On the flipside, if we're going to allocate one new star to the Wii platform, then right now there's only one choice. :)
Which raises the question of whether a TAS deserves a star for the sole reason that it's the first (and only) TAS for a new platform. I suppose one could give an argument pro and con:
1) Stars are intended to draw attention to certain TASes, especially for newcomers. It's not just about quality, but about giving a good representation of what TASing is all about. It's not unfeasible to assume that many newcomers (and even long-time viewers) would be interested in a Wii TAS.
2) Should the platform be an issue at all? Assume that the game in question was a NES game. Would it deserve a star? It's not a bad TAS by any means, but is it star-worthy?
Edit:mmbossman's post in the linked thread pretty much sums it up similarly.
The good thing about the three-grade voting system (yes/no/meh) is that it effectively stops people from misusing/abusing the system to bolster or shun a submission for biased reasons (such as "I like this game a lot and want the run published, hence I'll vote 10 on all categories", or "I don't like improvements on existing publications, hence I'll vote 0 on all categories"). With the yes/no/meh system they can't add bias to the voting results. Their opinion weighs as much as anybody else's.
Of course the downside of this is that people cannot issue the "weak yes" and "weak no" votes they often would want to. (Although one could argue that's a good thing because it gives them motivation to write about it rather than just leaving it as a vote and nothing else.)
As for someone voting "no" just because they don't like JRPGs, I think that's rather egregious. I don't find SMB-style platformers very entertaining in terms of gameplay, but that doesn't mean I would vote "no" on all SMB and similar runs. I vote on them based on their own merit, especially technical quality, not based on whether I would like to play the game in question myself.
If someone doesn't want to watch an 8-hour run, then please abstain from voting.
Also, didn't there use to be a "Takes no damage" tag category?
Taking no needless damage is kind of the default. If you take damage for no good reason (usually to make the run faster) then the run will look suboptimal, ie. less than perfect (which is what TASing should be all about).
A different issue is if taking damage would save time, but the author decides to make a no-damage run regardless, for entertainment purposes. The "Forgoes time-saving damage" category is for those.
it's so sad to read all the "do it without cheating" comments… really makes me want to punch that people in the face
It would be nice for once to see one of these people who don't find TASes impressive and consider it cheating to try it themselves. They think that it's easy and that there's no challenge. They are welcome to try to beat the current TAS and see how "easy" it is...
Of course this will never happen. It's easy to denigrate other people's work. It's much harder to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak.
I realise you're not being entirely serious with your post there, but this being a relatively new game it's possible that the glitches just haven't been discovered yet - think of Mega Man 9 and the Concrete Shot zip - even newer games can have glitches.
In a way it could even be so, rather ironically, that developing a glitch-free 2D game is easier nowadays with modern tools than it is to create a 2D game which has such glitches and the NES Megamen had. In other words, the lack of glitches comes naturally because of improved tools and development environments and practices, and because of not being confined to extremely limited resources.
I personally prefer simple nearest-neighbor upscaling when I run games in an emulator; sure it looks a little fuzzier, but it's not as blocky as straight magnification
I think you are confusing terminology. "Nearest neighbor" means taking simply the color of the nearest pixel as-is. In other words, the original pixels get simply scaled up to larger squares. (If you are scaling up to a resolution that is not an exact multiple of the original resolution, then some of the squares will be a pixel larger in one or both directions than the others, which may look ugly.)
You are probably talking about upscaling using bilinear filtering (iow. linear interpolation of in-between pixels from the original pixels, on both axes).
Simply put, I voted 10 on technical aspect because I just couldn't find anything wrong with any part of how this game was played. And believe me... I tried to find something to complain about, something to nitpick, something that just simply did not belong. I couldn't.
Note that it's not about "if you can't find any objection, you must vote 10". Not all games lend themselves for a perfect technical score for the simple reason that awesome technical feats are not possible (eg. because the game is too straightforward and bug-free).
That's not to say this game doesn't deserve a 10 (I liked it too). Just clarifying.
this says 160mb although I doubt I downloaded that much in a couple seconds.
It's possible that the server sends files compressed (http supports compression). If the file was mostly full of zeros (or other repeating data) it could compress a lot, explaining the fast download.
Am I the only one who doesn't really understand the appeal in the ssbm games? I once got to play one of them on a Wii against three other people. I found it quite boring. Simplistic small 2D levels, extremely repetitive, not much to do. The fighting itself is enjoyable for about 5-10 minutes, after which it just feels like doing the same repetitive task over and over. The visuals are sometimes nice, but they don't really save the rest of the game. I don't really get it. It's probably just me.
1. The ball if FAR from giant. In fact, it is so small that you can't even see it.
2. As soon as the ball touches anything, it would cool down immediately.
3. As moozooh said, the moment the energy supply is interrupted, the fusion process is also interrupted, and well... nothing happens. At all. There is no critical reaction or something like it's the case for fission power.
Also, the problem with nuclear reactors isn't the amount of energy they produce. The problem is radioactivity.
Even if a nuclear reactor were to explode like a hydrogen bomb (which they don't, because they aren't built to be bombs), it would cause some damage to its surroundings, and the pressure wave would certainly kill some people within a certain radius. However, if there wasn't any radiation involved, that would be all. It would be a catastrophe alright, but it wouldn't be very significant.
The real problem is the radioactivity. When a nuclear powerplant accident happens, the danger is in it spreading the radioactivity to its surroundings, which can be really nasty.
Nuclear fusion is a completely different mechanism than nuclear fission. For one, there are no radioactive materials involved. (Now, I'm no physicist so I can't tell for sure if the fusion reaction itself produces ionizing radiation. However, the danger is not any ionizing radiation produced by the reaction itself, but by the radioactive material spreading. There is no radioactive material in a fusion reaction.)
If a fusion reactor were to explode it would cause some immediate damage and possibly a few people nearby will die. However, other than that it would produce no long-lasting consequences.
I'll use another music type, since you're telling me that techno isn't the kind of music to use for this kind of test, because the sounds are synthesized.
The objection was that this sample in particular uses some distortion/overdrive effects which might be masking the loss in quality.
I think that the ability of distinguishing any loss in quality will depend heavily on what kind of audio is being compressed (or not compressed). As feos commented, this particular sample you chose might be a really poor choice because any loss of quality might be indistinguishable from the distortion that is already there in the original. In other words, the compression might not make any audible difference with this particular sample, even though it might make with a different, cleaner sample.
Also, a bit like JPEG is optimized for photographs, these audio codecs may be optimized for natural sounds, such as music and speech. They might be not so optimized for very primitive artificial sounds such as chip music. This could potentially mean that compression might not audibly hurt normal music, while it makes an audible difference in chip music. Given the nature of the website, this might be quite relevant.
This movie seems to have gone unusually unnoticed regardless of having a long history (one of the oldest TASes in the site) and the obsoletion having symbolical significance (last famtasia run to be obsoleted). Just a few votes, and only one rating. I think it's a pity. It should deserve more attention.
Our current plants are too risky in the long term. If we manage to replace them with something else soon, before a low chance disaster beyond all expectations occurs, then mankind would have managed to dodge the bullet.
I really think your concern is badly misaimed. Nuclear power is certainly not the greatest danger that humanity has. It's probably not even in the top-10 list.
One of the top dangers is pollution (and the subsequent global warming). That should be much higher in our list of priorities than nuclear power. In fact, rather ironically, nuclear power actually helps reducing pollution because it's a clear source of energy. (Yes, I know that mining for the radioactive material is somewhat polluting, and handling the nuclear waste is a big problem. However, when compared to other alternatives which produce the same amount of energy, the amount of total pollution is quite small. And approximately nothing else in this world is handled with more care than nuclear waste. It's a potential problem, but it's not a big one. There certainly are much bigger ones.)
As I'm pretty much the only one against nuclear power in this thread
It's not a question of being pro nuclear plants. It's a question of pragmatism. Exactly what would be the better alternative? Unfortunately simply shutting down the plants without coming up with anything that would replace them is not really a practical option. Modern economy, industry, technological progress (including quite important things like medical technology) and the welfare system depend on power production. Significantly reducing power production is going to hurt the well-being of many people. Probably many would die who otherwise wouldn't need to.
You would probably not be reading this if nuclear power was banned decades ago.
and I've seen the car argument repeatedly iterated, yea, I'm against cars too. There should only be public transportation and bikes.
You can't use public transportation and bikes to transport stuff from one place to another. Many of the important activities of individual people would be seriously hindered by the inability of independent vehicular driving. The usage of cars could certainly be significantly reduced (especially in the cities of certain countries), but banning it completely would be counter-productive.
(Well, we are going to run out of gas in a few decades anyways, so there's really no need to ban it. It will come naturally. I'm not really looking forward to it, though.)
