Wow, Jon's even late to the RROD party.

Great episode guys.

I can't wait to play Awakening, really looking forward to it.

My brother’s girlfriend got me Amazon gift cards for Christmas, so I bought Hyrule Historia. Coincidentally, it was delivered today and I’m actually unwrapping it while listening. I also returned a $185 book to my college today for $65 in return, so I can’t complain about the price of Historia in terms of being “textbook” like :). I’ve completed Skyward Sword several times; and never played The Wind Waker, so the HD version is day one for me. Thumbing through it, it looks like I will have a lot of pleasant surprises. Succinctly, I’m glad to hear NWR is referencing HH in the podcast.

I want to play Awakening, but now I have to wait--  I preordered at Gamestop (because of the stupid artbook bonus) but apparently NOA is having shipping problems-- they won't arrive until Wednesday, at the earliest.  Apparently, I (and Gamestop) are not the only ones having this problem either.

On the discussion of random battles and grinding.

I never really grew up playing RPG's, so my tolerance for random battles is pretty much zero. I've gone back and played Chronotrigger and Secret of Mana, both of which I really enjoyed. I think Jonny's right though, the psychological impact of even having the illusion that you can avoid battles, if you're fast or nimble enough, is huge.

As I enjoyed those two games so much, I thought that I might enjoy other 16 bit RPGs. When I played Phantasy Star IV on VC though I realised that I absolutely could not truck with random battles. I also played though Final Fantasy 6, and while I definitely prefer FFVI to PSIV, I was still driven mad by the random battles.

I think you must just need to build up that tolerance as a kid, because my patience for that sort of thing is non-existent.

On a side note, I think Bit.Trip Runner, Meat Boy, and Hotline Miami have set my expectations pretty high as far as just letting me play the game is concerned. By which I mean, those games have destroyed any patience I had for games with fail screens, which then take 30 sceonds or more to reload the level, and in some instances even force you to button mash your way through text and tutorials that you've seen multiple times (I'm looking at you Fluidity: Spin Cycle).

On side side note, I finally got all the puzzle pieces and 5 stars in Spin Cycle. That game was aweseome (I just wish they had included an option to skip all the text once you had already gone through a level).

Gui's praise of Ika-Chan's pixel graphics on the XL further cement my frothing need to replay Cave Story once I get an XL. Enjoyed the extended "out-takes" btw guys, cheers for bringing that to the 'cast man!

On the topic of Wii U VC being able to read Wii VC save states ...


If the "Wii mode" of Wii U works like a virtual machine running within the system, when that virtual machine is turned off, the main system may not have access to the virtual NAND memory of that other system.


So getting a Wii U version of a VC game you already own on Wii and copied over, it wouldn't be like your save state was deleted, but a new save state was created.  The Wii VC save state would still exist in Wii mode.  At least, that's how I'm thinking that this will work.  I'll find out when Super Metroid or other VC games get released that I owned on Wii.

Holy crap Jonny called it! :O

39:19 | Jonny (in response to James talking about the "The War of Hyrule" on the Zelda timeline):

"That's for the upcoming Zelda/Dynasty Warriors crossover."

Thanks for finding that. Now I'm downloading the old episode to hear it for myself.  Interesting to hear the "joke" in full context. :) lol

James' Earthbound rant was the saltiest experience I have ever gone through. Dear lord I've never heard the man so passionate about anything like this.