X-strike Podcast

[horsewnoname]

Good god, a Resident Horror cast party podcast? Now this I have to see...or hear...yeah!

[Reznor]

Good god, a Resident Horror cast party podcast? Now this I have to see...or hear...yeah!

Too bad everyone was too drunk/busy to actually record it...

[horsewnoname]

Good god, a Resident Horror cast party podcast? Now this I have to see...or hear...yeah!

Too bad everyone was too drunk/busy to actually record it...

Noooooooooooo!

[Jakanden]

The most recent podcast was a great trip down memory lane especially regarding some of my favorite 80's films (The Neverending Story, Monster Squad, etc..).

Regarding The Neverending Story, has anyone else here read the book? The movie covers only the first half of the book and unfortunately the second film basically takes a dump on the rest of it. The book is really good and I highly recommend checking it out as it is one of the best children's novels I have ever read.

Also - the original Lunar on the SCD had random battles. It was the Saturn port that introduced the "seeing them on the map" deal. I don't know what the first RPG to remove random encounters was though. I know Lufia II & Secret of Mana didn't have the random battles, but I have played too many to remember most of them.

[Ekkebus]

I didn't know that about Lunar since the first version I played was on PSOne. I don't consider Secret of Mana when thinking about it because its a real time action RPG and not a traditional turn based one. I think FF Mystic Quest and Earthbound are the earliest games without random battles. I just think its amazing that in 2008 random battles still exist.

[Jakanden]

Some people dig the traditional random battle, turn-based JRPG. I know a number of people who loved Blue Dragon because it was the exact same game that has been around since the NES days.

I myself have pretty much lost interest in the JRPG genre. The last one I actually finished was FFXII and I haven't played even one of the current gen ones.

I guess after over 20 years of them, I just don't have the desire anymore to play through these 60+ hour games that are essentially the same game with a different cast. Despite how awesome Persona 3 was, I got 45 hours into it and got bored. I just tried a replay of SMT Nocturne which was my favorite JRPG of the last generation and I got bored after about 30 hours. I guess I just don't like em anymore, even the same games I used to love (FFIV, FFVI, Lunar, Earthbound, etc..).

That being said, I will still check out Persona 4, FFXIII and Chrono Trigger DS, but I don't know if I will finish any of them and I don't care about any of the other games in the genre coming out (even Including FFIV DS).

[horsewnoname]

"Wolfman's got nards!"
"Scary German Guy is bitchin!"

Love that movie! Hey and someone else is playing The World Ends with You. I am spending far too much time playing that, and I'm not entirely sure why. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[Jakanden]

I loved The World Ends With You and actually completed all the post-game stuff. The secret reports really flesh things out in the story.

[horsewnoname]

Meh, I think I have about half of the post game stuff done. I'm spending most of my free time tracking down all the darn pins.

[mahoney]

What happened to time code cues?

[Ekkebus]

Well I think its obvious that I completely and utterly forgot about them.

I still like games that have random encounters I just wish that more didn't. Hell, most of my favorite RPGs have random encounters. It just always strikes me as being a copout to fluff the playtime of a game. I have to say from what I recall of the Blue Dragon demo it didn't have them though.

TWEWY rules. I recently finished the story and I'm not sure if I'm going to go to the trouble of doing all the extra stuff. Trying to beat a lot of those bosses on hard is a pain in the dick.

[cousinted]

*Ahem*

I cannot say this is the earliest case of a non-random encounter RPG, but certainly is the earliest I can think of in a major franchise: Ultima 3: Exodus. (Did 1 and 2 have random battles? Who has played them, honestly? They never made a console presence, so do they even count?) Ultima, which made a splash on consoles from Ultima 3,4,5 on NES and Ultima 6 on SNES, had Random battles only in #4 of these. Despite that, U4: Quest of the Avatar remains one of my favorite Olde Tyme RPG's.

[VFKevin]

I am glad that Rory mentioned THE MONSTER SQUAD. That was not a film that I knew when I was growing up. Rather, I discovered it last year when it was released on DVD, accompanied by revival screenings in theaters, often with cast and crew Q+A sessions. Director Fred Dekker has also gotten behind the revival. He had an interesting career and was mainly known through his three director credits--NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, THE MONSTER SQUAD, and ROBOCOP 3--as well as his association with the show ENTERPRISE (also divisive). I love NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and THE MONSTER SQUAD, both of which were previously hard-to-see. Fans had snatched up all affordable VHS copies. NIGHT OF THE CREEPS can be found as a bootleg and has been shown via Fear.net's cable offshoot, which is embedded in the "free" on demand section of some Cox Cable providers, maybe elsewhere as well. CREEPS and SQUAD are both very smart, off-beat, and snappily written. For kicks, compare MONSTER SQUAD to THE GARBAGE PATCH KIDS MOVIE. Both have similar premises, but one grows to love Dekker's sense of comedic timing and his hiring of really great youth actors.

I'm actually glad that I just recently saw these films, because I doubt that I would have picked up on all of the references and smart touches as a child. In sum, Dekker was one of the better talents of 80s horror and its good to see that he is getting some recognition.

[horsewnoname]

One movie I always associate with Monster Squad (because I saw them around the same time) is Monster in the Closet. It's very much a B sci-fi/horror parody. Great guy-in-a-rubber-suit-monster, gratuitous explosions, cliché doctor trying to communicate with the monster, and a guy in a fantastically fake samurai get up slashing his closet to pieces. It's a giggle.

With the children's movies we grew up with, I'd have to slip in an under appreciated animated movie: Secret of Nimh. I still love that movie today. When I was a kid, watching two rats have a sword fight to the death was cinema gold.

[Juese]

Nimh is still gold. Don Bluth, leading a revolution to end shitty Disney movies, and ending up making some of the worst. Grimm-style irony, mother fuckers.

This has nothing to do with the podcast I didn't listen to because I wasn't on it.