best game ever.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The rumor about FFVII being remade on the PS3 has been around for years but there's never been any real evidence to support it. It spawned from a tech demo that Square Enix showed off at E3 that showed the opening scene of FFVII in near-Advent Children quality, which was supposedly able to be rendered in real time on the PS3.[/color] [center][youtube=Final Fantasy VII PS3 Tech Demo]OnLsYJfkhNc[/youtube][/center]

[color=#4B0082]They could've left it in and just called it a rice ball, like every other anime translation I've seen, though.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Yeah, I just figured the style of the opening was a reference to the anime being based on the game, like 8bit said. There's been nothing in the actual show (that I've noticed at least) that's pointed to it being the "real world." Coopa in a sailor uniform is cute though. :catgirl:[/color]