I just can't get over how much the last episode bothers me, for some reason.
As KennyMan quite well stated, it makes no sense that changing the meanings of the elements of harmony would have changed cutie marks. The elements of harmony are related to personalities, not talents, which are completely independent (for example, farming apples has nothing to do with honesty, and being very fast has nothing to do with loyalty.) And cutie marks themselves are related to special talents, not to one's career and life choices, which are also independent (one's special talent may help with one's career, but it doesn't determine what it is.)
What bothers me even more, though, is that the effects of the spell make no sense either. It's completely unclear whether the spell retroactively changed the entire history of the world, or if it only took effect from the instant it was cast, and somehow changed everybody's memories (except Twilight's.) In either case the behavior of the affected ponies and the villagers is highly inconsistent.
The affected ponies had clearly no memory whatsoever about having been different but a day before, and suddenly changing. It's as if they thought they had been like that all their lives. (Again, it's unclear if this is because history was changed, or just everbody's memories.) Yet they act like they had been doing their new "jobs" for less than a day, rather than their entire adult lives. One would think that if they had been doing those things for their entire lives, they would be either more experienced or just abandoned it as hopeless. It was certainly not established that something forced them to do a job they had no talent nor motivation whatsoever for.
The behavior of background characters is no less strange. For example Fluttershy's animals clearly thought Dash was their "caretaker" (even if an incompetent one), did not recognize Fluttershy when she arrived... yet were acting like Dash had been their caretaker for less than a day (rather than having been so for years, either by changed history or memories.) Likewise for background ponies expecting Fluttershy to throw a party and entertain them and Rarity to take care of weather. Nobody was wondering what's going on, and instead acting like that's what's expected... yet still acting like they had been doing that for less than a day. Really, really inconsistent behavior.
And why did guiding the ponies to their true talents gradually reverse the effects of the spell? Did it also restore everybody's memories or history? Gradually? How and why?
Argh, it just doesn't make any sense.
(And this not even going to how out-of-the-blue Twilight's "upgrade" to alicorn came, from "fixing" a spell that makes no sense in the first place... And possibly retconning the origin of alicorns from what has been subtly implied during the series.)
Edit: I just thought of a good summarization of why I hate this episode: It feels like a pre-G4 MLP episode rather than a G4 one. Precisely the style of "kids are simple-minded, therefore the cartoon should be simple-minded as well."
the SNES football game thing isn’t a cheat, that’s a normal option programmed in the game
Note that we have to distinguish between three different things:
1) An "option" that's directly available in the game's GUI. This is not a "cheat" because it's directly intended to be available.
2) A secret cheat code programmed into the game (such as the famous "konami code".) Even though this is something that the game itself explicitly supports, it's still considered a "cheat" because it's hidden and not intended for normal play.
3) Modifying the actual game code (eg. by using a cheating device.)
Given that, according to rumors, this is actually intended to be the first of a three-parter, I might have to retract that, depending on what they do.
Curiously, in this particular case I wouldn't actually mind that at all. On the contrary, I would welcome it.
Like I said on m2k2: literally nothing in that episode made any fucking sort of sense or anything that even remotely resembled sense at all.
I am also completely puzzled what exactly they were after with this episode. The idea was... random and weird, and made no sense whatsoever, and there were too many questions left unanswered (such as, for example, why did nobody else in Ponyville seem to wonder what was going on and why those few ponies suddenly changed so much and get a completely new cutie mark... Did changing the cutie marks actually retroactively rewrite the entire history? But if that were so, why did they act like they had been doing their "talents" just for a day, rather than all their lives? Yet had no memory whatsoever that they used to be different... Argh, it makes absolutely no sense.)
It was like just a weird dream. Or nightmare. It would actually have made more sense if all this was just Discord going evil again and messing up Poniville as some kind of revenge (or simply to be chaotic evil.) Being basically the god of chaos, the weird effects and attitudes of the villagers would be fully explainable. In fact, that would have made a much better plot.
I have to say, from all of FiM episodes ever, this is the only one that I didn't like at all. It shouldn't exist. (Perhaps I'll just pretend that it doesn't exist.)
In general, this was a weak season. There were four episodes I liked a lot, the rest ranged from "slightly above average" to "meh".
I liked the season just fine (with the exception of this episode, of course.)
Edit: Btw, I don't very often have the patience nor interest to read really lengthy walls of text, but your analysis was so interesting that I read the entirety of it. It was quite nicely thought through.
Cave Story (2004) is a famous freeware indie game notable for being made entirely by one person, Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya.
. . .
The program used to make this run, Hourglass, was also developed by nitsuja—with the creation of this run in mind. As such, it is our first published run of a Windows game.
Hourglass runs quality games released as late as 2004? Seems modern enough to me. :p
Cave Story does not exactly showcase the technology of 2004. More like 1994 (the year that Super Metroid was published.)
Actually, yes. DOS games run on something like a 80386 16-bit 16 MHz processor, whereas Windows games run on a Quadcore 64-bit 2000+ MHz chip.
Eh, I might not be always up to the latest developments in TAS-supporting emulation, but I'm pretty sure we are far away from emulating the newest Windows running on the newest PC hardware.
In the context of TASing, so far, "Windows game" and "DOS games" are almost the same thing, the only difference being the underlying OS. Most Windows games I have seen TASed are for Windows 3, which ran in the exact same computers as DOS (and, in fact, ran purely on top of DOS.)
(Also, even modern 64-bit PCs still support the 30-years-old 16-bit mode which DOS was designed for. In principle it should be possible to install and run DOS on a modern PC. Many of the DOS games won't run properly because they depend on or assume hardware that doesn't exist anymore, or is way too fast. But in principle if a game has been sufficiently well made, it should be possible to run in on pure DOS even on a modern PC. I wouldn't be surprised if eg. DOS Quake would run on the most recent version of MS-DOS installed on a current PC. At least if your display hardware supports standard DOS protocols and resolutions. Most of them still do. You probably won't get any sounds, though, unless you have a sufficiently old SoundBlaster.)
Where exactly did this "modern Windows game TASes" concept come from? They don't exist, and as long as they don't, we don't need to put them in a separate category from DOS games.
I was expecting this to be a pun, akin to "Too Many Pinkie Pies was like watching paint dry". But it wasn't.
I don't see how this is jumping the shark (because that's when a series as a whole takes a prolonged, if not even permanent, dive to mediocrity, and that cannot be assessed before many more episodes have been made. You can't say "the series jumped the shark with this episode" when the episode in question is the newest one and there aren't any more of them made yet.)
I, however, did not like the episode at all. It made no sense, had too much singing (yes, I know it was meant to be that kind of musical episode, but I still didn't like it), there was no actual plot or aesop, and I didn't really like Twilight's new design.
Bonus points for breaking status quo, though.
I'm curious why, in the categorization of movies by system, DOS, Windows, and MSX are lumped in together. The three have very little in common in terms of hardware they run on, or software that emulates them, or tricks that are supported.
DOS and Windows have very little in common in terms of hardware they run on?
I thought they run on the exact same hardware.
This game looks fun to watch but horrible to play.
I have a tangential question: What exactly is the site's current policy on unofficial mods?
(Yeah, I know the de-facto term is "hack", but it just doesn't sound right to my ear, sorry.)
If there were some kind of "demo" category (or something better named) on the site, then this could probably be published under that. Perhaps all TASes of mods could be published under that. (What are they currently published as?)
I'm rather ambivalent about the entertainment value of this run, given how long and repetitive it is (even though the author tried to add entertainment value to it via gameplay.)
This is probably a stupid question but... I really don't understand the idea with this thread.
What song are you listening to right now? Why would that interest me, or anybody for that matter? You could just as well ask what you are eating right now, what kind of shoes you are wearing right now, what's the weather outside the window right now. What's so special about this particular thing that it not only got its own thread, but it has been going on for 8 pages now? Why does anybody care?
A few years ago there was an almost complete revision of many of the tags, such as "heavy luck manipulation" being applied only to those runs that really do heavy luck manipulation, and so on.
Was this tag added before or after that? It sounds like it should be heavily revised as well.
I find the CPU manipulation rather interesting in this run, especially in the last two games.
In the game against Kaga (the second-to-last game) black's (the TASer's) first move (at G12) is quite unconventional and weak because it's on the 2nd line (even for a 13x13 board). Maybe not completely horrible, but certainly not the best possible move (not by a long shot). White's response (at L11) is ok'ish, I suppose, although with black having 2 handicap it could perhaps have been better for white to worry about the moyo black is forming on the upper left corner this way.
Black's next move is quite weak. A contact move this early in the game is seldom a good idea. It only helps white strengthen his position. (In fact, a strong white player would probably play elsewhere at this point, and return to the upper right corner later, when it becomes more important. White doesn't need to worry too much about black's contact play because if black would want to do anything there, he would have to spend too many stones to do anything meaningful. That's because the contact play is just outright weak.)
If white were to respond to the contact play (but, as said, at this point in the game it would be way too early for white to worry about it), the usual strong response is to just extend, ie. play another stone directly adjacent to the existing white stone (in this case towards the left.)
However, what does the CPU do? A keima from his stone (ie "knight's jump" in chess terms.) Uh... I don't think that's a very good move. It's submissive and weak here, and not the best possible response to a contact play.
Now black punishes with his next move, threatening to cut and white... extends to the left, making contact with black's stone. Ok, maybe there might an idea here (like throwing away the upper right corner for the upper side) but it still sounds fishy.
Now black, instead of cutting (or extending from the G12 stone towards the center) just extends towards the left... Ok, if now white plays at K12 it would become an interesting fight. But what does white do? The worst possible move that could be done in this situation. He extends to the first line, making an empty triangle, for no reason whatsoever! There's no purpose to this move, it achieves absolutely nothing, and it self-kills the white stones. (If anything white should have extended towards the center, not towards the side.) White just lost the game.
The game against Akira (the last game) is even more screwed up. White's (the TASer's) first move is quite normal. His second move is quite unconventional and not very good IMO (it just gifts black the corner and a strong wall.)
Black plays elsewhere, which is ok. The couple of next moves are ok for black, I suppose, not so ok for white. Then white plays in the corner!!! This is possibly the weakest possible move in this situation ever! (Maybe only the other three corners could perhaps be slightly weaker than this, but not much.) This is like white conceding the game. Black should be astonished at this point.
If black wants to ensure the safety of the corner, extending down from his wall is one possibility (although a pro might have other ideas.) So what does black do? He makes a contact play with the stone in the corner! What? This is just crazy. That's possibly the worst possible answer to that corner play that one could devise.
What does black do next? He starts to crawl on the first line! Ok, this game is officially broken now.
Then white gives black another gift. He lets black connect his first-line stones to his strong wall. Black must be grateful. And then black makes a double empty triangle (rather than extending towards the center and cutting white's two groups.) No sane person would play like this.
And Touya Akira is supposed to be at pro level...
When adelikat and I were creating that page, we came up with a couple of examples of games which were not serious. Such as the NES Sesame Street game, or Elmo's Fun with Numbers/Letters. Another example is Color a Dinosaur.
I don't know about those others, but Color a Dinosaur has no well-defined ending, nor any gameplay for that matter, so that pretty easily excludes it from being acceptable.
However, this game has actual gameplay and an actual ending (heck, it even has end credits.) So what exactly is it that makes it not a "serious game"?
