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Comparing Secret of Mana iOS to The Super Nintendo Version

Secret of Mana is one of my most beloved games of all time. I come back and play this every few years. This game opened my eyes to how awesome video games could be. The story, music and game play are fantastic. Back in the day when the Super Nintendo ruled the gaming world, Secret of Mana was Square's triple A effort. And it is awesome.

Recently I saw Secret of Mana for sale in on iOS so I mulled it over and picked it up. What's a few more bucks to being able to play on the greatest games ever on my iPhone? Ultimately I was really disappointed with the iPhone version and this post is going to go over why. This also might be the most nit-picky post I have ever written... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 05/03/2012 at 03:37pm

That just looks bad and muddled. It seems like many re-releases just use some sort of smoothing on the pixels to attempt to make it look less pixelated, but it just looks muddy and out of focus.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 01:41am

I agree. And the art isn't even the same. Its just really a different game as far as I am concerned.

hardeyez wrote on 05/04/2012 at 03:03am

Yeah, I agree the original artwork looks much better -- more vibrant and clear.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 04:22am

Yep. GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS AND LEAVE THE 16BITS WHERE YOU FOUND EM!

Talky wrote on 05/04/2012 at 03:13pm

You guys are getting old fashion. I think the iOS version looks better and the characters are easier to see. The trees really look like trees. But I am not a pixel girl and not a video game snob ;)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 03:57pm

Yeah. Well I don't know I guess if someone grew up with something they loved, say a song and it was covered by another band and it wasn't great to them it would basically be how I feel about this remake. I imagine some people might like the cover more than the original as with the iPhone game.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 03:57pm

Oh and Pixels are beautiful. Its an old art style that isn't really used as much as id like these days IMO.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 05/04/2012 at 06:12pm

I love pixel art, and SoM is one of my favorite games, so I much prefer the original art work. My main complaint about the new graphics are that everything looks slightly blurry, like the whole game is slightly out of focus. When I heard SoM was getting ported to iOS my first thought was there is no way the controls for this are going to be any good, and it seems like my instincts were correct this time. Some games benefit from touch screen controls (I have Puzzle quest on PC and iOS, and I prefer the iOS version) but games that were built with a D pad in mind do not translate well to touch.

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Just bought tickets to Pax Prime this year. Very

Just bought tickets to Pax Prime this year. Very excited.

http://prime.paxsite.com/

**EDIT** Looks like the sold out 15 minutes after I bought my tickets. They have some single day ticket still available.

Tungsten wrote on 05/04/2012 at 01:11am

Some day, I'll be there...

It was always a dream of mine to go to E3, and while that has slipped further and further away, other -coms have really risen up and opened opportunities for average schlubs to go stand in a room full of stinky sweaty people doing very very nerdy things.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 01:41am

How far away are you from the location of Comic Con? If I lived in Cali that would be the one I would attend.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 05/04/2012 at 06:15pm

I want to make it to PAX prime one of these days. Comic Con is another one I want to go to (and I live close enough that I could make it down there) but they always sell out so fast I haven't been able to snag any tickets to it!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/05/2012 at 04:32pm

Yeah, I sort of monitored the PAX prime registration and was planning on jumping on it when it dropped. I imagine if you knew when Comic Con tickets were on sale you could do similar to go. Unless its scalper city or something, which would suck.

I imagine its possible that next year I may attend most of the cool Cons in California. Thats the dream anyway :)

Tungsten wrote on 05/05/2012 at 08:58pm

Spent most of my life in Southern California, never went to one. Now, I live in the midwest and I regret it.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/05/2012 at 09:00pm

One of the reasons I am taking advantage of living in the Northwest for PAX for sure. Wanted to go for a few years now.

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The right sound effects and everything. Disturbing Link

http://fruit.gs/404.html

The right sound effects and everything. Disturbing Link visual, but fun geek reference.

Here are a few Diablo 3 news bits I had to share. So stay a

Here are a few Diablo 3 news bits I had to share. So stay a while and read:

The above video is the new reveal for the Wizard class. It seems from this video she is an epic Nuke class. After playing the beta I didn't get a good sense for how the Wizard would fit into a party but after seeing her later in the game in this video it makes sense to me. Calling down meteors on demons seems very satisfying!

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5203654

Bizzard has released more information about the in-game auction house. This is a feature that has been getting a lot of negative attention and I don't really understand it. Isn't it a good thing to allow you as a user to make money by... Read All

Going to jam a few Elder Scrolls morsels into this

http://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/bethblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Dawnguard.jpg

Going to jam a few Elder Scrolls morsels into this post.

Bethesda just dropped the name of the new DLC for Skyrim called Dawnguard. From the Bethesda blog "Coming this summer to Xbox 360. More details at E3.." Kind of wish DLC like this wouldn't drop only on the XBox but that is often the way of things. Looks like we will find out more about this exclusive XBox DLC at E3.

In other elder scrolls news it looks like Morrowind turned 10 today and to celebrate Morrowind and Oblivion are half off on Steam this week. Awesome.

-

http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/01/dawnguard/
http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/01/happy-10th-anniversary-morrowind/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/22320/

Tungsten wrote on 05/02/2012 at 11:01am

I'm tempted on the Morrowind. It was my favorite of the series (never played the first two, so I can't really talk), and with the mod's you can run now it looks pretty nice.

For those of you who haven't played it, it's a lot like Skyrim or Oblivion... but wierder and less balanced.

Travis Admin wrote on 05/02/2012 at 08:19pm

Just an FYI about the DLC-- it is almost definitely timed-exclusive. Everything Bethesda has released since Oblivion has had timed-exclusive DLC on the 360, but it always makes its way to the PC and PS3 soon enough.

It's a really crappy practice though. I guess it's hard to argue with the bags of money Microsoft gives them for that temporary exclusivity though. To be honest, it's why I always buy Bethesda games (at least the first time around-- I own Oblivion on all three platforms now) on the 360. I know I'm supporting the practice and am part of the problem because of that, but that extra month with the DLC is all too tempting.

Tungsten wrote on 05/02/2012 at 11:15pm

Eh, with a game like Skyrim (single player, lots of time to waste, mods galore) I'm not chomping a the bit for DLC. Now, I'll probably get it, but if I'll probably wait until its on Steam Sale no matter when it comes out.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/03/2012 at 01:05am

I dislike exclusive content either direction. I agree that Skyrim comes packed to the gills with already existing content, its just lame everyone but XBox misses out on it.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/03/2012 at 06:00am

Well at least for a little bit anyway.

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Bought this game a few months back and have played much more

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu4k85uRPu1qe9bi5o1_500.png

Bought this game a few months back and have played much more recently. The unforgiving game play of the first few play throughts didn't win me over. I loved the art style and game tone but the lack of save really hampered me on it.

Started it up again recently and immediately unlocked the Magdaline character. I played through as Magdaline and did much better than I had previously. The play control is the same, but Magdaline starts with a Heart item that allows you to recover one heart every so often. After a bit the play control seemed to gel more and I did much better. Still lost but I went further in the dungeon and it didn't seem like a complete annihlation.

That or I... Read All

AutoCat1000 wrote on 05/01/2012 at 01:50am

Minecraft! (duh)

Tungsten wrote on 05/01/2012 at 09:36pm

Tribes

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 05/01/2012 at 11:27pm

Pong.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/02/2012 at 01:29am

Pong. Awesome. Missile Command is pretty good too. Seriously though it is :)

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 05/02/2012 at 04:28am

Missile Command was great!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/02/2012 at 04:33am

One Of my Atari 2600 favorites.

Tungsten wrote on 05/02/2012 at 11:04am

Pole Position

Gary_Butterfield wrote on 10/12/2012 at 05:39pm

This is some thread necromancy but I will generally take any opportunity to evangelize my GOTY. Roguelikes work in an iterative fashion rather than linear, right? You get a little further each time and the way you make "progress" is through player knowledge. That's not strictly true in Isaac where you also unlock new items in play but it's the main form of progress. You get better as you get further as you get better as you get further. Unlocking new characters is actually a really sly way of handling a difficulty curve. Maggie is the easy mode for when you're starting and later, that becomes Cain (try to get 55 coins without spending any in one run). This then unlocks the challenge characters and eventually, through an unlock, Isaac becomes the most powerful character in the game. I'll have a more cogent examination of what I think makes this special in my own post at some point but I would urge anyone turned off by the difficulty to power through. When it clicks, it clicks hard (I have hundreds of hours logged on this game).

Tungsten wrote on 10/12/2012 at 11:05pm

I still pick it up now and then. It's still fun and horribly frustrating.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/13/2012 at 07:35am

I come back to this off and on. It's fun and I get a little father each time... But wow... It's hard :D

Tungsten wrote on 10/13/2012 at 11:32am

I think I got to mom just for the first time the other day. She kicked the crap out of me.

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Interesting compilation of video game footage set to an

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kiePaAHK3jE

Interesting compilation of video game footage set to an instrumental piece. I find it strangely emotion provoking, with tones of loss, hope, and sweet struggle... Or maybe I'm just in a mood...

Oh Guild Wars 2, it has been a long beta weekend. Such a

Oh Guild Wars 2, it has been a long beta weekend. Such a laggy weekend indeed! With the pre-purchase (notice I didn't say pre-order) of GW2 it gave us access to a beta weekend starting on Friday and ending Sunday. I made preparations with some old gaming friends and jumped in this weekend. I hope you enjoy my thoughts.

First off, the game is beautiful. NCSoft has a stellar art department and their stylized art direction is consistent throughout the game thus far. Most quests have an audible cutscene to depict the situation at hand. Definitely blows reading a wall of text out of the water.

Each race has its own starting area and they feel very different. Even though I... Read All Oh Guild Wars 2, it has been a long beta weekend. Such a laggy weekend indeed! With the pre-purchase (notice I didn't say pre-order) of GW2 it gave us access to a beta weekend starting on Friday and ending Sunday. I made preparations with some old gaming friends and jumped in this weekend. I hope you enjoy my thoughts.

First off, the game is beautiful. NCSoft has a stellar art department and their stylized art direction is consistent throughout the game thus far. Most quests have an audible cutscene to depict the situation at hand. Definitely blows reading a wall of text out of the water.

Each race has its own starting area and they feel very different. Even though I wasn't very drawn in I'll give them credit for making each race feel very distinct. We got to play the Charr, Human and Norn races this weekend. The Norn are very nature focused, revering the spirits of the animals and the spirit world that only shaman can travel into. They are large too, I was towering over my Human friends. The Humans are exactly wat you would expect, homeland lost they fight on with unwavering spirit. Nothing too special here but the female characters are really beautiful. Lastly I tried the Charr as I wasn't very excited for them. I think they have the strongest story in the beginning. They are singularly focused on their militaristic lives. I was impressed that their gritty and visceral heritage played well into their storyline.

I played Guild Wars 1 quite a bit and have fond memories of that game. Though the characters and story are easily recognizable, not much is the same. Everywhere you run there's a "dymanic quest" which doesn't feel dynamic at all. If you ever played Warhammer Online you remember the public quest system. Well, this is public quest of steroids. The quests became so repetitive and boring I actually started avoiding them.

PVP is something I participated in quite a bit. I played a battleground, which almost put me to sleep, but I kept coming back to WvWvW. That stands for World vs World vs World if you were wondering. In a 4 continent battle putting 3 servers against one another in a very long battle of taking and holding objectives, WvW can be a blast! At times it becomes mindless as you run around in huge groups zerging each other. You will quickly find out that melee is painful, being on the front lines means getting focused pretty hard. Even on my warrior I was mostly using a rifle in combat. There is much less mindless auto-attacking as you need to use skills, dodge attacks and projectiles and revive teammates. The biggest problem I faced was being unable to melee enemies in certain situations due to so much server lag.

All in all it was a fun weekend. Beta's aren't meant to be perfect and this was sure was not. Lots of disconnects, lag and bugs to report. I hope the feedback makes the release a better product. After waiting so long for this title I am a little disappointed. I miss some of the simplicity from the original Guild Wars. Now we can jump in a persistent world, but that doesn't make up for some of the best balanced collaborative PVP I ever played in the original.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/30/2012 at 12:02am

Do you see yourself playing this very much after launch?

What did your friends think of the beta weekend?

Tungsten wrote on 04/30/2012 at 12:38am

I played a lot of the first one, but never really got involved. For someone who has a problem computing to a subscription, the guild wars series definitely appeals to me. I'm glad to hear they fleshed out the char, they were prettycool in the first game.I had high hopes for the dynamic quests - so I house they fine time that to make it less obnoxious.

Tungsten wrote on 04/30/2012 at 12:39am

Stupid phone keyboard

Chowda Post Author wrote on 04/30/2012 at 04:33am

I will play at launch since I pre-purchased it. But I am no where near as excited as I was.

Just asked my friend his opinion. He said he liked the beta, but was unsure of the WvWvW. He thought he would have liked it best and was unsure he would want to do it much at launch. Maybe it'll get better when we can level and get better gear.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/30/2012 at 05:30am

I hope so. Would you recommend picking up the old game? I never got it and maybe it's worth playing?

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Last night I went to the Magic: The Gathering Avacyn

Last night I went to the Magic: The Gathering Avacyn Restored pre-release party at Red Castle Games in Portland.

Red Castle Games is a pretty cool games store. It has a very large selection of awesome board games ranging from Settlers of Catan, Arkham Horror, Castle Ravenloft, Pandemic and others as well has a hefty supply of Magic, Pokemon and other collectable cards. It also has a farily large set of games you can pull of the shelf and play if you want. One such game, Hero Quest caught my eye as it has been out of print for quite some time. I asked at the front if it was for sale as its hard to find and alas, it was not.

My friends arrived and we started with a card... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 04/30/2012 at 04:52pm

It's just so weird to see people referencing Star City Games all over the internet. That's about 45 minutes from here, it's where I went a few times to grab booster boxes back when I was playing more since they're way cheaper than anywhere else in the area, and... they're apparently one of the major MtG authorities on the Internet.

You'd expect the place to be a massive warehouse, but it's mostly just full of tables for tournaments, with all the goods behind the counter taking up less space than most small hobby shops.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 04/30/2012 at 08:24pm

Awesome, they just came up after a quick Google for the Goblin and Elves dueling deck. Cool they built up their online portion so well!

Travis Admin wrote on 05/02/2012 at 08:17pm

A co-worker was telling me recently about pack wars. You take a booster pack, two lands of each color, shuffle it all together, and that's your deck. Optionally, no peeking before the game starts.

Totally random results, but often hilarious.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/02/2012 at 11:16pm

Huh. That could be cool! :)

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Any of you MMOers out there... do you think your game would

http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/226632-/K3TJe%20-%20Imgur-620x.jpg

Any of you MMOers out there... do you think your game would let this happen?

http://www.destructoid.com/eve-players-band-together-to-destroy-the-economy-226632.phtml

Ever since I first heard about it, EVE has tempted me. I don't really have the time, and I doubt I could really pull off explaining the monthly subscription to my wife, but a game where this happens sounds... entertaining. All of the other games try to make you "believe you are part of a larger world." Well, guess what: this game actually let's you interact with everyone and change the world, even if it's for destructive purposes Just like the real world.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/28/2012 at 08:24pm

Interesting. I sort of give it to EVE a bit for letting this happen. They do allow practically anything to happen so if certain people want to blow up things haphazardly then it makes sense that they would allow it as it could happen in real life.

I find the reasoning to allow it interesting. Its sort of the "broken window parable" that I don't generally subscribe to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Anyways its cool to see that there are MMO's that do allow anything to happen but if I sunk a ton into a great ship and it was destroyed for little reason id be pretty upset.

Tungsten Post Author wrote on 04/29/2012 at 01:25am

I am wondering how they got those bad-ass ships though...

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/29/2012 at 07:18am

Lots of time?

Tungsten Post Author wrote on 04/29/2012 at 01:43pm

Maybe the market will respond and people will start maKing bank doing escorts

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/29/2012 at 04:35pm

If people stick with the game they will adapt something like that.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/29/2012 at 04:38pm

Or maybe blockade some sectors like we used to do in the ol Tradewars days.

Jason_Taylor wrote on 03/05/2013 at 06:19am

lol. I'm in goonswarm and while I didn't partake in the burning of Jita personally, I do know that the repercussions were felt around the universe.

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