leecanread

 if you want up to date KoF XIII news as it comes in, as well as a slew of videos and screenshots, check out the kof cyberfanatix forums in the gaming news section. The loc test for today is over, but they continue until the 28th I believe, so there will be more tidbits and lots of videos for sure. So far I love everything I see, and am glad XII came out to tide everyone over until this.

The sprites are exactly the same, they are only zoomed out closer to their 100% sizes(around 120% maybe?), as opposed to their 200% sizes in XII. This makes the appearance of any jagginess less obvious, and also returns the game to the more classic KoF character:screen ratio. XII sprites weren't low res, unless you consider Guilty Gear X size low-res. The game should look pretty slick.

Don't gun it straight into art school. It'll put you in an unnecessary financial hole. I took 3 semesters of art classes at a community college and it was a great experience. You can both improve your art and also make social connections, enter contests, get your work shown in galleries, etc...In the end it's all up to you to push your skills, no matter how much you paid to be in a class. So I'd recommend you check out the art programs of affordable institutions first of all.
 
As for drawing, the best advice I can give is that above all, making the art you want to takes time. Time time time time time. Time and the ability to dedicate yourself and not waste it. For more practical advice, you have to understand reality before you can stylize. You're at a stage where you shouldn't be thinking about style yet. A personal style comes naturally, and the ability to conjure a particular style will come to, as you get a better grasp on reality which is the root of any style. Study the form and 3-dimensionality of things and understand how to draw with light and shadow, not just lines. It's a big leap but with time and study your brain will just set itself in that mode. When I draw, a lot of what I'm doing is just blotting out shadows, this is a method used by a lot of trained artists.
 
Also look at art that you like. Absorb it. Broaden your tastes to all centuries. Make a folder and just save all the pictures that inspire you. It's something I started doing and I think when you admire a good painting or drawing its lessons just seep into you.

When people say most anime sucks, they're correct, but it is also a correct statement that most moving pictures churned out of the bowels of studios, animated or live action, are awful. You've got to really research(wiki/forums) to find out what it is that piques your interest, and in the age of youtoobs and torrentz this is real easy to do. I'll list my faves and try not to repeat too many suggestions. 
 
Cowboy Bebop - a classic, with a great dub treatment. Adult Swim really rocketed this one to popularity and I know a lot of people who have no interest in anime at all tell me they've seen it and enjoyed it.  

Outlaw Star - another Toonami/Adult Swim classic. This is a future space-cowboy bounty hunter action anime that relies much more on fantasy than CB. It falls into a lot more anime cliches and goofiness than the more realistic CB, but it still is very character driven and has great drama. The characters may have big anime eyes but I love, love the sci-fi and fantasy designs in this show. 26 episodes.  

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Just look at that silly title. Melodramatic, at times incomprehensible, surreal, convoluted, but mostly badass. Giant humanoid robots that bleed everywhere. There's biblical imagery and terminology strewn about in a shallow but cool way. You can pick it apart, but you can also just enjoy the drama and the action on its own merits. If you watch the series, you have to watch the movies too. This series oozes with style and pretty much every single character is memorable. Did I mention the style is crazy. This is definitely an 'anime' in that you've got your visual gags and big eyed-ness, and questionable dialogue and harem-ness. But then in the same episode shit will get real. They ran out of money toward the end but I don't really think it suffers that much. 26 eps.

Armored Trooper Votoms - This is a sci-fi robot anime from 1983. Even though it looks dated the actual drawing is pretty good. This is a war drama centered around a badass soldier named Chirico who gets wrapped up in some conspiracy shit. There's intrigue, romance, and I think it can be pretty addictive. There isn't any nonsense in this, the robots that are piloted are utilitarian and the world feels real. I take it over the much more popular Gundam any day. It's 52 episodes, but if you take it one at a time it's really manageable, and it very rarely drags.
 
Gundam 0080 - now that I've crapped on the original Gundam, I give you my all time favorite Gundam sidestory. The format I saw this in was like 4 or 5 episodes, but I think there's a version that's more like a feature film. I'm not sure. Anyway, it's a war drama, naturally. You don't need to have any experience with the Gundam universe to appreciate this, since it's short and the focus is on the characters. There's some good robot action, but what 0080 does is center on a normal everyday ignorant little kid who doesn't have super powers(but of course gets involved in things far over his head). It's got some 80's cheese to it but I love that stuff. I really like the characters and the mix of tenderness and tragedy in this. I think a lot of people would say it's cheap but, eh, it got to me. 
 
There's tons of good shows and movies out there, especially of the action variety. And also a lot of gratuitious violent anime that's can be appreciated on that level alone. Ninja Scroll comes to mind immediately. Sometimes you just don't need character development and plot. Hope you find some good stuff. Also keep in mind the date of the anime you're looking at, as trends and cliches do evolve over time. I myself think the sweet spot is in late 80's/early-mid 90's.

good: expedited battle system where actions go down all at once ala grandia
bad: lame character designs
good: the game world looks great, not just technically but stylistically(style > polygon count always, imo)
bad: sphere grid BARF
uneasy about: ai controlled party members
 
i would really like to play this, i don't have a ps3 and probably won't for a long ass time, but I'm definitely interested. I've heard a lot of good things about the battle system and bosses and the endgame and all that, but the story is going to be the make or break deal for me.

i'd say it's easily worth 50 bucks. definitely shoot for a good bargain, but i say don't pass the game up just because it's still somewhat pricey for being over a decade old. if someone were to hand me a bare cd wrapped in a hong kong newspaper, i'd still probably give them 20 for it if i were a desperate man. as far as i'm concerned it's a piece of gaming history. incredible fiction and characters which are all portrayed with sincerity. there's a lot of things in that game that transcend the whole 'dudes vs. guy who wants to be god' scenario that is genuinely overplayed. in Xenogears' case I think that scenario is somewhat legitimate in the kind of themes it deals with. i love the style and the dialogue and the designs and the world and just...pretty much everything about that game. played it first when i was around 13, and a lot of the plot went over my head. played it a few more times in high school and once recently, and really got absorbed in it, read the Perfect Works and everything. definitely holds a special place for me. highly recommend you try it.
 
also if you're at all a fan of music xenogears' soundtrack is tops. aesthetically, although some may think the character sprites can look janky, it's pretty well put together and isn't too limited by technical aspects. really amazing team of people on that game.

People go on all the time about Sonic's SUPER SPEED being the core gameplay mechanic constantly, but I think that's mostly just rhetoric that Sega pushes, and used to really hard with the whole blast processing thing, because at the time it did move alot smoother and faster than other games. The only RUNNING heavy 2d sonic games I can think of were in the Advance series, where you really could just hold right for a good portion of them, and just...go fast. Pretty boring. Sonic 1/2/3/Knuckles/CD - not like that at all. They're platformers with an emphasis on pinballish physics and branching paths, usually an upper and a lower. There are intermittent bursts of speed, like in Chemical Plant, Flying Battery, Hydrocity, etc...but they're transient. Most of the time in the genesis games you're straight up exploring and moving at a very medium pace. And on levels like Metropolis Zone or Scrap Brain you just don't rush. The potential is there for speedrunning levels like crazy, by bouncing off of enemies and flying through the air and skipping all the obstacles of course, but if you're doing that you've put some study into it and are missing out on a lot of the fun. It's just not how many people sit down to play a game of Sonic. 
 
So IN SUMMARY no he was totally not being sarcastic it's a valid statement. Speed is just a small part and the makers of the Genesis levels had very deliberate areas where they wanted you to go fast and areas where they didn't.