kisrael

Oh SHIT! Just observe a coulple of the posts that get put up in "war room"... some of its some funny stuff, but a lot of it kills me a little bit inside I can't speak for the other "touchy people" (to be honest, I wouldn't have mentioned it on my own though I agree with Jess) but the Neo-Geo forums seem bad, but not worse than what I've seen at the InsertCoin-spin offs and /b/. (And yeah, sometimes I know that "kills me a little" feeling; on the other hand, some of that stuff is as funny as hell.) Just because I'm not easy to shock doesn't mean I don't support keeping THIS place as friendly as possible; not to the point where it's all rainbows and lollipops, but where people don't casually toss around slang that an "average" person would recognize as derogatory.

Sure. I've always thought of myself as more on the Descriptivist side of the Prescriptivist (the rules of grammar and usage determine what people should do) / Descriptivist (the rules of grammar and usage should describe how the language is actually used) debate (If you're geeky/scholarly enough to care, here is an amazing article on the subject.) Not necessarily, but in the cases I brought up (haven't heard "Brit" thought of as being that pejorative) , not NOT necessarily either I'd say intelligence, at least in terms of cultural knowledge and sensitivity. I don't think they're being racist in the use of it, or meaning the full negative set of implications, but they are saying that they don't care or don't know about the history of the terms they use. Except the extension of this line of thinking is "I can use any word I want no matter how offensive it's generally considered" and that's not the case. You have to take it on a case by case basis. And it's tough, because there's ALWAYS someone offended by something, so you have to draw a line. And in the case of Jap, I think there's enough people speaking the living language of English who would find it a bit pejorative that it's better to avoid it. Yeah. One example is DOOM... I remember being a bit surprised that my friend had NEVER read the intro text, just dove straight into it. But I thought setting the stage, as hokey and goofy as the story was, gave it a bit of context, even if the action was obvious run, gun, and find the keys...

Hmm, I think I saw one at a Boston Area one for $20. You might want to call ahead.

Objecting to "black" is pushing it a little, IMO. I mean it's not chromatically accurate, but neither is "white" (I'm more silly putty colored). (Also it avoids silly things like "African Americans from Africa" etc) Still, for me the only thing worse than whiny PC police are people complaining about whiny PC police and loudly proclaiming their rights to be as rude as they wish. You must be very big and brave. Clearly no one else here could dare the big bad corners of the web forum world. (also I agree with Miqorz: AA actually does a good job of keeping it a pleasant place to hang out. Just like I learned the hard way (well not really) not to put an animated GIF in my sig; it's "broken windows" theory all over again, and it works.) Heheh. Yeah! That also makes sense because "American" as a term for citizens of the USA might be terribly offensive to Canadians and Mexicans and hell lets throw in Nicaraguan and Brazilians and all the other countries of North, Central and South Americans too! Wah! KKK it is, though that might be offensive to baseball teams who have an entire side strike out against a tough pitcher. (Yes, I know I 'm also making fun of too much PCness; it's a fuzzy line, but "Jap" "Jew" and the N-word-that-dare-not-speak-its-name are over it, and you run the risk of this kind of off-topic finger waving taking over your thread if you use them lightly.)

I really hate how DVD player makers have rolled over, between region locking and "CAN'T SKIP THIS!" respect, it's just consumer depowering bullshit. Haha -- be careful, everything2 can be addictive. Those "related links" at the bottom are really tempting.

Basic politness isn't stupid stuff. But feel free to use whatever terms you find convenient, especially if you find "Japanese" tricky to spell or type. In the meanwhile, don't be surprised if a lot of people make guesses and assumptions about your level of intelligence and basic human kindness. Getting back to the original point: yeah, long text-y scenes kind of suck. I hadn't thought about the relative "information richness" of Kanji; so probably, each character takes a little longer to read, so a character by character print out wouldn't be as annoying as it is in English. Story and games is interesting. Sometimes a nice frame really gives meaning to gameplay.

Heh, when I read just this, my first guess is you were going to write about the curse of Blade Runner, how all these companies (like Atari) hit hard times after showing up in this vision of the future... Yeah logos are a drag -- when they're flat images you can just press the button to zip past it's ok, but when there's a pause as some stupid animation loads up, annoying. Almost as much fun as the DVD player conspiracy to make "unskippable" FBI warnings. "Gee thanks, corporation! I was going to pirate this movie, but JUST BECAUSE you made me sit through 8 seconds of legal smackdown warning that I've seen 5000 times before, now I won't! Guess I have to give up my legal 'but I just didn't know!' legal defense now!"

I'm calling shenanigans. The only place I hear "Jap" used in pop culture in a modern setting is by some old codger Veteran who fought in the Pacific, and the show is trying to paint him as rough and deliberately non-PC. This too is rather rare. For example, saying to someone "hey Jew" carries a bit of menace; usually the adjective form "jewish" is prefered, "he's jewish" is preferable to "he's a jew". The adjective form ("jewish") is softer than the noun ("a jew"). In part is the implication that being "a jew" is all defining, that it's a 100% categorization, and is a step toward "just a jew". The "just a jew" angle, with centuries of implication that they weren't even really human, led to some seriously awful things in the 20th century. Actually the issue is probably more no strict singular: "She is Japanese." (adjective) "The Japanese make a lot of games about schoolgirls." (plural noun) "He is a Japanese" is likely not good grammar "Many Japanese like comics" is less grammatical (maybe even incorrect) than "Many Japanese people like comics". "Many of the Japanese like comics" is probably more grammatical, but a little cruder. So yeah, it's a little bit "politically correct" but it stops people from assuming you're a bit of a jerk. The reasons some of these terms are frowned upon go way back to ugly parts of history; the "N" word is tied into centuries of slavery, "the Jew" to a few thousand years of persecution and the holocaust, "Japs" to a lot of bad feeling and racist images used during WW2. So no, no-one blames you for slavery or the holocaust or whatever, but it shows you as smarter, more aware, and less of a jerk if you follow the conventions of polite society.

Heh, even the screenshots they put on the extra Costco packaging had bizarre JPEG artifacts!

Has anyone played with the vg pocket caplet? I see a few references here and there. The retail price is $20, but I got it at costco for 15. The screen is legitmatelyimpressive (with A/V out!) and the games are solid...decent little ports of burgertime, bust-a-move, space invaders, and some others, including versions of zuma, and buster bros, and some other ones. Grapically it's roughly SNES/Genesis, though feeling a bit sharewarey in places... sometimes there's a nice vintage Capcom feel to the graphics.

Yeah, and as if one sports game wasn't bad enough, we also got Skate or Die for the Christmas update... That game rocked on the C=64 but I remember the NES port as being a bit lacking...

(bump for The Klikth Day of Klikmas (Klik of the Month Klub #6))

Yes, you're right, Berzerks' 3 step rhythm didn't quite fit the space, but maybe I made the wrong decision re: framedropping

yeah, I noticed that, gotta go fix it...

I made a new one. Get it?

It's nice to see a forum owner that feels this way. AtariAge is the only forum I'm on that I don't have all the sigs, avatars, and other bits of superflous forum "bling" turned off in the preferences. To be honest, I'm surprised that pretty much all the bbcode tags are allowed in sigs in the first place. I'm also grateful for the color scheme here. Some other VG sites go for that, err, cool "light text on black" look. With the wrong font, that can be hell on your eyes, I always get weird after-images. Assuming Al is reading this, and i know it's not the right place for it: I think it's kind odd and distracting that the "UPLOAD" button is big and green and all caps, even though it doesn't get used ALL that much, but Add Reply and Preview Post are often pushed down off the bottom of the screen, are relatively blandly colored, and in general aren't very notice-able. I might be tempted to make the whole Attachments box collapsible, and collapsed by default.

It is a very cool image, and I feel like the bad guy for asking you to remove it. If I make an exception for you, then everyone's going to start doing it. You should post the image here though so people can see what you created. I am not a big fan of signatures either, and I have rarely used one here myself. In my opinion, many forums are ruined by huge, garish signatures that are quite the distraction while you're trying to read a thread. On some forums there almost seems to be competition by users to see who can create the most obnoxious signature. Oh, no worries. Like you hint at, big LOOK AT ME sigs can easily get into a kind of "tragedy of the commons" situation. I think I was inspired by the SelectButton forums, who live up to what you describe. And I posted the image up above so it won't be lost to posterity. I keep thinking about trying to make a Java game using dozens of copies of Atari characters, maybe something a bit like I've heard Darwinia is like, but with real Atari graphics... The other thing is (and this is probably getting a bit offtopic) I'm thinking about changing my avatar so it's inline with what I use on other forums, a scan of the oldest "Alien Bill" drawing I made. Maybe I've done enough pimping of FlapPing, as fond as I am of liveinabin's art :-)

Yeah, it was neat to make up a very horizontal animation. I remember .sigs on Usenet, when everyone was using fixed-width fonts... there was a lot of ASCII art. I try to have a humble homage to that in my current AA sig, I hope people can tell that's supposed to be pac-man...

It's not a Genesis exclusive. There's also a version for the Sharp X68000 computer. The x68000 one is harder to find, though. http://gyusyabu.ddo.jp/MP3/1990/GRANA2.html Ooh, interesting page! Still, the Japanese only version hasn't been re-released commercially has it, ala VC or what not? I still think the game qualifies even if it's not perfectly exclusive...

They allow them on the Digital Press forums (among others) and though some of them are cool, I think they are a major annoyance. I appreciate that AA puts them in a different color so they are less likely to interfere with skimming a page. Other sites, it's not just that they have graphics (animated or not) - it's that they're HUGE. So weird to see like 2 lines of response and then about 2 inches of image...

Sigh, forgot know about the guidelines. Actually, historically speaking, I don't like .sigs on web forums AT ALL, I think the avatar and sidebar should be enough... But since other people have 'em, I thought I'd join in the fun, and I was proud of that animated GIF

So I made a new .sig file... I spent a few more hours than I expected but I'm pretty happy with the results... Trying to figure out if it's good as is or if I should throw in some more characters along the same lines... (That's one image w/ 10 characters shown 3 times) EDIT: didn't know animated .sigs were forbidden... here is the image I was playing with: which tiles well:

Granada was a cute little game, I liked the swarms of bad guys and the level on the top of a giant plane...

I do tend to more or less keep up with systems, ever since I got a GC on launch day. Sometimes it's just nice to be in on a system when it's still a hot topic, know you're one of the first, participate in active discussions. Similar to some of the reasons for going to the movies rather than just relying on Netflix. But it's a lot cheaper if you're willing to hang back a few years, and I think the GC/PS2/Xbox had some solid gems -- you already found one of my favorites, Rogue Squadron 2. I assume it's still looking pretty damn cinematic! I never had a Star Wars game that so brought me into the scenes of the movie...

I'm probably not a "hardcore gamer". But I think I have a deeper, or wider view than most... I started playing back when the industry was in its infancy, we've kind of grown up together. I had a collection of 2600 games when everyone else was getting into NES. I am a small time game author, for the 2600 and more often now in Java. I have a certain philosophy of what I'm looking to get out of games ("novel interaction"), I have certain genres I can't stand (all but the arcadiest of sports games, especially Tony Hawk-style, and any RPG with menu-driven combat)-- but I tend to respect the giants of those genres as good games, just not my cuppa. I've had most every major console since the mid-90s except the Saturn and now the PS3, and tend to hold on to the best games of each generation, especially multiplayer... So I dunno. I'd shy away from hard core, I sit down and play through maybe 5 or 10 games a year.