Gibbs, we've gone through this

chriscaffee · Post by **chriscaffee** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:09 pm

Something I discovered by accident today. "Dorobou" is the Japanese word for theif. It is possible that the Black Paper agent from PSO's "Black Paper" quest "Doronbo" is a play on that word.

One Classy Bloke · Post by **One Classy Bloke** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:20 am

Wooduck51 wrote:Iizuka's problem is that whatever his original ideas were they seemed to be good in theory, but then when the game is finished they are terribly mangled. Sonic heroes could have been a much better game if more time had been spent on it. Shadow would have been better if they had fixed the hostile allies and screwed up homing attack. It may not be Iizuka per say, but a coordinated screw up amongst the whole Sonic team (not sure though as Sonic riders was half decent.)

It's simply because the developers don't play the game themselves. As a games tester for Sega, i've seen some of these shit developers in action. For example, the NGC version of Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a complete mess. We've had 5 builds of it to test in the past 5 months, and any bugs we've reported about it have been promptly ignored. Currently the game is showing a loading bar in the middle of the screen at all times and crashes on meeting the first enemy. This wouldn't really be a big deal, but they are trying to release this as a final game. They are submitting this, hoping it will pass, and that people will enjoy a game that will crash in 2 minutes of starting.

Developers, at least Traveller's Tales, just don't play their own games. And thats why so many games suck.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:53 pm

If they can turn out a significant profit, quality is a nonissue. This is true of any large business.

It's like that episode on that one sitcom that achieved prominence in the late 70's or early 80's.

One Classy Bloke · Post by **One Classy Bloke** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:05 pm

Dude, when they are trying to submit a game (which costs money) which is bound to fail, thats not exactly profit making.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:19 pm

I was surprised to find out Traveller's Tales was still in business. What have they done between Rascal and this new Monkey Ball chicanery?

Post by **Segaholic2** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:21 pm

Chronicles of Narnia, some Crash Bandicoot, and most popularly the critically-acclaimed Lego Star Wars.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:48 pm

Oh yeah, I played that. I was actually kinda neat, but I fucking hate Star Wars and just wished the whole time that it would've been a more general Lego game. They could've had like the pirates set and the castle sets and the space sets and stuff. That would've been ultra badass.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:57 pm

I would buy a game like that, definitely, except now Lego's whored themselves out more than your mom on Friday nights. I'm not even sure if they have any original line-ups anymore. Now it's all shit like NBA LICENSED Lego! FERRARI LICENSED Lego! BATMAN LICENSED Lego! SPIDER-MAN LICENSED Lego! STAR WARS LICENSED Lego! HARRY FUCKING POTTER LICENSED LEGO!!!

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 7:48 pm

The point where I started to lose interest in Legos was when they started with that Bionicle garbage. Soon afterward, every Lego theme (space, medieval, ect.) began rehashing something fierce. The creativity just vanished overnight. Nowadays, I still have tons and tons of Legos stored away in the house someplace, but whenever I get the urge to try and rebuild some of my old sets, I just can't bring myself to do it. The urge to make any is gone. The old, mid-90's sets were great (especially some of those underwater base things), though.

My mom hasn't bothered to cancel our long-standing subscription to the Lego magazine. I guess she must like it, but I have no idea why. They also keep mailing that stupid Marvel Bionicle comic with it, which I thought was lame from issue one and have not read any since. I don't whether or not to throw them out...maybe someday I could pawn them off to some silly collector on eBay for a profit, but the comic is practically free and each issue feels awfully thin.

All this talk of Legos does remind me, though, that I should search my bookshelf for those really old Lego ad books that came with each set back in the good old days. If only to reminisce.

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 9:27 pm

I got my old legos out of storage during Spring break so my 5 year old cousin could play with them. I too have lost interest, and I was always into building shit. I was kind of more into K'Nex than Lego though. Mainly because one Christmas all my relatives teamed up and bought me the K'Nex training tower and I spent like a month putting that shit together. Then I took it apart and did it again. When it was done, the dang thing was 6 feet tall. Then later I bought a K'Nex dungeon or something and made a zipline that the guys could ride between the two. That was some cool shit, I should build that crap again. Are K'Nex even still around?

chriscaffee · Post by **chriscaffee** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:29 pm

My interest in Legos ended around the time of the Aquanauts. I had one or two sets after that like the Predator-ripoff aliens flying saucer and a small kit from the insectoid aliens but after that I sort of lost interest altogether. I think this was about the time of the Dreamcast's release and I started getting more into games.

Last year during Christmas break, I broke out the old bins of Legos and made a somewhat functioning pistol. Obviously it didn't shoot, but I had a moving slide with release and lock mechanism, detachable magazine with fucntional release, trigger, striker and optional suppressor (which was not secure. I could have made it secure with the plus-sign prisms used in technics but I couldn't find any). The magazine had a capacity of eight 1x1 cylinders loaded by a "stripper clip" (which was in actuality a 1x8 plate). The thing was ugly as hell because it was all red and grey and whatever colors I could find.

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:48 pm

Did you pistol whip anyone with it?

Cuckooguy · Post by **Cuckooguy** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:41 am

Me and my neighbors used to create boomerangs with legos. I mean, sure, they didn't work, and I don't think we tried and tested them out to see if they worked, but we did create boomerangs.

My sisters and I also had our very own lego men and named them. One of them was named Sam, and another Darblah. We also regularly created farm animals like cows and chickens and ducks and play with them.

The only lego colors we ever owned were yellow, blue, and red (we had a ton of red and blue). We also had green grass. I also tried to make the tallest stairs ever (the stair blocks were only 4x2 in size), but that always kept on falling apart. I would also regularly make pyramids.

Wooduck51 · Post by **Wooduck51** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:36 pm

Segaholic2 wrote:I would buy a game like that, definitely, except now Lego's whored themselves out more than your mom on Friday nights. I'm not even sure if they have any original line-ups anymore. Now it's all shit like NBA LICENSED Lego! FERRARI LICENSED Lego! BATMAN LICENSED Lego! SPIDER-MAN LICENSED Lego! STAR WARS LICENSED Lego! HARRY FUCKING POTTER LICENSED LEGO!!!

They have sold their souls to bionicle and the designer sets, or you can download a program, design your own model then upload it to Lego, who then asks for your money and if you give it to them they will send the bricks you need to build it. That or you can buy the $299.99 dollar death star model.

PBJClock · Post by **PBJClock** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 5:22 pm

Light Speed wrote:Are K'Nex even still around?

http://www.knex.com/

"look at the size of that thing"
http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=10143

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 5:58 pm

Is it just me or does that Death Star kind of look like ass? You would think for 300 dollars they could come up with a better design than that.

Frieza2000 · Post by **Frieza2000** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 7:26 pm

I finished selling them all a few weeks ago. I made about $900. The newest ones I had were a few small starwars sets and the original 4 disk throwing bots. My interest in the new sets was already fading by then, then Bionicle came shortly after and that was the end. I still have my chlorine bucket of regular bricks and random parts though.

Senbei · Post by **Senbei** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 10:19 pm

Last I saw, K'nex had some MechWarrior stuff going on. It was almost interesting.

Sci-fi Legos were always my favorite, but I really loved the Aquanauts stuff, too. And I don't care what anyone says, I want that Lego Death Star.
The Bionicle stuff is crap, but the Throwbot designs were cool. Damn, I'm gonna have to whip out my Technic crap now.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 10:49 pm

Frieza, that fucking rocks my world. I see several sets among that massive group that I wish i'd had.

The one Lego creation of mine that I got the most enjoyment from was this huge speedway I had constructed. I got a bunch of those roadway boards and fit them together to form a fairly basic, square-shaped track, then expanded upon it with whatever I could think of to fill in the space. Pit road, infield open-air garage, flagstand, grandstands, off-track concessions stand...the works. Looking back, there's some other things I realize I could've thrown in (if I had the means to do it) to up the immersion. I should to go back and recreate that mammoth someday. Maybe.

Ritz · Post by **Ritz** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:28 am

You know what really rocked? Legos in the bathtub. I built a semi-functional submarine once. Then I had this whole undersea base thing going on with these slotted rectangular/cylindric blocks, the name of which escapes me. Add the pirate ships and the robots and I'd occupy myself for hours upon end. Certainly beats anything you could do with a bar of soap.

masked_ferret · Post by **masked_ferret** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:08 pm

About 15 years back they had some "Lego on Safari" exhibitions in Australia. I remember being less excited by the moving animals than the fact that they had colours like brown and grey. All I had were red, blue, white, yellow and black. *snif* The memories...

Ritz wrote:You know what really rocked? Legos in the bathtub.

It sounds like you were almost asking to lose bits down the drain. I remember our vacuum cleaner had a healthy diet of plastic bricks.

Ritz · Post by **Ritz** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:31 pm

I'm under the impression that most homes outside of Australia have drain covers that prevent such events from occuring.

Omni Hunter · Post by **Omni Hunter** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 7:44 am

Ritz wrote:You know what really rocked? Legos in the bathtub. I built a semi-functional submarine once. Then I had this whole undersea base thing going on with these slotted rectangular/cylindric blocks, the name of which escapes me. Add the pirate ships and the robots and I'd occupy myself for hours upon end. Certainly beats anything you could do with a bar of soap.

I remember doing that too, I made quite a few badass submarines, especially with the Aquanaut set. I remember making transformers out of lego too, I think I made a dragster and a few other cars when I was in that phase.

I went to a convention yesterday and came across quite a lot of the lego stuff but one thing that almost killed me (but not Lego related) was a transformers stall selling Pepsi Branded Optimus Primes, complete with a branded red and blue Optimus holding a bottle of Pepsi on the front.

I think I broke down in tears at that moment.

Light Speed · Post by **Light Speed** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:42 pm

I swallowed a tiny 1x2 piece once. I was biting it in an attempt to pull it off another piece. Long story short, I got it apart, then swallowed it. I needed that damn piece too.

jenkins · Post by **jenkins** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:22 pm

I snorted one of those Lego coins once. I don't remember how or why.

When Lego released their Star Wars sets, I was still too young to realize that this was an obvious sign of a downward slide in quality. I finally caught on when they stopped actually displaying the latest sets in the magazies (2002, I think. Maybe '03.), and now the only one currently on the market which I'm interested in is the Star Destroyer. It's just so much more...complete-ish than the Death Star II. And I'm not talking about how it wasn't finished in the movie, I mean how there are gaping holes on every side.

That and I've always been a Trekkie and not much of a Star Wars fan. Now if the rendered the Enterprise-D in Lego goodness, that would be something.

My favorite Lego stuff would have to be the "Legoland Space" of the very early 1980's. My uncle has a bunch of them, which he passed off to me back in 1998, the same year that I got one of those "UFO" sets. Aside from that line, my favorite line was the 1997 "Divers" line. Those bubble subs were amazing.

Incidentally, how many of you have seen this guy's site? I found it while looking for pictures of the bathhouse in Spirited Away. Just amazing.