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DOUBLE CLICK HERE posted:I think it some variant of Stronghold Crusader 1 or 2. That sounds right. Nick couldn't even get off the starting level it was so hard.
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Aug 7, 2015 09:31
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As far as podcast jingles go, the WOFF theme is my favorite. It's just so gosh darn pleasant. That's one of Gary's, right?
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Aug 7, 2015 09:41
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HMS Boromir posted:As far as podcast jingles go, the WOFF theme is my favorite. It's just so gosh darn pleasant. That's one of Gary's, right? Seriously. Every time a new ep comes out I think about stripping it out just to listen to on its own when the mood strikes.
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Aug 7, 2015 12:45
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HMS Boromir posted:As far as podcast jingles go, the WOFF theme is my favorite. It's just so gosh darn pleasant. That's one of Gary's, right? EC posted:Seriously. Every time a new ep comes out I think about stripping it out just to listen to on its own when the mood strikes. Save yourself the time and throw them a couple of bucks for it: http://duckfeed.tv/store/woff-digital-fun-pak
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Aug 7, 2015 13:16
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The theme that pisses me off is the closing theme for Abject Suffering. It seems like it's intended to be bad, but it is so catchy and I love it. That always give me a moment of worry that aesthetics aren't actually a thing and we all just respond to familiarity. Yes, a Mario Paint song gives me existential terrors.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:08
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I think Gary mentioned at one point that he wanted to make the Abject Suffering music appropriately bad without making it actually unpleasant to listen to, so I think he pretty much hit the mark there.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:32
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Song For The Deaf posted:Not to build it up too much, but the WOFF! about Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is one of my favorite episodes this year. Really enjoyed this episode. I am much more in Gary's camp about that game and it was nice to hear someone articulate all the problems I had with it, which can mostly be summarized as the tendency to overexplain and repeat things that I basically associate with Japanese writing at this point, unfairly or not. The game is sooo much longer than it needs to be, I doubt I could even finish it if I played it today versus 5 years ago.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:28
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AllisonByProxy posted:Save yourself the time and throw them a couple of bucks for it: http://duckfeed.tv/store/woff-digital-fun-pak I've listened to podcasts at 1.5x speed for too long and now all "normal" versions of their theme songs just sound wrong and slow to me 
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Aug 7, 2015 19:30
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Thanks for the kind words, guys. You can also become our Patron at any level and download the big compilation of pod music I made that includes the alternative Metroid, Fallout and Mario Paint versions of the theme I did. I don't know if I ever wanted the ending them to Abject Suffering to be bad but I did want it to sound tense. The first theme is us going into the games with open hearts and then the ending theme is the queasy aftermath. So It Goes posted:Really enjoyed this episode. I am much more in Gary's camp about that game and it was nice to hear someone articulate all the problems I had with it, which can mostly be summarized as the tendency to overexplain and repeat things that I basically associate with Japanese writing at this point, unfairly or not. The game is sooo much longer than it needs to be, I doubt I could even finish it if I played it today versus 5 years ago. Absolutely this. I feel weird and racist thinking it but I keep running into examples of tortured Japanese writing filled with too much exposition in video games. A lot of writing in western games (or all games) is bad but it seems like this particular sin comes up in Japanese games more than anything. It's a huge turn off for me. I'd love to see Raymond Carver's editor tackle something like 999. Or any editor, really. Woffle fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 21:32
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Woffle posted:Absolutely this. I feel weird and racist thinking it but I keep running into examples of tortured Japanese writing filled with too much exposition in video games. A lot of writing in western games (or all games) is bad but it seems like this particular sin comes up in Japanese games more than anything. It's a huge turn off for me. I mean, one of your earlier episodes apparently called the japanese born to be autists, so it's consistent.
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Aug 7, 2015 21:52
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Apparently Japanese is just such an imprecise language that it's become a cultural norm to repeat oneself to avoid misunderstandings, and this is definitely reflected in most translated media. It doesn't really bother me that much, and I think most good translations, like Phoenix Wright, make the best of it by adding more character to the dialogue.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:11
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Most translations nowadays are from relatively cheap localizations (in terms of big companies) and shortcutting a repeat saves them so many days of work. It's also a thing when the japanese meddle into the localization more, compare MGS1 to future MGS when Kojima was more involved in the dialogue, and then compare Revengence which had the least Kojima involvement. There's also the context of database culture, where creators design based on a trope first because that is the quickest way to recognize and sell in a country where anything outside of mobile and dedicated handheld games have been on the decline for the past decade quote:It's part of a syndrome in Japanese stuff called "Database Culture" where familiar uncontroversial characters are recycled again and again with minor differences because it makes it easier to pander to otaku if they can effectively pick the familiar and like it without context. The Senran Kagura characters are mixes of generic archetypes with anime/cultural in-jokes and lots of big ol' titties. For literally any character in the game you could trace almost every element of them back to something else that way popular that they are a knock-off of. A huge chunk of their attack animations, weapons, character dialogue or backstories are either intentional cliches (usually played up for comedic effect) or references to other things. For example there's a character with a Pile Bunker who makes shot-for-shot references to the Alt Eisen, another who uses Saint Seiya attacks, another who has a GaoGaoGar-themed super move, and so-on.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:26
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If Gary ever really wanted to torture himself, the Golden Sun games are the classic example of Japanese writing that is absurdly wordy to convey extremely basic information and plot. http://lparchive.org/Golden-Sun/ is one of my favorite LPs. I think I have a soft spot for listening to people tear apart things I didn't enjoy (but still played for some reason; ah the joy of being a kid and having low standards and endless time and patience). Quovak posted:In case 70,000 words somehow seems low, I'll refer again to my thread title. The original Metal Gear Solid game script is about 36,000 words. Metal Gear Solid 2, as in the game that has a 45-minute conversation about meme theory between the penultimate and final bosses, is about 47,000 (both of these are for all the mandatory cutscenes, not including optional CODEC calls. Likewise, the GS count doesn't include NPC flavor text). Golden Sun is chock full of characters constantly repeating themselves (and each other). Also, every single dungeon is a maze with random battles to fill up your time for when you turned left but there is a locked door down the path and you should have turned right 2 random battles ago haha.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:58
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Even when characters aren't saying anything they are saying too much.
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Aug 8, 2015 00:27
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Golden Sun is one of those topics where SA is basically a hive mind in opposition to the rest of the internet. See: Third edition D&D, Fallout 3.
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Aug 8, 2015 01:44
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Golden Sun is one of those topics where SA is basically a hive mind in opposition to the rest of the internet. To be fair: I will never tell someone they're wrong for having enjoyed that game, but I will absolutely tell someone they're wrong if they think it's a good game. The GS series is one of the worst-written tedious slogs in standard JRPGs. It also comes the closest to the uuuuuugly appearance of GBC-only titles you can get on the GBA.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:15
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DARKSEID DICK PICS posted:To be fair: I will never tell someone they're wrong for having enjoyed that game, but I will absolutely tell someone they're wrong if they think it's a good game. The GS series is one of the worst-written tedious slogs in standard JRPGs. It also comes the closest to the uuuuuugly appearance of GBC-only titles you can get on the GBA. On top of all of that, it uses Camelot's awful engine where all the agency the player has is "Yes  " and "No ".I forget, did you finish your LP of the series, or did it drive you to madness as well?
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Aug 8, 2015 02:34
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DARKSEID DICK PICS posted:To be fair: I will never tell someone they're wrong for having enjoyed that game, but I will absolutely tell someone they're wrong if they think it's a good game. The GS series is one of the worst-written tedious slogs in standard JRPGs. It also comes the closest to the uuuuuugly appearance of GBC-only titles you can get on the GBA. I'm not disagreeing, just noting. I haven't played Golden Sun in at least a decade.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:37
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Golden Sun had some neat level design ideas. All the psychic powers that let you physically manipulate puzzles. Stuff like the tools in Wild Arms and Lufia 2 are so rare in RPGs where "good" dungeon design is a straight line with the occasional dead-end treasure.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:42
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DoubleNegative posted:On top of all of that, it uses Camelot's awful engine where all the agency the player has is "Yes I finished GS1, got my payment, and quickly hosed right off on ever replaying GS2. Said payment included GSDS so they got the last laugh. It's still on my shelf, mocking me. My first experience with it ended with me trapped in a 7-minute loop of recapping the first game and I never put it back in the DS. al-azad posted:Golden Sun had some neat level design ideas. All the psychic powers that let you physically manipulate puzzles. Stuff like the tools in Wild Arms and Lufia 2 are so rare in RPGs where "good" dungeon design is a straight line with the occasional dead-end treasure. Or that you had 3-4 seperate "ghost hand" spells. I JUST REMEMBERED HOW POORLY THEY USED THAT CONCEPT TOO AND I'M MAD ALL OVER GODDAMNIT.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:42
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Oh yeah, regarding 999 and its wordiness it's a branch of VN called NVL as in it's a proper visual novel unlike say Phoenix Wright which is ADV or "adventure." There's definitely a desire to fill the screen-long text boxes and often these games don't take full advantage of the visual aspect that the medium allows you. These kind of games are far more static than the more animation laden games and they bloat their word count because people are paying 8,000 to 10,000 yen for this stuff. It's not fair to say that "wordiness" is ingrained into the culture, especially not a culture that invented the haiku and has an onomatopoeia for expressing silence. Hiroki Azuma's "database culture" is a good explanation of the breakdown in pop culture media. You can also see a similar approach in weekly anime where episodes have to be frequently padded to match the manga it's based on. This gives you the classic Western example of "Goku continues to power the spirit bomb, ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF DRAGON BALL Z." But then you look at a Ghibli film or Dark Souls where dialog is sparse, curt, and they adopt a show-don't-tell attitude. e: I forget if there's a legit term for it, but Western translations of Japanese media will actually add dialog! If you ever watch a dub and someone is talking during a scrolling panorama or with their back turned I guarantee you that dialog was added. Probably doesn't happen in games very often but I think it's funny. al-azad fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 02:50
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Woffle posted:Absolutely this. I feel weird and racist thinking it but I keep running into examples of tortured Japanese writing filled with too much exposition in video games. A lot of writing in western games (or all games) is bad but it seems like this particular sin comes up in Japanese games more than anything. It's a huge turn off for me. Don't worry, weird and racist screeds seem to be the free space on the bingo card of people talking about Japanese media. I think it's safe to just say it's a badly written game. I don't understand the insistence on pushing tortured essentialist culture arguments about how the Japanese are fundamentally different than the white man because you don't like a piece of media made by them. I mean I do understand, it's racism, but it's dumb and bad and people should stop it. Especially given that the people making the arguments lots of times don't seem to actually have any familiarity with Japanese media or culture beyond secondhand stories and bits and pieces. "I watched 3 episodes of DBZ 15 years ago on Toonami, so here's an 8 page essay about how standing around and talking about Spirit Bombs is an extremely problematic aspect of Japanese culture" icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 03:03
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Golden Sun is frustrating in some parts and the story is pretty awful. Not sure how many people in general really really like it, I only hear about Isaac for Smash Bros stuff. Replaying it now and reading that LP brings back memories of how boring those puzzle sections were. The Mario RPG games did it a little better. Funny enough I think Camelot's best RPG was Mario Tennis Power Tour. That quote about dialogue in Golden Sun compared to Metal Gear is mindblowing.
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Aug 8, 2015 03:11
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MinibarMatchman posted:Funny enough I think Camelot's best RPG was Mario Tennis Power Tour. I think it might vary depending on personal taste but yeah, I think any sane person will admit Camelot's best RPG was (insert preferred Mario sport title here). (For me it was Golf.)
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Aug 8, 2015 03:15
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Tae posted:There's also the context of database culture, where creators design based on a trope first because that is the quickest way to recognize and sell in a country where anything outside of mobile and dedicated handheld games have been on the decline for the past decade Is that really a Japanese-specific thing, though? American media does the same thing. Heck the base instinct of popular media is to look at what is most popular and furiously produce things meant to remind consumers of that thing they already like (See: the endless parade of similar young-adult movies when Twilight became popular, or the practice of rebooting old franchises)
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Aug 8, 2015 03:19
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I think it's partly that it's a different set of tropes than those used in American/non-Japanese media, so people notice them more
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Aug 8, 2015 03:21
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My favorite thing in the world is goons calling random story elements in videogames "anime".
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Aug 8, 2015 03:30
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With my body wracked by food poisoning, I've spent the day in bed playing Virtue's Last Reward. The translation is so much better, and my recollections about the gameplay concerns are validated.
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Aug 8, 2015 03:59
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There's a kernel of racism in a lot of this stuff I'm sure but you've watched a heckin lot of anime so I'm not entirely clear on what point you're trying to make here. Do you disagree with the idea that there's a few very specific kinds of bad writing going around in Japanese media (that ends up as even more of a broken record in English when lovely localizers get their hands on it) or is this just a reaction to the uncomfortable "oh Japan!" way people tend to react to that bad writing? I'm with you on that second one, just wanted to make sure that's what you mean. Regarding VLR, I read Let's Plays of both games since I don't own any handhelds, so the QOL improvements didn't affect me, and I didn't think there was anything special about the translation. The game completely lost me when it decided to have a character change how they vote based on how you vote despite not even being a morphogenetic wizard which left such a bad taste in my mouth that I can't call it an improvement over 999. Makes me feel like a huge nerd idiot to have that one detail sour me on the whole story, but oh well. HMS Boromir fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 06:19
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My takeaway from VLR:
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Aug 8, 2015 08:14
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Tae posted:I mean, one of your earlier episodes apparently called the japanese born to be autists, so it's consistent. I don't remember this but if I said it, I wish I hadn't. I don't *feel* like I'm being overtly racist. There can be stylistic elements or themes that can be more prevalent in one culture over another. I like to think I've divested myself of any sort of "LOL JAPAN!?" reactions but I also don't think I'm completely making this up. I've also described plot or dialogue as being anime like, even though I'm aware there are all sorts of anime. It'd be like describing something as like a Lifetime movie or an HBO original series. Or even like a comic book, for a more apt comparison. You can say, "This felt like a comic book" and you get an idea across. You can do so without taking the time to note that there are hundreds of thousands of exceptions to what people mostly think of when they think of a comic book. It's not precise language and it's probably not best practices but I don't think it's a sin. Also, and this is going to seem like revisionist history but if I wasn't at work today, missing this discussion, I was going to bring up Golden Sun. Riff from VGHD did a poll on twitter as to what jrpg he should play next and Golden Sun won. I was cursing my monitor for not getting to him in time to stop him. Golden Sun is garbage. EDIT: I remember the other thing I wanted to mention- There are lots of style elements that I think of as being singularly Japanese that I love, mostly the mindfuck stuff. I love how weird Godhand or Deadly Premonition are. I love how dark Berserk gets. Those are things I think of as cultural too and hopefully that's not or LOLJAPAN!? I just want brevity in my words (posted at the bottom of a wall of text). Woffle fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 08:41
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Song For The Deaf posted:With my body wracked by food poisoning, I've spent the day in bed playing Virtue's Last Reward. The translation is so much better, and my recollections about the gameplay concerns are validated. YO Kole, I already replied to the facebook page but: 1) I am sorry I broke you with bad sea based puns 2) Splatoon does have "voice acting", but its nonsensical poo poo 3) Splatoon US localization is amazing and full of stupid puns and jokes. Callie and Marie are prime example of this:    It’s so loving stupid its wraps around and becomes good. 4) I wish i could form my thoughts about why splatoon is so good without sounding like an insane raving fanboy.
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Aug 8, 2015 08:49
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Also Phi sucks and I'll take an anime girlfriend over a cryptic rear end in a top hat any day.
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Aug 8, 2015 08:54
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I just listened to the Action 52 Abject Suffering and you two, Kole and Gary, were obliquely referencing some kind of controversy involving Vaati. What happened? I'm not tuned into the souls community so I'm entirely in the dark about what happened.
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Aug 8, 2015 08:59
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umalt posted:I just listened to the Action 52 Abject Suffering and you two, Kole and Gary, were obliquely referencing some kind of controversy involving Vaati. What happened? I'm not tuned into the souls community so I'm entirely in the dark about what happened. Here's a real good overview. http://kotaku.com/plagiarism-accusations-shake-up-dark-souls-community-1716528025 Vaati's response: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s281/sh/d8d3bffc-3866-46d5-924c-d3636f59644d/7adb7cc52beb8489 My take: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smvru1 Essentially, some people out there feel like he just aggregates content and outright steals a lot of blocking for his videos, along with some other weaker claims. We never did a full on debrief on the show because it'd mostly died down by the time we recorded.
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Aug 8, 2015 09:03
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I absolutely loved Golden Sun and Golden Sun 2 when I first got my GBA and had all the time in the world. I barely made it 30 minutes into the DS version, and I don't think there was much difference really, I'd just developed the jrpg fatigue. I would actually be really interested in a breakdown of how bad writing manifest in different cultures.
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Aug 8, 2015 13:47
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I hate Golden Sun's writing so much that I have no qualms transposing its sins against the entire Japanese culture. Kraden: I have nothing further to add to the preceding post, but since this is Golden Sun here are some extra words by me, Kraden, renown scholar. So It Goes fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 14:05
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DARKSEID DICK PICS posted:It also comes the closest to the uuuuuugly appearance of GBC-only titles you can get on the GBA. What? I wouldn't recommend anyone bother with any of the Golden Sun games and I don't care for the art style but the visuals are one of those games' few strong points and were way ahead of anything on GBC.
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Aug 8, 2015 14:12
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Woffle posted:Here's a real good overview. http://kotaku.com/plagiarism-accusations-shake-up-dark-souls-community-1716528025 Thanks! It's actually somewhat more mundane than I was expecting, but I digress. Thanks again for putting the effort into explaining this for me!
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Aug 8, 2015 18:09
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I have no ties to the Souls community but I thought Five Nights At Freddy's fan theory videos were ridiculous. Dark Souls is something else entirely.
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Aug 8, 2015 19:29
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