It ain't great for your wallet, but I'd like to genuinely suggest you buy a TV from the same year that every generation of consoles came out on which to play them. You can get them cheap (or free) on Craigslist. I've got my SNES and Genesis hooked into a TV that can't be more than half a metre in diameter and has nothing on the back but a cable TV input. It looks better that way, and is less distracting when the in-game text isn't a foot tall. My N64, Playstation, Gamecube and PS2 (I lumped the two generations together) are all plugged into a twenty-something-inch CRT. My Wii is plugged into the only flatscreen in the house, with some nice component cables.

@Butano said:

@JJWeatherman: I figured that if the broken in-game tutorial started me as the king of Scotland, that would be the place to start lol. The vassals weren't too hard to get a grip on, as I just granted land tiles to my sons and would transfer a few over to him so I wouldn't have to worry about them. I made sure to basically only have maybe 2 land tiles that I own myself and if I ever conquered a new one I would give it away. The best part about being king is having access to the entire realms army, though try not to have them raised for too long or else your vassals get pissed. Crusades were the hardest part for me, as my armies were a whole lot smaller than the others.

Perhaps I should at least look into that in-game tutorial, as I've passed it up completely in favor of YouTube videos. It's got to have some useful info, though.

Man, I decided to rush through that initial campaign I started and it was a glorious disaster. I somehow ended up having a three year old inherit my titles after several other characters died of various means. I'm not sure how a three year old can order people's imprisonment and execution, but that totally happened several times, haha. This game's great. I'm going to start again and hopefully things will go better for me.

@pyromagnestir said:

@JJWeatherman: I think Louis decided to hire an actual editor for the newest season. If I remember right it's a lady who's edited some Woody Allen movies in the past.

Ah, that's really interesting. I was actually thinking more than once that the editing seemed more complex and that maybe it was done by someone else. That's cool that he's trying to do some things that were maybe outside of his abilities before, but on the other hand, I thought he did a great job editing it himself. I'll definitely be keeping a closer eye on the editing now as I finish the season.

@Akrid: Great interview. Thanks for sharing.

And I would agree with @pyromagnestir about the dungeon episodes of the P4 ER. Ironically, they're often some of the best episodes not only because the battles can be interesting, but because you never know what Jeff and Vinny will start talking about. At times it becomes a mini-bombcast as they discuss the games they've been recently playing, or any other random things they feel like talking about. And of course it being Jeff and Vinny, these conversations are always interesting and/or funny.

@Akrid: I'm honestly a little bummed to hear someone would willingly skip so much of the endurance run. You perhaps missed out on some of the best/funniest stuff. Stuff like Chie kicking a tank or all the random deaths and other things that I can't recall right now (and even if you did see some of that stuff, having witnessed the build up to those moments may have added to the hilarity). Personally the only parts I didn't love when it was originally going and have mostly skipped over in my effort to watch the series over have been the 2nd time through a dungeon for the secret items. But aw well, I'm glad you got what you wanted out of it.

@pyromagnestir: Well I said 100+ because both times I skipped 90% of the dungeons - just the bosses and dialogue. So that's kind of a good half of the game gone.

And yeah, I'm still really loving S2. Was just a bit surprising is all, because I remembered this interview where he talks about how he doesn't feel comfortable calling himself an artist, and he sort of tries to demean his own work when he says it's high-falutin'.

And in my opinion, he often tries his best to hide is intelligence and the wisdom that drives his comedy. It's cool that he's laying it a bit bare now, making more of a dark drama then just a comedy show.

@JJWeatherman: I think Louis decided to hire an actual editor for the newest season. If I remember right it's a lady who's edited some Woody Allen movies in the past.

@Akrid said:

what a co-ink-ee-dink, I've been watching Louie too! What a great show. It's odd, but so far S2 does not ring of comedy, despite it being made by a comedian. Seems he's often shooting for something artistic as opposed to just laugh-out-loud hilarious.

I've watched the ER twice, and I agree that it's probably the best thing they've ever done. I mean, It'd have to be to keep me entertained for... Man, probably at least 100 hours. Not eyes glued to the video mind you, doing other stuff. But they made an amazing game twice as amazing in my eyes.

Heh. Seeing as their actual play time for the Endurance run was 99 hours and 59 minutes, not counting any time they wiped and had to start over, I'd say your underestimating a smidge if you've watched it twice.

And Louie's season 2 may have been far more of an auteur type thing that straight up comedy, but it still gave me the bum swap, which was just soo great.

@JJWeatherman: I figured that if the broken in-game tutorial started me as the king of Scotland, that would be the place to start lol. The vassals weren't too hard to get a grip on, as I just granted land tiles to my sons and would transfer a few over to him so I wouldn't have to worry about them. I made sure to basically only have maybe 2 land tiles that I own myself and if I ever conquered a new one I would give it away. The best part about being king is having access to the entire realms army, though try not to have them raised for too long or else your vassals get pissed. Crusades were the hardest part for me, as my armies were a whole lot smaller than the others.

@PerryVandell said:

Buying an N64 is always a good purchase as long as it still works. I'm always skeptical of buying stuff off Ebay, which doesn't make much sense considering everything I've bought from the site works fine. Guess my mind has to don a tin-foil every now and then.

Oh, and nice work!

I bought the actual system in a store, so I knew it worked. I probably wouldn't be too hesitant to buy one from eBay, though, as I've also never gotten ripped off there. People like their positive feedback, thankfully.

@Akrid said:

what a co-ink-ee-dink, I've been watching Louie too! What a great show. It's odd, but so far S2 does not ring of comedy, despite it being made by a comedian. Seems he's often shooting for something artistic as opposed to just laugh-out-loud hilarious.

I've watched the ER twice, and I agree that it's probably the best thing they've ever done. I mean, It'd have to be to keep me entertained for... Man, probably at least 100 hours. Not eyes glued to the video mind you, doing other stuff. But they made an amazing game twice as amazing in my eyes.

Yeah, I know what you mean about Louie. I actually like that about it, though. It's different from anything else I've seen, and that's awesome. Also I just love the fact that he edits it all on his MacBook Pro. At least he used to. I assume he still does.

And if you've watched the ER twice, you've been entertained for far longer than a hundred hours.

@Scrawnto said:

I watched the ER over a few weeks in the summer a couple of years back (Was the endurance run really that long ago, or am I misremembering that?), then I watched most of it again with @Butano when we lived together. Great stuff.

I have had Crusader Kings 2 installed on my PC for weeks now, since I bought it for super cheap on sale, but I have yet to actually start it up. Not sure why.

It started in 2009, man. It's crazy that it''s been that long. And if you have like a whole weekend on your hands, you should try Crusader Kings out. Ha.

@believer258 said:

Wait, so how recent is all of this? That's a lot of gaming to be doing in the past week or so.

Anyway, awesome job on the N64! I usually don't let my nostalgia get to me, but sometimes that happens. Also, those N64 carts off of Ebay - were they those insanely expensive ones that are still in the box and plastic or just the cart for ten dollars or so?

Oh I don't know. This is all over maybe two weeks or so. It's not that much.

But yeah, I just ordered the carts with no boxes or anything. I think Ocarina was still like $20, though. Majora's Mask may have been like $28, but that came with the expansion pack. Goldeneye was like $15-ish. I wasn't about to start buying box + manual copies, as those can get much too expensive. I found one sealed copy of Ocarina of Time in a protective plastic case for $5,000! Bananas! I totally wanted it, though.

@Butano said:

Yea, I've seen the P4 ER twice now, though only half of both DP ERs and about 12 of the Chrono Trigger ones. Don't know why I could watch all the P4 one and not finish the others, but it's something I'm looking to complete this summer.

I actually just finished playing my first campaign of CK II. Took me around 30 hours to do. Started off as the king of Scotland, had no idea what to do other than wait for events to happen in the beginning, and once I got the hang of it, my family held on to the crown for about 250 years until my cousin starts a civil war due to me raising crown authority AND Norway decides to go to war with me over the Northern tip of Scotland. Got knocked down to a duke and never recovered, though in the last year I was acting regent to the 6-year-old king and was deemed first in line for the crown upon his death. If only I had a few more years before Jan 1, 1465 (the end date to the game) to carry out my plot to gain the crown back.....

Not sure what my next campaign I should start as. I think starting as king somewhat limited play, as I didn't really have any goals other than hold on to the crown, so I'll start off a little lower next time, like a baron or something in the Byzantine empire or France and work my way up from there.

You know, I never did finish the Brad and Ryan DP run. I finished the Jeff and Vinny one and about half of the other, but I guess I lost interest. Maybe I could remember where I left off. The Chrono Trigger one was good, though. You should definitely check the rest of that one out.

Oh man, that's some tough luck there in your CK game. I can't even imagine how complicated the game must get when you're a king with loads of vassals and a dozen or more counties to manage. My head hurts just thinking about it. I'd say definitely start at a lower position on your next run. The tutorial I watched recommends starting on Dublin and making it your goal to unite Ireland and become king of it. It's a smaller scale game that way, I think. I'm going through that to try and learn the game and then I'll try something a little crazier next time.

Yea, I've seen the P4 ER twice now, though only half of both DP ERs and about 12 of the Chrono Trigger ones. Don't know why I could watch all the P4 one and not finish the others, but it's something I'm looking to complete this summer.

I actually just finished playing my first campaign of CK II. Took me around 30 hours to do. Started off as the king of Scotland, had no idea what to do other than wait for events to happen in the beginning, and once I got the hang of it, my family held on to the crown for about 250 years until my cousin starts a civil war due to me raising crown authority AND Norway decides to go to war with me over the Northern tip of Scotland. Got knocked down to a duke and never recovered, though in the last year I was acting regent to the 6-year-old king and was deemed first in line for the crown upon his death. If only I had a few more years before Jan 1, 1465 (the end date to the game) to carry out my plot to gain the crown back.....

Not sure what my next campaign I should start as. I think starting as king somewhat limited play, as I didn't really have any goals other than hold on to the crown, so I'll start off a little lower next time, like a baron or something in the Byzantine empire or France and work my way up from there.

Wait, so how recent is all of this? That's a lot of gaming to be doing in the past week or so.

Anyway, awesome job on the N64! I usually don't let my nostalgia get to me, but sometimes that happens. Also, those N64 carts off of Ebay - were they those insanely expensive ones that are still in the box and plastic or just the cart for ten dollars or so?

I watched the ER over a few weeks in the summer a couple of years back (Was the endurance run really that long ago, or am I misremembering that?), then I watched most of it again with @Butano when we lived together. Great stuff.

I have had Crusader Kings 2 installed on my PC for weeks now, since I bought it for super cheap on sale, but I have yet to actually start it up. Not sure why.

what a co-ink-ee-dink, I've been watching Louie too! What a great show. It's odd, but so far S2 does not ring of comedy, despite it being made by a comedian. Seems he's often shooting for something artistic as opposed to just laugh-out-loud hilarious.

I've watched the ER twice, and I agree that it's probably the best thing they've ever done. I mean, It'd have to be to keep me entertained for... Man, probably at least 100 hours. Not eyes glued to the video mind you, doing other stuff. But they made an amazing game twice as amazing in my eyes.

Buying an N64 is always a good purchase as long as it still works. I'm always skeptical of buying stuff off Ebay, which doesn't make much sense considering everything I've bought from the site works fine. Guess my mind has to don a tin-foil every now and then.

Oh, and nice work!

Pay that treacherous fucker of a son back! As Omar put's it: "You come at the king (or Earl, as the case may be), you best not miss."

I've been meaning to get to episode II of the Penny Arcade games for a while now. That first game was fucking funny. I still have my old N64 and even still use it on occasion. My brother wants to have it so he can have drunken Mario Kart 64 nights with his buddies, but I will not give it up. As it goes, he can pry my controller, and so forth... Persona 4 is great and I keep a few of my favorite episodes of the endurance run downloaded for the occasional random rewatch. My go to is probably the Rise dungeon epic bossfight, followed by a certain night's misadventures in the teacher's hotel room. And Louie is a really good show. And Louis seems to be just a pretty smart dude in general.

There, those are my random responses to your random collection of thoughts.

I'm saw an season of Louie C.K. I never got into to it. I did like his joke about how his daughter thought he was tricking her into drowning.

I’ve recently been catching up with season two of “Louie,” Louis C.K.’s self-produced television show. It’s a great show, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Seasons one and two are both on Netflix. Anyway, there was a scene with Louie in the car with his daughters and one of them says that she’s bored. As you’d expect from a five year old, she keeps repeating that she’s bored even though no one’s responding. Finally, after asking her dad why he won’t answer her, Louie replies.

“Because ‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none-percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever, inwardly. Do you understand? Being--the fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to be bored.”

I don’t get to be bored, either. Thankfully, I can always write.

I recently decided it was a good idea to buy a Nintendo 64. It probably wasn’t. Certainly not financially speaking.

Nostalgia is a fickle mistress. Memories of the past--even the fondest of which--can have their very foundations crumbled to pieces when met with the cutting perspective brought about intrinsically by the present. Even with this knowledge neatly tagged and filed away in the section of my mind labeled “Recall Before Spending Money,” it was nowhere to be found one fateful afternoon, and thus I now own a Nintendo 64.

Do I actually regret buying a Nintendo 64? Was it really that bad of an idea? No, not really. It’s actually kind of awesome! Not for my wallet, but you know. I decided to hit eBay for some more excessive spending and have thus far come away with both Zelda games, as well as Goldeneye 007. Add the three games I picked up alongside the system (Superman, Episode I Racer, and Tony Hawk) and I’ve got a nice little collection going. Ideally I’d still love to own Paper Mario and Donkey Kong 64 as well as Super Smash Bros., but I’ve managed to contain my excessive spending for the time being.

Speaking of excessive spending, I recently bought a new TV. It’s a 40” LED LCD--not top of the line, but it gets the job done. The only reason I mention this is because my newly purchased Nintendo 64 looks horrific on the thing. I thought it looked grimey on my old 26” TV, but stretching that out to 40” makes it, as you could imagine, even worse. My only hope is to look for an S-video cable, but I’m not sure how much good that’ll realistically do.

Not that the picture is holding me back from enjoying the system. I’ve already saved the Great Deku Tree, ransacked a bunker equipped with dual golden guns sporting infinite ammo, and flown through an ungodly amount of rings in my quest to foil Lex Luthor. I’m having a lot of fun reliving these products of my childhood.

I think most of all, though, I’m enjoying just the simple act of owning this system and these games once again. And maybe that’s weird, or sad, I’m not sure. All I know is that looking down at the floor in front of my television and seeing a nintendo 64 sitting there with the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time peeking its head out of the top, I just can’t help but to feel a slight sense of comfort and happiness. Yep, definitely weird.

I’ve also been playing Persona 4. So, once again maybe this is weird, but I believe the Persona 4 Endurance Run produced by Jeff, Vinny, and Drew to be the single best piece of Giant Bomb content to date. The weird part is that I’ll still go back and watch select episodes occasionally. I do this more often than you may think. If, for example, I’m eating something and sitting in bed, I’ll flip on a random episode of the ER. Episode 50 is actually one I go back to often. Anyway, I’ve grown to absolutely adore a game that I’d previously never even touched for myself. I’d never played even one minute of this game, and yet I’d have likely called it my favorite JRPG ever (I don’t play a ton of them). Anyway, I finally decided that I had to play it. Well, I bought it, and now I am.

It’s strange playing a game that you’ve already seen a couple hundred hours of, for the first time. It’s almost like watching one of those movie trailers that spoils seemingly every aspect of the plot, except you know, more so.

Knowing where things go in advance isn’t limiting my enjoyment, though! In a parallel universe Inaba, James(!) Tunoku has transferred schools and has found himself in the middle of an investigation that can only be solved by some sort of... team. Anyway, I’ve been enjoying getting to hear the voice acting at a reasonable volume. Chie actually sounds different to me coming through my speakers. Weird.

Last I left off, my entire party was wiped out by Yukiko’s shadow boss. I’m so ashamed. I was clearly ill prepared for that battle. I’ll jump back in soon and show that giant creepy bird thing who’s boss.

With the Quick Look of the third episode of the Penny Arcade games, I took to buying the first two via Steam and getting into a series that I really wish I’d gotten into a lot sooner. Those games are pretty awesome!

If I were to pin one negative on the first game, though, it would be the excessive need to backtrack through environments. The first episode relies too much on that, and the environments become tiring as a result. It would help if there were a faster means of travel, but the character’s legs only move at one speed: not fast enough.

I really am loving the humor. I’m not at all what one would call a Penny Arcade fan, but even so, these games are funny. So much so that I’ve gone and read a few Penny Arcade comics as a result. I don’t know, I still think the comics are only so-so.

The Gabe and Tycho characters in game are just fantastic, though. Gabe in particular. Terrific facial expressions paired with perfectly fitting, witty dialog is commonplace, and it’s always hilarious. Tycho’s relationship with his niece is also a great source of humor. This is very much worth playing for the laughs alone.

But that’s not all there is! No, there’s actually a fairly involved battle system that requires some quick reflexes paired with a healthy dose of strategy; I did not at all expect this. You’d think a game like this would hinge on its story and humor, but really, the battle system made combat something that I, honest to god, always looked forward to.

Whether you’re reading the outstanding dialog or beating mimes to a pulp, these games are totally fun throughout, and that was a very pleasant surprise. As I mentioned earlier, the only downside is the trek between these points, but that’s something easily overlooked at the end of the day.

I’m a bit into episode two now, and there seem to be more environments this time from what I can infer, but I’m not sure. That alone could make this second episode perfect if the rest holds up as well as it did in episode one.

Episode three is of course a complete departure from this style of game, which on one hand is sad since I’m enjoying these games so much, but on the other hand is awesome because it’s a game by the creators of Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World. Those roots definitely show, too. I’m super excited to play episode three, but I’ve got number two to finish up first!

The other game I've been playing a bit of is one called Crusader Kings II. This is the game formerly known to me as "That impenetrable game that Dave did a Quick Look of that one time."

I picked this game up on Amazon probably a good couple of weeks ago now, and have finally started to dig in. I decided to watch the Quick Look over again before I jumped in, because you know, I had no idea how to play. Little did I know, that was but the start of the deep, dark hole that is my trying to learn this game.

After watching that hour and a half long Quick Look, I still didn't understand enough to get started, and so I turned to YouTube. There are actually several great video series that have been put together informing new players such as myself of the finer details of the game. These are extremely helpful. If you're thinking of getting into this game, I'd highly advise you to set aside at least a couple of hours and search "Crusader Kings II tutorial" on YouTube. Invaluable.

After watching a couple hours of videos, I went off yet again in an attempt to conquer some damn land. I ran into a bit of a road bump.

So I start up this game as the Earl of Dublin. I was trying to follow the path of this guy in the tutorial, at least to start off. I'm sending my council off to do what they need to do, managing my vassals, granting people honorary titles so that they like me more--you know, Earl-type stuff.

I then notice that my eldest son and heir to my land is unmarried. Naturally I declare that he'll marry this 15 year old girl. But of course not for another year, as 16 is the minimum age for marriage. Being that the county of Dublin is so small, my son and heir also happens to be my Marshal. So this guy's got it made. He's the heir to Dublin, Marshal, and he's got a smokin' hot 16 year old wife now.

How does he repay me? The little prick plots to kill me! Luckily I had one of my council members uncover plots and thus discover this, or who knows what would have happened. So I discover that my own son wants to kill me. I decide that I'll try to talk him down and convince him that killing me is the wrong move. I could have arrested him with a good success rate, as after you discover a plot, that becomes very easy to do. But nay! This is my son, god damn it! He eventually did accept my request to end his plot, but not before breaking my heart. As it stands, I'm not sure whether to let him remain heir, or to make some changes in my succession laws. Or maybe I should just kill him. Would that be evil, or just fair?

Whatever I end up doing, or how this plays out, I think this game's kind of amazing. I've only been playing for a bit, and I still don't know a lot of the basics, but I've been able to have these legitimately heart-breaking moments that have really taken me aback. For a game so rooted in menus and text as opposed to action, the emotions that can come out of this game are pretty amazing.

If anyone has a great Crusader Kings story, I’d be interested to hear it. There seems to be an endless potential for crazy, random fun. I guess I'll attach this to the forums in hopes that some fellow Crusaders see it.

Anyway, I think that’s about enough waffling from me. I’m about to hit 2,000 words, and that’s no good for holding people’s attentions.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Do with this information what you will.