Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

I wanna draw but it’s so late for me to do anything like that right now but I’m not sleepy at all. My back hurts bad though and so does my neck, as I always slept on my stomach for years and now the misaligned spine and slightly sore neck pain are coming to me now, so I expect to get somewhat bad sleep. Never sleep on your stomach unless you want to feel almost neverending pain and stiffness like me

Anyway, has anyone been having a good day or good night? I haven’t really done anything. Probably going to sleep in a few more minutes. Just wish I could draw more and was a bit more creative with it. Feels like I’ve never had time to be creative and do what I like, and it feels like my free time has been wasted doing insignificant things. Thinking about games and what I could be drawing right now…

@Pastellioli I wanna see I’m having a boring day but it’s been quite eventful actually, though not always for the better. I’m making some really great Mac n cheese so that part is good, but the bad part is that my day started out really sour when I game on steam had a permanent black screen due to a driver issue that I don’t quite get. Something to do with the video player I suppose and that it uses pre rendered cutscenes, something which tends to break far too many low budget pc ports sadly. I winded up refunding it which left me feeling defeated and with a sour taste in my mouth, but I have hope.

@Yousef- I love macaroni and cheese a lot! So tasty, me and my family have it a ton during Thanksgiving. My mom sometimes makes a keto version of it using cauliflower as a replacement for the noodles and makes the cheese extra gooey. I love how both versions taste, and keto Mac and cheese tastes best with pieces of ground beef.

Sorry about the game. I almost never have issues with a game that ultimately result in me needing to refund it or delete it. My consoles also don’t really have issues like that either. Are you going to get another game as a replacement for the one that you had to refund? I think that’s what I’d do if I had a game that didn’t work and needed to return.

@Pastellioli I’ve thankfully gotten it as a bundle of six games. So I’m not short on my backlog, it’s just they’re all from the same dev, so I’m not exactly putting my hopes up let’s say.

@Yousef- That is very good! Video game bundles and compilations are really a bang for your buck. In my case, Rare Replay was pretty much worth the money since it had a ton of games and content in there and it was pretty inexpensive too.

@Pastellioli RR was a lifesaver for me. That, and GTA IV.

@Yousef- I freaking love Rare Replay and it’s pretty much the only thing I play my Xbox for lol. I’ve made some progress in the games and I am close to finishing a stamp card but I’m trying to find some easy to get achievements to finish it. There are still a few games on there I haven’t finished or started, and I don’t think I’ll 100% it, but I know @Banjo- is going to try to, and I can’t wait to see that happen. The compilation was 30$ where I live but I got it during a spring sale last year and I got it for the low price of 7$. Pretty worth it! I’d say Rare Replay is one of the best and most well-made game compilations ever, mostly because of its presentation, extra content and small documentaries, and it even having an opening musical number as well. It makes me pretty sad that a lot of the IPs in there aren’t making a return though.

@Pastellioli that’s gonna be a big commitment. Wonder how you’ll feel about Rare’s lesser known games like Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

(On a sidebar, my bad if I’m not quite as chatty. I didn’t get much sleep so I’m really mellow energy wise today. XD)

@Yousef- I did actually play Grabbed by the Ghoulies back in May and finished it! I did think it was pretty good but my biggest issue was that it was extremely repetitive and hard near the end, so I think I gave it a 6, but it’s honestly more of a 7 now that I look at it. Found it super charming though.

I did also play Kameo last year in June and thought that was cool. A lot of Rare’s lesser known titles are often called bad or something, but I think they are more decent than bad, it’s only really brought down by issues like repetitiveness. I think I may have played most of the lesser known titles in there. I played a few of the NES and ZX Spectrum games in there and they were really not fun.

Went back to playing my rhythm game and now I finally was able to not only full combo a song, but got all perfects on the notes! The songs I was trying to play had tap registration issues and I did get annoyed, but I swapped to a more slower and less complicated song and the tapping worked so well there. Even though I did end up not having a good time at first, at least I was able to get one successful session in.

@Pastellioli a perfect score is the dream. That’s when you can finally put the controller down and reflect on the song you just perfected.

@Yousef- Yeah, and it was on a song I really liked. I was pretty close to getting all perfect on the song for a while, but I always fell short of one or two perfects. I think maybe I should play easier songs for now so I can get back into it, and maybe the game will actually register my taps lol. It felt so satisfying being able to full combo a song finally after I wasted so much time on another song a few days ago.

@Yousef- Thanks! It was great other than some weather-related issues tossing many of our air travel plans into a blender the first day, but we did make it! There are at least worse airports to be stuck in for 7+ hours than our starting airport. My friend and I weren't expecting to be bounced towards the East Coast first.

@Pastellioli Interesting, looking into it more, I didn't know until you brought it up that Rare published the game as well. I always thought it was Nintendo given Rare actually was a second party developer. Also looking into it, Conker's Pocket Tales was also published by Rare and not Nintendo. Always thought it was Nintendo publishing.

Bet the multiplayer was fun, kinda wished I experienced it when I borrowed the game, but my brother didn't have Xbox Live until later on, after I borrowed the game from a friend. Yeah, I do believe stores are very strict with certain games. Most places I know will not sell "Adults Only" rated games, even though they sell Mature games. From the sounds of it, I'm guessing Microsoft may have been worried over the game being rated AO, which means no store would sell it.

It was ok, I did like the game. The unique thing about Conker's Pocket Tales is that while it's a dual pak game (works on Game Boy and GBC), it had two versions of the game. One version is the Game Boy Color version (color, has better graphics, etc), the other is the Black & White version. The thing is, while they are similar, they end up feeling like two different games. Plus, it's an interesting piece of history. Conker in his original form, before they made him into a mature game.

@Tyranexx Wow, the Narnia series never even came to mind with me. Yup, it was an official Universal event, actually saw it in an official news release from them too. Here's a local news story about it (going to tag @MarioVillager92 too). This is what the Trolls event I went to looked like. It was made to feel like you were part of the world of the movie. The thing they didn't show in this report was inside the bus (with the interactive video game) and the concert area.

Understandable, I tend to sleep ok. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night, but usually fall back asleep. Will admit, I do feel a bit tired on some days when I wake up in the morning. That would be cool to see what they served on your vacation. Those places sound great, and a fresh ramen restaurant is awesome. I remember going to a fresh ramen place near where I use to live and it was really good ramen. BTW, it sounds like you and your friend had a great trip.

@Sunsy Although Rare did have close affiliations with Nintendo back in the 90s-early 00s, most of their IPs they published themselves (or with help from other companies, like THQ), and so they owned a lot of the game IPs themselves. The only N64 game I can think of where Nintendo was the publisher was Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie, and I even recall hearing that Nintendo had some of the rights over that IP for a few years before Microsoft purchased Rare. Because I am a huge Rare fan, I read a lot of things and fun facts involving them and their games.

I never see AO-rated games anywhere (obviously because they have worse content in them than the other ratings) and I do think your reason is very plausible, cause I think they also could have gotten a lot of flak from some people had they released Live and Reloaded uncut and uncensored, though again, the only audience Bad Fur Day offended were parents, though I do not think Bad Fur Day's material is super "mature" or AO-worthy, in fact, some of the content can be seen as more tame when you compare it to more modern "mature" media that carry a similar tone to it, though I still wouldn't say Bad Fur Day is for younger audiences. When I read the development history for Bad Fur Day though, they said that they had to avoid showing something during this rather crass attack the main character does to avoid getting the game an AO rating. I can remember what it is, but I do not think I should mention it here because it's a bit inappropriate.

I might try Pocket Tales soon via emulation! Wouldn't mind trying it out. I do think that it is interesting, since that game was kiddy and showed the family-friendly direction that the games were originally supposed to go in before going all "mature." The reason why the games did go "mature" was that the original kid-friendly version of Bad Fur Day got mixed to negative impressions, mostly for being generic and having visuals and a tone that was too similar to Rare's other games, most notably Banjo-Kazooie, and the project was faced with the possibility of being canceled if they couldn't rejuvenate interest in it or did something to make the game more appealing and interesting to their audience, so they delayed the game by a few years and intentionally went radio silent on it to shock people with the reveal of the retooled version of the game. I have heard the development story on that game probably a million of times, but I never get tired of hearing it.

Good morning or good night. How is everyone feeling today?

I'm fine, but I heard recently that they are going to raise the prices of Xbox Game Pass and are now going to lock games behind the more expensive subscriptions and give the cheaper option less games...it disappoints me a ton because I really saw value with the cheap subscription I had (as I don't have the money for the expensive tier or can buy a lot of individual games) and had canceled it before the news came out, and I had intended to get it back soon, but I guess not unfortunately. It also doesn't help because Nintendo Life's sister site Pure Xbox has this game club that I am apart of where Game Pass subscribers play a specific game a month, and several people alongside the person leading the club sound like they plan to unsubscribe and not renew once their sub runs out...I, unfortunately, think I'll leave the club when they eventually get onto Conker's Bad Fur Day (hopefully next month) since the new subscription prices are out of my budget, and I also can't buy the games from their voting list because of money as well. I love the Xbox console, but why is it that Microsoft just seems to make a bad move after a good move?

GamePass was always too good to be true, and these new tiers and prices seem like a desperate attempt at not losing as much money, but Microsoft is only willing to foot the bill for so long for market share — and when that market share stagnates, well, someone has to pay the bills.

@Pastellioli good morning, friend.
Yes, I’ve long accepted GP was gonna perpetually change into what it is now. So I’ve canceled my subscription a while ago as I felt it was not a service for me any longer.

@Yousef- It's a shame, because I was actually going to resubscribe soon to the standard Console subscription since that is where I found the most value in it, and I only cancelled the Console sub because I needed to save a bit more money. It sucks now that the new replacement and price hike just came out of nowhere and now I have to use a downgraded version of the Console sub with internet but lacking certain games, or sub to the more expensive options just to get all the games I want. I was looking forward to participating more in the game club, but now I don't think I'll be able to. However, someone did give a proposal or at least a suggestion saying that the game club should play older games instead of day one games, but I wonder what will happen with the club given everyone there sounds like they don't want to resubscribe or are planning to cancel their subs. It stinks really. I'll still be buying games to own myself, but I can't really buy anything right now.

@Pastellioli it’s really funny and ironic how a move meant to increase their revenue is driving away customers like us.