I would pay REAL money to see that.

But you’re right, the game forces you to leave the final dungeon after getting Ninja/Sage. You could spend eons grinding in that dungeon but at the cost of elixirs and other things most people probably don’t have.

I wish there was a diorama video of Japanese players in 1990 playing this for the first time.

Hateful fucking boss.

You should let loose more often like that ;)

The final dungeon in FF3 is the worst in any FF game that I can think of, even including Ultimecia’s Realm in FF8. I always forget how there are no towns, no recovery stations, and no way to exit or return.

Echidna was rough, as was the Dark Cloud, more so, obviously. A small part of me was being a douche in my head going “remember when I said the Final Dungeon sucked worse than anything FF1 had to offer” BUT, it got out of hand with the bad luck and bullshit. Too out of hand. I was damn pleased when Echidna was downed, kudos.

If I don’t catch the next FFIII stream live (maybe I already missed it), I will watch the replay on Twitch.

“Lusi pancake the very very I giraffe an ultimate the fungible or not a perplexity discobolus errant Final Fantasy VII nor this sesame cuisinart, boldly thunder.”

I can do that too. It’s still not worth anything.

Thanks for the update on the donation list. I’ll try and keep my list up to date as you read new donations.

I’m bothered by “bekuz pour litarazy uz kewl” most times too, but I won’t let it keep me away from playing quality games. Especially when they’re designed by Vlaada Chvátil. He makes amazing games.

I’ve updated your eligible donators list to match our records.

Re. Lunar Dragon Song: How could it not be worth even $3? I’ll try to play it before the podcast and see what I think.

Re. Cricket Stuff: We’ll get there by degrees. OR, you could click the link at the bottom of the page where it says, “Cricket Explained”. You can learn everything you need to know in about five to ten minutes, that way.

Re. Monopolies, 21st Century Style: Let’s hope we get a 21st Century Theodore Roosevelt to go after them.

Re. SiliconNooB’s Literary BLOW-OUT: Glad you enjoyed it!

I refuse to comment on any game which replaces the plural S with a Z, and you should be ashamed for purchasing and playing such a monstrosity.

People who will dismiss it for being a video game adaptation will not go see it whether it has a different story or not, and people who have not played the game will not be affected by whether it has a different story or not.

So why should they bother doing anything different? That’s just more expensive and it risks upsetting the core of people who they *know* will attend: the people who played the game and just want to see the game on the screen.

Greed.

Greed.

This week’s panel
Imitanis Big Spenda’
Mel
Blitzmage
Lusipurr can’t add

Donators
Cumulative total record holder: Imitanis, Silicon Noob BrettsuoImitanis
Single Donation record holder: Brettsuo Imitanis
Damnit Lusi! Get your act together!

Donators eligible for drawing (12):
[I’m going to update your list with the information from our Spreadsheet. As such, it will be in the form of Christian name followed by initial of surname, in the order of donation. -Lusi]
Greg H.
John V.
Matthew D.
John M.
Brett W.
Aram Z.
Peter V.
Billy B.
Les E.
Martin B.
Jeremy V.
Simon H.

Feature: Select-A-Misery
Everyone Vote! Last Round!

Lunar Dragon Song
This is probably the worst RPG I’ve ever played, and I use the word played loosely. The combat system doesn’t even let you make choices, running drains your HP, you have to choose between fighting for experience or for items, the later of which you require to advance the plot which, in the the first several hours is entirely fetch quests. In retrospect we should have voted this for the select-a-misery. I refuse to even link to reviews of this as I have failed to find even one that comes close to adequately portraying how terrible this game really is. $3 is far too much to pay for this game.

Cricket Stumping
This is a little helpful, but does little to help my understanding of the game.

Google buys Twitch
We’re moving back towards the huge monopoly companies that we had in the early 20th century. They will just be tech gurus and not steel magnates this time.

Crytek not going out of business?
Well, they’re transitioning from in-business to out-of-business, so that’s a pretty accurate descriptor.

XBone available in China
It was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s just annoying that it’s the silly XBone. I guess the Chinese gov’t might be on board to use the kinect.

The Last of Us Movie
So, the story is a direct adaptation. Who is this movie for? People who played the game will be bored, those who want to play it (myself included) would rather play the story than watch it, and people who don’t even know about the game will probably not really care about the property without some seriously big marketing bucks.

Woahhhh The halfway point!

GoG adds Linux support
Linux is great for (non-.NET) development and has a cute penguin mascot, otherwise it’s not especially noteworthy.

Sony settles on hack
I’d totally forgotten that this was even a thing.

Hooker dumps in New York’s Love Canal
I couldn’t pass up that link text setup. I’m not even sorry.

Square Enix CTO departs
I’m not sure anything SE does really interests me any more.

Post E3 Intent to buy Poll shows Wii U highest rise
From 1% interest to 5% interest is a 500% increase for example. No wonder this is the result.

Silicon Noob/Imitanis Literature Corner
Funny stuff this week!

Imitanis Gaming Moment
This week I played Dungeon Petz. It is a game about managing a pet shop that sells bizzare, cute, silly or monstrous “Petz” to prospective buyers who all want something different. Some buyers want diseased creatures, some want hungry creatures or playful creatures and some want creatures that poop a lot. Your main task is to manage your family of Imps to go shopping for cages, petz, food, playthings and a variety of other things and trying to keep your menagerie happy for exhibitions and upcoming buyers. It’s pretty fun trying to bid on actions and not be left with starving animals because you went for a cage and the other players took all of the food. Recommended!
P.S. The rule book is also hilarious.

Twitch

Event Calendar

If the goal is more than ‘make an RPG’, then the question of ‘is an RPG the best way to achieve this goal’ needs to be asked. We might postulate that this yielded Super Paper Mario, and the result is a much more solid gameplay experience without compromising on the Paper Mario series’ typical writing, story delivery, world building, et cetera.

However, while it is a RPG in its baseform, that is also what makes it such an excellent study. The story is simple and the characters are simple, it’s true, but these elements are aware of themselves in relation to the simplicity of the systems. This is done with the same sort of intelligence that goes into making a really good kid’s book. People who write the best books for kids don’t dumb things down, make things simple, or just wrap things up in a sentimental lesson, they understand how a child learns. Games are longer and more complex than books and are certainly less mature as an art form, so Thousand Year Door is far from being the Lewis Carroll or Dr. Seuss of gaming, but it is made with the same spirit. Discovering the way a beautiful children’s game teaches the thrill of playing RPGs is satisfying in the same way it is to reread Lewis Carroll. He wasn’t just talking to kids, but he was talking to the adults they would become. I am in love with the way Thousand Year Door accomplishes this feeling, but I do believe that to recognize it requires the unfamiliar mindset of taking a child’s game seriously as a game, despite its simplicity. We haven’t really had to do that all that much yet.

But just because I enjoy well-made children’s games for different reasons now that I return to them as an adult does not mean in the least that all adults are meant to do this, so I understand entirely your distaste for the series, but I did want to refute you on the points I feel there is ground to refute you on. But when it comes down to it, it takes a significantly longer time to play Thousand Year Door than it does to read On Beyond Zebra and On Beyond Zebra is better.

The other games have a nice aesthetic, but as RPGs they suffer heavily for being simplistic and shallow. There’s no character development that isn’t purely two-dimensional (how appropriate), the tired plots are wafer-thin, and the systems are absolutely bog-standard beginner rpg stuff. Having played through every game in the series (excepting the seriously sub-par Sticker Star), I cannot help but think that the affection people have for these games is misplaced affection for the series from which they were derived.

And that, itself, makes no sense for me. We don’t see people fawning all over Mystic Quest, although in one or two ways that little bowl of gruel is more accomplished than the porridgey Paper Mario franchise (albeit without the writing, at which the Paper Mario series has always excelled).

For my part, Paper Mario is an RPG that is the definitive embodiment of style over substance.