Topic #1
Whoever recommended Porcupine Tree in AMan's topic some time ago: go you, I have listened to like six minutes of this and this is awesome. I sounds like the space occupied between my favorite King Crimson era and Dream theater, for which I do not care one whit for reasons that escape me. This pushes the envelope *just* enough to really like make me think man and is awesome.
Topic #2
This weekend, I played Star Wars: Rebellion, and awesome strategy game that would have everything interesting about it ripped out and combined with more CGI and a crappy C&C clone to make Star Wars: Empire at War. As a kid, would play this game for hours on weekends, probably second only to Age of Kings, but the weird thing is I finished a game in four hours; this used to take months even at the easiest difficulties.
So I guess I'm going in two directions with this topic:
2a) I kind of get those Korean guys who perform 700 clicks per minute in Starcraft because I may or may not have strained my wrist with how quickly I was clicking to do stuff in this game.
2b) What are some other childhood favorites that you played the hell out of, and can now own effortlessly, though they were once imposing? Also, despite utterly obliterating the rebel scum in record time, I still had a blast, though that was possibly just out of nostalgia.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
:D That was me. I highly recommend checking out Lightbulb Sun and In Absentia (from their acoustic/pop phase), The Incident (from their new metal phase), and Signify and Up the Downstair (from their psychedelic/ambient period). But it's all really good.
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CSBE FTW!
DarthMarth - Better than a bowl of Cheerios.
I was listening to In Absentia; it sort of lost me halfway through (same problem as with Dream Theater, honestly; lengthy low-energy sections) but definitely awesome while it kept my attention (though this was only the first 25-30 minutes; I didn't get as far as .3, for example, which is awesome because I <3 the bass).
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Are there victory conditions in the Sims? I dated a girl briefly in Canada and our dates consisted mostly of her talking about her sims and yet I never attained clarity on this.
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Set signature in options page.
Growing up, I could never best Robotnik at the end of Sonic 2. When I was 18 I finally went back and beat him/the game.
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Ocarinakid
I dunno, but I *do* know that Zombies Ate My Neighbors *still* kicks my ass.
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SIGNATURE
I received Mega Man X for Christmas the year it came out (1993) and at that time, the only boss I could -barely- manage to beat was Chill Penguin. I never beat it in childhood, and due to a long pause between me selling it and repurchasing it, I never beat it until three years ago. It was an otherwise quiet night in the UW dorms when I started playing it again. I was able to run through the 8 bosses pretty easily but the Sigma stages gave me some trouble. A couple of my roommates came out to support me during my run through the 8 bosses. By the time that I was fighting Sigma, 4 of my roommates had come out to watch the action and the hilariously high levels of tension as I struggled to keep my HP high while pouring Rolling Shields into the head of Sigma's mech. When I finally won, we all celebrated. Great memory.
I can now run through the game nearly effortlessly and grab all of the bonuses and upgrades while having complete, developed conversations with other people without getting distracted. The last time I played through it, my roommate had some people over and were having a conversation, and I kept up with some comments of my own, when a friend said, "Wait, how many times have you played this game? You're holding a conversation with us but you're ripping through this game like it was nothing and you aren't even getting hit by anything."
The only other game I think I know better than Mega Man X is probably Super Mario Bros. 3, but even in childhood it wasn't too challenging. Still a fun experience, though.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
There aren't victory conditions in The Sims, but when you've maxed out your stats (I'm talking Sims 1 here) and built yourself an ostentatious house and you start getting bored, you're done.