Semjaza

The previews kind of give the impression that this movie is gonna be straight out action, and dragons are going to be killing things left and right. To me it seemed kinda like an average war hero movie with dragons stuck in instead of a human badguy. I liked the movie, and a lot of it was actually really well done. Quite a few times I thought it was dragging though...a lot of the character development was just plain boring.

Seen (what I own has a star next to it, with the format): 3x3 Eyes: Perfect Collection *DVD Robotech: Macross Saga *DVD (Complete set) Macross II *VHS Macross Plus *VHS Tenchi Universe *VHS (Complete set) Tenchi in Tokyo Tecnhi Muyo! Tenchi the Movie *VHS Tenchi the Movie 2 *DVD Tenchi the Movie 3 *DVD Lily C.A.T. *VHS Golgo 13 *VHS Plastic Little *VHS Project A-ko *VHS Project A-ko VS Wicked City Vampire Princess Miyu Vampire Hunter D *VHS Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust *DVD Appleseed *VHS New Dominion Tank Police *V-CD Devil Hunter Yohko *VHS Riding Bean *VHS Genesis Suvivor Gaiarth *VHS (Volume 1) Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) *VHS Ninja Scroll *DVD Ghost in the Shell *VHS Metropolis *DVD Akira (Original Dub) *VHS Akira (Hardcase Special Edition) *DVD Boogiepop Phantom *DVD (Complete Set) Serial Experiments: Lain *DVD (Complete Set) Roujin Z *DVD Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland *DVD Blood *DVD Jin-Roh *DVD Nadia *DVD (First 3 volumes) Yu-Yu Hakasho *DVD (First 2 DVDs) Ranma 1/2 *DVD (First season , & a few Random Rhapsodies) Persona Black Magic M-66 Speed Racer Astro Boy Golden Boy * Book of the Necronomicon 9 O'Clock Woman Crying Freeman Junk Boy Hellboy Outlaw Star DB DBZ DBGT Sailor Moon and all it's versions Read: Akira * Battle Angel Alita * (First few) Ogre Slayer * Appleseed * (Own all 4, plus data book) Ghost in the Shell * Lone Wolf and Cub * Ranma 1/2 * (A few issues) Chicago Utena EDIT: I TOTALLY forgot Magic Users Club *DVD And Macross the Movie *DVD (I got this from Hong Kong, definately worth it :)).

It's strange that it doesn't bother to mention how long any of these people played, or which age groups were most affected. Those would be the other two imporatant points I'd think... This is part of an experiment though. They probably had people playing one game for 6 hours straight to see what it did. I doubt it would affect any average gamer. And who's to say this isn't a temporary thing as it is? I still think videogames are what helped me read and write so well, so there are still good points to them :).

It depends on the game. Samus is blonde in Super Metroid. The same with Metriod Fusion. You see this at the end if you do well in SM, and also when you die in both games. Samus probably only has brown hair in Metroid do to color limitations. Each sprite on the NES is only allowed so many colors, which must also fit into how many the NES can show at once. I swear in my copy of Metroid she has green hair...but I haven't played it in like 5 years :D.

Personally, I couldn't stand Goldeneye. Something about Pierce Brosnan just isn't right to me. I will probably see Die Another Day once it hits DVD. I saw the preview at the theater and it looked pretty good... although I found the opening with the frozen gun corny compared to past opening credit scenes in the Bond films.

A totally different developer is working on the upcoming DBZ games than worked on the past ones. I'd assume it would be a different one from the new GBA games as well, as generally teams are split over handhelds and consoles... That and the GBA adventure game is pretty crappy. The quality of the nextgen DBZ games is up in the air though. Robotech is being pulled off well (after tons of horrible Macross games, a few good ones), which I didn't expect. So now that DBZ is going to another team anything is possible.

Speaking of new games... has anyone tried out this Pokemon Mini stuff? I remember hearing about it at last year's ECTS, and apparently it's out in the US. They have it on a back rack at my Toys R Us by the GC games. It's kinda like a larger Pickachu Mini, except it uses cartridges to play new games. The only one I remember offhand was Pokemon Pinball. Has anyone tried this thing?

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust isn't available subbed. The original acting for the anime is English, and it was shown that way in Japan as well. No one can dub lip movements that well :). It was animated with English in mind. I guess translators think they can do a better job with the script? Obviously, they can't...but who knows the real reasons. There are times when subs are a little too literal, but they still get the point across better than most dubbing.

True, but this isn't exactly the same as enrolling into the school :). And yeah, people from Digipen did go on to NST... I think to other teams involved with EA too, as well as other places.

I don't think much of anyone thinks Keanu is a good actor lol. Somehow he just got lucky, and a lot of people recognize him... so he sticks around. I don't know how anyone would ever cast him as some super hacker like in the Matrix. I see him and all I think of is Bill and Ted. I can't help it. It almost seems as if he is that idiotic in real life. I wonder how he got so far, and Alex Winter didn't

I've been watching anime since I was 8 (I'm 19 now), so I know all about the whole subbing vs. dubbing debate. I don't really watch DBZ... But isn't it rather obvious why a name like Mr. Satan would be changed? People over here like to complain about [i]everything[/i]. There is always going to be some group that is annoyed. Knowing people today, I'm sure a bunch of childrens and religious groups would go nuts about DBZ promoting "satanism" because of that name. Regardless if it had anything to do with the show or not. This is just how people are. The job of these companies that translates is also to localize unfortunately. They have to worry about being PC and not upsetting some group. There are many problems and risks if the show isn't. I do think the whole rice ball thing is idiotic, and most other changes are annoying. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was annoyed that Arisu's name was changed to Alice in the English dub of Lain. You just have to remember that most of these things aren't exactly up to whoever is translating. It just follows how society wants things as a whole. Although, most name changes make little sense. If I'm bothering to buy an Anime DVD, why would I want the details changed? I watch dubs when I just don't feel like reading. That's generally it. I do feel that the Japanese acting is better. However, in Japan people make a career out of anime voice acting. They also use a lot of professional movie actors as well. That rarely happens here. I don't know much Japanese, so for all I know what I consider excellent might be really crappy acting to Japanese people :).

SMS was just shown at the World Hobby Fair in Japan, and was the most popular game there. People waited in line up to 75 minutes just to play the game, which had a 5 minute time limit. From IGN: [img]http://cubemedia.ign.com/cube/image/glj02_07_15_mario2_small.jpg/[/img] Here is a scan of the disc: [img]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/smsdisc.jpg[/img] Here are some ad scans too: [url]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/ms1.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/ms2.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/ms3.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/ms4.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.ria.net/~binary/images/ms/ms5.jpg[/url] And a few more commercials. These are 4 more 30 second ads, excluding the one I posted before. [url]http://www.nettendo.com/com/sms30_01.mpg[/url] [url]http://www.nettendo.com/com/sms30_02.mpg[/url] [url]http://www.nettendo.com/com/sms30_03.mpg[/url] [url]http://www.nettendo.com/com/sms30_04.mpg[/url] For those who are interested in importing... all the dialog is spoken in English, while the text is all in Japanese (other than some menu icons). From what I hear the voice acting is excellent, and the entire opening uses a lot of voice. I'm not sure how much voice the rest of the game uses though, other than Mario's yells and shouts (like in SM64). They used Charles Martinet for Mario's voice again though, and I think Leslie Swan is Peach again as well. The best thing I have heard so far is that the stages in this game are several times bigger than the ones in SM64 :).

Revenge of Shinobi was on Sega CD. For some reason I always thought it was made by Vik Tokai though. Saturn got a game called Shinobi Legions, but I'm not sure if it has to do with Sega's Shinobi or not. Pretty much every system back in the day got a version of Shinobi (even Turbo Grafx 16 and Commodore 64), the worst probably being the NES port. The new GBA game looks great though, and I'm looking forward to the PS2 game.

Hmm... I live in Chicago, and most people know the basics of it. But some things people don't know are: We have the world's largest aquarium (Shedd Aquarium), the largest bakery (Nabisco), the world's largest illuminated fountain (Buckingham Fountain), world's largest free zoo (Lincoln Park Zoo), and like 40 other world's largest whatevers. I live here and never even heard of half of them. Hey, I beat Cera's zoo's claim to fame! :devil: The first resident of Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (that's a long name), who was a fur trader who built the first settlement in 1779. I don't think anyone here knows that even, not that it's all that important... Chicago was apparently named in 1833, after an Indian word meaning "strong". Someone told me Chicago meant "stink weed" in some Native American language (I guess there were lots of onions around here then), but seems like they were wrong lol. Chicago also had the first electric iron and cooking range, the first winding watch, the first co-ed public high school and the first cafeteria. Cracker Jacks, Butterfingers (GROSS), Baby Ruths and Scwhinn bikes came from here too. Chicago is home to the first totally fire-proof hotel, the Palmer House Hilton. Don't ask me how they even know that. Hugh Hefner started "Playboy" magazine in 1953 in Chicago. A street over here was recently dedicated to him. People kept ripping down the signs though... I guess some people don't like porn? The term "Jazz" was coined in Chicago in 1914. There are a lot of jazz type clubs around... I hear a lot of people playing it downtown on the corners. This one guy even brings a whole drum kit to State Street. He plays with a few other people on guitars. The world's largest gum manufacturer, William Wrigley, Jr. Company, is in Chicago. It was also the first U.S. manufacturer to give its employees Saturdays and Sundays off of work. The first regulation baseballs and bats used by professional players were manufactured by Chicago entrepreneur (and former pitcher) Albert G. Spalding. The first Ferris Wheel made its debut in Chicago in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition. I think the largest one is here at Navy Pier. I never bothered to go though. Oh, we also have the Taste of Chicago. I guess it's the world's largest food festival or something to that extent. I've been a few times... You have to buy little tickets to get food. It's just overly expensive, and honestly a lot of the food is just weird. It's still the only place I've ever seen a big fat pickle on a stick. Most of the food is pretty good though.

I was going out with my last girlfriend for a total of 7 months... we had been really good friends for nearly two years up to that point. The problem was that I live in Chicago, IL and she lives in Athens, OH. That's about an 8 hour drive (7 if I go 90 most of the way :D). So I know how badly it sucks. I've never really been the type of person to care if I had a girlfriend or not. I'd really rather I didn't have to deal with all that. But if something happens it happens. I was very happy with that girl, and I've still yet to meet anyone that I even thought compared... But the distance just made it too damn hard. Besides, we were only 19... I don't think we should have to deal with something like that in the first place. If it's meant to be, it'd work out.

Pokemon.com has a bunch of news on the GBA Pokemon games. They will be called Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire. They are both going to be released on November 21st in Japan. No news on a US release date, but I would hope it would come here faster than Gold and Silver did. [url]http://www.pokemon.com/news/news1.asp[/url] Nintendo is adding 100 new Pokemon to the 251 from the last games. They revealed a couple more of them at that link, so I think 10 have been shown so far. According to IGNPocket, the battle system has been changed. Instead of bringing around 5 Pokemon, you can only carry 2 at once. But they can both fight at the same time, resulting in a lot of 2 on 2 battles. Pokemon.com also has pics of that.

I was looking around on the Nintendo of Japan site and found these. Apparently, they were shots sent in for some kind of contest. [url]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/index.html[/url] That's the first page, click on Next at the bottom to keep going. They all must have took a lot of planning and good timing. Here are a few of them: [img]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/sinsain/sinsain04_360.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/etc/etc13_360.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/etc/etc16_360.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/etc/etc20_360.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/contest/etc/etc03_360.jpg[/img]

I saw this on Gaming-Age last night. In SSBM you would get an Olimar Trophy if you had a Pikmin save on your card. There are also trophies for Super Mario Sunshine and Metroid Prime. [url]http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/0201/level_s.html[/url] Go there to see them. This is on NCLs site... so they are legit.

I am always surprised how few people know who The Ramones are... I asked my one friend who seems to think he is the authority in punk if he liked the song "The KKK Took My Baby Away" and he said to me, "That MxPx song??" He had almost no idea who they were. Blah.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Silent Warrior [/i] [B] Let down by FF7..horrified by SaGa Frontier?! Are you kidding me?? What planet are you playing from? FF7 is one of the best RPG's in it's time. It brought something new with it to PS. It revelutionized the whole FF saga. As for SaGa Frontier, yes this game could've been better but it was good in my opinion. It was like any other RPG cept it was different in it's ways. [/B][/QUOTE] Well, I understand the whole FF7 debate. I don't feel it revolutionized anything. Sure it looked good, and the FMVs were nice...but really it didn't do anything [i]new[/i] that made me think anything like this. FF6 was already as cinematic as a game could get on SNES, FF7 was just a natural evolution. I don't want to get into all the reasons why I don't think it's the best thing ever. I will say that the main reason I never loved FF7 was because Sony Computer Entertainment America butchered the US translation. There were too many times when the motivations of the characters were unclear. SCEA nearly killed Grandia and Star Ocean: Second Story for me too. Somehow I got past it though. When Square joined with EA they really fixed the US translations though. Xenogears was the start of that, and Chrono Cross was possibly the best translated game I have ever played. As for SaGa Frontier. It looks good. That's it. The game's story is all over the place, and it almost never tells you what you need to do. There are times when you have to fight enemies that are WAY stronger than you, which would be fine... if you were given a chance to level up before them. Most of your time is spent running around aimlessly hoping to find some tiny clue that would let you advance. I did not have any fun with that game at all, and I will say it is one of the worst RPGs I have ever played (the worst being Faria on the NES, although it was more like Zelda). I did like the way the game did leveling up and ability learning... but that was it. SaGa Frontier 2 was WAY better, but still nothing great. I'd much rather play Tactics Ogre, Persona 1 and 2, Suikoden 1 and 2, Thousand Arms and Grandia before SaGa Frontier. There are just so many RPGs that are way better than it. And back to Xenogears :angel: Maybe someone else would like to explain the basic story of this game... but it DOES have a great story. It's something I'd start playing when it gets cold out again though. There are too many other things to do in the summer :).

X8 is simply the result of Yuke's rushing (or being rushed as the case may be) yet another wrestling game. As soon as I saw Yukes was in charge I didn't expect much. I certainly like it more than Raw and Smackdown though. I'm hoping they can turn x9 into a good game, they already have the backbone done from x8... they simply need to tweak and add to it. That and possibly change the whole control setup haha.

I cannot say this for sure... But I've only seen Mario use the nozzle to clean up paint and mud around town (and on enemies). He also used it to fill up some pirhana plants. It's quite possible he still uses jumps to defeat enemies. I mean, there is a picture of Yoshi jumping on one and smashing it flat, so obviously it's still in the game somewhere. And like ElvenFoxKnight said, everyone thinks Mario is responsible for the painting around town. So I'd guess they'd think the imposter was Mario in general. Maybe only you and Mario can see that he is fake? Dunno. Also, that juice and hungry thing was a good idea. I was thinking that maybe you had to fill Yoshi's up with different things (such as food or juice), either to get people to help you or to perform certain moves. I don't quite get why the Yoshi Egg is thinking about pears though (which I'd guess is related to the whole juice thing).

Hmm... MxPx also covered Ah-Ha's "Take On Me", but the Reel Big Fish cover is better than it... I also think it's infinitely better than the original. Reel Big Fish covered Brown Eyed Girl too, which was good. Less Than Jake covered "I Would Walk 500 Miles" by the Proclaimers, "Summer Lovin'" from Grease, and Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It". Nofx covered "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, "Stand by Me" and a few others. My favorite is New Found Glory's cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Goonies R Good Enough". Just because I love that movie :D. There are some tons of tribute CDs punk bands do too... Like Punk Does Metal. I never bothered to check it out though. I find most covers bands do on live bootlegs though, and it seems like that's mostly what is online right now. As for Manson, well... That has been my favorite band most of my life now. It seems more people hate him for his image than the actual music. I ask people why they don't like him and usually I hear that, or someone tells me about some rumor they heard (that of course isn't true). If you don't like the sound, or the religious overtones (which honestly aren't as extreme as most like to think) than that is cool. Everyone has their opinion :). I will say that his cover of "Tainted Love" was excellent though, I prefer it over Soft Cell's original. He also did an awesome Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover of "I Put a Spell On You," which I think is way better than "Sweet Dreams". As for the whole Punk trend thing... It is slowly dying it seems. Every genre of music goes through this. Somehow a band breaks through and everyone and their brother suddenly loves your favorite band's singles (it is ALWAYS the singles, as most of these people seem to have no idea that the bands play anything outside of that). This is fine in some ways, because it gets more people into the band...and a lot will stick around with the band til the end. But most people are just with it for the trend so they can feel cool another couple weeks. Really, most punk still isn't that popular...it's just stuff like Blink 182 (which I personally cannot stand). Pop-punk bands that I think should actually do well seem to go nowhere (like The Ataris, although they are now on a big label... so maybe they will finally make it). Who knows how much longer this will continue though.

If you have a dorm, you'll have to see what they provide. Of course you will get a bed and such... Some will give you a microwave, a phone, a small fridge and will provide you with some sort of computer and internet access. A lot of schools charge extra for you to use these things. The place I went to had a fridge and phone fee. They wouldn't allow microwaves in the rooms though, we had to go down the hall. Of course you need clothes and whatever else, but I'd think that was a nobrainer. Just try to bring a lot of school supplies so you don't have to think of it later. Other than that... basically anything TN said. I'd also grab lots of snacks and stuff, because cafeteria food is 99% CRAP.

You don't need the Linux kit for anything, that is mainly for people interested in game development... like the old Net Yarouze PSX. I've been reading that Sony is thinking about putting some sort of slot on the broadband adapter so that you could use any Hard Drive you wanted with a US/UK PS2. Meaning, you wouldn't need to buy an official PS2 HD set. I'm not exactly sure how that is going to work though.