VT-Vincent

Actually, I remember back in the day some of these half-assed file repositories would only allow you to download so many files per day. When you hit your cap, it would lock you out for 24 hours unless you paid them... or deleted your cookies. The idiots actually stored that lockout info on the client end.

I'm with Emsley, I can't stand them. I think my favorite is the "What have your friends been saying about you?" thing. Basically, it is an elaborate scam to get you to pay real money for the answers or complete so-called "offers" for points that will let you see the answers. In turn, it also asks you questions about your friends, notifies them, and invites them into the scam. You almost have to admire how well calculated the stupid thing is. At this point, I just set all of the crap to be ignored.

Right now, the only real game in my sights is Final Fantasy XIII. I'm kind of curious about Sonic 4 and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing but I've been burnt by Sega enough to be extremely cautious.

Now that you mention it, "she" does look really creepy... it looks like a guy wearing a wig and I think I see a hint of a mustache there.

Actually, I did grow up with the Sonic series starting from the original... the key phrase in my quote about SA1 was "for the time". It was Sega's first true attempt at moving Sonic to 3D and considering that, it wasn't terrible. The game suffered from technical issues but was still generally fun. Unfortunately, as time went on the technical problems became far more obvious and the game could no longer wow fans with it's graphics. It certainly didn't age as well as Mario 64. Sonic's speed has always been a tricky thing to tackle. When you think back on it, the original games really weren't that fast. The speed of SA1 and 2 was fine in my opinion, it was in Sonic Heroes and beyond that they ruined it. To really make Sonic move as fast as he technically should, they would need to dumb the levels down to multi-tiered race tracks essentially. Dimps did this with Sonic Advance 2 and it was a disaster. Every level was simply the same repetitive crap stretched out to last a couple of minutes. They need to find the balance they had from the original 3 games and accept the fact Sonic simply can't move at that fast (at least not all of the time).

Actually, I thought that Sonic Adventure was a pretty good entrance into 3D for the time. It was at Sonic Adventure 2 that things started to go very awry... first, it wasn't an Adventure, it was a conventional linear game. Second, you barely played as Sonic or his knock-off, most of the levels were made for the other characters that everyone hates. Sonic Heroes improved a bit from SA2, but screwed things up in other ways. Everything that came after that was a complete disaster and an embarrassment to the company. I'm glad to see they are getting back to basics here, but I'm disappointed it is being released as a downloadable title. Unless they decide to move it to a full retail release at some point, this game will be gone forever in a couple of years. With this generation, there will be no going back to relive the classics - when they pull the plug on the servers you can kiss it all goodbye.

I suspect they are trying to "establish" a large number of accounts on the forum and when they have them, they will probably bomb it all at once or they will be used by live humans to do "intelligent spamming".

Mine was strangely productive... I spent most of Saturday organizing my basement workbench, filing all of the paperwork I've neglected for the last 6 months and generally cleaning up around the house. Saturday evening I spent a good couple of hours working on my site and almost all of Sunday was dedicated to working on my site. Aside from a few minutes of Sonic 2 here and there on my PSP, I actually didn't do too much gaming this weekend.

RockNES, an NES emulator for Windows has been updated today. This new release is available in two versions - the i586 release which is optimized for single-core processor and the Core2Duo release which is optimized for dual-core processors. Below is a list of changes in this release: Source: http://www.vtemulation.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=476 Author's Homepage: http://rocknes.kinox.org

Ootake, a Japanese Turbo Grafx 16 emulator for Windows has been updated today. Below is a list of changes in this release: The processing of "Monochrome Screen Function" mounted with v2.28 was sped up (lightened). I think that the bug that was slow operation in some personal computer environments was solved. The processing when the volume was adjusted ([PageUp],[PageDown]key) was sped up. And, the interval of the adjustment was detailed (Change from 5 to 4). (It can be fine-tuned with [Ctrl]key.) When CD-DA is played, if the seek(access) to the same part is consecutive, it is processed at high speed. Moreover, the timing was brought close to a real machine. In "Draemon - Nobita no Dorabian Night (CD)", the problem that had been freezed after "Jaian" had been helped was solved. * "Draemon - Nobita no Dorabian Night (CD)"'s timing of the CD access is severe. Please play with CD full installation ("CD-ROM->CD FullInstall" menu). The stop timing of ADPCM voice was corrected. The access timing to the CD-DA track when the check on "Speed->Fast CD" menu is removed has been adjusted. Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected. Source: http://www.vtemulation.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=473 Author's Homepage: http://www.ouma.jp/ootake/

It's not surprising Neowin saw such an increased load... IPB 3.0 is definitely more resource heavy than the previous version. I would actually be curious to see a set of benchmarks on some of the more popular forum applications.

I smell a spam bot...

This may seem like a complex problem, but the solution is actually very simple. This is something that will require everyone in the world's cooperation. First, wait for the earthquake to happen... then, when you see a fissure forming, grab both sides of the ground and hold them together as tight as you can. If everyone does this at once, it will temporarily stop the earthquake. Then, someone needs to run (and swim) around the world with a giant roll of duct tape. Once the world is taped up, we'll all be safe again.

Ouch... forum upgrades can be rough. When I upgrade mine, even for minor releases, I always make multiple backups of the databases and files. I've been pretty lucky so far as I haven't had any completely go south on me but there's always a first time for everything.

The thing that has actually amused me the most about the franchise over the last decade is the fact they actually try to make some explanation of how all of these games fit together somehow. Like how Twilight Princess was made from some sort of alternate timeline and how "Link" is actually a different person taking on the same role in every game. Do we really need an explanation of the Zelda universe? Can't they just say there's no coherent storyline between the games and "we wanted to try something new"?

Out of curiosity, are you guys planning on upgrading to IB.Board 3.0? I actually got an email the other day from IPS stating that they plan on discontinuing support for the 2.x series later this year. I can understand why a lot of people wanted to avoid it at first, mainly due to the lack of hacks as well as the lack of maturity of the code itself, but they have had a lot of time to refine and improve it. While my community isn't nearly as large or busy, I have to say I've had a pretty positive experience with 3.0.

Your upload speed is nice, but it's a shame you aren't getting more than 1mbps down. I'm on a fiber connection right now with 15mbps/2mbps. If I end up moving in the next few months, which is looking pretty likely, I'll need to drop down to DSL which will be about 1.5mbps/384kbps. I'm really not looking forward to that. The only other option I have is going with Com(munist)cast who can get me close to the speed I have right now, except with a lot less reliability and throttling after I've watched too much Hulu/Crunchyroll (which by their estimations, seems to be about 2 minutes).

A few weeks back I finished Big Windup. I've been watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for a while now and I've also recently started Pumpkin Scissors since most of what I watch has dried up. I like where Fullmetal is going, but I may drop Pumpkin Scissors if it doesn't pick up in the next few episodes.

I've actually been following the Anime and I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised. They are handling the pace of it much better than in the first series and they're not afraid to kill off any major characters. This is the first time in a long while where I've actually been looking forward to new episodes.

Honestly, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of body modification...

Finally finished The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass. This is actually one of the first Zelda titles I've played where I haven't tried to get all of the extras. I only picked up one or two of the extra heart pieces and a few other optional items. Maybe it's just me, but I found some of the challenges for the other extras to be extremely tedious and difficult. I found this game to be a bit odd in the sense that it was the first game since Majora's Mask that really didn't involve any of the series' primary characters. No Gannon and no Zelda (technically, Tetra was present but never went into "Zelda Mode"). Another peculiarity of this game is that it had no impending sense of doom... it felt as though if you abandoned your quest absolutely nothing would happen. In the end, I think the game itself was quite good but the story and plot were definitely weak points (even more so than in some previous titles). I'm glad I played through it, but I am hoping that a lot of these issues might be addressed in Spirit Tracks. It if carries on in the same way as this game did, I might find it difficult to justify completing.

Yabause Wii, a port of Yabause to the Nintendo Wii has been updated today. Below is a list of changes in this release: fix clipping bug in high-reso. support state save & load sort game list alphabetically with case-insensitive some minor fixes and changes Source: http://www.vtemulation.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=472 Project Page: http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Yabause_Wii

Sorry to hear that Emsley... the toughest thing about dealing with a family situation like this is the emotional warfare that follows.

I'd have to agree with Cinder on this one... she has to actually want to fix this problem. If she doesn't, there's nothing you can do to force her. Eventually, she will either see what is wrong with her lifestyle or she'll get to the point where not even high risk lenders will be willing to give her anything. Most important of all though, you can't let her lifestyle damage the way you live - don't let her money and don't get sucked into the vicious circle of crap she's created.

For me, it's actually the opposite, I'm lucky if I use 50 minutes a month. I despise the phone, the data plan is all I'm concerned about. If I could, I would drop the voice plan completely and use it only for data. For the limited amount of voice time I need, I could pick up a cheap prepaid which would cost me about $10/mo. As far as paying for the device, I actually don't mind that at all. I would agree if it was just a phone, but it's not - it's an iPod touch plus the wireless communications hardware. Considering the touch sells for over $200, I consider the price I paid a value. If they'd allow me to get it without the voice plan and finally allow tethering, I'd be as happy as a pig in shit.