Hmmm, don't call the GameCube retro. It's my baby.

Nah j/k. Even though it's almost 13 years old, the GC survived through time pretty well unlike the N64 which looks like crap compared to it (even though it's still quite awesome).

Also I recently started playing SSBB so I might consider Project M to play with you.

There isn't an "other" thingy. Whatever, I'll say it here : you should start by implementing the easier stuff and only leave the tricky features in the poll. Just a thought.

You could also grab one of these backups and try it locally on your PC.

I know what Epoch is. What I meant is that we should all be on the same time zone. At least virtually so that we're always up at the same time.

Well IIRC the only Ubuntu variant besides the official version I've ever tried was Kubuntu and it was back when no computer could handle KDE. The two other distros I used were Raspbian (Debian for the RasPi) and Archlinux , my daily driver (the arm port doesn't count as a fifth one).
Also lxde is ugly.
Also, bare-minimum base install distros like Arch and Debian are set up and forget type deals. I just run one command to upgrade my packages everyday, watching out for potential issue warnings on the official blog. And due to the rolling release nature, it's way less of a hassle to do. It also gives you the opportunity to tweak everything to your likings and you only install what you want/need.

Yes you can do whatever you want. But the default install is not that good to start with. That's why Mint exists mind you.

Also about the ads, I think it's Google-style but in the Unity search bar and you have the option to disable them.

LOL.
Also about the Ubuntu thing. The problem is that it's becoming the MacOSX of Linux. It's too user friendly, defeating the purpose of using Linux (to have more control over your computer even though both still have root access). Also I heard that Canonical is favoring their own software over the long existing and community preferred stuff. It's becoming somewhat commercial too (apparently there are ads in it).
Regarding desktops, it doesn't change the whole distro. I personally prefer using MATE and swapping the default window manager for Awesome. And I don't use much of the MATE software actually since I do so much stuff in the terminal. Even my terminal emu is Konsole (the one from KDE) as I prefer it even though it takes a bit of time on first start.