God damn it - a GOG sale AND Steam Summer Sale? My wallet is in orbit.

Thanks a lot - I'm glad to be back on PixlBit and herping and derping around the community, and thanks for the follow! I would have been completely confused had you not explained haha.

My dad and I were extremely close, which is why it hit me so hard, but I look back with fondness on all of the memories we've shared, and he's still teaching me new things every day. I'll have some information up here on my new Android game soon - I kicked ASS on it last night and got a ton done, so it might damn near be time for a teaser trailer :)

Thanks so much, it means a lot to me. I wouldn't wish this kind of thing on my worst enemy :(

Yeah it can be terrifying, especially when it's something so sudden, but I knew he had heart problems, just no idea they had gotten so severe, especially when he had just had it checked out not weeks before. Life is always a ride on peaks and valleys, and I'm trying to ride this peak for a long time!

Thanks a ton I really appreciate it. Yeah I've been pretty busy on GM:S haha, and feel free to stalk away :P With Steam's Summer Sale today though, I may get distracted if only for a little bit!

I wasn't sure if I even wanted to get involved or not, purely because of the snowballing that this topic has garnered across the internet, but oh well, I'm a sucker for great discussion.

The first line argument people use is the art vs. not argument, whether it's artistic and tasteful or just filth. As for the Dragon's Crown sorceress, the artist (George Kamitani) gave her absurdly large breasts - "voluptuous" would be an understatement - but does that mean it deserves to be scrutinized to the point where it'd be considered Hentai? Or does it still count as artistic?

The thing we all need to realize is that there will never be a clear definition for this, there's so much interpretation involved on an individual level that there'd be no way to quantify and rate something like that that would line up with everyone's point of view. I grew up with art - whether it was watercolor, pastels, charcoal, pen and ink, acrylic, the whole nine yards - it was a big part of my life. Naturally, I developed an appreciation for the emotion that art can convey, the depth and complexity that can be created by shapes and brush strokes. With that said, I gained an appreciation for the female form - and not just what many people are taking issue with here - the "busty, skinny archetype," but all shapes, sizes, art styles, you name it. To me, the female form isn't appealing just because of my inherent natural desires, being a young man and apparently someone's target demographic, but to me the female form embodies power, life, and love, and it's something to be admired and cherished.

As for the idea that every single woman in a video game is sexualized and objectualized is somewhat of a gray area for me, because in my mind there are many titles that most certainly fit this description - the damsel in distress, the powerful hero sweeps in to save the day and they live happily ever after, but I think this goes back to early art - in early times (medieval specifically) male and female roles in life were very polarized, and that was reflected in the tales of the time, where the woman was a home maker, taking care of the children, things that (sadly) to this day are still accepted as the norm. Even until the 1950's, men were commonly the "bread winner," while the woman was steretypically thrown into the home maker role. Nowadays, there are tons of women making huge waves in their respective industries, and personally I think it's fantastic - to get that kind of diversity not just because they're women, but because they bring new perspectives, new ideals, new ways of thinking that I believe will benefit not just their respective fields, and eventually, civilization as a whole.

One thing I have a personal problem with - and I know for a fact people are going to take this the wrong way, and a flame war will probably ensue, but there are many cases where being offended is a choice. If I'm listening to "Disciple" by Slayer, and someone hears Tom Araya screaming "GOD HATES US ALL!" and they say to me "Hey! I'm a devout, god loving christian and that offends me!" I'd absolutely lose my shit.  If you're looking for something to offend you, you will find it - if you're looking for something about race, you will find it, if you're looking for something about religion, you will find it - and it's this endless ferreting for something to hang over someone's head that's making the issue worse. When major events of sexism happen, they get muddled in with the lesser, more, dare I say, nitpicky events? I think the real issue here is that the straight up douchebags (you know, the ones that send rape threats in online games and various other outlets) need to remove themselves from the discussion, and peferably from the gene pool, and we need to see all sides of the issue and learn something from it. It's 2013, mankind has been to the moon, we've developed cures and vaccines for illnesses, we've created computers that can perform unbelievable calculations, yet we still fight wars over race, religion, and sex.

Earthbound isn't for everyone, but I personally enjoyed it. The art style is unique, though some people may not enjoy the cartoony look of it, but overall the story is fantastic, if not a bit tough to decipher on a first playthrough, but if you can appreciate it, it's a fulfilling and rich storyline. One particular scene is especially powerful, when [Spoiler, I guess?]: Poo gets spiritually torn apart limb from limb by an enigmatic spirit in the final phase of his Mu training. [End maybe spoiler] That scene really stuck with me, as well as of course the last boss, but I'll leave that for you to get to :P

I didn't realize Unity was visual! The interface of the IDE looks nice and clean, I might just have to play around with it myself! I've been using Game Maker since some of its earliest iterations (I believe version 3 was new around the time I started) so it'll be a new experience most definitely, but considering how incredible some of the Unity based games out there are, it might be worth getting into.

Thanks! I found myself playing for a solid 2-3 hours without even noticing the time go by - it was a fun and action packed little jaunt, and for being built with Unity really showed off how impressive a platform it can be.

Yes sadly it requires some sort of social networking login - which is a complete pain in the ass, but I aboslutely 100% thank all of you who voted, or hell even tried to vote! I appreciate it greatly!

Kefka. The ultimate villain. He's intelligent yet maniacaland twisted, he's ruthless yet calculated. He destroys the fucking world before the heroes even get to try and defeat him. He has the best final boss music from any of the Final Fantasy games. Done deal.

Yep, it would have been too expensive and time consuming to localize it, and since it was in 1996, they'd have been cannibalizing their marketing for FF7, so it flew right under the radar, but now there's a fantastic translation of it, and it's well worth the play!

I've said it before, but you can WRITE YOUR OWN SPELLS. It's awesome, and the storyline, while nothing super innovative, is interesting and solid enough to keep you going, and you can play the three main stories in any order, and even switch to a different one whenever you want!

Oh yes - those were the days where the prices didn't have anything to go on, they pretty much based it on how many megs the cart held, so those larger RPG's could be almost $100!

The Mantra system is so incredibly cool - you write your own spells! And the sprites are some of the most impressive I've seen from Square - they're big, detailed, and a lot of them are very well animated!

I thought he bought the ORIGINAL for 30 bucks! I was super envious ther for a second!

Don't open it. Put it in a protective case. Emulate it and play it with a controller. You're sitting on a gold mine!

Shantae cart-only can go for over $100. Complete it yields $300-$400, and there's a signed copy floating around for like $1500.

I don't get that, I can kind of understand why they wouldn't be able to faithfully remake FF7, due to 1.) Becoming a member of Avalanche, a terrorist group, that B.) Uses explosives to destroy Mako Reactors, leading Shinra to destroy the pillar supporting the plate, murdering everyone in Sector 7, and C.) This is SquareEnix we're talking about.

NO No no no, no Tidus :P Though I do plan on buying the X and X-2 HD remakes, I figure I'll give those games another shot, but we'll see :P

Vincent Brooks from Catherine. While he's not a "hero" in the strictest sense, he's a fantastic, multifaceted protagonist. Instead of battling hordes of aliens/demons/zombies, he instead has to battle himself when in the nightmare world, and the way it all translates to the real world and vice versa, is just amazing. His reactions to things are so human - the panic you hear in his voice during the nightmare segments is so believable, you start to fear for him - and since you're controlling him - yourself too. Catherine overall is such an amazing game, if you haven't played it, go play it right now.

"So buckle up, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye!" +100,000 points for the Matrix quote. I need to listen to this later so I can see if you brought up LSD, quite frankly the weirdest game ever.

Yes.

1.) Milon's Secret Castle

2.) Ninja Gaiden 2

3.) Slingshot AI in any simulation racing game

4.) Every bonus stage in any Spyro game ever.

5.) Castlevania's jump arcs + enemy placement (early on at least)

6.) Mike Tyson in Punch Out!!

7.) Ghosts'n'Goblins

8.) Ghouls'n'Ghosts (Yep, twice)

9.) GTA 3, the coffee stands across all 3 islands. Timed.

10.) Ocarina of Time - The Water Temple, you spoony MOTHERFUCKING bard. Use a key in the wrong place? GG.

Don't buy Turtle Beach - 90% of the price is for the name, there are tons of other "surround sound" (see below) headsets that sound just as good, if not better, for $40-$60. and honestly, you can use a normal PC headset if you already own one (with separate 1/8th jacks for mic/headphones) and get a 1/8 stereo to 3/32 mono adapter, dual rca to 1/8 jack, and a 1/8 stereo coupler (about $10 in suppplies) and use that. Also - don't worry about "surround sound" headphones - it's not possible, you can't have the equivalent of 7.1 when the speakers are millimeters from your ears. Get a good stereo headset and you'll hear positional sound better. Don't spend over $60, you can get lower end Sennheisers or Steelseries (usually a tad pricier) and get the same quality as a $200+ "gaming" headset.