I believe that was a Daruma head. It's true that it bears specific Japanese cultural significance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma_doll) but all you really need to know to get the joke is that it's a big silly head. It may just as well be an Easter Island head or something. What matters is that it's not the boss and that it looks weird. This stuff isn't "The Far Side," most of it is just plain zany. For the most part I think you CAN just assume you know what's going on.
You're comparing it to western humor like it's exactly the same.
... It's not? The only major difference between Japanese and Western humor is that the Japanese actually think puns are funny. Everything else is superficial: Homer Simpson eats donouts and drunks beer, Kaishain eat curry and drink milk.
I can tell what's going on in this mini-game, what I was questioning is whether or not that "woman" was actually a woman or not. If you look back at my post, I said it was either a man dressed as a woman, or an ugly woman that looks like a man dressed as a woman. From the design, it's not easy to tell. Whereas when you look at drag queens, more often than not, it's obvious.
... Do you see a lot of women with glaring, obvious five o'clock shadows who release deep, glutteral grunts from a jawline wider than their head? You're either very generous about such things or over-thinking the matter completely.
For example, I can understand in that one minigame that you're running away from a "woman" and you need to move to avoid the kisses. But what I don't understand is why the woman looks like that. Is that actually a man? If so, why is a man dressed as a woman trying to kiss these 3 men? If not, why does that woman look like a man dressed as a woman? Is there supposed to be some joke that all the Japanese would understand in this? I don't know and that really makes the run overall less enjoyable to watch. Another example is the minigame where you have to work when the boss is looking, and play around when the other "thing" looks in on you. First of all, what is that other "thing" looking in on you? Is it supposed to be funny? I don't get it!
That is what the Japanese would call an "okama." Western humor has them too. They're called "drag queens," or perhaps, "ugly trannies". The Kaishain are running away presumably because they're straight. Having transpeople aggressively pursue obviously disinterested men is a time honored tradition in homophobic humor worldwide. Have you never on the internet heard people invoke General Akbar's "It's a trap!"? Figuring out what's going on really is, in most cases, simply a matter of common sense.
Well, it's done now so I hope he submits it. It's long, but I'd vote yes on it. I really enjoyed watching it and was surprised that the story was as effective as it was coming out at that pace. Also, quite a change of pace to see someone playing this game struggling to survive.
I agree in general that point and clicking on the right frame is not super-human enough to be at all interesting. However, I do think it compares well to the solitaire run: the runner luck manipulates a quick and easy stack, and then they go through the motions of solving it quickly. Not that I think this is very much above "meh."
If I remember correctly, Nintendo did mandate certain tests in order to get the seal; namely, the game was not supposed to randomly crash all the time as happened on, say, the Action 52 games. I have no idea how that compares to the Atari days. Nintendo's content guidelines were only enforced in the American and European markets (I remember hearing that to this day neither Nintendo, nor Sony, nor Microsoft allow A0/18+ games (porn) on their consoles. But then, Something Awful has made me aware of the Japanese "visual novels" so I'm not sure how true that might be.
Also, if memory serves me right, Nintendo sold their systems at a loss in every case but the Wii; licensing fees weren't their way of "being greedy," (Although I remember hearing that they become exorbitant up until the N64) it was their way of making any money at all.
I'm not going to vote because I feel I surpassed my threshold for seriously playing and watching Megaman some time ago.
Watching what of this I did though really got me to thinking that meshing together all kinds of pixel art and music that might be good on its own produces a very unsatisfactory result, even when it's all in 8-bit. I mean, a lot of the music was from gameboy games like Seiken Densetsu. A lot of the graphics from SNES games like Yoshi's island... It's really a shame that ROM hackers can't attract more competent artists to their causes.
River City Ransom allowed only two enemies at once, and there would be lag. It only got worse with weapons and a second player, which is ironic considering that the best thing about that game was how frenetic the action was. So, how much stuff can we have happen on screen now, I wonder? Four players? Ten enemies? It would be nuts!
I've been waiting for such a game since high school...
So what do we do if someone wants to obsolete a run using the translation patch, by using a ROM in the original language? Do translation patches automatically become the "preferred" versions of games as soon as the patches reach the quality level needed to be accepted by the site?
Honestly? I'd say so. At least for long, story-driven RPGs with no sequence breaks. That, after all, is when having a translation patch actually matters. A translation (whether fan-made or official) ought to be used in any case that it would significantly improve the run's entertainment value. After all, what version do you think visitors to this site are going to have played? It takes a special kind of crazy to finish an RPG in a language they don't know.
Say a stable release of a translation patch for FF5 is created (hell, one might already exist for all I know). Would future runs be required to use that patch? What if we had a published run on the site using a translation patch? Would all future runs of the game be required to use the same patch?
Final Fantasy V was one of the first to have a stable translation patch released actually ;) Come to think of it though, FFV has since been translated and ported to the PS and Gameboy Advance. The latter might actually be preferable (Can a game be obsoleted by a version of itself for a different console?). To answer the question though, I think that with patches like these translation choice ought to be as much under scrutiny as any hack or demonstration category; and if the case can be made that one translation is "better" (For reasons other than mere text speed) then a runner ought to switch to that one. Or just use common sense or something. Frankly though, I don't know of any games with multiple fan translations. Generally translators move on to new material once there's already a stable release out.
However, it sounded like the game is haphazardly programmed (according to the translator, the ROM is a mess), so with enough effort, glitches could be found. I just wonder how much glitches could save timewise.
The Earthbound ROM was supposedly the same way and we know how that one turned out :)
Tomato actually commented on the WIP here:
http://earthboundcentral.com/2010/04/mother-3-tool-assisted-speed-run/#comments
There might be some interesting stuff in terms of possible glitches there. It rather sounds like the translation processes involved quite a bit of hacking and screwiness to make it work.
I didn't think this would be a very good choice of game, but I do rather think it's a nice way to see the story recapped, and it is a good story. A run that took advantage of glitches to sequence break would probably be unwatchable as far as I'm concerned
Given the logic behind specifically preferring that runs be completed using an English ROM I can't imagine why we'd at this point demand that all those interesting unreleased games people might be curious about should be run in a foreign language. I mean, as it is, my Japanese is far too crappy to really enjoy the Final Fantasy V run.
Make a rule similar to hacks: "The translation should be good, notable, excepted, stable, etc." Although, I think translated games out to be put on the normal pages instead of in the hacks and demonstration section. I'd say that fan translations have much broader appeal than hacks because that's what most (English speakers) are going to be playing for these games in the first place.
As said, I don't really know how popular these home computer games were in the US in the 80's, or if the US was more a NES/Genesis country.
Not so sure about the 80's, but when I was growing up in the 90's I'd never even heard of the home computers, or really, even the old Atari systems. For me, that period was defined by the Console War between the Genesis and SNES. Plenty of households still had an NES lying around though because they didn't want to have to upgrade it. I know that most households had at least one of those systems... I always understood PC games to be for a different audience, namely people who understood computers and were using them anyway: most kids my age preferred the simplicity of game pads, and cartridges, and not having to load anything in DOS.
So, I've noticed that this board has a fairly international user base. I've been wondering something for a while, and as both Wikipedia and Google have both been surprisingly unrevealing I thought I'd pose this question to you folks; how was Old School Gaming in Europe? On the NES and SNES say?
I know that games over there have to run on the 50hz Pal format and I've heard that NoE had even stronger censorship policies even than NoA, but what exactly did they do with regards to language? Here in Canada we tended to get English-French bilingual manuals, but it occurs to me how much trouble a French speaking kid in Quebec would have had trying to get through an RPG... And then, Europe has more than 20 languages. So what did they do? I remember hearing that not nearly as many games made if over to Europe, but on the other hand I know you got titles like Terranigma where we didn't. How's that work? Can you elaborate on any other peculiarities of the market in Europe?
You've mentioned before that pushing any button on the controller is supposed to stop the game's timer... It suddenly occurs to me; didn't this game have mouse support? If so, does using it effect the game's timer differently? Is there a way to do the money trick (or that glitch that allows you to build in the black void) or even just to switch between mouse and gamepad?
Edit: Nevermind. I was led astray by Wikipedia and some reviews.
In relations to bountys, unless it's a fairy small project like something which could be done within the space of a couple of weeks then money incentives are unlikely to provide much motivation. Even if you offered me $1k to do a 100% TAS of Majora's Mask I still wouldn't do given that if would eat up all my free time over the space of a year.
The idea for having bounties that donate to the site is a bit different in its intent; namely, to encourage lurkers to pledge their support in a way that provides dedicatory significance for specific content they feel strongly about. That it might provide a TASer with a sense for what runs are in high demand or would especially benefit the site would be a possible bonus (even if unlikely).
It occurs to me though that allowing donators to sponsor published runs might be a better way to go (No having to wait around for money to be cashable or worrying about whether a sponsored run would be publishable in the first place.)
Patashu: The Difference is that in Go (and any other abstract strategy game of its ilk) the actions of the other player are variable; they have the potential to think and formulate strategy just like you do. In a video game, the response to your input is deterministic (*Ahem* Barring the recently touted exceptions that prove the rule...) Thus, console gaming has much less depth in that regard...
Now, having two TASers play a 2-player game competitively, (Each frame would be a "turn" with each revealing their input value to the other at the end)... That might have potential for depth, assuming the game in question itself had deep enough play mechanics.
Hey people, thanks for watching.
Just saying that I want to run the hard mode of this game, so maybe this shouldn't be published (well, it depends on whether people are ok with 3 publications). I'm also improving xenos' normal run and if it wasn't for those autoscroller stages this improvement would already be ready to be submitted.
Three seems like a bit much for a game as straightforward as this. Maybe this run could obsolete the normal one and we could have a Hard Mode done with running?
Three players wouldn't leave room enough to watch the AI get creamed. I think that individual in-game times for the player are a better measure of speed in games like this but I'd be happy to see a two player run for possible play-around opportunities.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. I loved every minute of it. All forty of them. Just, mind boggling puzzle action, especially after I went and tried this on no friction myself. I don't care how much of a nerd I might seem, pulling this off is just too mind-blowingly crazy.