Fiero88Formula Posts

C&C is old, but REAL retro RTS would be Dune II.



If you want to play the real grand daddy of RTS, this is it. The DOS/Amiga version can likely be found anywhere online and has some additional perks, like movies with a storyline, but the real jewel is the Sega Genesis version. Find a Genesis emulator and get Dune. It can be a bit slow paced at times, but it doesn't require hours of gameplay for each level, plus the AI of the computer honestly isn't all that bad.

It has become tremendously easier now than ever before to become an INFORMED enthusiast, not just a fan, of the anime culture. There was a time oh so long ago around two decades ago where anime fandom was an extremely difficult thing to grasp. We didn't have the modern amenities of being able to download the newest fan subs of the next slice-of-life series (Hell, I don't even know of ANY slice-of-life series during that time...), watch it within a day or two, and then move on to the next. if it was made on VHS, you might go out and buy two episodes for what at the time cost about three to four full tanks of gas. One could potentially argue it was actually easier to be a fan back then, simply because Japanese animation on a whole had yet to develop into what it is today simply because many of the titles that were or had been released were considered peaks of what Japan could push out (Akira, Robotech [Macross], Gundam, etc). There was for sure a lot less to choose from.

I have to say that one of the series that I saw really help to build up anime's modern reputation though is Dragon Ball. If you were buying anime in the mid 90's, you were likely buying a Dragon Ball VHS, and this image of anime formed to where there were two camps - Dragon Ball series, and everything else. I for one during that time did not really care for Dragon Ball, but many of my friends did, and I saw what happened was Dragon Ball worked itself as a "gateway" into the larger spectrum of what Japanese animation is. Someone whom just was introduced to Dragon Ball was likely to watch some other sort of anime. Maybe it was another action series like Fist of the North Star or something else, but at least that person was watching anime.

Another ordeal that has somewhat hurt the whole anime genre is that for a while most American publishers were very unsure as to how Americans would take in the bulk of Japanese culture. The greatest example of this was in just about every video game released here that came from Japan. Most all of them were cut or modified in some way, and of course whole gaming genres were simply overlooked. The dating simulation genre is one that immediately comes to mind. I remember that one of the first real deal Japanese games I got to play was Tokimeki Memorial back around fourteen years ago a little while after it was released on the Sega Saturn. I was amazed to see something so nice and put together that for some reason we just did not get in America. Playing from the perspective of an avatar, interacting with characters whom actually had deep backgrounds, were fully voiced, all the while being able to determine the outcome of the game... was well... pretty amazing. If we got anything from Japan at the time, it was simply a (badly) translated RPG or maybe a fighting game or two. Here was a whole genre that for a while not only did most know did not exist, but one that has still to this day never really caught on - name the console games that allow you to date characters. If you can count any with your fingers, they'd all fit on one hand.

I do think that what will be the ultimate downer that the American mass at large will never be able to surpass is the instances of underage characters frequently being engaged in sexual activity in many of the stories. Fan service is something you simply do not see hardly at all in the main stream American animation market other than the occasional innuendo.

The doujin uploaded to the site is actually very well laid out. There aren't very many doujin sites in existence that allow you to search titles in so many different methods. The major updates that occur are great, considering that when new doujin is uploaded it's often in bulk and typically has all sorts of titles for all tastes.

My only gripe is that the focus tends to be more of recent modern doujin works that are uploaded, but there are some good classics and some good works from the 90's have been uploaded from time to time. In all seriousness though Fakku is a pretty amazing site.

I remember that game being ridiculously hard. For a lot of you younger people here that maybe hasn't or only very little played the NES, you'll find that pretty much any game made during the late 80's/early 90's based on a cartoon or series was very hard. Battletoads caused an extreme amount of frustration that lead to a great many instances of throwing NES controllers.

Some personal choices?

Initial D Mountain Vengeance on the PC has to be one of the worst games ever made. If you're ever played the arcade games or the Playstation games, playing that piece of crap will really make you ask questions. It can be found for free all over the net, and if you're really itching to waste a quick two minutes of play time to realize how incredibly bad it is download it and see.

I might get flamed for this one, but I though Vay on the Sega CD was a pretty bad RPG, especially when compared to other Sega CD offerings like the Lunar series. Vay's combat was just too fast paced, the difficulty was rather high (there's this elemental boss that just kicks the shit out of you and you have to spend forever leveling up), and was coupled with a somewhat predictable story. I actually gave that game away, and am hitting myself since it now sells for a nice penny on eBay.

I feel the biggest deal regarding this is that anything that attempts to be live action in relation to anime/manga created in the U.S. is simply never going to follow canon. It is as you have said, that obviously the movies are constructed to a mass audience, but I think in addition to following the standard movie 'canon' style, many of the implementations of anime appeal (fan-service, character design, etc.) simply will not be transferred over.

For instance, if there ever is a live Evangelion movie created by a U.S. production studio, I can guarantee you that Rei will not have blue hair and have her anemic signature looks. One, it's obviously not going to go well with audiences, simply because the masses will think it's silly that she has blue hair. Two, the studio is going to try and throw in innuendos between Shinji and Rei that simply wouldn't have existed in the series, making it seem like they're in love with each other in a manner that the original series did not put on. I feel that if it's created, whomever writes the screenplay for it will do exactly as I've outlined. It's simply going to align itself with what mass audiences will expect.

I have been generally very please with most all anime live action that is actually created by an Asian production company. Death Note was pretty nice. Lovely Complex was humorous, albeit in a large amount due to over exaggeration. I'm a big Initial D fan, and was fairly pleased with the movie, especially with the usage of very little computer animation help and actual drifting. The multitudes of live action series are rather humorous as well. I watched a good chunk of Sailor Moon live action with my fiancee' and she thought it was so humorous that it was ridiculous (in a funny enjoyable way).

+1 on this. If you criticize it, you better be able to do better.

Honestly I'm not the least bit surprised that the letters were placed above those images. My day job grind is a Fed job doing just that where I process scanned images and rework them, often by free hand (it's nice to get paid a really good chunk of money for a career to do fun stuff. Stay in college. It pays.). Working images is a ridiculous amount of work that I don't think a lot of you realize, especially when you have to process free hand.

First off, you have to take into consideration that it is possible that the original person whom scanned the image could be working with a commercial grade scanner. These even on their highest settings can be of varying so-so quality. To process really good high resolution images you have to have a very good scanner, not the scanner include with your $99 Canon printer. I mean a REALLY good dedicated flat bed that can handle up to 4000 dpi (these would be the sort such as negative grade scanners). The preliminary setting up just to scan is going to be a large factor.

Second, many need to take this into consideration - most manga in Japan, especially tankoubon, is printed on less quality paper than the shit you're going to see over here from TokyoPop or whatever manga you buy. Here's a good example. Take a graphic novel manga (I know most all of you have AT LEAST one lying around), open a page, and hold it to a light. Of course you're going to see the images on the other side. With the exact same Japanese GN, you're going to see through the paper more. I'd like to take example photographs of what I'm talking about as I have many mangas where I have the English version and the original Japanese market book, but it just won't do justice to what I'm talking about.

When you scan Japanese market manga, you very often get bleed through from the page on the other side. Even with a good scanner with bulbs that won't put flow-through from the bulb to the page is going to place some bleed through. I can absolutely guarantee you that they did work around the edges of the pages in the white areas to attempt to remove the scan through.

Also, some of those pages simply don't warrant implementing the English text because of space limitations. Page 4 and Page 7 (the top left of that image) are good examples of that. If they were to place English text in there, they would probably have to reword it, thus the translation would be slightly lost. Would you rather it look good and miss part of the story, or look bad and get the whole picture? I know what my choice is.

Don't down them. They put the time to process the manga and present it to you. Be happy they're doing it FOR ABSOLUTELY FRICKIN' FREE.

Damn. Season of the Sakura was the first visual novel I played back in late 1996 right after JAST USA released it, and I only heard about it because I really liked Rayearth and Evangelion (which the game references both very nicely in it's characters). I REALLY REALLY REALLY feel sorry for people who couldn't experience that type of magic back in the day. It to this day still has a more in-depth story that many of the common eroge games that are released. That game made you actually work REALLY hard to get the sex scenes for many of the girls, and even then you weren't guaranteed to get them in the end if you played the game wrong. You have to remember that was way before we had anything of the sort of any type of anime game that wasn't watered down through Americanization and still recognizable (other than the fact they had to raise all the girls' ages to at least eighteen), plus we were only getting maybe 25% of the anime/manga we get now in terms of volume (also remember no such thing as manga graphic novels at this time).

Seriously, if you haven't played through that game all the way and completed at least half of the story lines then you cannot call yourself an eroge game player. That should be next on anyone's list to play if they haven't.

It's really hard to stomach that Clannad dub. I wasn't really expecting anything great when it was finally released so it's not surprising.

I think one of the more recent really bad dubs was Initial D. Besides all the name changing and slight story altercations, there's actually an episode in the second season where Itsuki ('Iggy' in this case) calls Takumi 'Cole' (referring to Koichi Iketani). It was bad enough that I stomached most of the dub just to see it and then have something ridiculous happen as a character calling another character the wrong name!

The short answer is there are none. If you're hearing or reading of people actually taking any sort of port and placing it on a PSP you've come across rumors.

As you said there are visual novels (and dating sims) that have been released on the PSP, but they are all ISOs from the original UMDs, not a PC port, that are themselves ports by the companies from the PC to PSP. The PSP is actually a good platform for these types of games, and even some real classics like Tokimeki Memorial (the original one from the mid-90's) was ported by Konami to the PSP.

Essentially to release any sort of English version of these ISOs you'd need a way to edit the ISO like how you currently can do with ROM images for emulated games. I don't think that anyone has currently figured out how to do that, as you'd have to somehow rearrange text code to fit the English language. Basically a lot of work that no one knows how to do yet.

How exactly do you sit the laptop? What I mean is does it sit on a table or do you place it on carpet or on a bed? I've blown two Toshiba laptops and I found the problem was that apparently they have to sit on a flat hard surface when the get hot. If they're placed on carpets or beds excessive amounts of time and continuously get hot they can cause blue screens. If you've updated your drivers and your still experiencing a blue screen the hard drive is likely damaged.

Look it up on Google and you'll see similar problems Toshiba owners encounter.

There's a few problems I can see with any sort of Evangeliion live-action movie regardless of whom makes it.

Back a bit around fourteen years ago when Evangelion was first making it's way over here, it received heavy criticism. There were two camps - either you really like Evangelion, or you didn't. Plain and simple. Reasons vary, but there are a few things to think of. Evangelion was brought over during a "transitional" period of anime publishing in the U.S. Many anime up to around 1996-97 was still heavily cut and butchered. While A.D.V Films did a very good job in keeping everything intact and from a dubbing standpoint it was actually executed very well, Evangelion was a departure from most anything seen before and the whole psychological ordeals the characters go through was way different than anything that had been brought over here before. Evangelion for some time was very difficult for a good deal of the anime community here in the U.S. to take in.

Anno himself was quote in a few American magazines back in '97 after the original run ended that he really had no clue how to finish the story. It came back to haunt him when the final portions of the series were finally being released over here by A.D.V. Films, and a lot of critics such as those in Animerica Mag. really bashed how the series was going after about the sixteenth episode (Remember, this was back when anime was on VHS and being brought over in only two episodes per tape. We had yet to find out that it was actually budget problems that were holding the project back, so all the blame originally was on Anno). For some time, the anime community just really thought the series was falling into a shit hole.

Another thing I see as being a hampering development is that there is already an effort ongoing to remake the original series into movies. I think this probably wasn't the best move. If they wanted to do a movie, they should have made a serious attempt after the End of Evangelion was published. Now, with the aforementioned movies like Transformers that you mentioned, any sort of mecha-style movie is going to require some very impressive visuals - that Evangelion simply isn't going to warrant - that won't see any sort of serious support.

I do like Evangelion. My fiancee' really hates it, but I think for it being a varying budget T.V. series it's extremely well done. I wouldn't mind seeing a live-action movie, but I think it's chances are already just really in a low point.

Mai Shiranui. If you played Fatal Fury 2 originally back in the early 90's, you'd understand.

She's an 'enabler'. Look it up, although for the standard 'being beaten' situation it applies slightly different. The idea is that she enables him to do this to enable an 'end' or 'higher status'. Typically that term is applied to subsistence abuse, where you constantly enable someone to continue using the subsistence to end something (alcoholics get violent when they don't have alcohol, so when you give them alcohol they're even further violent = enabler). Here, she "loves" him, so she allows him to abuse her for further "love" = enabler.

Here's a really cold hard fact that I don't understand why it's so hard to get through people's fucking heads - physical and emotional abuse is not love. In fact, it's the anti-love. Not to pry into personal business because I really hate to do so but how old is this girl? Is she completely in a position where she cannot leave? My fiancee' has a very distant younger relative that is seventeen and stayed in a abusive relationship with some classmate, whom not only beat her but now she is pregnant. Of course now he's nowhere to be found. The thing is, if you're in the age area of going to school (up to around when you should be graduating college) then there is absolutely no reason you should remain in any sort of abusive relationship. You're not having to worry about finances and monetary spending, so it's not a money thing. Also I'm sorry but really until you're into your twenties most people do not have the correct life mental capacity anyway, so it can't be because of stress (believe me, if any of your are still in school now wait until you get out and work two jobs and pay a mortgage - and I don't mean apartment rent. You'll really understand stress then...). Basically there are a multitude of points when you shouldn't stay at all, but it really applies when you're young.

The only main reason I could see someone staying in a relationship is when you are in a position where it is difficult to sustain yourself if you were to leave. I'm twenty-six, and own a house and have a ridiculous amount of other finances to handle. I absolutely have to have the support of my fiancee' - I literally cannot live without her simply on the fact that nothing will get paid. If either of us were to get abusive towards one another, we really could fully leave one another. She actually probably could because family is nearby, however I cannot. We would give up a house, destroy our credit, and basically have to climb back up a hill that took six years to climb - not worth it.

Both me and my fiancee' come from abusive households. My fiancee's father abuses her mother frequently emotionally because he's an alcoholic. My father (when he was alive. He died in 1994 due to liver failure from alcohol) beat my mother daily.

FFXIII is pretty linear. Then again, what recent-ish Final Fantasy hasn't been ridiculously linear?

It also largely depends on what your definition of "linear" is. Most people who are RPG players think of "linear" as being not able to explore or move around much (a.k.a. lack of world map), whilst others list this definition as simply not being able to alter the outcome of the game in a dramatic manner, which in that case pretty much every RPG made would fall into that category.

<<<<< ----- The Pontiac Fiero.

Everyone I know in the car hobby considers them shit, and most everyone in general does. Primarily due to a bad reputation that they all caught on fire in the 80's and burned to the ground. The reason was because retarded owners who didn't know anything about cars figured they could just dog them into the ground. I'm however very fascinated with them. I do all my own work on them, primarily because no shops around here will work on them because it's a mid-ship engine layout.

I laugh though. Ignorance truly is bliss. I like that everyone hates them. Keep them dirt cheap so I can buy more. I've owned four, own two currently, and plan on buying more. Both of my current ones, '86 Fiero GT and '88 Fiero Formula primarily see weekend and fun duty, while I drive a "boring" Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder during the week as my work car. I've expanded my living space so I plan on adding another one to the stable for my fiancee', which will be my fifth and our third (she's been bitten by the 'bug' and wants one for her).

If you're talking about the School Days hentai vids that are here on Fakku's video download section they're not corrupt for me. I've played them fine when I originally downloaded them a while ago.

You might just be getting the file at a "bad time." It's likely lost it's seeders, and all you have left are leechers sending the file. It shouldn't be downloading really "fast" unless there's a shitload of seeders sending the file or not enough people sending information to complete the file fully. Your torrent client may say you're actually getting 100% of the file, but you might not be getting the full 100%. Your best bet is likely to delete the torrent file the client reads, and try downloading it somewhere else. You could wait to see if people begin to seed it more, but if certain torrents have already lost seeders you're likely not going to have that happen.

Again I can't stress VLC player enough. You'll know for sure - if it doesn't play in VLC player, then it likely isn't going to play on any other player.

Yes. Fruits Basket is a good example of this phenomenon. It was immensely popular over here before any sort of license ever hit over here. It was one of the first mangas to receive large fan scanlation online. I can imagine that subbers and fan translators played a large role in getting it out there so it would be popular when it was finally licensed.

I know we have tons of PSP threads, but I thought I'd start one strictly for Lunar Silver Star Harmony and see how many Lunar fans here have played the other games. I just picked up the PSP Lunar yesterday and really haven't got a chance to get into it but I've enjoyed it so far. One of the better buys on the PSP and XSeed is really helping to make me realize I didn't waste my money on the PSP.

I bought the original Lunar Silver Star game in 1993 on the Sega CD. I then bought Eternal Blue for Sega CD in 1995. Then when they were ported to the PS1 I bought both of them the day they came out. I then bought the Gameboy Advance Lunar SIlver Star (Lunar Legend), and Lunar Dragon Song on the DS, now I have the PSP Lunar Silver Star. I still have them all and have been an avid Lunar fan since '93.

Anyone else played the new one or any of the old ones? It would be interesting to see how many have played the originals on the Sega CD.

If you've ever played the original Lunar games, Silver Star and Eternal Blue, on the Sega CD - and then played the Lunar remakes on the PS1 - you'll appreciate anime cutscenes in a game. They added so much depth to the story it was like getting knocked the fucked out by greatness.