Jotokun

Ah... the only one I know of is the emerald egg, so I cant help you there. Sorry.

I've played it... but might not be much help since I dont remember the names of the towns. Still, I'll answer if I can.

Face Shrine (Southern or Northern) - LA Eagle's Tower - LA Tarm Ruins - OoS Lanayru Mining Facility - SS Koloktos / Moldarch Battle - SS I'd suggest some more laid back themes, but most of them have already been covered to death.

Haven't played the game, only saw the trailer... but it was the first thing that hit me reading the title. That LSD one certainly looks like it fits the description.

They're both universally bad... but I'll go with games based on movies because of the major exception in Goldeneye. ROM hacks or from-scratch fan games?

...well, I guess that means I've been new over six months! maybe its time I changed that?

5. You think some old maps you found are an Ura Project beta. If you dont remember...

Lucy. Even if shaped by horrible circumstances, at least she has some understanding of the world around her. Clear skies or dark and rainy?

Well... you asked for an opinion. We disagree. That doesn't mean you or I are wrong, just that we look for different things out of the Zelda series. I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of OoT either. My first game was Link's Awakening, and I loved how tightly everything fit together. While OoT was 3D, I felt that the dialogue was overly simplistic and outside of the dungeons, the overworld was lacking. But it was an evolutionary stepping stone, and for that I see it as important, a milestone for the series. Majora's Mask expanded on that in pretty much every way, and is IMO the gold standard for 3D Zeldas. While the world was smaller, it was far more alive. It improved on the tightly integrated world of LA with its groundhog day loop that allowed every NPC to operate on a schedual, making them feel real. It threw Ganon/dorf aside, proving that while an important part of the series, Zelda does not rely on his presence. It showed that the Zelda series could go beyond the generic black and white world of morals and showed genuine examples of fear, sadness... and most importantly, the most genuine examples of joy and happiness. With the negative vibes to serve as a backdrop, the positive ones are more pronounced and better appreciated. Wind Waker was a step back in the realistic NPCs, but in most other respects was able to keep up with Majora's Mask. What looks on the surface like a bright cartoon is really one of the darker entries in the series. Everything has a backstory, every backstory shows a different set of colors than one may expect. Ganondorf being the best example, in WW its hard not to sympathise with him. The music was amazing, the difficulty for the combat was just right, and the visuals were stunning and still hold up today. The Triforce fetch quest is tedious, yes, but the dev team only went with it because they ran out of time. If you dont look at that one instance of padding, WW is a really strong entry. Twilight Princess, on the other hand, did nothing new. Transformation mechanic? MM. Twilight Realm? ALttP says hi. Ganondorf? Same old stereotypical villain Ganondorf instead of someone with a genuinely clear motive fueled by understandable reasoning. NPCs? Static and, for many of them downright annoying and unrelatable people . Fetch quest padding? Frequent. Combat? Wiggle the wii remote until victory. Puzzles? Press switch, hit glowing spot. Music? Aside from Midna's themes and remixes, bland and uninspiring. Overworld? Empty and oversized to realistically use for travel. There was nothing really "dark" about the game aside from your generic "Evil guy is taking over the land". Majora's mask worked because it went beyond that. Sick father with no way to help him? A fear that you cant run a business by yourself? Knowing you'll never achieve one of your life dreams? While in different forms, every one of those can potentially happen IRL. TP, not so much. Skyward Sword did a lot, and being the most recent Zelda game I'm kinda hesitant to talk about it even if it has been out a while for fear of spoiling something. However, as much as it tried to innovate, between the unusable motion controls and Mario64-esq hub world instead of a proper overworld makes it my least favorite entry in the series as far as the console games go. IMO, of the 3D console Zelda games, 1) Majora's Mask 2) Wind Waker 3) Ocarina of Time 4) Twilight Princess 5) Skyward Sword Again, this is just an opinion. Dont feel its a personal attack or something like that if you disagree.

-Zant was a badass --Too bad he was ... if they had made him I think TP would have had a stronger story. -Dark story that doesn't require you to really think about why it's so dark --Dark colors do not a dark story make. Dark for the sake of dark is cheap, and TP's feels cheap and forced. I'd say this is a fundamental flaw with, as you put it, not having to think about it as a grim story is only grim in comparison to something else. TP lacks that something else. -HUGE overworld --...with almost nothing to do in it -Beautiful soundtrack --Unmemorable soundtrack. The only songs I can remember from it are Midna's theme and Hyrule Field. The others reeked of generic. To add to that, the combat and puzzles (statue puzzle in the sacred grove aside) are way too easy. The light spirt / tears collection stuff made the first half of the game a complete drag to get through. Needless to say, TP is one of my least favorite Zeldas. I dont think its bad by any means, its great... but I dont think it hits the bar set by other games in the series. I'd actually argue that TP so far is a turning point in that everything from it onward isn't as good as earlier works. I dont want to sound like I'm mindlessly hating on it, so I'll leave with a positive... Stallord. Funnest. Boss fight. Ever.

Yeah, I think market saturation is going to hurt these things. Consumers dont need ten bajillion different versions of the same thing, and developers aren't going to waste their time on developing for something unless they know it'll sell a ton. With that said, I think smartphones are an exception because while they may be terrible game devices due to the lack of buttons, everyone has one for other reasons (calling/texting + web + email, etc.) and since they already carry them, why not have games on them? If most run the same OS (Android in this case) it kinda sidesteps the issue of dev support.

The Ouya does look like an overall better device, seeing as its got seniority which will hopefully draw dev attention and is fairly open. Myself, if I wanted something like this I would just plug my Nexus 10 into my TV and pair a bluetooth controller. Any Android device with HDMI out or Miracast would do.

Something to keep in mind, if a kid wants a violent game desperately enough, they can get it. My parents were pretty strict about me playing M rated games, and I remember when I was younger (very early teens) I really wanted to try out Grand Theft Auto. My solution? I pirated a copy... it was either III or Vice City, dont remember which. Anyone with an internet connection and a decent PC would be able to do it. In my case, I found the game kinda boring and didn't keep it for more than a few days... but the point is, while the parents have some say ultimately the best thing they can do is try to teach the difference between reality and fantasy. Because kids can turn to piracy, they can borrow from friends, they can get a points card to a digital distribution service and get a copy digitally... plenty of ways to circumvent parental watch. But yes, the majority of these cases are idiot parents.

Nothing will change. The fact is, those games sell and sane logic and research demonstrate NO link between them and violent crimes. The Supreme Court has also ruled video games as protected under the 1st amendment thanks to that Californian case a while back. Worst case scenario, we wait for the next big tragedy that the news will blow out of proportion, and the blame will shift from video games to global warming or North Korea or whatever the easiest scapegoat will be.

Definitely in agreement there... Coloseum-esq gameplay and plot + wild pokemon + free roaming and more fleshed out overworld (instead of that stupid map screen) would make for an epic main series game. I dont think the gyms have to be completely thrown out though... just make them 100% optional.

The vast majority of which occured in Gen II. Natures/Abilities werent until gen III, and since then all the notable changes are under-the-hood type things such as the physical/special split. The removal of poison/burn damage out of battle I'd argue is a bad thing (but that could just be because I'm a nuzlocke challenge convert). Still, I"m not sure what else they could add without fundamentally changing the game. So I can kinda forgive them for that.

Although I highly doubt it, I'm hoping to see a break from the 8 gyms and evil team plot that's long gone stale. I'm not saying they should be taken out, but rather perhaps made an optional sidequest to something else. As for what I expect? Not sure I can say beyond the obvious stuff (ex. roller skates) without seeing more. That trailer had very little aside from "Hey, 3D Gen 6 exists!"

A few 80mm fans for my desktop computer, a really cool looking old wooden chess set and a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse. The last one was an absolute godsend, I loved its predecessor (VX Nano) and used it so much that the left mouse button stopped working. Was going to see if I could repair it, but ended up losing the receiver for it. After that I had to switch to a bluetooth one I had lying around and it was pretty flakey and jittery. I've forgotten what it's like to have a silky smooth cursor... so nice to be back!

Every generation has its scapegoats. Before it was movies and TV, before then rock music, before then books, and so on. Sadly, this is something darwinism wont be able to correct... but give it 20-30 years and the scapegoat should change.

Unfortunately, at the moment I'm not. My schedule is a tad busy at this point, and as I mentioned I'm having trouble getting my dev environment properly set up. If those change before your competition starts I'll definitely let you know.

I fail to see the problem. I dont think this contest would have to be a full-on RPG, it could be a simpler puzzle game or short platformer. If my C# werent so rusty and I could get Monodevelop running properly on my machine (mac user, so no Visual Studio) I'd probably try entering such a contest. Edit: The concept sounds similar to the Ludum Dare competition. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

Not out of the box, but it might one day be possible from homebrew. The WiiU can run Wii Homebrew through an unpatchable exploit in Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and the Wii has some USB loaders for gamecube games. You'd still need a Wii to rip your games since the Wii U's optical drive wont physically work with that disk size, and there's the matter of no gamecube memory card slots or controller ports. But I wouldnt count it out just yet.

My awesomesauce hackintosh. Needless to say, I like my desktops clean. I'm actually running two monitors, a 1920x1080 and a 1440x900, but since I have no widgets or icons on the second screen and OS X is nice enough to separate them into multiple images when taking screenshots, I didn't see the need to post what would have basically been a cropped version of my wallpaper. Edit: Also strongly rethinking my image upload service, seeing as they reduced the resolution >_<

Not only is the redesign stupid (Title below videos now WTF?!?!?!), it seems less stable. Seems every other video will just abruptly halt now mid-playback, and not because it needs to buffer.

A cheap ~60gb SSD would be nice. I have a hackintosh, and would love to dual-boot with Windows for some games (havent been able to play Skyrim in a while, and Black Mesa looks great) but experience has taught me not to do so through partitioning. I'm with xdaniel though, the best gift is being able to see family.