Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Earth to Romney: We hate you.

Food for thought.

Let's have a minute of silence for those who contemplate moving to Canada if Obama is re-elected. Or France. Or Australia. Or the UK. Or Germany. Or Spain. Or anywhere. Your only safe haven is Pakistan. Enjoy the drones!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

And speaking of Skelux's hacks...

THIS happens. On the same day I announced I was going to LP Star Road, another one of his creations. Now I haven't played this one, but it looks absolutely crazy. The Mario recolor not being Luigi is probably going to tick off some people, especially with all the urban legends about Luigi being in the game back in the late 90s. But oh well, two-player SM64! To top it all off, he's doing the same for Star Road. You know, because only one player trying to struggle through Hidden Palace Finale wasn't hectic enough.

The Star Road 2 status update in the movie description makes me sad, though. Not one level designed yet... unless he means making the actual first level in the game (the first world made for the first game ended up being world 10). So that's an LP that's not happening any time soon.

New poll: Have you played Star Road?

In the wake of my most recent LP announcement, I want to know how many of you actually know what game I'm talking about. Have you played Super Mario Star Road? Have you even heard of it? I have a pretty good idea of what's going to win, but I'd like to ask nonetheless.

Edit: Well damn, all my votes were lost again. Screw this. I'll get back to polls once they get their shit together.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Where are my poll results?

Well, seems like I lost the results for the current poll, through no fault of my own. I just came back to find out only one solitary vote is left for the Hidden Grottoes. Great. I'll keep the poll up in the event that the votes miraculously come back, but I might be hoping for too much here. All I really remember is the nail-biting affair between the Fanservice Tournament and Challenge Mode (as I really don't think anyone really cares about Easy mode, though to be fair this probably is the hardest main series game thus far even without Challenge Mode), and how poorly the Funfest Missions and Join Avenue did. I'm not sure if it's because most people have yet to realize their true potential, but nonetheless, it's good to remember that Funfest Missions are the best way to grind for all kinds of stuff, especially shards (though before the post-game which shards you find depend on your version, sadly), while Join Avenue gives you discounts that quickly stack up when you level it up. Just saying.

Edit: Another vote came in, yet the vote total still says "1", and both options with a vote have 100%. This thing is borked beyond repair.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Nintendo botches PWT download

From Serebii:

For those of you with the international games, the first Pokémon World Tournament download tournament has been reissued due to an error in one of the finalist's teams. This error caused one of the trainers to have a team which did not reflect their team they used in the VGC. This reissue is currently live internationally, but not in the Japanese versions. At this time, it's not possible to redownload it if you have currently downloaded the errored one. As such, we've edited our Download Tournament page to include the new team.

Umm... how do you botch that? It's not just one Pokémon they got wrong, it's THE ENTIRE TEAM. I'm thinking maybe it's a quarter-finalist's team or something that got on there by accident, but don't they proofread that stuff to make sure they get it right? Sucks for the people who already downloaded that thing only to find they have the wrong team, and due to the way the game is programmed it's impossible to patch or fix. Also sucks for the guy who actually won the right to have his team on there, even though they changed it a few days in.

On another note, I would like to ask anyone with knowledge of the VGC metagame a question. Why are there so many Hitmontops and Cresselias on these teams? Why are they so much better in a VGC setting than in standard singles OU?

Sunday, October 14, 2012

New poll: Favorite new BW2 feature

Self-explanatory. Now that the game is out worldwide, it's a good time to ask. If you're not far enough to have experienced these features, don't worry, I'll be leaving this poll up for a little while.

Anyway, from my experience, it's hard to choose because there's so much amazing stuff. Join Avenue allows you to buy stuff you couldn't ever dream of buying before, and the discounts on level up really provide incentive to keep coming back. Pokéstar Studios may be the best mini-game ever. Pokéthlon was great, but this is like puzzles, except with Pokémon battles. Of course a crit can mean the recording is an insta-fail, but otherwise it's a really clever concept, along with the strange ending mechanic. The Fanservice Tournament may be pure fanservice and a re-skin of Emerald's Battle Dome, but hey, it's really fun with all the modes you can choose from, and all the old characters thrown in for the gratuitous fangirl squeals.

The Hidden Grottoes are a great addition, allowing you to get extra items and DW Pokémon, even though the idea is fairly simple. The Funfest missions are a slight step up from the missions in the first game, but they're still not all that amazing. The medals... well, Pokémon finally hops on the achievement bandwagon, and it works great. I haven't tried the Black Skyscraper / White Treehollow yet, so I can't say anything about it. Same for Easy and Challenge modes, though these are fairly self-explanatory anyway. Same for the Memory Link events. Putting them in the poll anyway.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The worst bell curve ever

239 votes later, a surprising amount of people wouldn't mind if I did a U-turn and started making big fat bucks for LPing. Well, maybe big fat pennies, which are getting abolished soon, so I'm left with nothing. Still, you weren't nearly as harsh as I thought you would. I expected the results to have a nice bell curve, but seems like that bell was clobbered with a baseball bat or ten. Well, five people said "instant unsub", but I wouldn't blame you after everything I said. That was the major factor for many of you, since I've repeated my opposition to making money off these videos so many time. 56 voters said they'd be very annoyed and disappointed, ant 47 would be a bit peeved. A shocking 111 wouldn't care at all, even after all the approval I got over how I handled things, which I thought translated to a disdain for partnership or something like that. Finally, 22 voters think I should've accepted the first offer YouTube made to me over two years ago.

The real fun part is this: I expected more generalized annoyance at the prospect of monetization, not just because of my hardline stance, but because of the... unsavory types any kind of partnership would attract, and a certain obligation to keep them around because they make me money. They'd be stupid, they'd smell, they'd troll, but hey, free money. Food for thought.

No new poll for now, I'm drawing a blank. Sorry.

SSB roster: critical mass reached?

There has been much talk lately about the possibility of the next installment of the Super Smash Bros. series axing some characters to make some room for new blood, considering the developers themselves estimate that the 35 characters Brawl had already formed a very sizable roster. So clearly, if we are to see anything else than Brawl all over again, something has to give. But who? While no one was lost between the original and Melee, Brawl saw Dr. Mario, Pichu and Roy fail to return (not counting Young Link since it was basically a re-skin). And to be quite honest with you, these are the three characters any good axing list should've had. In that order. So clearly they did it right that time.

I've read a top 10 list about it a few weeks ago, but I cannot for the life of me find it again. Nonetheless, one flaw about that list is that it blatantly ignores the enormous popularity of certain characters, most notably Jigglypuff, in Japan. "No one likes Jigglypuff", they say. Maybe take a look outside of America for a change?

Anyway, who should go? My first pick would have to be Toon Link. Sure, it's the only Zelda character that's not calamitously bad in Brawl, but that's nothing a few buffs to regular Link couldn't fix. Two Links are one too many, period. Wolf is much the same. I mean, Fox and Falco are already similar enough, did we need another clone? Can this guy and never look back.

Mr. Game & Watch and ROB should also be considered. Joke characters are nice, but when your roster reaches critical mass they should be the first to go. Major props to the game designers for managing to make them major factors in Subspace Emissary without making everyone go "WTF were they smoking?", but that's all the more reason to make them go out with a bang.

I know I've already mentioned Jigglypuff, but I think it should go too. As I said before, the "nobody likes it" reason is BS. My reasoning is, it brings nothing to the table. It's like it's a joke character in its own right. Yes, I know it was top tier in Melee, but theoretically anything can be top tier if the numbers the programmers punch in are high enough. Besides, yes, it's popular in Japan, but the big difference between it and the rest of the roster is that it isn't elsewhere. By that logic Tingle should be a playable character too next time.

And finally, either Ness or Lucas. Shouldn't need to explain why (and no, it's not because of my personal disdain for Mother). Which one? Your pick. Ness' game actually had an international release, but by now just about everyone with any interest in the Mother series already played the Mother 3 fan translation. Lucas is also fresher in everyone's minds, is generally speaking a more interesting character, and stars in a slightly better game. Okay, that probably doesn't matter, but the point is, one of the two has to go.

Finally, I should mention one thing: I've seen many people suggest that the Ice Climbers and Olimar should be axed. I have to disagree with that, purely for gameplay reasons. These two are arguably the most unorthodox characters in the game, and killing off all the variety in that particular aspect of the game just doesn't sound very appealing to me. As for Lucario, it might get ditched based on the fact that it was one of gen 4's mandatory overmarketed Pokémon and this isn't gen 4 anymore, but I kind of want it to stay on board, because other than that I can't make a strong case against it.

So that's six characters in total that I wouldn't mind seeing dropped. That's a fair amount of space to introduce new characters, especially if they decided to increase the roster size slightly, to say, 40.

Now, what about you? Who would you like to get rid of if it comes down to that?

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Unusual YouTube phenomenon spotted!

Take a look at this playlist, if you will. Pay special attention to the view counts. Spot anything weird?

Yeah, I have no idea how that happened either. One video in a series gets over four million views, yet aside from the finale the rest is in four-digit land. That means less than one in a thousand people who watched that one video then watched the rest of the series. Talk about poor retention! Of course, a hint may be in the like/dislike bar for that one with the four million views. I mean, when I ended up in Chugga's related videos all of my work's viewership skyrocketed, not just one video.

Branching out to the rest of his channel, sort all his videos by popularity. One video with 14 million views (and quite unpopular to boot), eight more over a million, and countless others in the six digits. And yet he barely has more subscribers than I do. My highest video has 160000 views, and I only have two others above 100000. How does THAT happen?

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Scumbag radio station

I've already ranted about radio stations a few times before, so this isn't completely unfamiliar territory. Well here's a fun little tidbit for you... the radio station that's on at work advertises that they play 16 songs every hour. Do the math and multiply 16 by your average song's duration, and you come pretty close to nonstop music. But of course there has to be ads in there, and they gotta give DJs some airtime too... so what do you think they do? They cut out half of most songs they play. No, really. Now technically this means their advertising is accurate, but to be perfectly honest with you I'd find it a lot better if they just played less songs, but in their entirety. Especially considering you'll be hearing many songs twice over the course of the day... and that's just during regular business hours, too.

So that's the radio business for you. Conventional radio channels suck for a variety of reasons, satellite radio channels suck for other reasons entirely. Whoever wins, we lose.