Ronnie

As a side note, I love that feeling of excitement when you start an ambitious new game and you're learning all the systems, digging through menus etc. Running around like an expert after hour 20 or 50 is fun too but nothing beats that early wide-eyed excitement as you start a (good) new action/adventure/openworld game. Love that feeling. Opening Section of a game I'm sorry to shamelessly rip off your pick @RedShell but I'll have to go with A Link to the Past too, it's often mentioned as being one of the best openings to a game ever and it's easy to see why for all the reasons you mention. I'll add that spending the opening moments of the game in darkness/rain/the castle and then emerging out into the sunny overworld with the music blaring was great (Mario Odyssey did this too with New Donk City).

Anyone else pick up one of these in the last few days? They're sold out now but the creator has said he will try and get more printed in future. Original sale was limited to 90 copies, they sold out within a couple of minutes. Yesterday's second batch of 200 copies sold out WITHIN ONE MINUTE. The designer even went as far as giving every person who ordered one of the original 100 a unique hand drawn cover! Incredible artwork, and obviously inspired by that early style during the LOZ/Zelda II days, (which I actually wish Nintendo would return to for Zelda instead of the more light-hearted tone they've shifted to since ALTTP/OOT)

Bubble Bobble is up there for me too, alongside SMB, but the NES version. The secret exist ending blew my mind as a kid.

Following on from my earlier post, I vividly remember going to Toys R Us when the NES was in its prime, seeing walls of games in plastic security cases. It was like Christmas had come early. This was back when there was no internet, barely any gaming magazines and you just picked a game based on the box art. That's how I ended up getting (and falling in love with) Cobra Triangle. In some ways I kind of miss those days, now you often times know almost everything about a game before you've even received it.

Earliest Video Game Memory Playing this with my ten-years-older brother in his bedroom. I remember 1-2 in particular blowing my mind as a kid for some reason. Might have been the ominous music. I think he must have got the game 4 or 5 or so years after its original release though. Also have great memories of playing Chip's Challenge on the PC back in the day.

Really curious to see the rumoured Mario collection, iconic games being remastered? Yes please. It's a shame they didn't get to do a Mario anniversary live event like they were supposedly planning, sounds like that would have been a lot of fun.

If you're ok with the slow paced systems, you're in for an absolute treat. I thought it was an amazing game, best openworld ever.

I know these aren't the most well composed or framed screenshots, but they do convey just how utterly spectacular Red Dead Redemption 2 looks. Mind-blowing, and easily the best (realistic) visuals I've ever seen in a game. That last one in particular

Jokes aside, I'm relieved to hear it said so often. That's what's exciting, first person shooter not so much.

Well said, couldn’t agree more with this in particular, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the way things have been heading lately.

If you select/highlight the bit you want to quote, there should be a small popup that says "Quote this"

Isn't personal abuse against the forum rules? Can't say I'm surprised it's coming from you. Right back at you. Unfortunately I don't have a the phone numbers of every black person in the world for them to tell me themselves. All I can do is suggest arguments (not tell) as part of a debate, on a message board, meant for discussion and to be a talking point. Who'd have thought. From my own personal experience if someone started a "give some money to businesses run by gay people, they could use the extra help" I would feel patronised. I'm not one of these people who likes to be treated as different and special, but I guess some do. I'll try and sleep easily tonight.

But why? Why would I do that? I get that it's an optional thing, but it just seems pointless at best, counter-productive at worst. (I'd typed out the above before reading the rest of your post which goes into more detail, still not convinced but I can see your argument more now. I get what you're saying about it helping (potentially) less well off businesses but that seems a separate issue to me.) I can understand that but I don't think moves like Black Pound Day are the way to do that, and whilst I obviously can't speak to it myself, I can imagine many would find it pretty patronising and made to feel like a charity case. It's the same way when I pass by a sign at the local bank that says "we support the LGBTQARFFS+ community" I feel patronised. But again, unpopular opinion I'm sure, I think a lot of people these days want to be made to feel special, social media has a big part to play in that. Exactly. There hasn't been this much of a racial divide in decades. The sides feel like polar opposites right now and that's just sad, and I find it's being perpetuated on a daily basis with things like this that are frankly dripping with virtue signalling a lot of the time. Maybe not the creator of Black Pound Day but people like Etsy sending out emails telling people to buy stuff from black creators and the like. A lot of it just feels fake to me, which doesn't help. @Goafer will I'm sure say that this heightened division is a necessary step for long term equality but I just don't see it. I think things were organically getting there before all this blew up. Yes systemic racism in the US police is a big problem, hence black lives matter, but all the stuff on the periphery is doing more harm than good imo. Good to know! Your friend sounds like a smart guy.

Black history month is at least educational and Mother's/Father's day isn't remotely the same situation as "hey, buy from black people because let's treat them as special and different from the rest of us for this one day", and I hope you can appreciate that. So you're saying that subconsciously teaching people to treat black people differently is the way forward? And that highlighting that division by shining a spotlight on the fact that black people are different is a good thing? I couldn't disagree more. We're supposed to be breaking down barriers, not putting them up. So you're saying that these so called "minority businesses" need help? Bit of a generalisation. It's tricky because I can obviously see the benefit of educational things like this. From my personal pov, I'm gay and I find the whole Pride month thing a bit embarrassing but I appreciate that's an unpopular opinion. I wish gay people would just be treated the same way as straight people in this country, and to not constantly be reminded that gay people are considered different. But I still consider the above months you mention to be different than "Hey give a few quid to black people on this day" like they're some kind of charity.

Just the 10k from me! #cheapskate

Thanks again @BowserBasher + @Glen-i

And you don't find that in the least bit condescending towards black people? "Here guys here's a special day, juuust for you!" As for encouraging people to explore different options, I do that anyway when I shop, I don't care about the colour of someone's skin. It's pathetic, and utterly counterproductive. We should be breaking down division, not encouraging it with nonsense like this.

Anyone have moustaches in their Ables?

So Black Pound Day is apparently a thing now and I don't get it. I obviously understand the Black Lives Matter campaign but this? It makes no sense to me. Why not treat black people the same way you treat everyone else? Then the world would be a much better place. But no, we're now told to treat black people as "different", and there's never been more division as there is now. It's so dumb and things like this just shine a spotlight on this imaginary line society has created

I really enjoyed Watch_Dogs too, much more so than its sequel. Most people prefer 2 but I gave up two hours in and I rarely do that with games, it was a very different game to the first.

No voice chat for me I'm afraid, but it's fine I won't say much! Phew, I'm not the only one who'd been watching Wheel of Fortune while in lockdown

The game does indeed look incredible. Like BOTW and RDR2 another big leap for openworld design. I'm still gutted it's first person though, I get why they're doing it for creative reasons and immersion, but I just don't know if I'll be able to play it. I'm really not a fan of first person combat and the perspective itself tends to make me nauseous. Happened with the Witness and Sea of Thieves, felt awful after an hour of playing those.

Only if you're sure, if you haven't got many then thank you but don't worry about it! Sorry I wasn't able to open up for Marina's birthday in the evening, had a family thing.

Great post @Julius What failure? It's sitting at a 90% review score on Rotten Tomatoes, sold a ton at the box office and plenty of people, myself included, love it. It didn't resonate with a group of fans but that was absolutely not down to the execution. It was for story reasons, because people couldn't deal with the film not lining up 100% with their expectations of how they wanted the story to unfold, after a thirty year build up of expectation. Just because Luke wasn't mowing stormtroopers down with his green lightsaber or Snoke didn't explain his backstory in pointless detail does not = a poorly directed mess. The hysterical disappointment in some quarters says more about hype and fan expectation/entitlement, than the final product itself. It's almost a carbon copy situation with the Last of Us 2, something that reviewed well, that's technically extremely accomplished, but that made story decisions that a big group of fans didn't like. Conversely plenty of people love it, just as they do Last Jedi. They just don't shout and scream about it over and over online or on social media like the hate crowd do. Couldn't disagree more. Rian Johnson is an excellent director and his next big film, Knives Out, got even better reviews than The Last Jedi did. People adored that film. But hey, opinions. You didn't like the film, I loved it. For me personally, I can watch the opening space battle, Rey/Kylo Ren's Force connections, Kylo betraying Snoke, the guard fight scene, the Holdo manoeuvre, any scene with Porgs, the gorgeous Crait battle and tons more bits over and over, and I intend to.

Will open now. Basically looking for any blue flowers going spare that aren't windflower, hyacinth or pansie. Edit: oh wait that just leaves blue roses well one of anything blue then would be appreciated