For today’s CVGM I’m going to show you the greatest SNES game that no one ever played:
Uniracers.
See, back before Rockstar was Rockstar and making games about carjacking, they made a game about alternate-universe sentient unicycles who spent their days racing around on colorful tracks, doing stunts. This sounds like a rather, uh… interesting premise but boy, did they ever pull it off. The basic formula for this game was that doing stunts (jumping, spinning, flipping, etc.) made you go faster, so you had to do as many stunts as possible to win. However, in a game where the track goes up and down and twirls around and makes unexpected hairpin turns, doing a stunt at the wrong moment is likely to hurl you into a wall, which would cause you to lose a lot of time.
The solution?
Multicolored tracks which you learn to “read”. A normal blue-and-green striped track means it’s all clear and you’re okay to do stunts. Red-and-blue means be careful: some big jump or twist is likely coming up. Orange-and-yellow means be on the lookout for unusual obstacles, solid yellow means a shortcut is coming up, and finally, blue-and-yellow means you’re seconds away from the finish line.
This all probably sounds either very complicated or very simple. Trust me though: the execution was brilliant.
The trick to this game was that you could learn how to squeeze the most out of every inch of racetrack– and that was something you had to do if you wanted to beat the more difficult opponents.
Uniracers comes with dozens of racetracks and a sense of speed rivaling that of Sonic the Hedgehog. Of course, Rockstar, not do be outdone on that last point, allows you to name your Unicycles anything except Sonic or Sega… you will be informed that said name “isn’t cool enough”.
The Super Nintendo has got to be one of the greatest game systems of all time so narrowing its games down to “favorites” is difficult to say the least, but this game sucked up far, far too much of my SNES time back in the day, and it was worth it.
…because I told you there would be fish rambles. I mentioned there would be fish rambles, didn’t I?
I know a LOT about fishkeeping. I have to: fish are my job. As such, a lot of people ask me fishkeeping questions, and because I was feeling, uh… fishy, I am here to provide a piscatorial post.
In specific, this is how to Start a Tropical Fish tank with Minimal Issues.
…well, okay. For the absolute minimum amount of issues, you should do all of this with a pinch of fish food in the water instead of live fish. But I know a lot of people are impatient, myself included, and you CAN do this with fish already in your tank.
See, this is a very common problem. People come in to my store to start a fish tank. They assume, 9 times out of 10, that keeping a fish tank involves sticking fish in a tank and leaving them there. Maybe poking the water once every couple of months. These are the people that are constantly having problems with it and usually swear off fishkeeping forever. But now, I will tell you the Secret to avoiding these issues all together! =D
Ready?
Before we begin: CRASH COURSE ON THE NITROGEN CYCLE IN FISH TANKS!
Fish eat and thus, fish poop. Fact o’ life, unfortunately. Fish poop turns into ammonia, which is very toxic to fish. Bacteria in your gravel will turn the ammonia into nitrite, which is still very toxic to fish, and eventually to nitrate, which is… toxic in high doses, but most freshwater fish can tolerate it in lower doses.
In a brand new fish tank, this “good bacteria” does not exist yet. Thus, while you are cycling a tank, it is up to YOU to make sure that the bad chemicals do not reach toxic levels.
No! Bad! Gaaah! *brain explodes*
HOW TO DO IT:
1.) MAKE SURE YOUR TANK IS NOT OVERSTOCKED. Marketing will show you pictures of five guppies in a three gallon mini-tank. Unfortunately, aquarium marketing, uh… is usually not accurate. “The Rule” is roughly one gallon for each inch worth of full grown fish. This rule is not set in stone. If you are willing to do a lot of work, you can bend it. And bigger fish (and goldfish) need more gallons per inch. But if you’re starting out with a fairly small tank, it’s a pretty good rule to follow.
2.) FOR BEST RESULTS PICK FAIRLY DURABLE FISH TO START OUT WITH. Zebra Danios and White Cloud Minnows are good choices. Platies are also pretty good. Do not use Mollies. They are notoriously sensitive to ammonia and thus are not a good cycling choice. Stuff like Neon Tetras and Barbs are difficult to use, but not impossible.
Got your tank set up? Got your fish? Good!
3.) WATER CHANGES. I know people hate doing these. Unfortunately it is basically the only way to get a good cycle going unless you wanna mess with chemicals and things. Do about a 25% water change every other day. This should keep the ammonia down to a manageable level. If you have a test kit, use it! Otherwise lots of pet places will do a water test for you for free.
The Ammonia Phase usually lasts 2-3 weeks, though it may vary depending on a lot of factors.
Once you get through the Ammonia Phase you will hit the Nitrite Phase. This means the ammonia on your test strip will lower a bit, and your nitrite pad will turn bright pink. The Nitrite Phase, in my experience, only lasts a few days. Continue doing the every-other-day water changes.
Not long after this you will do a water test and you will notice that your ammonia and nitrite counts are nice and low, but your nitrate is starting to rise. You may also start to notice algae growth around this time.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Your tank is cycled and you have just bypassed the issue that discourages probably 80% of first-timers from continuing in the fishkeeping hobby. Wasn’t that easy?
Now you can get more fish (if your tank has room for them). Be sure not to add more than a few fish at a time, as to not overload your little biological system.
4.) NOW WHAT? I am going to get on the soap box here and tell you something that you probably don’t want to hear. But I’m going to tell you anyway because I’m a firm believer in this. Ready?
Keep doing those crazy frequent water changes.
See, conventional wisdom says that once you hit the completely cycled Nitrate Phase, you can scale back your water changes to once a week or once every couple of weeks. Yes, you can probably do this and not suffer too many ill effects.
However, I recently saw a bunch of math done by fish geeks, complete with all sorts of charts and experiments, showing that conventional wisdom in this case pales in comparison to the beautiful fishkeeping results you’ll get with frequent water changes. See, even if Nitrate is the least toxic of the chemicals we’ve discussed here, it’s still, in the end, toxic. And it is Algae Food. Algae loves it some Nitrate.
I change 25% of the water in my fish tank every other day. My fish are brighter in color than any other fish I have ever seen. They are happier and more active than any other fish I have ever seen. I know you’ll accuse me of anthropomorphism here, but I swear to the Fish Gods that they get even happier for a few minutes after a water change. They are healthy– I have had these fish for months (or years in the case of one of them) and they have never been sick. And guess what: no algae. You heard me. No algae. Oh, I’ll get a couple flecks of it every few weeks. Takes five seconds to scrub it off. Far cry from the dozens of people who come into my store every week begging for an easy solution to their algae woes.
I have mentioned, before, that I can glance at a test strip and tell you how old someone’s tank is and make a good guess on how many fish they’ve got in there. Recently I tested my tank water. And let me tell you, if it had been someone else’s tank water, I’d have smiled politely and asked why they were asking me to test water that clearly had no fish in it. That’s how clean my water is, and that’s why my fish are so happy, healthy, and bright.
Can you get away with fewer water changes? Yes. Especially if your tank is sparsely stocked. But in fishkeeping, as with many hobbies, you get out of it what you put into it. Spending five minutes every other day doing a water change is worth it, to me.
*gets off soap box*
…did I just rant about fish? Sheesh. I am beyond hope.
Remember NaNoWriMo? Yeah, you know, the thing that spawned the book I’m still working on six months later?
There’s a version of it in April as well. It’s called Script Frenzy and it’s basically like NaNo, except you write a script/screenplay/graphic novel instead of a book.
So am I planning on participating?
…did you really expect me not to?
This is up my alley like you would not believe. Writing scripts and screenplays is my favorite creative thing in the world. I say this as someone who draws, coughs up electronic music, and writes novels. I am soooo stoked for this.
Unfortunately April is looking like it’s going to be a terribly busy month, filled with things like editing the aforementioned novel (I know, I know, I keep saying I’m going to leave it alone and I keep failing at that…) and also puttering around with some silly Real Life things that need to get done. But there was no way I was going to miss out on this. So I decided to compromise. In November I had a little more time on my hands and was able to get away with inventing a novel on-the-spot (I’m serious, I made the darn thing up as I went), which was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that this time around, considering how much busier I am, so I’m going to go back to a ready-to-go idea that has been kicking around my head for years.
Remember my Chemistry Post on Aspect of the Hare? And remember those anthropomorphic atoms that I mentioned?
Oh yeah.
This is a story I’ve been working on, on-and-off, since AP Chemistry in 2001/2002. The storyline has gone through several iterations but it has been nothing but fun the entire time and I’m excited to make yet another attempt beginning tomorrow.
My mind’s eye sees this as being a computer-animated movie: doing for chemistry what “Shrek” did for fairy tales. Something that can make science fun and silly and “new”. Hey, I never said I was sane.
I think this will be much more relaxing than NaNo was: really, I’m very visual when it comes to my stories and I’ve always felt that I take to scriptwriting like a fish to water. Plus, there’s no real self-pressure to “OMG GET PUBLISHED!” so I can just post up the finished result for everyone to see at the end of the month!
I should preface this by saying I’m a huge SimCity nut. I should then add that I always sucked at SimCity games until I figured out the secret for cost-efficient city layouts.
Anyways, no matter how much I sucked at it at the time… I present to you the game that is solely responsible for teaching me what those mysterious signs in front of empty lots saying “Zoned Commercial” mean:
If you’ve never played SimCity, it might be one of those things that has you wondering “Wait, you find this fun?” You know, like Harvest Moon or one of those other simulation style games. Well, I’m here to tell you that planning and designing your own city is basically one of the most addictive things ever. Why? Because it goes beyond just the planning/design stage. You gotta keep your citizens happy. And make sure they have enough schoolhouses and hospitals and fire stations and etc. While somehow pulling in enough SimCash to do so.
Another way that they pulled you in was by dangling technologies in your face. Most SimCity games start by default in the year 1900. Not that SimCity is dying to be particularly historically accurate in most respects, but at the same time, they won’t give you much tech until you are actually able to use it. If you wanna run your city on nuclear power in the year 1900, tough luck. You’ve got coal and you’ve got oil. You’ll have to wait to get the nukes. SimCity 2000 was brilliant here, because not only did they give you presents of better power technology as you went along, but you got Arcologies, a.k.a. giant bio-dome-esque houses that would quadruple your population and also double as spaceships.
You got these babies in the year 2000. (Speaking of which, ten years on and we don’t have these in real life yet? What the heck? C’mon people!) And they were awesome.
For a bonus challenge you could turn on disasters and have to deal with things like hurricanes, fire outbreaks, or giant Godzilla monsters attacking your city– you know, just the normal everyday stuff you see in the newspapers all the time.
So yeah. SimCity 2000. Sometimes I wonder how many addicts of this game went on to become actual urban planners. Perhaps not many, because thanks to this game I have a tendency now to look at the way my own hometown is laid out and mumble about how inefficient it is…
What most of us refer to as “creative writing” is something I’ve always done. Always. Like breathing. Remember the “breathing” metaphor, it’s gonna come back. (A lot.)
I asked for notebooks for Christmas and my birthday and filled them up with stories. With story ideas. With character ideas. With journals. With poems. Lyrics. Anything.
I was always writing.
Got it?
Okay.
Now.
Apparently “always writing” as a child is not a common thing. Because everyone was always asking me if I was going to be an author or writer when I grew up.
And I would always look back at them as if they were crazy.
Of course I wasn’t. I was going to be a doctor/firefighter/artist/veterinarian/scientist/astronaut/horse breeder/chemist/animator/whatever I wanted to be at the time.
Asking me if I was going to be a writer when I grew up was like asking me if I was going to breathe when I grew up. If I was going to be someone who sat in a room all day and specialized in breathing. What an incomprehensible idea. Why would I want to do that?
I wrote stories because I had to. Because if I didn’t, I might die. Same as if I stopped breathing.
Didn’t mean I wanted to do it for a living. How absolutely preposterous.
I think my attitude toward writing drove some people nuts. See, I wrote not one, not two, but THREE full-length novels before I turned eighteen. And yet I had no interest in “being a writer”. A lot of people could not comprehend this, and were always asking me when I was going to major in English. Even when I was in college and majoring in film/chemistry/Japanese Studies/film again, people were asking me when I was going to wake up and smell the roses and change my major to English. (It sort of got irritating, actually.)
I laughed those people off. Every time.
Majoring in English was silly. Like majoring in breathing. I took AP English in high school because it was easy 5’s on the AP tests and thus easy college credit. I had no interest in pursuing it further.
So lemme tell ya, this whole NaNo thing where all of a sudden I’ve been introduced to a world of editing and critiquing and advice and “do and do not” lists and blogs and feedback and publishing and agents and proofreading and all this STUFF, is really throwing me for a loop. I’ve never really had to deal with any of this before. I’ve never looked into any of this before. What an utterly bizarre little world to stumble into.
I’m still not quite sure how to digest this whole process. The whole thing feels so absurd, in a way. Not bad absurd. But, “Huh, I need to edit my breathing” absurd. It’s just never even crossed my mind before.
So if over the course of the next few days… or weeks… or months… you see me flailing around here or on Twitter or LJ, babbling nonsense about this mythical novel of mine, please bear with me. My mind is a flurry of strange thoughts and new experiences and impatience and these characters that have been living in my head for the past six months.
I have been informed that today is unofficially Ada Lovelace Day. Clearly I have to blog about my fangirling for Lovelace.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (for that is her proper name), child of the rather infamous poet Lord Byron, was born in 1815 and is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.
In the 1800s. Yes, you heard that right.
Cause around this time a brilliant guy named Charles Babbage (who I also fangirl over– his autobiography? Read it. Yeah. He had a hilarious childhood. But I digress) took a pile of draft paper and whipped up a bunch of sketches for mechanical computers. He had one called a Difference Engine, which was designed to calculate polynomial functions, and one called an Analytical Engine, which was much more complex and designed to be programmable via punch cards. Babbage’s ultimate plans called for it to be, essentially, a modern computer, except powered by gears and steam. Thus sayeth the Wikipedia:
There was to be a store (that is, a memory) capable of holding 1,000 numbers of 50 decimal digits each (ca. 20.7kB). An arithmetical unit (the “mill”) would be able to perform all four arithmetic operations, plus comparisons and optionally square roots. Initially it was conceived as a difference engine curved back upon itself, in a generally circular layout, with the long store exiting off to one side. (Later drawings depict a regularized grid layout.) Like the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer, the mill would rely upon its own internal procedures, to be stored in the form of pegs inserted into rotating drums called “barrels,” to carry out some of the more complex instructions the user’s program might specify. (See microcode for the modern equivalent.)
The programming language to be employed by users was akin to modern day assembly languages. Loops and conditional branching were possible, and so the language as conceived would have been Turing-complete long before Alan Turing’s concept.
First of all, does that not blow your mind? This guy was a century ahead of his time. Completed versions of these machines were never actually built in Babbage’s lifetime, due to a lack of funding, but some one hundred years later a group of people built one of his machines according to his plans. It worked. And to make things better, it was absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous in action. Look at this thing move.
So anyways, Ada Lovelace, who happened to be an amazing mathematician, was doing documentation for Babbage’s machines and just started coming up with examples for how one might “program” the analytical engine. You know what else she said? She wrote about the possibility that “the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent”. She foresaw electronic music. In the mid 19th century. Ever sat down and dinked around with FruityLoops or a similar program? Yeah. Ada Lovelace totally called it 170 years ago. Just sayin’.
Now from what I can gather, the point of Ada Lovelace Day is to talk about women (or a specific woman) in computing/science/etc. Which is a pretty great idea, because I know from experience that contrary to the video-game-osphere (and WoW-o-sphere especially), where there are a lot of women involved, something like, say, the open source movement is considerably more guy-centric, and the idea of how one should approach this topic is actually something I’ve thought about a lot. So, I fully support the Ada Lovelace Day idea.
But honestly if you told me to pick a woman in computing/science to admire, I would’ve picked Ada Lovelace to begin with, anyway, because I am just That Much of a A Fangirl.
Plus, bonus points for anything involving Difference Engines/Analytical Engines.
Think back to a world of awesome 3D platformers that were just coming into their own. Think back to something a little more refined than the formula started by Super Mario 64, but not an overboard collect-o-fest like Donkey Kong 64.
You know what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about BANJO-FREAKING-KAZOOIE.
(Attention: Please stop everything you are doing and listen to this remix:)
I remember when we first got this game. We got this at the same time as our Nintendo 64 and Yoshi’s Story. Yoshi’s Story was what we played first, because we all knew who Yoshi was but we’d never heard of this Banjo character. It was only a matter of minutes, though, before the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge replaced the Yoshi one, and there it would stay for a long, loooong time.
Let me explain the brilliance of this game for those of you who missed out. It’s a Mario64-ish platformer, as I said. You wander around a central “hub” world and visit “themed” worlds inside. You’ve got all your obligatory ones… the water world, the snow world, and so forth… but the way that they are done is so original that you don’t even realize it’s old territory. Not to mention the last world, Click Clock Wood, is actually split up into four different versions based on the seasons of the year.
The controls are intuitive and varied and make much use of, well, you being a bear and toting around a bird in your backpack. The humor is offbeat and quirky and quintessentially British (oh Rare, gotta love ’em.) and the music is some of the most memorable you will hear, particularly the main theme, a motif which is masterfully weaved into most of the other music in the game and done in different styles and tempos depending on location.
The game objectives themselves mostly revolve conquering various challenges to collect items, which is how most platforming games in that era worked, but in my opinion Banjo-Kazooie pulled it off just about right: lots to do without going overboard. The sequel, Banjo-Tooie, would later teeter close to being overboard in my opinion (but was still fantastic and had a lot of improvements, don’t get me wrong), but B-K just did it right.
And don’t let the cute fuzzy characters fool you, this game was challenging. I don’t think I ever beat it. I never quite had enough Jiggies (the game’s lingo for “puzzle pieces”, an item you collected) to get into the last world. And yet despite that, I still managed to dump countless hours into this game and I enjoyed every minute. This was platforming at its finest. Rare and I go back a long ways. I spent many, many days with the likes of Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye 007, and all three Donkey Kong Country games. All of these games are amazing and all of them would be top contenders in my personal “Best Games Evar” list.
But if I had to pick a fave Rare game?
It just might be this one.
“Stupid Bear and Dumb Kazooie, I’ll be back in Banjo-Tooie!”
I know I’ve offhandedly mentioned my Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies before on Aspect of the Hare. And because I’ve no shame, I’ll delve into the specifics out in the open for possibly the first time… ever.
OCD manifests itself in a variety of different compulsions. Some people wash their hands, some people check their door locks, some people have to arrange items in just the right way. For me… it was (scratch that… is…) numbers. Everything has to be counted. Steps on a staircase, magnets on a fridge, circles in a pattern. Especially if they are lined up in a row. Objects that are lined up in a row are just begging to be counted.
Sometimes random numbers pop into my head. If I do not know where said numbers are from, they must be written down, or Google’d, in case they are important and I just don’t know it yet. “Pike, that’s silly,” you say. “Yes, I know,” I reply. But that’s how it works with obsessions like that. There are some things that you just do. No matter how silly they seem.
Numbers are special. They’re “safe”. They don’t change. It’s funny, because growing up, I was always the writing kid. The English student kid. But numbers had an unchanging beauty to them that appealed to me somehow, and they sort of became my sanctuary.
You might be wondering where I’m going with this or if I’m trying to make some sort of serious blog post about mental disorders. I’m not, actually. This is just the merely-tangentially-related intro for the meat of the post.
The meat of the post is this: Timepieces are one of my favorite things in the entire world.
See, numbers are special. And you know what’s really special? When the clock says 9:00. Or 10:00. Basically any time with at least two zeroes at the end. I have no idea why I find this so appealing. I just always have. 9:30 is slightly less special, and 9:15 and 9:45 even less so, but those four numbers are considerably more special than any of the other 56 found in an hour.
So what is a clock? It’s my numbers obsession. On my wall. Or on my desk. Or on my wrist. Or in my pocket. As the case may be. (Because I carry two watches with me. And have at least one clock in each room in my apartment.)
It gets better, though. A clock is also
beautiful
mechanical
perfection.
A clock or watch is form and function in one elegant package. The ultimate junction of art and engineering. And I love it.
Okay, okay, one more thing, and then I’ll shut up.
Mechanical clocks, specifically, are an elegant timepiece from a more civilized age. An age when things weren’t cheaply made. When things were designed to be fixed if broken, rather than just tossed and replaced.
…yeah I’m one of those weirdos that takes apart clocks and things. I took apart my last one. It wasn’t designed to be put back together so I had to “break it” in order to do so. The ticking remains are sitting on my desk. I’m sure a lot of people would think I’m absolutely nuts. Well, maybe I am. The whole OCD thing, after all…
Anyways. That, in a nutshell, is why I am a clock geek.
We here at Clockwork Hare Enterprises hope you have enjoyed your foray into the Potentially Too Much Info Camp this Friday, and hope you have a pleasant weekend!
In my opinion, cracked.com is basically one of the most addictive websites out there. Worse than TVTropes and possibly worse than looking up old 80s cartoons on YouTube. As a Mr. Munroe once put it, “They could write a list of ’17 worst haircuts in the Ottoman Empire’ and I’d read through to the end, then click on all the links at the end.”
Anyways, I’m browsing the other day and they happen to have this article about World of Warcraft up there, so I was reading it and it wasn’t a particularly great article but it was mildly entertaining, and then I get to this picture:
And the first thing I think is, “How silly, the article is talking about mini-pets at this point and they show a picture of a hunter pet.”
And the second thing I think is, “That must be The Rake, since the hunter is in Mulgore and doesn’t appear to be a very high level.”
And then the third thing I think is, “…huh… actually… that looks pretty… familiar… is that… no… is it?”
I went on a searching spree on Aspect of the Hare. Scoured all my old screenshot posts. All my old “I rolled a new hunter” posts. I didn’t seem to be having any luck, though. Maybe it was just coincidence…
Then I went to my Photobucket:
A-ha. I knew it. I knew that wasn’t just any ol’ hunter and pet.
That’s Althalor. And Kolya. Yes, formerly the Rake.
You know, it’s funny. Screenshots of my hunters have been on WoW.com and I’ve been linked on all sorts of big-name sites, but nothing quite prepared me for having a (uncredited) spot on freakin’ Cracked.
Lemme preface this by saying that I’m not really big into stealth games. I can appreciate them from a “that’s a neat idea” standpoint but I’m really horrible at them and I tend not to play them. Maybe we can blame it on Mario and Dig-Dug, but for whatever reason I’m just too used to running into the action and disposing of the bad guys first and asking questions later.
That said, Metal Gear Solid is one of the greatest games of all time. OF ALL TIME.
Since I’m not a big stealth game fan, I’m not exactly sure what it is about this game that is so appealing to me. I think it may be a combination of the following:
Epic storyline
Interesting and ultimately unforgettable characters
Fun and unique “lovechild of a Hollywood action film and a Japanese manga” aesthetic
Fantastic music
Breaking the fourth wall. A lot.
Let’s talk about this breaking the fourth wall thing. One boss reads your memory card to freak you out, and you have to plug your controller into another slot to beat him. He also makes the screen go blank for seconds at a time to make you think your TV is on the blink. Another character has you looking at the physical game box to find her codec number. And they don’t tell you that you’re supposed to do these things– they drop hints and then you’ve gotta figure it out.
The characters I mentioned are another big strength of the game (and series, I think). Talk about a rogues’ gallery of villains rivaled only by Batman. Revolver Ocelot, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, Psycho Mantis, and the list goes on. The good guys have awesome characters too, including my personal favorite, Otacon the computer nerd. Because I <3 computer nerds.
(As a side note, according to Wikipedia, Both Otacon's first name "Hal" and Solid Snake's real name "David" are both taken from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which has just BLOWN MY MIND.)
Speaking of movies, this is a very cinematic game. Hideo Kojima is known for being a big film buff and it shows with tons of fantastic cutscenes. To some people, this is a weakness, because they'd rather be playing the game than watching it. Me? Well, I already said I stink at stealth games, so all the cutscenes starring the great characters are A-OK.
