yellowlightman

Awesome pics Peter, those old Japanese cars are awesome. Was it a club meet or something?

Portable N64 games? That'd be a Nintendo DS...

That's really weird, considering it's an onscreen keyboard anyways. I wonder if they did it like that instead of a QWERTY style because they though it'd be easier to use, don't have to kee scrolling around for keys spread out over a full sized keyboard. I'm surprised no one on this thread has talked about the emulators currently being developed for the PSP.

I'm currently working on a project for my design class based around the work of Osamu Tezuka and I'm currently trying to find some decent sized pictures of some of his work. Mostly looking for pictures of faces, or action scenes. If anyone has some decent source material they coudl scan in, or could point me in the direction of a good website I'd really appreciate it.

On the plus side, that's the most grammatically correct post I've ever seen you make.

V and B are interchangeable in Japanese, given that 'ba' and 'va' are written with the same katakana I doubt the original writer's even had a specific romanization in mind.

I just recently started playing through the Titans mission campaign in AEUG vs. Titans after not touching it in over 6 months. Still a solid game in terms of gameplay, but gets boring fighting against the computer. I played it a lot in the arcades this summer when I was in Tokyo, and even though I usually got my ass handed to the guys that would hang around all night and play it was a lot of fun. Oddly enough, I think they tweaked the speed a little bit in the PS2 conversion, probably in an effort to make it play more like a traditional console mech game, as opposed to an arcade game.

Uh... it's a costume. Can't expect something someone has to fit into to be 100% anime accurate.

Yeah, I mean... The Pillows still put on a great show, I just thought they got upstaged by the less-famous bands that were also playing. Not sure how easy to find their CDs are, the one I bought at the concert did a poor job of capturing the energy of their live performance, but I can send you a few MP3s if you'd like. The other bands I saw at the concert we The Emeralds (decent, if slightly generic rock), Titan Go Kings (little Japanese girl punk rockers), and Betty Booka (electric ukilaelee duet). Who are the Pillows playing with in Chicago?

I think that's the biggest thing Microsoft has going for it, they're actually making a conscious effort to give gamers what they want. They're certainly not perfect, but they'll get it right eventually. Sony meanwhile released the PS2, which had nothing particularly improved about it (still really irks me they had to audacity to use the same controller, when it was obviously flawed). I think Sony still suffers from this kind of ego, take a look at their response to the complaints about the square button on the PSP... Nintendo is frustrating in a similar way, but instead of ego I think it's being stubburn. Nintendo enjoyed so much time where they could make whatever they wanted, and have it sell in the millions I don't think they've ever fully recovered and realized they might need to sacrifice a few of their high ideals to sell more units. I love Nintendo, but I wish they wouldn't be so bullheaded. That's my way of thinking as well, Microsoft is the only one showing that it's trying to make the system people want, rather than making the system they want.

I saw The Pillows in San Francisco last month, and got shown up by a bunch of unknown Japanese girl punk bands like Tsushimamire. Kind of a bummer, the audience was 90% otaku who were there only for The Pillows and practically ignored the other 4-5 bands. I think I saw Egan Loo there too, oddly enough.

Thanks for the invite. Regrettably, I actually live in Sacramento. You're up in Sac? I grew up there, currently a couple of minutes away in Davis. Guess I know who to call next time I get a ticket.

I sure as hell hope they never get back together, as a big GNR fan I realize they're never going to match the brilliance of Appetite for Destruction, so why bother? Axl is too busy being full of himself and Slash is too busy not caring and just wanting to play real rock... just wouldn't work anymore, better left to enjoy the memories. I listen to just about anything, big favorites include The Doors (loved them since I was a kid), The Who, Queen and Guns n' Roses. I'll honestly listen to just about anything, and I'm a sucker for pop and catchy songs so I dig stuff like Savage Garden as well. Also love 80's rock and pop, early 90's alternative, some hip-hop rap (I love Jay-Z's Black Album), dance, the occasional J-pop or J-Rock, all sorts of stuff. About the only thing I can't stand is whiny indie rock, bullshit poser bands like Green Day and easy-listening jazz. Right now I'm getting pumped up for the Social Distortion concert at UCD, so I've been listening to a lot of punk... Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones.

1. Dual-layer DVDs will have more than enough space to hold the games, not to mention.. how much more space do you need? FMV isn't nearly as popular, and if you look at systems like the N64 with the "wrong" media type, they still had plenty of great games. Not to mention using regular DVDs will keep costs down. 2. You'll still be able to buy an XBox 360 with an hard drive, there's just a more economical option for those who don't care or need one. Not big deal. As for paying for the DVD remote, that was to keep costs down. In order to have a DVD player, the manufacturer has to pay a liscensing fee. By making the remote a seperate peripheral, it allowed those who didn't want to use the XBox as a DVD player to save that money. The PS2 was released before the XBox and Gamecube and benefitted considerably for it. The PS2 was technologically inferior and had weaker launch games, but won out because it established a large user base early on. Not to mention the majority of Japanese buying the first wave of PS2's weren't buying it for the craptastic launch games, but because it was an affordable DVD player. Irrelevant. Modern PS2 games still look worse than some Dreamcast games. VHS was inferior to Beta. The Gamboy dominated the handheld market for years with outdated technology. I have my doubts about Microsoft overtaking Sony this generation, but it will happen eventually. Microsoft will eventually throw enough money and eventually get things "good enough" to dominate the console industry. Sony is egotistical and has stopped innovating, their days are numbered. The exact same thing happened with Nintendo. That said, all this new system mumbo-jumbo makes me think about how much I should spending on filling out my Saturn and Dreamcast collections.

My defining memory of Runequest were the ducks. Never played a game of it, but for various reasons I have some of the sourcebooks. I bought GW's Judge Dredd game for the comics in it, playing as a Judge always seemed kinda boring to me. Seems like they missed out on the flavor by focusing solely on that aspect of Mega City One. Anyone ever play Cyberpunk? One of the great games from R. Talsorian, real shame they've seemed to drop off the radar aside from the Dragonball Z game. Loved their Bubblegum Crisis books as well, if only as an english-language sourcebook for the series.

I've been out of the RPG loop for years, what exactly is Silcore?

Facists have the coolest uniforms and best logos. The Japanese Imperial Rising Sun Flag and Nazi Swastika were very striking icons that have their roots in decidedly non-facist origins, so I can understand where the appeal for using the designs comes from. The Japanese have been using WW2 design cues in Gundam since 0080/0083 so it's kind of a moto point.

I've never really seen the fascination with rules systems, as I tend to focus more on the roleplaying part and as a GM I'll haphazardy removie rules or make decisions in the effort to maintain the story and environment in which the players are participating. I generally prefer setting-specific rules, as generic rulesets (from my experience) tend to lack something and don't give as much flavor to the campaign setting. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was a slightly unusual ruleset thanks to it being derived from the wargame, but within the context of the setting I find it works quite well. I'd be hard pressed to adapt it to any setting other than fantasy, but as a fantasy game it does the job far better than ny of it's contemporaries that I've played. The exception to my dislike of general rulesets is Dream Pod 9's Silhouette system, which I think is a really elegant system. It's definately geared towards mecha-based games, but between the scaleability and simplicity of it, I prefer it to other mecha-based rulesets. Lots of games featuring complicated stuff like robots tends to get bogged down in numbers, which really hampers the game-playing experience.

I totally agree, the placement is a major flaw when you need to switch grenades in the middle of a firefight. Personally I'd prefer if they just relocated the black and white buttons to be above the other buttons, rather than below... it would make them much easier to hit. Not sure how necessary four triggers really will be, or how comfortable it'll be.

I don't think it was concieved as a trilogy to start with, is the problem. Prsonally, I think they shoulda left it as a stand-alone. But it made too mcuh money to do that. The two Matrix sequels sucked hard because with the original Matrix, the Wachowski brothers had to revise and polish the script so much just to get it made they actally had to make it a dencent movie, opposed to the sequels where they were given the green light to do whatever they want and (obviously) didn't put nearly as much effort in cleaning up or polishing the scripts.

I think it's modeled after the controller S pretty closely. Comparing my controller with the pic, the thumbsticks and d-pad seem to be the same distance apart from each other, or at least damn close. Assuming the picture is real, it looks like they ended up putting the black and white buttons on the back afterall. Considering how poorly place they were on the controller S, definately not a bad thing.

I agree, back in the day I played tons of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark so I hope PD0 doesn't drop the ball. My only concern is how it'll shape up when compared to Halo2. I just recently picked up TimeSplitters 3 (I played the 2nd one to death) and it's not a bad game, and if I wasn't continually comparing it to Halo2 I'd love it... as it is, I played it for a week and haven't touched it since.

Er, looks just like the current XBox controller?

Umph. It's ugly as hell, and I don't see it becoming endearing in a way the original XBox is. To be expected, Microsoft design sucks. Looks like the controller is staying pretty much the same, which I don't mind because the current XBox controller is the most balanced on the market. Halo 3 is inevitable (eventually) and XBox LIVE is the best thing to happen to video games in the last 10 years, so I'll probably be picking this up before the PS3 or Nintendo Revolution.

Kind of doubtful, given that the Robotech RPG had gone down in popularity since it's heydey in the late 80's/early 90's. They had wanted to do a second edition of the TMNT book, but couldn't get enough pre-orders to justify it. Although Palladium has gone on record saying they wanted to make more source books, but Harmony Gold wouldn't let them. This was around the time Robotech 3000 was in the works and HG was hesitant about approving new source material (same reason AP lost the comic license). What it came down to was Palladium still had the license, but couldn't do anything with it... and when it came time ot renew, and HG still didn't want them to do anything with the license it just wasn't cost effective to keep it.