How much did you pay for it? Seems like retro consoles are ridiculously expensive online. If you go through eBay, all the listings are going to treat it like some ultra-rare collector's item.

Usually, you can find older consoles in thrift stores or pawn shops for fairly reasonable prices. Flea markets are also a good option.

"The Master," from ActRaiser 2. He's actually supposed to be "God," but that was kind of lost in the English translation.



Why? I think the game is a masterpiece. It's perfect in every way. I'm not even sure where to begin...

First off all, I like the game's approach to the concept of divinity. You play the role of a god, but he functions like any mortal man. He's not omnipotent in any way. He actually has to manifest himself as a physical avatar in order to fight evil creatures. While in this form, he can be harmed, and even killed. To me, this implies our "Master" has possibly gained this title through many tedious battles with evil, as opposed to being innately divine. The fact that he can survive all of these battles in lieu of his own mortality makes him a sort of stoical strongman worthy of being considered a god.

Secondly, I love the difficulty. The game is extremely rigid and unforgiving. Every achievement means something, because you have to go through some serious effort to progress. This also goes hand-in-hand with how our "Master" must have risen to divinity in the first place. Surely, this one-man army is extremely able-bodied to have survived so many battles with such unrelenting evils.

Third, I like the simplicity of the gameplay. It's really straightforward, and you only have a few moves at your disposal. The challenge before you is memorizing enemy patterns, and finding strategies that will allow you to survive every few steps you take through any given battlefield.

Fourth, I like the fact that the game uses a password system. All the data really keeps track of is which levels you've cleared, and which difficulty mode you're on. This gives you the freedom of coming back to the game at any time to retry levels over and over again, without having to hoard a ton of lives or continues; and you will be retrying some levels many times.

Fifth, I really like the overall design: Graphics, music, special effects... It's all one very nice, neat package.

Strangely, I didn't like the first ActRaiser game. I just didn't care much for the "SimCity" parts. I think it's cool that ActRaiser 2 just dropped all of that and threw you straight into a bunch of action scenes.

The rules of this game are simple: Post strange occurrences, articles, images, etc. that can only originate from Japanese culture and ingenuity.

I'll start us off:

I could never make sense of French phonology. I can remember the rules, but none of it seems to make any sense. Why does "beau" sound like "bow"? If I say "e-a-u" really fast, it doesn't naturally produce an "oh" sound. That's supposed to be the purpose of diph-/triphthongs - to produce a natural blending of sounds.

In Japanese, if you say "nai," it sounds like "nigh." "A" and "I" are pronounced "ah" and "ee," respectively. When you put the sounds together and say them quickly, they produce the "eye" sound. That makes sense. The person speaking doesn't have to remember some specific, phonological rule - the sound is produced naturally. With French, it's like you have to remember phonological rules for about ~40 diphthongs, triphthongs and digraphs. ;_;

Yeah. It was basically to save space. I believe the original programming environment was much less restrictive, and compression tools were used to organize tiles into certain sets and rooms as the game was compiled.

by blocks do you mean like maps made of 16x64 tiles? I think this might be a bit overkill on memory/space

16x64? I'm a little confused by how you worded that. I had a response in mind, but it might not relate to the question you were asking.

The idea was that action screens (or "blocks," you could say) would be 96x64 sections. Only a section is displayed at a time, while you are exploring it. When you move out of its boundary, you do the Zelda-style transition to the next section.

Of course, it's a pretty limited amount of space to confine the player to. I figured that using some 8x8 tiles around the boundaries would help keep the area kind of open, but it's still somewhat cramped. This is mainly going to be a problem during boss events, since bosses are so... big.

It's funny that you mentioned Madonna. She seems to change her style every few years. (that is, when she gets a new director) For example:



I used to be into a lot of heavy electronic stuff, but it's kind of strange how I've transitioned into softer, more melodic genres. I'm mostly a fan of things with classical elements, ambiance, lo-fi, down-tempo, etc.














In case you can't tell, Enigma is pretty much my life.

... and these are dedicated to you, Kevin: