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Some familiar music in this collection.

Thanks for looking out for us. Got myself a new password.

Well, I'll assume you're looking for stuff that's exclusive to Japan rather than just good stuff for the SNES in general. Are you a Tetris Attack fan? The Japanese version, Panel de Pon, has the same gameplay but completely different characters. Tetris Attack is one of my all-time favorites, so its Japanese counterpart was the first thing that I purchased once I got the ability to play Super Famicom games.

That's a lot of excitement for one week. Glad to hear things came out alright.

Welcome, new mods, and thanks to the old ones for keeping things running around here.

Happy birthday, Austin. Glad to have you around the site.

As seems to be the case with many people, I was raised Christian (Baptist, if we're getting specific), and I spent my childhood believing, but finding church to be boring and not really bothering to read my Bible or any of that. Eventually, I hit a very low point in my life. As so many things felt like they were going wrong, God continued to be there as a comfort in my life. I dug deeper into church attendance and started taking my faith much more seriously. Nowadays I consider myself to be a devout Christian. I make an effort to study the Bible and in general try to be a better person. My faith feels integrated in my day-to-day existence in a way that it wasn't for most of my life. I teach Sunday School on weekends, and I find it to be very fulfilling and meaningful.

In terms of how my beliefs affect how I play video games, I suppose there's a few things. As a minor bit, I think that I've soured a bit on more violent games. Beyond that, I'm a fan of story-heavy, decision-heavy games like the stuff Telltale has been doing lately. I try to put as much of myself in those player characters as possible, so of course that means that my beliefs will play a role. Usually that just means things like insisting on non-violence where possible, but I appreciate when games let me explicitly acknowledge my religion. As an example, (very minor Walking Dead Season 2 spoilers),

Now, as I'm starting into Life is Strange (just finished episode 2), I'm enjoying Kate's presence as an openly Christian character. So many games understandably don't mess with real-world religions, choosing instead to have characters who are religiously and politically ambiguous. I like having characters who I can relate to, especially in story-heavy games.

@edgecrusher: Man, you're not the first person I've heard say that about this week's Indycar race. I guess I'm going to have to give Indycar another chance. Didn't really grip me the first time I watched it.

Edit: Wouldn't you know it, a replay of this week's race starts in a few minutes. Just set it to record.

Yeah, he seems totally cool so far, and I imagine that he will continue to be cool. Glad to have him on board.

@chumley_marchbanks: Right back atcha