Dr. Morbis

I don't want a cellphone and I don't need a cellphone, it really is as simple as that. If either of those two feelings ever change, I'll get one, but until then, I'm good. It really isn't some counterculture perogative, or lack of funds, or [insert other made up excuse here]; if I was told I had to get one for my job, for example, I'd walk into the store tomorrow... It doesn't take me ten minutes to take a dump and I honestly don't know wtf is wrong with all the "reading while on the can" people out there in the world - it's like a two minute ordeal, and that includes washing your hands. Wtf are you guys doing in there? Shit or get off the pot. Furthermore, the idea of bringing something from outside a washroom into the washroom with you has always been considered to be absolutely disgusting in our culture, like you've "soiled" the item, so to speak, so I honestly don't know why cell phones are getting a pass...

You have changed my life. I don't know how I could have been so foolish for so many years. I just went to the Apple store and signed up for a five year plan with the most expensive phone they had (over two thousand dollars!!!). I have so many people to apologize to that I'm not going to have time to return to this forum for probably four or five months. I will miss you all, but this is the only way I will ever be able to live with myself as I begin this long, painful journey toward my personal reunification with the twenty-first century. I'll see again you when I finally arrive... Seriously, though, if you're so smart with those things, maybe you can help me with this one: how do I turn off everyone's insistance on explaining to me how badly I need to get a cellphone?

For me it's more a case that I don't need a cell phone because literally every single person around me and in my life has one, so the whole "emergency" excuse is invalid. Furthermore, if I'm at home or at work, I've got a pc to use, and if I'm not at either of those two places, then whatever I'm doing doesn't need to be bogged down and interrupted every two seconds by a phone. Finally, the thought of being "on call" 24 hours a day with a phone in my hand or my pocket for the entire rest of my existence is literally the opposite of the kind of life I ever want to live...

No, you're not the only one, I'm still landline only. I love the reactions I get when I tell people I don't have a smartphone: they literally stare at me as if I'm some alien from a distant galaxy who just took off his mask...

There are ridiculously easy games from every era and there are balls-hard games from every era, but I do think there has been a fundamental paradigm shift from the 80's to now on what video games are and were all about, in general terms. On the front of one of my NES Control Deck boxes it says: The most challenging video game system ever developed. I mean, it was an actual selling point. You played games to try and beat them, and not everybody could and not everybody would. Here in the 2020's, in contrast, video games are by and large about the experience now: the story, the atmosphere, the depth of the world, etc. In the 80's it was about teenage boys trying to accomplish ridiculously difficult tasks; now it's about everyone and their Mom's just enjoying themselves and escaping their real lives for a while, hopping and bopping around just for funsies...

I own Swamp Thing and love both the art style and the music and the gameplay. I feel that it's one of the few times that being really slow and clunky and having almost no jumping power actually fits with the character being portrayed completely: he's a friggin' swamp thing!

That game is my pick for least-beaten game on the NES; sure there are plenty of other "terrible" games, but they're usually pretty short or have some redeming quality like being so cheesy that they're fun to laugh at, but Ultima V on NES feels so unbelievably broken that it's virtually unplayable, and since it's an RPG, you realize quickly that what's happening on your TV screen is going to keep happening for hours and hours on end! I'm guessing that the only people in the world who have beaten the NES port of Ultima V are guys trying to accomplish a "beat every game" mission, whether that be the yearly thread here on VGS or a personal goal some people (like myself) have of completing every NES game. Outside of that, literally no one on this planet is beating this game for fun...

You seriously just want to beat the game as quickly and painlessly as possible? Do this: two fighters and two red mages. Seriously, you'll rip the game a new one. More advice; only read this if you want it even easier: make sure both red mages get the spells: FAST (that's haste), FIR2, LIT2, and a bunch of CURE spells, and leave a level one spell slot open until AFTER class change so you can go back to the first town in the game and pick up RUSE for all four party members. On every boss battle after that, triple RUSE the whole party (this means using the first three turns of the battle casting RUSE) and you'll be 99% unhittable for physical attacks. Then FAST everyone and watch the bosses fall before you can even finish buffing. There are a ton of other little tricks, but just knowing the above will get you through the game pretty painlessly...

Yeah, this is the pivot point for me. I'm the type of gamer who doesn't like hugely intricate stories and long cut scenes in RPGs; if I want to follow a story, I'll watch a movie or read a book. For me, when I play a video game, what I do is the story, so for FF, I'm only a blank slate when I show up with my crystal ball; after that, everything I do is the story. "Orco was limping back to town with 14 HP left after a hard fought battle with a nasty group of wizards, just desperately trying to haul his plunder and the bodies of his three dead friends back to the priest, when he was suddenly ambushed by a lone ogre just outside the town gates. Well Orco tried to run but the ogre struck first, though as luck would have it, this is the one time in his life that the world's weakest black mage was able to dodge an attack, and he made it back to Elfland by the skin of his nose..." That's the story when I play Final Fantasy. I haven't read any of the townspeople's dialog in so long that I don't even know what they say anymore. Nor do I care, as FF is so refreshingly a video game: free of cut scenes and story arc, and all but the briefest of dialog (note that no character in the game ever says a single word more than what can fit - without scrolling - into the little blue box at the top of the screen). Just let me make my party and drop down into a mysterious world and I'll tackle all of the challenges to come... Final Fantasy is a gamer's RPG, and that's why I love it to death.

No, but it would be if I ever saw it. You play as a shark trying to eat up all the swimmers. Unfortunately it is ridiculously rare...

Speaking of that, there's an arcade game called Shark Attack where the two buttons on the control panel are labelled "Thrust" and "Munch" ...

Well the converasion has completely veered off into other directions, but I just want to add that I trust Bea and Guillavoie's judgement, so congrats on being the champ for 2023! With the all-round skill set you've got and your professed love of NES/Famicom, I'm surprised you haven't been putting up these crazy high scores for years. It would have been cool to see you giving your best against some of the all-time great tournament players from the NA era, that's for sure; you seem to be able to dissect these old games like no other...

One of my favourite games of all time and my favourite RPG. I've beaten it solo with all six classes, both with and without class-change, and I keep a chart of all my completions with the party details and whatnot. Desert Island game for me... 10/10

You know what? I hadn't ever read that and I didn't even know this was an actual rule - that's entirely on me. I should have pm'd the show runners instead of creating all of this drama, and I apologize for that. However, you would still be in the same situation you're in now where you're having to prove yourself, because I still would have had concerns over your scores and would have reported them privately. Please don't take this personally; you're a relatively new player (to me anyway) and your scores are exceptionally good to the point where they seem to defy the logic of some of the games at first glance. If you have to prove your scores are real, what's the big deal? If you've got the skills to get the scores you posted, then the truth will come out and you'll be crowned the champion, it's as simple as that. If I had a time machine I'd go back and cancel all this drama, but I don't, so the best I can do is tell you that any serious qualms I have in future weeks will be sent privately to the show runners from here on out. Once again, you are correct, these facts can be figured out quite easily; the thing is, in a high score competition of Rolling Thunder that starts near the end of the game, why would anyone ever plan to go down to zero bullets to learn what happens?!? Likewise with the 50 bullet bounce-back: why would you ever intentionally go below 50 bullets to see how the game reacts? I didn't dissect the game like you did, and as a result, I didn't figure out the endless boss strat that you did; you're clearly thinking outside the box on a level far beyond where I'm at, and it got you an incredible score as a result. I will say this though: if you're going to continue to break games to the point where what you're doing is counter to the intended rule set for that game, would you PLEASE ask one of the show runners if what you're doing is going to be okay early in the week? With Rolling Thunder, they obviously allowed point-scumming because the game is timed, and you found a loophole by taking advantage of the one point in the game where time does not tick down. I highly doubt they were aware of the fact that the boss was untimed, and there's a pretty good chance they would have modified the rules in some way had they been made aware of that fact at some point during the week. Anyway, if you're scores are legit, then fear not, you'll be the champ. Better to be an undisputed winner than to leave a lingering shadow of doubt...

Nice catch phrase, but it does nothing to absolve you of the actions you have taken in the past and the decisions you have made. It's your life; why don't you spend some time trying to improve yourself rather than baiting someone on an internet forum who is leagues better than you in every concievable aspect?

Come on man, sleeping with married women? Ruining relationships, destroying lives, kids losing their Fathers? You've made the world a worse place just for having lived...

I can't think of anyone, so I guess you win...

Hey man, you asked; you literally asked! So there's your answer in that thread right there. What kind of man are you? Simple answer: the lowest of the low.

This kind:

You're barely worth a sentence...

Naw man, if even one delicate flower were to wilt due to something I've written on the internet, I won't be able to live with myself...

When you're "shit talking" someone for some sort of character deficit, it's usually a good idea to avoid exhibiting the exact same behaviour that you supposedly decry. And I've seen enough of your posts in the Everything Else forum over the years to know exactly what kind of "man" you really are... Fair enough. I'll take some time to think about it over the winter and let you know in the spring what I decide. The last thing I want to do is get in the way of your attendance in the NES weeklies...

Rdrunner wouldn't play a save-state-scumming TAS on his pc and then feed a still image to his CRT to take the final picture, and then make another TAS to prove that a strategy that would never ever be discovered during the course of normal play was actually possible to do. Just saying... Seriously, I know it's not popular, but we should just bring back game room videos for the finals. That Batman speed run competition was fun, as was Mega Man 2, and Castlevania... bring back the video evidence! There's no where to run and no where to hide when everyone's actual skills are laid bare...

@BlackVega I wasn't throwing accusations "because there were some bad apples caught in the past;" it was because everything I saw from you in this tournament was bizarre and seemed out of place. First of all, I missed like half the season, so I wasn't around whenever Battletoads & Double Dragon was played and your scores were initially called into question, or any other weeks there after - I didn't know you from Adam heading into these last three weeks, so if you're legit, then all hail to the King, but here's how it all looked from a regular Joe's perspective: So we all played Boulder Dash out of the gate, on literally the toughest conditions possible, and none of us are able to even get out of the first stage -except- this one new guy I've never heard of who has no-deathed the entire final world! Wow, that's strange, unless this guy happens to be ungodly at action-puzzle games or something, but whatever, we'll give him benefit of the doubt. Next up we have Galaga and Commando. On Commando you make one really strange comment about how you got to the third level without shooting a single dude!? Very odd again, since I've played through it dozens and dozens of times by this point and not once have I seen all the enemies vacate the screen on their own at a level-ending base, never mind twice in the same run. But once again, maybe you've got a killer strat or something, I don't know. As for Galaga, you post an insane score with all (or almost all) of your reserve ships unused on Stage 31, meaning you either no-deathed to that point or you died maybe a single time. Once again, that is absolutely insane! Not many people are operating at that level for shooters, that's for sure. It took me many many hours to do it, and I limped over the finish line with one ship in reserve to come in second place. And now we come to the piece de resistance: the final week. At this point you're five points up on me and the entire field has basically checked out of serious competition other than you and I and maybe PII; all you need to do to secure an easy tournament win is come in second place in both categories of this two or three horse race, at the absolute worst. So what do you do? You spend hours and hours learning Rolling Thunder inside and out and developing this crazy strat that no one else in the world has ever thought of based on aspects of the game no one has ever even considered in order to put up a ridiculous score that rolls the counter and goes over a million points, with a half-mill score below it for back up!!!! Does that not seem even the least bit bizarre to you? Is there like a 20k cash prize I don't know about or something? FYI, here's what you actually needed to do in order to win this tournament: beat 2-8 and get to 2-9 before snapping your pic: yeah, literally beat one level, probably half an hour's work, and you're done, but instead you spend all this effort in developing one of the most obscure and singular-use strats in the history of video games: point-scumming the final boss of Rolling Thunder to beat one other guy in a tournament that you've already clinched!?! So many questions come to mind: -Why did you feel you needed to point-scum at all when progress was the marker and almost no one was even going to beat the game? -How did you decide on the final boss as the target for your objective? -How did you know the clock stops on the boss so that it's even feasible? (Seriously, who's looking at the clock during an intense final battle?) -How did you know that running out of bullets wouldn't be an issue due to their replenishment rate? -How did you know that his shots slow down if you just hang around with him for a while? -Why did you feel that you needed to spend so much time going all the way up to a million freaking points! A MILLION!!! Like WTF!! We're you thinking, "Oh man, what if one of these guys gets to the final boss and develops the same strat as me and gets 800k points? Damn, not worth the risk, I better hit seven figs just to be sure..." Anyway, I'm sorry man, but if you can't see how your scores and actions in the last three weeks have looked completely out of place within the context of a normal dude participating in a normal competition, then I don't know what else to say. You didn't even have any of the game-specific banter that guys throw in when they're really into some game of the week, like tips, tricks, perspectives on some aspect of the game we're all playing, nothing but short weird comments like "controls suck!" (that was from your Boulder Dash No-Death run) or "tournament, more like torment" (from your illustrious million point Rolling Thunder endeavor). You gave me no real reason to believe in my heart that you weren't cheating, to be honest with you, and I know I'm not the only one here who feels that way... Now it's cool that you posted an emulator video, but in this crazy age of deep-fakes and AI and TAS's and all that stuff you'll forgive me for not putting too much credence in your video, especially when a menu with words like, "config, tools, and debug" are staring back at me through the entire playthrough. I don't see anything out of place myself, but again, it's an emulator, and it's not even a video of your actual run, so not really admissable if I were the judge and jury. You mentioned Billy Mitchell in your response, and the thing is, he was considered a legend - one of the best - they didn't catch him for decades, so if you're playing the long game, you've probably already won. But if you truly are legit, then I can say without a doubt that you are far and away leagues beyond the abilities of even Bert Sampson with the scores you're putting up in literally all genres, and you're thinking further outside of the box than anybody else here ever dreamed. Like I said earlier, whatever the show runners decide is totally fine with me, but it'll be tough to change my mind after everything I've seen; you know what they say: if something seems to good to be true...

Alright, I just threw the game in and purposely ran out of bullets, and what it does is give you one bullet back after a delay, then when you fire it, it gives you one more bullet after a delay again, and so on. I don't know if this replenishment happens at a fast enough rate to fight off the final boss's projectiles?!? Furthermore, since it never increments you more than one free bullet, how would you fill up to "50" once you've used all your ammo, which would be depleted rather quickly in a drawn out battle with the final boss?