RH

4 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Definitely resist the urge to spoil yourself at this point! So that trip to the esper gate wasn't what you expected, but the game is gonna surprise you eventually.

Honestly, just stay completely off guides until that point (and ideally a while after). FF6 is pretty straight forward and whenever you need to go somewhere specific to progress the story, the game always tells you quite clearly what it is you need to do, so I don't really think relying on a guide should be necessary at all.

 If you have any questions, better to ask here instead.

Yeah, I might.  I tend to pick up a guide at over world exploration times when I have an airship, or whatever.  I do not want to 100% this game but I do want to be sure I get key abilities and items as they are available.  I tend to skim the guides and look for items in each section like accessories.  I'll skim the abilities they recommend acquiring and if I don't feel they are that useful, I skip going for them.

The other times I use a guide is when I feel a bit stuck in a maze of a dungeon.  I have a feeling I partly know what's going to happen.  It's a minor trope of Squaresoft to make the #2 bad guy, surprise!, the #1 bad guy!  I'm guessing that Gestahl is about to be thrown off the raised island section, or something like that because Kefka is obviously magic-hungry and insane.

In fact, if I had one complaint about the story so far, I'd say this is my #1 complaint.  I don't know what's going to happen, but I've heard enough to know that Kefka is the antagonist for this whole game.  But, even knowing that going in, Kefke is so heavy-handed cruel and magic-hungry, Gestahl is a complete and obvious idiot for trusting Kefka as he absorbs every Esper within a 20 mile radius.  What do you think will happen?!

Well, I don't know for sure, but it's definitely not hard to guess!

13 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I don't know if you noticed, but which Esper you have equipped also affects which stats improve more when that character levels up, så espers really help shape your party. 

Personally I like this system much more than Materia because its tied to the characters! I always found the Materia system pretty silly because it ultimately didn't matter at all who I had in my party, I could just equip someone else with the exact same Materia.

First, yes, I did notice that. Fortunately I caught onto that quicker rather than later.  This also means I need to balance my player leveling so that if/when I get better Espers, I don't want to be at level 99 and have no way to further level stats!

Regarding Materia, though I can see your point, what I really loved about Materia was the way you could craft and couple the linking of the various abilities.  I know that individual players "no longer matter" but that's not 100% true.  Very few players had equipment that allowed for 4x double-pairing (IIRC) of Materia. Anyway, I prefer it, but to each their own.

1 minute ago, Reed Rothchild said:

FYI, I'm seeing this on mobile

Thanks, I'll see what I can do.  I use Dark Mode but I pasted the text in from another editor.  Do you use Light or Dark mode on this site?

Ok, I know this was asked on one of the first of these “Master Sets” but can someone give me explicit detail on what these are? I saw @Splain mentioned years ago that he intended to do this, but I’ve tried to Google this question and I haven’t gotten any answers.

What is this exactly and why does each set contain some unlicensed x-in-1 bootleg cart?

You’re cool man.  We all make mistakes.  No big deal. Live and learn and keep making awesome games.  I can tell you do it for the enjoyment of the experience and I think that’s really awesome.

I would argue that Code Monkey is right on this one because even to fix bugs, it’s not a truly 16 player game if it doesn’t “just work”.

But I do want to come here and say that it’s still “GB History” as the game, I assume, was intended to have this mode and with a big patch and not significant re-engineering, you pulled off a 16-player game on Game Boys.  I can’t even imagine how that’s possible with all of the cross-communication required from each device, back to one another.

Anyway, thanks for sharing and I can’t wait to see the full video.

I feel like I've made a comment or two like this over the years but again, thanks for sharing these posts.  They are fun to read and observe even if I don't download the associated ROMs when you provide them.

I like to see someone experimenting and making little games for handhelds and other devices.  Thanks for sharing, even if I am an uber-lurker for your posts.

Unfortunately, Awexome Cross doesn't work.  Yes, you can go to the above linked site, navigate to the game and start it but once you die, the obstacle sprites disappear on your second life on.  So you can kind of play it.  You just have one life and have to kill yourself for the next 3  to start over.

My friends and I use to play this one a bunch.  Flash Games were the killer games for pick-up-and-put-down time wasters.  In a way, they were the precursor to easily 95% of all mobile games out there.

My wife and I really enjoyed one called Moby Blaster, which was on the VeggiTales site and was a promo game for the VeggieTales Jonah movie.  It was an Arkanoid rip-off for sure, but they were a bit more generous on the power ups and if you got a ball multiplier a couple of times, it was very, very satisfying.  We played that together while we were dating but bored at our work.  We talk to each other on AIM and compare scores.

FYI, this is available for free today on GoG.

https://www.gog.com/#giveaway

I have very little time to play games, much less test all of these cool projects you work on, but I want to say I appreciate your diligence to keep making games for all of these vintage systems.  I know I’ve seen you make them for the F, 2600, Game Boy and Game Gear.  You made any games for any other systems?

I, too, made it to The Joker but no farther. Man, I loved that game so much but The Joker was just a brick wall so I never beat that game.

26 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

Me, Reed, and Wunderful are just gonna have a table conversation about how the 49ers are the GOAT in sports history no matter how many “facts” or “evidence” other teams may have for the claim. 

Sooooo many 49ers questions. 

Oh, and you could divide the lemon into four quads.  They can all then be the same image flipped and rotated with pallet swaps.

Lighter. I say put the light gradient on the top left, and a dark gradient on the bottom right.

I agree, legalese was the way to go. 

Sorry to hear about the struggle with ants.  Ants are bugs and like most vermin, they hang around if they have food/and or water.  Bathrooms provide moisture and, I think, they are sometimes attracted to the sugar in toothpaste, of which, there is likely residue everywhere, even if you clean your bathroom regularly--it just carries  from the micro-water droplets from when you brush your teeth.

Ants are also special because if your home is built over a colony, you will get them if it rains or the ground gets wet.  I know because I've lived this.   Raid isn't your answer.  The best my wife and I found was to have pest control come out.  They will ant bait around your house and put this gel substance in the nooks and crannies of wherever you seem to see the source of your ants in your home.

Ants may need food and water to thrive like all other bugs in a home, but they are... special because they are the definition of explorers in the bug kingdom.  They go where the smell "food", even if it's not there.  Fortunately, if they aren't anything but piss-ants (sorry, I don't know what else they are called) then they are really just a nuisance and not a real problem.  And by "problem", I mean they don't bite and don't really ruin or damage your home.  They are super-annoying, though and when we moved one of the greatest highlights was getting away from the dang ant colony our home was built on.

(FYI, we bought the home brand new and lived in it for about 5 years.  We kept the ants away most of the time by frequently calling pest control, but if we got a heavy rain, there was no stopping it.  The ants would move to get away from the rising water. You might be in the same situation.)

Hey man, I'll mention that I do skim your work because I do find Homebrew making fascinating and it's something I'd like to do but is super-low on a priority list.

I say I skim because since I rarely play old license games, I just like to keep up and see your progress, even though I might not download your games, though I might now just to take a look.

Anyway, I know this site has a blog feature, and there's nothing wrong with using it, but I think the people on this site have probably (like me) settled into our ways of engaging this place.  A different approach you could take for engagement is to create a new thread over in the Homebrew section for each game.  Then, as you add levels and make updates you can make a long string of posts that people can interact with.

In general, I think most of us come here and look at the "What's New" page and skim the new posts that have been made since we were last hear.   Seeing your various GB and GG games pop up under that same headers from time to time might get a bit more interaction.  I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I tend to just read the blog posts that are made by you or others and see them more as "articles", intended to be consumed and not engaged.  Forum threads, however, work better for back-and-forth community interaction because of how they are integrated into the site.

Just my $.02.  And I will try to comment more too.

14 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

I'm disappointed that tickets have been discontinued in favor of the debit cards they do now. Part of the magic of playing some of the games was hitting the jackpot and watching all the tickets spit out. The debit don't have that magical feeling.

I understand that feeling and there's strong nostalgia to it, but I like the pay once, play for X time setup.  However, if you do hit that BIG 5,000 ticket jackpot, you're going to waste all of your time waiting for your tickets to spit out.  And it is fun for about 5 minutes but after that you start feeling like there has to be a better way.

I kind of appreciate that the quick pay out promotes more game play time.  I think it's a net benefit, but that's just my opinion.

Showbiz was where it was at!

Still, Chuck E. Cheese is a good experience.  My wife and I use to go there for fun before we had kids (well, afterwards too.) It does feel a bit weird to be AN adult in there by yourself, but with a +1 or more, it feels fine.

I like it and I prefer the less adult-party atmosphere vs that of a place like Dave and Busters. The pizza is as you said too—good.  I’d rate it a 7 if 10.  Not the best, but far from the worst.   I think upper management understands what they are and as primarily a kids party joint, you don’t have to have the best pizza in town, but you also don’t want to be known for having bad pizza either.

Thanks, Shmup!   Good read!

I agree, this is a really good idea.  It’s a great way to build community.

They look like just a couple of guys, up to no good.

19 minutes ago, killerkobra said:

Wait...? Did you actually think it was still up for grabs and you were gonna swoop in and snag it?? Like I would actually advertise a sealed Metroid that I left behind??? HAHAHAHA

HA, no.  I just wanted extra context.  Plus, Kijiji is a Canadian thing, right?  I'm in the southern US, so I would not be trekking up there for a box of games. Well, maybe THAT box, but I wouldn't be looking for it there on Kijiji.

Oh dang.  About what year was this?  Also, I need to hear more about that Metroid?  Good condition?  Did you even try to negotiate it separately?  Oh, and where do you live?