arch_8ngel

Pretty sure you got the info card from me. My dad was an endocrinologist that had a significant amount of his practice devoted to pediatric endocrinology and childhood diabetes. As a result, we had Captain Novolin and Packy and Marlon as freebies from the Novo Nordisk drug rep. Kind of surprised we never had the other two.

Always up for a block-pusher puzzle. Looks good!

The other unasked question that is relevant, IMO -- where are you getting either of these degrees?

Computer science gives you a much broader range of options, and probably positions you better to get a follow-on credential in cyber security. Cyber security as a stand-alone, without a solid computer science foundation, sounds to me like it would lead to more IT/technician type roles. EDIT: also, for what it's worth, with cybersecurity ramping up as a discipline on the military/government end of things, I suspect that the "best" jobs in that field will all involve a TS/SCI that the former military guys will have out of the box.

I never played OOT until after Twilight Princess, so it never really impressed me in the first place. Secret of Mana is definitely one that I remember being better, but replaying it now it feels incredibly clumsy from a control standpoint. On the NES, Astyanax was a childhood game that I could one-life any day of the week. But revisiting it 25 years later, it is ROUGH and nowhere near as tight as I remember.

I have a hard time believing that a stainless steel body shaped this way will meet modern crash safety standards, so it will be interesting to see the final profile I guess.

Gameplay-wise that is definitely a more accurate comparison. And yes, he did say that.

Build/component quality is definitely lower -- but the game mechanics are a lot better. Also it is a WAY cheaper entry point.

I picked up the kickstarter of the remake of Fireball Island and sold my original. Figured it would give me the physical novelty of the game without having quite so huge a box on the shelf and I could sell my original for the ludicrous current eBay prices.

"I know you mean well... but Monopoly is designed to be un-fun and is possibly one of the worst board games every designed, from a gameplay standpoint..."

basically it is 12 barrels with a 12-shot wheel per barrel -- looks tedious as hell to load. Looks like fun to shoot, though.

Police corruption isn't a new thing: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/24/nyregion/police-corruption-a-look-at-history.html Stories like LA Confidential exist for a reason.

I'm definitely not suggesting that eBay would be a viable alternative for high-dollar auctions like this. Just surprised that there isn't another reputable boutique auctioneer, given how much these guys can pocket from a single-day auction event.

If they are making $10k+ in buyer-side fees on an auction like this I would HOPE the seller-side fees are negotiable!

double-post

I still can't believe that there isn't viable competition in the auction space with huge buyer premiums like that. And aren't there fairly substantial seller-side fees as well?

Well, while I respect a number of well-made hacks (there are some impressive total-conversions out there -- a long with a couple of serious level-redesigns that involved some deep knowledge and programming) -- the seeming implication when somebody thinks you made a hack, is that you potentially leveraged a lot of existing in-game content and "your game" may only really be "yours" in a very superficial way. Maybe that is what you think people think about NESMaker, but I'd at least recognize it as a toolkit where the person still essentially designed their own game. (even if they did that within some confines/limitations of whatever NESMaker offers) Right or wrong, to me there is a different implication of how much of the way the actual game plays were deliberate choices on the part of the individual.

Have you played it? He did "borrow" a sound or two from MegaMan (though he programmed them himself to sound that way). (and stylistically, his disappearing blocks are very similar) But the movement doesn't feel much like MegaMan if you ever play them side-by-side. It is definitely its own beast.

The only REALLY big box board game of the 90's was Fireball Island, IMO... Curious of some examples of what you're referring to. And quite a few of the popular euro-style games are sitting right there on the shelf in Target, nowadays...

That is distinctly less problematic than people assuming the game is a hack IMO.

Catan definitely isn't "the best" by any stretch, but it is at least easy to explain to newcomers to Euro-style games. Agricola/Caverna is a big step up in planning and complexity on that front. And I know quite a few more elaborate games have come out in the meantime.

3 and 6. I've managed to get through a few lightweight dungeon crawls with the LEGO board games with them. My oldest is definitely old enough for the family-style version of Agricola, as well. I've played chess with them a few times, too. I will look into My Little Scythe. I haven't played Scythe since that came out after I had kids. EDIT: and we have played stuff like candy land, checkers, memory/card-games, and that robot-turtle-mover gamer with them. I was more talking about my serious collection of older-kid-to-adult board games that is waiting for both of them to be old enough to read so that the mechanics will all work and cards won't get destroyed by kids...

I have a sizeable stockpile for when my kids are both old enough to participate. Had my first in the timeframe of my wife and I playing a lot of Agricola and Caverns. Nowadays, I at least play a level of Heroquest every couple of weeks with some co-workers at lunch.

No, Battle Kid was from scratch. Sivak made a lot of his own tools (built a gui based room design tool to lay out his game, even) This actually makes me sad that there are people out there assuming that some of the best known homebrews are hacks of existing games.

I am trying to hold out until it is on video. My youngest isn't quite old enough to make it through a full movie yet.