darkchylde28

The strongest opinion, basically, lol. Lots of arguments back and forth about them, and whoever held out the longest got accepted.

My thoughts on it was that it wasn't a true recall-recall, but more of a "soft" recall, where they had all the warehoused stock pulled back or made unavailable, and what was already out at retail was out there. Hence you wouldn't hear stories from workers at Walmart or Hills or Ames or Kmart or Kaybee or Babbages talking about having to ship the stuff back, and only the warehouse workers for either Nintendo or perhaps some middleman distributors for Nintendo would really know what happened to all that stock that was sitting around. You're absolutely right that we really need some sort of firsthand statement or concrete evidence of what happened there, but that would also require one or more people doing a lot of networking and digging to make contact with as many people as possible who worked for Nintendo or their associates during that time period to find facts, and the thing is, people just aren't doing it--and for the most part, not even the "historians," in the hobby. I don't have the time or patience to go digging for it, but it was either stated by Howard Phillips in a thread on NA or someone on NA linked to an interview he did with someone who specifically asked about SE, and he outright said that there had to have been at least as many copies in existence as whatever Nintendo's MOQ was (I believe it was 10K), and he disputed the idea that Bandai could have gotten away with a partial order, etc. Basically it cost too much to reset everything on the manufacturing lines if you were asking for less units than their minimum, so Nintendo wasn't willing to budge at that time. He didn't know what became of all of the extra copies of the game that seemed to have disappeared from the public's hands (whether they were unsold and destroyed or repurposed for WCTM, sold out of the MOQ but everybody forgot about it, etc.) but was adamant about how Nintendo's manufacturing worked in those days, and the MOQ was the order of the day.

I agree that this idea becoming "fact" in the public consciousness is wrong. However, I don't think the leap to that conclusion is too farfetched, seeing as Howard Phillips himself confirmed a while back (perhaps on NA?) confirmed the minimum number of SE cartridges that had to exist (like 10K, IIRC) due to Nintendo's MOQ (minimum order quantity). When you compare the number of SE cartridges seen/documented to the amount of Tengen Tetris cartridges which still exist after an actual, legally mandated, documented recall was performed, it's clear that something similar had to be afoot. I want to say that either Howard Phillips or another Nintendo of America employee lent some credence to the idea via a thread on NA in its later years when their personal, sealed copy went up for sale, and they stated that it had come across their desk due to the title being recalled and all copies had been ordered to be destroyed so that Nintendo's would be the only one out there, and whoever had the sealed cart just hadn't gotten around to it. I think part of the issue with situations like this is that we have so many "armchair historians" in the hobby that when tidbits like those I mentioned above come up, everybody kind of expects these folks to make a record of all these sorts of details, and then we as a community find out years later that that didn't happen. If we as a community really want to know for certain how these things went down, someone will need to step up to actually document all of the little details, the sources for those, etc. If we had a thread or subforum or something for things like this, I don't think it would be as necessary to have one or more specific people keeping all the receipts on stuff, as it would be available to everybody, but we've semi-recently talked about something similar on here and there's not been an overwhelming approval for it.

This seems like a decent idea. I'd be willing to go through and catalog all of my stuff here (or wherever) in order to help improve the accuracy/sample size. One caveat, though, would be that it would really need to calculate things on-the-fly and people would really need to willing to be on top of updating their collections as they sold/traded things off, as otherwise you could end up with a dozen people all "owning" the same copy of a rare game that keeps getting resold again and again.

I'm pretty certain he means hard copies, as if he includes ROM files, then anybody with the knowledge to find and download them could be considered "prototype owners."

I mean, for the longest time, my wife and I used a passive antenna I built out of a thin board and 4 coat hangers and got great signal out of all the channels available to us until they moved the transmitters for the two stations we watched the most about 40-50 miles further away. At that point I picked up a ~$20 powered set of rabbit ears and have used those ever since. OTA TV really hasn't changed much since the digital switchover beyond having to have a digital decoder of some sort and digital signals being a lot more sensitive/finicky than the analog ones were. In the old days, if you had a big storm come through, a marginal signal that looked strong would go a bit fuzzy, whereas today you'll get a lot of pixelization and skipping audio, if not outright signal dropout until the interference has passed (think of what a skipping/dirty DVD looks and acts like). If you've got a powered antenna, some of that can be mitigated, but you're still at the mercy of the elements to a large degree. Still beats paying an arm and a leg and a kidney for cable, though. My wife and I have never had cable TV from the time we got married and haven't missed it all. She grew up in a household that always had basic cable, but apparently never got control of the TV enough to really worry about it too much. My family had cable (including HBO!) when I was very little, up until our big move from where I was born to where I grew up. Then, we were strictly an OTA family from the time I started grade school through when I was in college. The only reason my parents' house ended up with basic cable was because I paid to have broadband installed (6th in our city!) and basic cable was included since it couldn't be blocked without blocking the internet service. Even paying for the service, it was rare for me to sit down and watch anything on it, as I worked a lot and spent most of my spare time playing games of doing things on the internet, so I didn't miss it at all when I moved out and got married. By the time my kids came along, my mother in law had cut the cord as well, so neither of my kids have any real idea what cable TV is and only semi-recently learned what OTA TV was when I connected our powered antenna back up to our TV. I'm pretty sure that they just thought that everything had always been random streaming services and hard-copy media (tapes, discs, etc.) until they saw me scanning through the newer stations that we were suddenly getting. Generally speaking, basic rabbit ears will work, but I've read that some additional tweaks tend to be done or need to be done to modern versions in order to pick up the digital signals a bit better. My grandmother's huge, powered, roof mounted antenna from the 60s generally pulls in digital TV great, but there are certain channels that will go in and out at certain times of day like clockwork, apparently due to them playing with the frequency slightly at those times. My cousins who live next door have no such issue with those channels, but they're using a modern antenna that's specifically built/marketed/etc. for digital signals. I'd say your proximity to the transmitters alleviates these sorts of issues for you, as both my house and my relatives' houses are all at least 40-50 miles away from their respective transmitters (which is wild in my case, as my house is about a mile from the local TV station, but they beam their signal 40-50 miles out to a mountaintop to broadcast it).

Just a heads up, it looks like you tried to link to a photo that's in your Gmail, and, as such, none of us are able to see it, just the big link which goes nowhere. If I open it in another tab it shows the Gmail logo in the tab and just says "Gone" and "Error 410" in the tab.

Yeah, but as I said the last time it was on the list, I have basically zero interest in it, as I never liked Smash Bros, and thus have as little as possible interest in its demake. Sorry!

...and with that statement, the heavens opened, lol. For anybody interested/willing, 7 Days to Die literally went on sale for $6 right after I posted above. Should anybody be able/willing/interested, you can pick it up via the Humble Bundle site for roughly the next 7 days at the below link! Miracles really do happen, @ZeldaFreak! https://www.humblebundle.com/store/7-days-to-die

I started to participate when this went up, but then held off, as this seems like one of those questions that's better to talk about in person versus text that's available forever, since these skate nearby to what type of questions get asked to secure someone's online account. I know that's not the case here, but it did make me hesitate, then reverse my decision to share. Maybe this could be brought up during one of the next game nights, as it would be fun to compare and contrast without the worry.

If I vote for the only game in the list that I have (7 Days), I'll just create a 4-way tie, so I've held off for voting. It's starting to look like this may be a game night where whoever isn't doing anything shows up and something gets decided on-the-spot.

For the most part. There's still a few things that I want to complete it, but they've gotten so outrageously expensive and hard to find that that I don't anticipate ever completing the collection and am thus pretty satisfied. For the most part, anything that I want to play can be done via flash cart or some other form of emulation, so I'm not really missing out on the content, even if I don't have the physical game as part of my collection.

Still looking to form a little group. Here is a link to digitized versions of a lot of the various rule and source books, should anyone want to give them a look. The campaign will be running under West End Games' 2nd edition rules, so the blue rulebook would be the primary one used, but the "Second Edition: Revised and Expanded" book (starfield background) could also be referenced. Books under the "Galaxy Guides" and "Sourcebooks" categories would also be decent reads to get a feel for everything. Much like with any RPG, the system is incredibly simple once you understand it, but the core rulebook does a great job of spelling out all the rules and providing multiple examples to help understand everything. Again, if anyone has any questions, comments, etc., please feel free to respond here, hit me up via PM, reach out via the VGS Discord, etc. Thanks!

Weird. When I first checked the site, it didn't show any stock numbers at all, but "Proceed to checkout" was highlighted like it could used. Upon seeing your reply, I went back, and now "Only 0 items in stock" is now showing in red below the quantity in the cart, and "Proceed to checkout" is grayed out. Glitch with the site, or perhaps we just missed the last one going out the door?

Just saw this, thanks for putting this on my radar! I picked up the ROM and look forward to checking it out soon. With that said, were you aware that 6502 Collective is still/currently selling it? Here is the link that should take you right to the page where you can order a copy. I can't tell whether they offer international shipping or not without checking out, but if they don't, I imagine you should be able to work something out with someone in the US to accept delivery for you and get it shipped out for you. There might even be companies to do that sort of thing for you, as I know there are for people trying to order things from Japan but get them delivered overseas. Good luck!

Yeah, I'm a bit curious about this too, as your life counts down constantly, so you'd have to wander around a good bit just to find enough food to survive until the end. Maybe it's a measured tactic only employed on the harder/hardest levels?

The leftmost image in the first screenshot he posted shows the login screen for his app. Currently there isn't any way for anyone who isn't part of his testing team (presumably just him) to log in, so there's no actual way to log in, just the image showing what the login screen would look like.

My suggestion would be to charge a flat fee for outright purchase of the app and have no ads involved for the basic functionality. Have the default storage be local to whatever device it's on. Should you have the ability/option, offer a cloud-based backup/sync service for the app for some sort of additional fee (offering monthly, quarterly, and yearly options at progressively better value the longer the term). If you're wanting to collect data from users' data, such as your own sort of population reports, I would make that option require the users to manually opt-in, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to offer them some sort of benefit/bonus for agreeing to share the data with you (lower fee for cloud data, free trial of cloud data, etc.). Just my thoughts. I know not everyone thinks like I do, but honestly, I can't stand "free" applications that constantly spam me with ads. I would much rather pay a fee up front and "own" my copy of the app, as well as whatever basic functionality it offers. If you went that way, having a function to be able to export users' data into another format (one of the various spreadsheet formats already mentioned would likely be best) would make your app stand out from a lot of others out there, as most typically keep your data within that app, and that app only, even if they have the ability to import from any and all other formats.

I'm interested but lack both of the newer systems (and have no real desire to spend that kind of money on either one), so I'll be waiting for late Spring/early Summer for the PS4 version to drop. It didn't show up on Amazon as a thing, but doing some Googling had it show up on Sony's own site for preorder, and I was also able to find it on GameStop's site, so it looks like there's little doubt about it being released on the platform. If I had to guess, I'd say the PS4 and Switch versions are as done as the others, but they're leaving them shelved for several extra months in order to try to tempt people into pulling the trigger on the newer systems. With the odd exception here and there, I figure I'm safe continuing to get releases for the PS4 so long as the same title is on Switch given the power difference between the two, and if the Switch can run something, the PS4 (and/or PS4 Pro) absolutely can.

Dune II

Are you usually sending them across the border, though? That's one of the stipulations they've always had, regardless of how you were sending money. I noticed yours was translating from CAD sent to USD received, so that could be your excuse for getting hit. Yeah, I discovered that a month or two back. I don't recall it always having been that way, but to be honest, before the last time, it had been a bunch of years since I'd transferred anything back, so it's likely I just missed it due to not using it.

I've run into those people as well and just gone ahead and sent things via G&S with the fees added on, a note in the payment saying I'd added the fees, then mentioned that I added the fees when I messaged them to tell them the payment was sent. To date I've not had one of those people reject the payment, but that was all pre-1099K times as well. And you're absolutely right, if you want to get a certain amount after fees and it doesn't do anything crazy to the price, raising the price slightly to accommodate is exactly the route to go. You took a hurdler's leap over my point that there's no downside to using Friends & Family between Friends & Family. The guy you interacted with was neither, so of course you were worried first and foremost about the stuff and the money you'd spent on it when they disappeared. If you'd sent money to a friend or family member for something via F&F, I would certainly hope that your first concern would be their welfare versus "where's my stuff" then "how do I get my money back." I've never once said people should just jump on the F&F bandwagon, so please, enough with the straw man arguments, because those aren't the points I'm making. That seems to be new. They started charging a fee for putting balance money into your bank account immediately versus stretching it out over the course of 1-2 weeks a couple of months ago (or at least that's when I ran afoul of it), so perhaps that's when they started charging a fee for debit cards as well. It used to be that both bank transfers as well as debit cards were fee free since PayPal operates as a bank and banks don't charge one another fees to push money back and forth.

Don't feel bad at all, it's my bad for not looking back through the pages. I thought I'd seen it mentioned earlier and was like, "Oh well, I'll get to that later." You beat it first and for this competition, so it's yours here. It'll be mine when I get around to beating it to get it off my backlog list, lol.