lol

[Inochi 命]

i19.tinypic.com/2cp46ye.png

i18.tinypic.com/2qbtbte.png

i7.tinypic.com/2wggp3o.png

i7.tinypic.com/33kt5ig.png

i15.tinypic.com/2ev3rr4.png

i5.tinypic.com/3yq83gk.png

i15.tinypic.com/44igrr7.png

i7.tinypic.com/4c0es7r.jpg

the interpretations run deep...

[ARES]

hahaha that last one is the best.

Also:

"The look the same!"
"Good god... they so god damn look like the same person."

[FM-77AV]

HAHAHAHAHA!

What IS this? I love it!

Weeeeeeeird. Also.

[Inochi 命]

I have no idea what it is.

All I know is that it's one of the few internet comics that are actually funny to me... more than that, it's one of the few things on the internet that have made me laugh to tears. Strangely though, the 2nd time I looked through them they just made me smile and chuckle a bit.

I found it on another message board.

My favorite one is the first one (last one is 2nd best). That first one just totally caught me off guard.

[FM-77AV]

Another funny webcomic:

www.bloodthirstymelon.com/diary.php?cid=146

[Inochi 命]

Mario sucks? Some of the best platform level design, gameplay, and control in both 2D and 3D gaming... seriously makes me disagree with that comment. I'd understand if it didn't agree with your tastes, but Mario games aren't bad by any amount.

And that IS how Mario is. These pics are just emphasizing what's already in Mario. It reminds us how the series is one of the most retarded ideas ever yet we've come to accept it as normal (i.e. why the hell is Mario listening to a talking, 2 foot mushroom man all the time?)

[FM-77AV]

Super Mario World is the perfect game. It is perfect in EVERY aspect.

[Inochi 命]

I guess it really is just more of your own tastes then...

Personally, I don't go back and play Super Mario Bros. anymore unless if I want to go on some nostalgia trip. It was great when I was a little dumb kid, but the mario series has seriously improved enough that it's older games are no longer worth the replay (except for nostalgia, like I said). Super Mario World (NSMB didn't even come close to touching it!) is the only mario game I really go back and play sometimes. It's always been a simple, balanced, and somewhat challenging series that goes well with anyone that can get past the silly concept. With every release, the series outdoes it's self and gets more complex in level design and adds to the gameplay while keeping simple enough for just about anyone to just pick up and play. And regardless of how silly an idea is, they'll put it in a mario game as long as it makes it more fun and opens up new challenges.

But I adore clouds with smiles on them... I grew up staring at them for long hours every day while being chased by angry suns with sunglasses. I started with mario, grew up with it, but it's not one of my top 5 favorite series (probably around 9th).

and what developer hasn't been throwing out remakes, re-releases and rehashes for a quick buck lately? I don't buy them, it's just for people who missed out or want to revisit their past but dont have the old games anymore. New mario games come out once every couple of years. NSMB was the first 2D Mario since Yoshi's Island.

[FM-77AV]

What do you mean by "With every release, the series outdoes it's self and gets more complex in level design and adds to the gameplay"? There are only five Mario games (SMB 1-3, SMW, NSMB) and NSMB cannot even compare to SMW.

[Leroy]

I can go back and play the NES games for more than nostalgia.. they're still pretty good. In fact, my friend was playing Super Mario 1 on the NES while we had an eight-player Wario Ware Wii game going on last weekend. We laughed at him whenever he died.

[Inochi 命]

NSMB had some great, original level design that might not have been much better than SMW or Yoshi's Island... but it rivaled them. What was wrong with NSMB is that it went with some of the basics from SMB3, with the overworld and moves and whatnot. Ok, so NSMB is sort of the exception to what I said, but it works from SMB1 to SMW (then SM64 as well, if you consider that it made a pretty good transition to 3D and it was technically the first to do something like that).

Whenever I go back and play SMB1, the princess is safe within an hour or two (depends on use of warps)... must have been all of the practice I got with SMB DX. It's fun, but the challenge and wonder from my first few plays (starting from when I was old enough to finally beat it) are completely gone for me.

[FM-77AV]

Me and a friend played through the entire Super Mario All-Stars collection recently. All perfect games, especially SMW. They just never get old, regardless of how many hundreds of hours you play them.

[FM-77AV]

I've never played any platformer that can compare to SMW. Sonic, Bonk, Kirby, all junk in comparasion.

[Inochi 命]

I have to agree with you about characters, deuce... characters that don't agree with me are one of the prime reasons I dislike certain popular RPGs. heh, I actually like the characters in SF... but not as much as KoF in general. Although, no one from any other Fighter can replace Ryu as my favorite character from a Fighter, except maybe Siegfried if he had lived up to his potential.

The Mario series is indeed the king of platformers. The most important part of a platformer is level design, and nothing has surpassed mario in that department yet. And all other platformers exist only because of mario...

[Leroy]

Personally I find it absurd to play (or not play) a game based on the characters or story. But then again, I grew up playing Pac-Man and the like so to me the gameplay is always the most important.. anything else after that is just extra (graphics, sounds, story, etc.). They can ADD to a game, but they can really detract from something that's just fun to play. For example, anime characters make me vomit.. but I love action RPGs so I've just got to bear through it since a most of those games can't seem to break out of the ultra thin world of anime stereotypes. Oh boy, there's a shy girl and a tom boy and they both like my orphaned spiky haired hero! Genius!

[Inochi 命]

Well, if you outright hate the characters in a game, it can still be playable but it will bother your over all opinion of the game in the end, by any amount. I did play through FFX despite constantly rolling my eyes at the characters. Still ended up not liking the game over all, though, and the characters were one of my largest complaints (as they were in other FFs i've played). If the gameplay is decent (and doesn't trudge into boring territory), I can get through any game, even if the characters are a bunch of... eh, I guess there are certain kinds of characters that'd keep certain people away from a game no matter how good people say it is, for the good of their stomach or brains (Def Jam... ugh). Your avatar is an important part of your gaming experience, of course it can deter you opinion of a game. The personality of the characters directly influences the game too. Mario wouldn't be as fun if it was about something less silly... if you didn't play as a plumber trying to rescue a princess, you wouldn't be going down pipes or wearing raccoon costumes either, the fun would die.

[Leroy]

deuce said:

You're contradicting yourself there.

Ack, that's a really bad typo. It should have read: They can ADD to a game, but they can NOT detract from something that's just fun to play.

[Incog Neato]

Hirm! Deuce's mentality about Mario is what gets me raging on about certain cartoons and comic books but not video games. ^^ I still haven't watched that Avatar show mainly cuz the main character's design annoys the hell out of me. There are folks spewing praises left, right, and center about how cool the stories and characters are but ... ergh. Erase the damn goofy arrow from the guy's head then MAYBE I'll watch it.

I also couldn't sit through the first 2 episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force for artistic reasons as well. :E I hate it when people say "Oh, it gets better after X episodes." Like I'm going to stick around for THAT long. >_> If something doesn't give me a good first impression, chances are, I'm not going to continue with the series. >:E

Oh yeah, game-wise, I rather despise the Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin artwork but I stuck with the game cuz it was mighty fun. :D However, had the game been like a text adventure (a la Genso Suikogaiden) where the drawings are right in your face, I'd bail.

[Grave]

deuce said:

I actually rather liked them... better than the ones in Dawn of Sorrow, anyhow. And as pretty as Ayami Kojima or whateverhernameis' work is, the fact is that all of her characters have the nasty tendency to look the same. Alucard, Soma, Juste... even her rendition of Nathan Graves or whatnot from Circle of the Moon. It's nice artwork, but it's not expressive. But have you seen the interview with IGA where he explains reasoning behind the new art style?

I'm in agreement here. I thought I'd hate the PoR artwork from what I had seen of it before playing the game, but it works really well in execution. It didn't look "serious" enough to me, but really, the game is pretty light in general, and I found it all to be more than I was expecting.

Not that I'm not happy to see Ayami Kojima back for the PSP Dracula X, though. I was pretty thrilled to see her new Richter artwork.

[Inochi 命]

My favorite art for a Castlevania game is for the original Rondo of Blood. I love how Ayami Kojima goes into a lot of rich detail and is very unique, but there's something about how she does faces that doesn't sit well with me. I guess I'm just tired of seeing overly feminine male faces come out of Japan. I hated how Richter looks both in SOTN and in the Rondo remake in comparison to how he looked in Dracula X. Still, I like Kojima's Castlevania art only 2nd to the stuff in RoB. but IMO, her art for the remake doesn't compare to anything she's done before.

best castlevania art ever. I've set this to my desktop wallpaper countless times.

but then, i've also just bought this poster to replace my FFVIII and VF4 posters.