Semjaza

Well, in response to your complaints... [spoiler]Look at this movie. You have to suspend reality a bit for nearly any of it to make sense. Therefore, the whole buried alive thing, while weird, was not out of the realm of possiblity in the world created for this film. As for the bullets... they were just shotgun shells filled with rock salt, just as he said. It's not enough to kill someone, but it will hurt a lot. Plus salt in open wounds stings, which was also said in the film. It wasn't slang for shotgun blasts or anything. He wasn't trying to kill her at that point. The black and white was apparently done to get around ratings issues... in that big fight scene, anyway. In Japan, for example, that whole scene was supposedly shown in full color. I guess there was just too much blood flying around lol. I've heard the special edition DVDs will have this in full color, but I have no clue how true that is.[/spoiler]

[quote name='Hiei_wife']O really october u say what yr and time[/quote] The thread is from [U][B]2001[/B][/U]. That should answer your question.

[quote name='Senor Ding Dong']I already did that. It's not the disks, it's the system. And i called them, and they told me it would cost 90+ dollars to get it fixed. Besides, it's not under warranty anymore.[/quote] First of all, I never said it was the discs. I sent the system in because it wouldn't read the discs. Same issue as you. Second of all, we weren't under warranty either. I believe I directly said that in my post. As for you calling and them saying that, I don't know what to tell you. Based on my two experiences with this issue they've been willing to fix the lens to read the games for free. Unless you weren't very specific about what the issue was, I'm not sure why they would have told you that. If you want to mess around with the PS2 and get it to read stuff yourself, go to GameFAQs.com and look up a PS2 hardware FAQ. They have a couple about fixing PS2s there and anything anyone could tell you here would be in one of them.

[QUOTE=Senor Ding Dong]It's not playing 5/5 Ps1 games. I got Xenogears today, and i put it in (It's brand new BTW), it doesn't work. None of my other PS1 games do, yet my PS2 games do. I am NOT spending 90+ dollars on repair.[/QUOTE] Hopefully we'll not get into another ridiculous "Do 49 things to your PS2 I heard from a guy who heard it off a web site and hope it works" thread like the last one. However, if you call Sony and tell them that discs are not working they fix it for free. This is part of some settlement over a lawsuit they lost, supposedly. I did this with my brother's PS2, which was far past warranty. I just told him the issue and I answered some basic questions (don't tell them anything more than they ask). He said they'd offer to fix it for free and he told me where to send it to. I spent like $10 on shipping and insurance and got it back within a week. It ran like new and they even replaced a busted part and fixed some other things. That's the route I'd take.

I do not talk about these movies much, but I really enjoyed the first one. I saw Kill Bill 2 with a few people and everyone enjoyed it. While watching it, part of me kind of wished they kept it as one single film. Afterwards, however, I came to the conclusion that it works just as well as two seperate parts... perhaps even more effective in some instances. The first half was really mindless bloodshed with very little character development, while the second half was almost completely opposite in all respects. I also have to hand it to RZA and his influence on this movie's soundtrack. Everything was pulled off perfectly. I've read recent interviews with him where he mentioned he didn't want to "rap up" the film like so many other companies do when they localize foreign martial arts films that are comparable to this movie. He wanted the music to fit and work with the scenes and I think he and everyone else involved really succeeded on that level. Did anyone else notice the Super Mario Land theme near the start of the first volume of Kill Bill? lol [spoiler]I did expect more action in this half that was given... but at the same time, it really fixed any complaints that anyone could have had with the first part; that being the character depth. I enjoyed the dialogue in the first half, but this one really just blew it out of the water. The Superman analogy made by Bill near the end is one of the best going out speeches I've ever heard in my life. It actually made me almost like Superman, which is saying a lot because I LOATHE him. I really loved the scenes with Pai Mei and their throwbacks to Hong Kong cinema. It reminded me of (intentionally at this point) goofy films like Legend, which I believe starred Jet Li. The camera work in that section was wonderful. I think it succeeded on a comical level, but at the same time, I think it was even more interesting for people who have seen the types of films it was mimicing. If anything, I only have two minor gripes with the entire film (both parts)... the first being that Beatrix's daughter seems far too accepting of her mother considering they've never met. At the same time, it seemed as though Bill was very active in showing the child who her mother was and so forth. So I guess I'm more mixed than bothered by that. The second is just that I was disappointed with Bill's death. I suppose, in the scheme of things, the five point exploding heart technique was the best way for Bill to go. Afterall, she loved him (even still, I'd say) and a bloody battle wouldn't have made much sense... But at the same time, I would have absolutely have loved to see her and Bill have a swordfight in the moonlight that he casually refers to in their conversation. What an awesome scene that could have been. There really were no impressive swordfights in the second half, which was somewhat of a letdown for me. I thought it was cool that they managed to work Samuel L. Jackson in though heh.[/spoiler] I don't know what the hell to do about the DVDs for this film though. The head of Miramax has been an absolute dick and has insulted the fanbase of the film in a roundabout way... saying that because it is two parts, they can double-dip the film and release a ton of versions. Vol 1 normal, vol 2 normal, 1 special edition, 2 special edition, box sets... I am really annoyed that I don't know what the really definite version of the film to own will be.

A lot of people make fun of my interest in Prince. I don't think it's simply because of the whole "Artist" debacle as much as it was his image. Trends change, I suppose. The artist thing was actually pretty clever if you know his reasoning for doing it. I don't think that lame Batman song helped either. My favorite song by Prince is still Darling Nikki. A few bands have covered it to varying success, but I don't think anyone has even come close to conveying the amount of sexuality that Prince is able to put into the song. The song is basically the whole reason why Tipper Gore went on a rampage against explicit lyrics and why we have those stickers saying so on CDs now. I plan on getting Musicology. I'm pretty sure we already talked about it.

[quote name='James][color=#707875']Also, coconuts mentioned The Eye. That's one I'm interested in seeing. I think it's a Hong Kong film, isn't it? The site looks pretty interesting and I like the concept. So I'm interested to see how that came out.[/color][/quote] I had wanted to see this for awhile and finally did a few days ago. I found it rather disappointing, especially in comparison to The Ring. There were so many comparisons made between the two when The Eye was first being brought over here, but they really aren't all that similiar. It reminds me more of a lighter Sixth Sense. I think I've talked to you about this movie way in the past... It's not quite as scary as that led me to believe. There were some jump-out sections in the film, but nothing all that disturbing. The movie itself is good. I did enjoy it.

I'm really happy to see Rodney Dangerfield and Steve Martin high on the list. They're probably my two most favorite comedians.

I just found out today that Fox is getting rid of Wonderfalls... a show I considered to be one of their best and certainly the best new show I've seen in the past few years. They put a small push behind it, but once it started airing they pretty much just gave up on it. The only commercials I saw for it after that were on during its own timeslot. This was eerily similiar to what they did with Futurama as well... which was obviously cancelled and suffered a lot due to it being constantly pre-empted by sports games. Fox always moves their shows around after people get used to the time slots too. Everything they've canceled in recent memory has had this happen. Family Guy, Futurama, Titus, etc. Wonderfalls was moved to a new timeslot against CSI (which is like the number one show on TV right now or something) and was cancelled after one episode in the slot. I don't get TV decisions. Especially Fox's. It's as if they have something against TV shows with any shred of intelligence to them. We're stuck with reality shows about dwarfs and people who think marriage is just a game. When they find a trend they stick with it. First all those "World's _____iest ______" shows, now the crap they have now. Broadcast television really is bad now in general. Any show that gets popular is beaten into the ground to the point that it has little reason to exist anymore. Even The Simpsons, which I still love, really doesn't seem like it should be on the air anymore.

If you are interested in classes like Piro said... I recommend some in particular. Publishing is a big one, particularly magazine style publishing. While you obviously use different programs for publishing (such as Quark or InDesign) they will teach you things that elude a lot of web designers out there. This is especially useful in the fact that many designers are trying to get out of the box styles that form most websites. Most sites are created according to some very basic block patterns and that works fine enough, but isn't always the best for something from the design perspective. A class on that is particularly useful in something dynamic like Flash that allows vector work. You'll have a much easier time if you approach Flash designs more like a magazine than a plain old HTML site, I've found. Typography is also a good one. If you can, take this with a rather finicky teacher because you'll get more out of it. This basically just involves lying out type well and most likely creating your own typeface by the end of the class. Absolutely necessary for anyone into graphic design on any level. You cannot understimate the importance of type at all. Color Theory never hurts if you've not taken it. People mix incompatible colors online so often that it's not even funny. I don't think you have this problem, but the class can't hurt. I've thought back to it in many situations. The problem with a lot of web designs is that people approach them from two very seperate angles. First you have the tech guys. They are able to show off coding skills and such, but a lot of their work feels very rigid and usually contains far too much information and nothing to break it up. The other angle is that of the designer... who basically feels that they can get away with anything as long as they think it looks nice. Little consideration is taken for usefulness, usability or the abilities of the audience. Obviously you want to mix these two up, and I feel those classes listed will give you a good background in that... obviously HTML classes help too lol. Of course, I don't know how easily you can take these classes. Some high schools seem to offer courses to this effect now.

I don't think those are better scans... they seem like they were just the originals with a Photoshop blur filter applied to them to remove some of the weirdness.

I might approach this from an angle you're not. I think of portfolio sites as being used to get actual jobs... not just a collection of work to show off. So I'm wording my thoughts on this with that in mind. Obviously if you just want this to hold stuff for random people to look at, you can ignore most of what I have to say. If you want to someday build this into something you can really use, my comments might be slightly more useful lol There are some basic issues you have with this layout that really can't even be covered by the artistic aspects of this. Firstly, when you approach these sorts of sites, you have to think about your audience and what exactly it is you want them to see. Obviously, this being a portfolio site, you want to show off your work. A busy or design-orientated site is fine to use in this situation, but you run the risk of it overtaking your work. You don't want something with so much going on that it takes away from the pieces you wish to display. However, your design is fairly monotoned and smoothed out, so I don't think that's an issue for you. The issue this has is simply that there is almost no room to actually display your work. There's little reason to make a portfolio site where the work is not prominantly displayed from the start. I don't know if you plan on having people clicking on little thumbnails to view larger versions or what. Having a site that basically would just have tiny 50x50 icons built into thank link to other windows is rather pointless. I'd suggest increasing the size of what you have here. It's far too short in general, but the content area is absolutely miniscule In fact, considering your target audience, I'd go ahead and just make this for 1024x768 browsers and higher. Anyone of importance that wanted to see your work would be at a higher resolution as it is and there's little reason to decrease it for the amount of people out there with lower resolutions. Besides, most people with PCs are moving up to XP as it is and that won't even run below 800x600. If you so desired, you could make a version for 800x600 and one for 1024x768 and higher. If you really want to keep it this small, you could just have it open in a pop-up that fits the site within it. This is obviously a fixed-size site and since it's in a large window, it just looks like you're wasting a large amount of space. There are times and places for that, but I don't think it works for what you're wanting to accomplish for this. As for the rest of this... get rid of the second euphoria title. I'd also get rid of the partners part of the layout as it just takes up space. If you really would like to affiliate with others, put it on another page. It doesn't make sense to have this on a portfolio themed site, unless you just want this to show your friends and have no interest in actual job-type applications for it. No company gives a crap if you're friends with spong.com lol. I also agree about the navigation issue. I don't find it confusing where the "navigation" part is placed in relation to the actual links, but a large amount of people will. A decent navigation is absolutely vital on a web site and, really, even if you think something you've done is common sense, it probably won't be for everyone. People decide whether or not they like a site within about 3 seconds and if they are remotely unsure about what you want them to click on... it's already too late. If you were just making a personal site with a billion and one things on it, obviously navigation would be more complex. It's all relative. I would definitely ditch the little biography thing on the side though. Put it on its own page and leave it off the first page. Portfolio sites look pretentious when people paste crap about themselves all over it as soon as they load up. Most people do not think that's true, but it really just reflects badly on yourself in the minds of many. At least you didn't throw your picture on the main page lol. I would also give up on the "loading" style text. It's really just superfluous on a site for this type of thing... especially given that it's nothing but static graphics. I also think you're just using an odd combination of typefaces. You have these more plain ones on the side, but the navigation has a more uncommon appearance. I really just do not think they go together at all and their use is strange. This is probably the main thing that brings this design down for me. People downplay the use of typefaces lately, especially in the amateur design community, but they mean a lot. They're probably the most important aspect of a decent design... especially on a web site, where people are meant to read things. Not that they are hard to read, they just do not mesh and most people will realize this when first looking at it, I think. So sorry to go on and on, but hopefully that was of some help lol.

I love movies but I don't really like going to the theater. I can't justify spending up to $9.25 to see a new movie. Plus most people here are just so obnoxious. I don't expect utter silence when I see a film, but obviously I expect some quiet during important scenes in a serious film. It's too much to ask out here. People bring babies to horror films. They bring toddlers to everything else and allow them to run around the entire theater during the length of the film. Fat people bring gallons of popcorn with them and proceed to eat it loudly and shake it around, while clicking their Diet Snapple (that makes up for all the "butter flavored topping" they put on the popcorn, I guess) bottles around as they vainly attempt to understand the film. I don't mind these things during something like Bad Boys 2, but when you're watching Return of the King and two people are talking for about ten minutes straight, it gets annoying. I didn't pay to listen to how crappy the theater's fries are. I'm forced to go a lot more often than I'd like to. If it were up to me alone, I'd go to the theater three times a year at the most. I don't get the point of spending $10 to sit in a dark room and stare at a big screen for two hours. I'd rather watch it at home so I could do and say what I wanted to.

I'll try XIII again, I suppose. I do enjoy Halo on multiplayer though... especially with all vehicles on. King of the Hill is fun too, while it lasts. The original thread starter mentioned Metal Arms. It's more of a 3rd person shooter, I'd say, but it's amazingly good (I think you can play in first, though). I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a solid action title, especially the Xbox version. GC version is still great, though.

While I cannot vouch for the single player, I found the multiplayer in XIII incredibly dull. My main issue was simply with the level layouts. None really stood out and were really all just unremarkable in my opinion. Perhaps if I only played console FPS games I'd be more impressed, but eh. Of course, it still is quite fun if you manage to get four player together. Maybe I just didn't have a good experience with it, I don't know. In terms of FPS games on GCN, the only one I really waste my time with is Timesplitters 2. Good control, nice customization and decent levels... although I felt some are overly mazelike. The single player is decent as well. Serious Sam is hiting GCN soon too for $20. The PC game is fun in a shoot-everything-in-sight kind of way. Don't expect deep gameplay or amazing graphics, but it could be a fun playthrough.

I've linked a couple of scans for the game at the end of the post You'll notice first of all that they've kind of just ditched Amano's artwork for the series. Square is apparently reworking these from the ground up to appeal to new fans of the FF series, which explains that. Things are being adjusted so people can easily jump into the series, even if they're not familiar with the older titles. For example, FFI is being reworked to include MP instead of its standard magic system. I think the games look pretty good and I'd have to say they have pretty much a 100% chance of hitting the US. [url]http://v.isp.2ch.net/up/a0b1e56bd078.jpg[/url] [url]http://v.isp.2ch.net/up/860a7a042080.jpg[/url] [url]http://v.isp.2ch.net/up/523549231b52.jpg[/url] Thanks to Neo at GA.

[url]http://v.isp.2ch.net/up/cdecbad91930.jpg[/url] Images of a new character. Her name is Pannero. The game seems to have ditched the horrid circle shadows that were shown in older shots.

Any video would be from last May. I am sure the game has made significant progress since then. I wouldn't worry too much about what is shown in that multiplayer shot. The game still has several months of development time left and I'm sure multiplayer modes are not as far developed as the single player at this point. Besides, Zoid is involved with this game. I don't know if many console gamers know him, but he was a very important multiplayer PC developer before he joined up with Retro. I'm pretty sure with him involved that multiplayer will turn out just fine. Plus he posts at SA, so I'm sure he is aware of everyone's concerns on that subject. I'm not concerned and expect that to turn out well, personally. I agree about the HUD somewhat. I don't mind the colors because I think they make sense and stop the game from looking too much like a Prime expansion pack. I don't really get why they have those huge energy tank bars though. They seem unnecessary.

[quote name='Zidargh']Hugh Jackman eh? I don't remember any of his films but I know the name. I have a strange feeling he starred as Zorro. It's his beard.[/quote] He's Wolverine in the X-Men films. I'm mixed. This movie has the potential to bring down the Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein properties if it is done poorly. I too am going in with some what low expectations based on the Mummy films. I don't expect it to suck horribly, but I do expect it to be a decently enjoyable popcorn flick. Little more than that, really. We'll see.

You're right. It's like 260,000 copies. I don't know that that's all that bad... but I also don't know how much of that was from it being on sale. It had been on clearance in my area for several months. Sales do come up otherwise, mostly because they've managed to put out only two games since they started on Too Human way, way back on the PSX in the first place. Now obviously you can't sell games if you don't put any new ones out, and that's my point. I have to wonder how much of an investment Nintendo wanted to put into them because of this. I'm sure they want to avoid another Rare... but that's just a guess and kind of extreme anyway lol. There were like 80 people working on ED alone and even members of Nintendo of Japan got involved in the development. It just seems like there is more work involved in these titles than they get back. Plus, Rare games sold decently in Japan by comparison (ED was like in the 10,000 range total). In any case, considering the "meshing" stuff... I suppose it's just possible that SK wanted to do things differently from Nintendo. Dyack has always said they worked well with Nintendo and shared the same philosophy, so I find it slightly confusing and surprising. Nintendo didn't seem to be interested in throwing their own properties on the company either. Doesn't matter, they can make games for all three now lol. Also, SK is Canadian. Not UK based. As for Factor 5... [url]http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/04/14/news_6093544.html[/url] "However, Eggebrecht was quick to dispel any "doom" that might surround Factor 5's announcement. Echoing Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack, he emphasized his enthusiasm for Nintendo's future console efforts. "We are extremely excited about both DS and GCNext, so any talk of us abandoning Nintendo platforms altogether is just not true," he told GameSpot. According to Eggebrecht, the only reason Factor 5 has stopped making GameCube games was that they've abandoned current-generation hardware altogether. "It is simply because we have moved into next-generation development," he said. " IGN sure as hell sensationalized that news article.

Kill Bill is really just an exploitation film, plain and simple. I think if people realized that, they would look at Kill Bill in a different light. It wasn't trying to be anything more than what it was and it really is far better than pretty much every film it bases itself on. I loved the movie and, unlike many, I enjoyed the dialogue. I thought it was absolutely spot-on for what the film was trying to accomplish. As for that interview, I honestly just think he's joking anyway. I'm slightly annoyed that Bill is absolutely everywhere now. Especially after all the trouble they went through to keep him faceless in the first volume.

[url]http://cube.ign.com/articles/506/506508p1.html[/url] Factor 5 is making games for other systems. No GC games are planned. They are showing nothing new at this year's E3 though. No clue what the reasoning was... but at the same time, I don't know if I care. I'm tired of Star Wars games and their attempt to branch the series out in the last incarnation was awful. The third person people sections sucked and the flying areas really didn't evolve at all. This, plus other issues, pretty much makes that brochure I posted 100% fake too.

[quote name='satan665']I knew you'd have some crazy amounts of gear, Semjaza. I love hearing about this stuff. I'm still holding out that someone has a Turbographics 16, or a Jaguar..[/quote] I'd absolutely love to own a Turbo Duo. Mostly just so I could play Dracula: Rondo of Blood. Of course, the game is very expensive usually and I don't see many Turbo Duos around lol. Jaguar is one of those things that I can't imagine having. It certainly isn't worth it for the games, although I hear that Alien game is decent. It's one of those things you have just to have, I guess.

I think this mostly just comes down to sales. I don't think it's because they don't "mesh" with their philiosophies on how games should be made, especially after all of Dyack's gushing about Nintendo in the past and how similiar they are. ED sold something like 100,000 copies in the US. It's also the second lowest selling Nintendo published game in Japan right now. Obviously this is far below the desired numbers. I've not heard amazing things about Twin Snakes sales either, but I think it is doing well enough. This is very surprising though. As you mentioned, I think SK was held back by their projects. In some ways, they were obviously given experience, but they weren't able to really start from scratch on a game. I think given that chance, they could do something really amazing. Who knows what will happe though. Here's some supposed shots of Nintendo's E3 brochure. Too Human is on it. I am assuming these are fake though because some of the screens used on them are old and Burnout 3 is supposedly cancelled for GameCube. :( [url]http://www.cube-europe.com/newsgfx/e32004excl1.jpg[/url] [url]http://www.cube-europe.com/newsgfx/e32004excl2.jpg[/url]

I'm mostly posting this because the first scans of the Game Informer issue with the game have hit the net. The scans are incredibly low quality and zoomed in too far, but they give you an idea of what to expect. I believe EGM is also going to have its own screens of the game, so hopefully some better ones will surface soon. The largest addition to the game is obviously multiplayer. It's hard to get all that excited by the screen they have of it, but I have to assume that it is still fairly early on at this point. Hopefully they'll let you play as characters other than Samus clones (Halo did that too with Master Chief...). Anyway, I attached them. If anyone else has better shots, please post them. I'm sure someone here still gets GI lol.