Unprofessional Fridays: 06/20/2014

Man, I remember people vehemently arguing that Toshinden was better than Virtua Fighter (I assume because they didn't want to get a Saturn and Tekken hadn't come out yet).

Vibri is female. Vib Ribbon is a wonderful game, one of my absolute favourites. I've never been fully certain about what determines the shapes certain songs create, but it's definitely not as simple as how loud, quiet, fast or slow the songs are. I have played metal songs that have been simple and slow atmospheric songs that have been pretty fucked.

Love this stream, and I'm glad there's more Peter Brown. That dude is awesome.

@legendarychopchop: "Huuh."

I'm with Peter on Syphon Filter, the run and the taser are hilarious but it's not a very good game. It wasn't terrible for the time, but it always had the feeling of an MGS cash-in and I remember the controls feeling pretty gross.

Also, I could listen to Jeff and Peter talk game collecting for hours. Thanks, guys!

Yes! A dying PS1 disc reader made the PlayStation logo feel like an oasis in the desert.

You guys should play godhand for UF ;) , also this is my first time seeing vibribbon and it looks better than anything on my ps4 atm

Jeff looks energized as hell. Is it the clothes? Is it the days off? Is it E3? GF?

• UI designers in this era wanted to put a gradient on everything.
• That FMV actress in Warhawk is the voice of Mei Ling in the MGS franchise

My thoughts exactly! Good to see him like that.

Vib Ribbon lives up to the hype.

I sort of drifted to sleep watching this live as the fighting games took hold, so I missed Bushido Blade. I got a lot of mileage out of that game back in the day, despite its instant lethality. I think it was a pretty good model of post-Sanjuro chanbara film duels, replete with high pressure arterial spray.

And Syphon Filter. Wow. I forgot so much about that one.

jeff looks SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.

also sony press sneak fucks

@rorie Namco + T -> ANT COM

Toshinden 2 had an amazing (FMV) opening.

Damn a new jumping flash as like a $15 game might be awesome. Watching it being played I wanted to play it but figured it probably controlled like shit.

I only ever played the demo of Vib Ribbon so I was pretty stoked to finally hear the full version of Sunny Day. I didn't even know that it kept going after the first verse.

Syphon Filter was cool, I played the demo a ton but never finished the full game. I think conceptually the third level in the park with the bombs was my favorite, even though it was a timed mission. I originally got stuck on the snow base level as a kid and only got past it when I returned to the game several years later. Even so I never managed to finish the game completely. Got lost on one of the later mansion levels or something, I dunno, the latter half of the game didn't seem that great anyway.

The Dual Analog definitely came out in the US. I got one for Christmas in 1997, when I was in college.

It was a decent controller. It had longer handle-arms on it than the Dual Shock, which was great for large-handed gentlemen like myself. No vibration, though.

what's the least snobby way I can complain that they stretched out all these PlayStation games to 16:9?

I would watch that SO HARD. All the inscrutability and brutality of the Souls games with none of the precise control!

SYPHON FILTER AND BUSHIDO BLADE ALL OF MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE

Best move in a fighting game is hands down Yoshimitsu's "Trip Smash" throw where he grabs one arm, kicks out one leg of the guy making him tilt back and then smash him in the face. Seeing that in the trailer for Tekken 1 on the "Demo 1" disc that came with the first Playstations (at least in here Europe) was what sold me on the Playstation. I just had to have that! That and the playable demo for Destrution Derby.

Tekken 2 was my peak of fighting games. I came first in a local tournament at a big LAN party and won a Commodore 64 Games System which is the console version of the C64 and probably the most expensive thing I've ever won in my entire life!

Brad took Japanese in college but has always admitted he hasn't actively maintained it.

Finally, SOMEONE makes good on mentions of Vib Ribbon.

i just remember my friend gloating to me while showing it and ragging on my N64 :(

tbf it's a pretty nice controller

I thought I knew street fighter. I don't know enough about street fighter.

*edit BUT sf3 being the bad street fighter??? CMON JEFF

The joy that Vib Ribbon brings to Jeff and Brad is fantastic.

Tobal No. 1 and Robo Pit

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

Oh man, EX + Alpha was such a dope game. Found it used at a FunCoLand and wrung hours of gameplay out of that disc with my fighting game buddies in high school.

Shout-outs to Peter Brown for being awesome in this.

I don't know how the logistics would work but we need a podcast/video/site thing where Jeff, Peter, and the dude from Video Games New York get together and talk about old games.

Someone needs to tell Brad and Matt that you don't pronounce the "L" in yolk.

Really bothers me that they didn't even mention Soul Blade(/Edge) on the PS1 during all the Soul Calibur talk.

More like Namco => No Mac

This is the kind of comment I love seeing before I've watched the show. Like what? How will this even come up? Fantastic.

I knew literally nothing about Vib Ribbon before watching this. I don't understand why it was so hyped up. The create levels based on cds thing is a cool idea but the gameplay did not look fun at all and the default music did appeal to me either.

I would love an endurance run of FFVII

I remember spending dozens of hours playing Tekken 2 when I first got my Playstation. Not my first console by any means, but that was a defining moment in games for me.

That Rorie has some good ideas.

Sega Master System startup, fer the "Master Race"!

Say whatever you want, I had a lot of fun playing battle arena toshinden. Admittedly I was like 10, but the music is still pretty hot.

Its pretty lame you guys just played fighting games for the first hour, but you made up for it with Siphon Filter.

As someone in a similar situation I can empathize. Years later I took a trip to Tokyo and then felt pretty cocky about my retention only to figure out at the end when I'd been saying "Tokyo is a lot of fun," I'd actually been saying "Toyko is very birthday." Multiply that by a few TGS trips and it makes perfect sense. When thousands of people are watching you live on the internet, I'm not surprised he qualifies what he's translating with, "I'm pretty sure this says..." or similar statements.

For the most part, you can get away with just remembering katakana for most video games, a set of about 40 characters with 40 alternate pronunciations marked by what look like quotation marks or a degree symbol next to the character for about 80 total sounds, and those can be used to phonetically spell all words borrowed from other languages in Japanese. "Su-ta-to" is "Start," etc. (Obviously this goes out the window for RPGs or more text-heavy games).

fucking Syphon Filter is the best

I remember falling and dying through the geometry in the first Siphon Filter SO MANY TIMES. First Ps1 game I took back to the rental store and got swapped out for something else.

Syphon Filter is a fucking fantastic game, the second one is a bit of a disappointment but the third was actually aight.

The PSP titles were good too but different from the first trilogy. And I'm not one to say you're playing the game wrong but holy shit jeff lock-on, that's like the games main gameplay feature.

I think I'm going to play and beat Syphon Filter this week, dat shotgun is so good too.

best one in the series

I really enjoy having Peter on these things, he's a refreshing presence and seems to mesh well with the bomb crew.

The answer may surprise you.

That was my first time seeing the infamous Syphon Filter run - I thought it was pretty damn good. Exaggerated, sure, but a lot more convincing than the robotic run animations I remember from that era.

@vrikk said:

He actually does know it decently enough to recognize stuff, but he's not fluent or anything. That's why there's uncertainty when he tries to figure stuff out. Brad's knowledge of Japanese is probably better than my knowledge of French. I took three years in high school, and if you sat me down in front of a game with a lot of French text, I might be able to parse out some of it, but probably not as much as Brad can parse from Japanese.

That said, if you want me to strongly imply that I had sex with your mother in awkward textbook French, I'm your man.

You guys are all insane. Super Nintendo had the best startup, in that there was no startup. Right into the game, baby.

@rodiard@missashley@jpratt85