peteer01

I find my stagnated Japanese coupled with my gradually declining English skills discomforting. Sometimes I'll see how badly a post of mine reads and hope the people reading it realize I live in Japan and (erroneously) assume that maybe English is my second language...

Too many or too few? (words) I am interested. PM maybe? (Amongst users of this TAY board, you're probably one of the most active Kotaku commenters these days.)

No, I'm not a pro, but I'm not bad either. I used to play local SF3:2I tournaments at a game center in Aichi when I was in Japan in 1997, and I did pretty well...but I learned very quickly that it doesn't take long to find people at a game center who will let you know that you're not that good. I would definitely say I'm above average at SSFIV, and I certainly did my share of reading and contributing over at Shoryuken.com. As for inputs, I don't judge a game based on how easy or hard the combos are, although I've heard that compared to SSFIV (which, again, has some insanely execution heavy (see: desk) combos) the combos are significantly easier to pull off. I prefer if good decision making is more important than good execution in a fighting game. If I do have any problem(s) with MvC3, ease of execution won't be it. Brain, you said that in chat as well...but, without playing the game, it looks like there are multiple 100% damage combos (without X-factor) on YouTube already. How practical they are remains to be seen, but my initial impression remains that MvC3 is the kind of game that will be more fun than SSFIV for casual gamers, while SSFIV is the kind of game that will be more fun than MvC3 for people who want to put hundreds of hours into learning the ins and outs of the game, and play at the highest level they can. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong, and I should be holding a copy of the game in my hands before the end of the work week. I'm glad I'm going into the game with relatively low expectations, either the game is roughly what I'm expecting, and I'll have some fun with friends while it lasts, or it will be better than expected and I'll be pleasantly surprised.

It reminds me of the Neo Geo Pocket and Next Generation Portable. (I really hope Sony doesn't go with NGP as a name...) If I see someone talking about ME, I tend to think Mass Effect instead of Mirror's Edge unless there's some context.

Nowhere to go but up! (My coworker gave me six creme filled maple leaf cookies from Canada this afternoon...and those are in my intestines right now. So, it's not like I'm the best example of healthy eating this week either. )

Yeah, that I don't get. If you're gaming to the point that you're falling asleep mid game in that situation, just get the extra sleep that your body obviously needs. University, at least for me, definitely had some intense periods that didn't leave much time for gaming, or partying, and some less busy periods, where school, socializing, and gaming were all able to co-exist. But yeah, as a student, if you can't fit sleep and classes (and the preparation and homework that goes along with that) into your schedule, you need to stop gaming until you can.

So, Pac Man CE DX and Geometry Wars would both count as Retro? I also think you kind of summed up what I love about Treyarch's Zombie maps. You start playing them instantly. There's no saving, there's no ending...you just play until you can't keep up any more, and you see how far you can go. Not sure if I would call Zombies "retro", but it definitely has that pure gaming quality to it that I really enjoy.

Do you game on 360 much? Play any COD:BO? I've got a pretty good sized group of real life friends that play online together. We used to play some Halo, MNC, Borderlands, SSFIV, BFBC2 and some other games, but for the most part, it's been a lot of Black Ops since November. A lot. We're a pretty fun group of guys, some ex-pats working in Tokyo, some military guys that have been here for a long time around Tokyo. Those of us who speak decent Japanese play with Japanese guys a lot as well, but if you just want some guys in Japan to play games as a group and chat in English, there's a good number of us. Do download the DLC in the states while you can. VPN will be your only open for COD:BO DLC (and some other M rated stuff) once you're over here. Still haven't "introduced myself". Here goes: I have a star at Kotaku. I live in Japan. Um... hm. I, uh, I have an awesome wife, and we have two awesome kids. They are awesome. (Seriously.) I highly doubt I need to say any more than that...but if I did it wrong, maybe someone can let me know and I can try again. (Also, I walked in on Beefychu and Connorrr once. It was unclear whether or not they were decent. True story.)

Have kids. (preferably more than one) Then let me know if you can see how it could happen. When you're trying to juggle a spouse, a full time job, multiple children and making time to play a few games with your friends when the rest of the family is asleep...it becomes pretty easy to see how it could happen. It doesn't happen to me because I'm a night owl, and gaming when tired ends up affecting my mornings more than my evenings, but it doesn't surprise me at all that I've had more than one friend fall asleep while gaming in the past.

I have a friend who was notorious for falling asleep during Halo 3 and COD:WaW. I think it was probably the ages of his two kids (who were then around 2-5) and the fact that he was probably up earlier than any of the rest of us. Yeah, it might not be that fun when you fall asleep in a single player game and lose, but it's also not that fun when you're wide awake in a close multiplayer game, and the teammate you can normally rely upon to help you out is completely sleep at the wheel controller. It was pretty entertaining that we could sometimes wake him up by yelling his name into the mic. We ribbed him about it, but it wasn't ever that big of a deal. Now that his kids are a bit older, it doesn't seem to happen any more.

Talking with people who own the game, watching WNF, watching YouTube combo clips and matches, reading about the game...I'm pretty darn sure there are some good arguments for not liking the game. From the looks of it, if you take the game seriously and want to approach it as a competitive fighter, it's pretty easy to get upset at the game. I'm not planning to put several hundred hours in the game or play the game seriously like I did with SFIV/SSFIV, and hopefully that means I'll just have a lot of fun playing friends...but I've already heard enough to have a good idea of why people wouldn't like the game.

I could definitely relate to everything WTF said. I do disagree with suggesting someone maintaining an irregular eating schedule though...I think it's a great idea to try to get your body used to eating healthy meals at relatively regular times. College students can get away with a lot, but as we get older, I really think your slowing metabolism becomes a bigger factor in taking care of your body between 25-30. If you can eat well, starting with breakfast every morning, and stop eating by 10PM every day...that goes a long way to helping keep the fat from accumulating. Yeah, whenever I get a gym membership I end up within about 5-10 lbs. of the same weight (depending on how out of shape I've gotten), but over 6-12 months, I put on a lot of muscle and end up with a much better body composition. It's great how much progress you can see over those first 6-12 months, but after that, there are no short cuts or leaps and bounds of improvement, and while maintaining that healthy body should be enough of a reward in and of itself, the time and money involved in that gym membership and work-outs can be difficult to maintain. For me, it's usually a serious illness or injury that gets me out of the gym long enough for my membership to expire, and then it's easy to just not bother signing back up for a while. I haven't been in over a year, but I think when it warms up a bit, and if work is going well, I'll probably sign back up this spring... We'll see.

D'OH! So...I finally got around to trying PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX yesterday. I bought it. Definitely worth the 800 points, and much better than I was expecting. That said, today I see that it's the DOTW on sale for half price from today. For any of you who tried it but thought 800 points was too much, any any of you who haven't tried it...I highly recommend picking it up for 400 points. My feelings it that the vast majority of the TAY board will find it worth their time and money at that price, and that the few who won't are already sure that they're not interested in this.

You two (and Chat) are basically responsible for my friend picking me up a copy for my birthday (which was in January). He still feels closer to how Chewblaha feels about it than you two, but another friend of our picked it up, and he's thinking it might be a bit of fun if the three of us play. That said, I was playing SSFIV with him today, and I'd be much more excited to hear about AE (or similar update) coming to SSFIV...but tentatively hopeful that MvC3 will at least be a lot of fun.

Excaliburps, congrats! That is some awesome news, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about the gig when you can share more about it. (Oh-oh, just realize we might all figure out your real name and know what you look like!) Also, I saw a pretty Japanese girl on the train yesterday playing a DS. Would you like me to take a picture of one next time I see that? You can write an article about attractive Japanese women, and then tie that into gaming with the photo! What?

Almost.

That is correct! I guess that means it's your turn?

I lost the tendons on the outside of my right foot indoor bouldering. (Bouldering is a type of rock climbing that's more about a specific path than just climbing up.) But bouldering and rock climbing are both awesome. My wife and I used to do it together before we had kids.

The 360 has the XNA and Indie Games. Isn't that what all the people who are actually interested in developing for the 360 would want?

Great idea, not such a great presentation. (Was a slide show, with ads, really necessary?) I also would have loved to see IE5 used, and show more sites that you'd expect to work, rather than the ones that obviously wouldn't.