The Android’s Closet has been open for a little over four months now and I think we’ve been doing well; we’ve had a lot of great comments and discussions and Mister Adequate and I continue to be flattered that people actually like to show up and read what we cough all over the screen. We are both aiming to be People Who Write for a Living at some point in the future, and so this is great practice for both of us.
Now this is sort of a cop-out post, but… oh who am I kidding? This is a cop-out post. Anyways! Basically I want to know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about. I know that this blog tends to orbit around a pretty steady rotation of a handful of specific games, but when you combine both of our respective gaming experiences we’ve played a LOT of games through the years so if you want to hear about something in particular, lay it on us in the comments. There’s a good chance at least one of us has messed around with it.
I’m also curious if there are any specific types of posts you’d like to see more of. More Let’s Plays, like my Civ one? Reviews? Videos? Some sort of *gasp* podcast? We’re all ears!
At some point soon I’ll be looking into getting a dedicated email for the blog so you can email us these sorts of requests anytime you wish. I’m also considering getting a dedicated Twitter account for the blog. Currently, my own personal Twitter auto-tweets everything from the blog, but I think that causes some confusion because a lot of people assume that Mister Adequate’s posts are my own and, while flattering, I want to be sure he gets due credit.
To make up for the lack of video game content in this post, have Fluttershy playing FFVI.
Rather unrelated to everything but the last sentence, but seeing that image took me back. I used to whistle the song from that scene in the car when we were on road trips because my mom thought I whistled it beautifully.
That’s great. And I love that song. That scene alone is pretty much the sole reason why FFVI is my favorite in the series.
OPERA SCENE
<3
On a somewhat more serious note: I have three points for you two. The first is just, sometimes the text in some screenshots is shrunk too much to be readable, and that's bad for me because a lot of them seem to be CivIV screenshots, which I'm considering buying.
Number the two: I have not seen much discussion of music on this blog – or perhaps I just love talking about video game music so much that I'm the only one that thinks it doesn't come up enough. Regardless, I do not recall seeing the names Motoi Sakuraba, Nobuo Uematsu, or Duane and BrandO on this blog.
Finally: More "let's play"s would be neat. Maybe even a noob version for people like myself who are interested in a lot of the games you talk about but haven't played many of them.
Thanks for the screenshot feedback. I’m often trying to walk on a fine line between screenshots that don’t take over the entire screen and screenshots that are too small, but I’ll look into tweaking that balance a little.
Thanks for the ideas :D
I’d love to see some reviews of good RPG co-op games. My husband and I love to play x-box together (2 controllers, one console), but so far haven’t found many games that have smooth co-op play. Either the camera goes crazy wild because the characters are “linked” so closely or the game is split screen. :)
Fun co-op games for the Wii would be great too. I don’t think they have much in the way of RPG’s for it yet, but that’s the only modern console we own as primarily PC gamers.
I just love your blog and you pointed me to some really fun games. (DF, CivIV, Trine, VVVVV – now in the Humble Bundle,…)
I really enjoyed your Let’s plays too.
PS: More of the above mentioned games and SMAC is always good. ;-)
Thank you! I’m glad I was able to introduce you to stuff that you like :D
Mister Adequate I like the fact that your posts frequently have me reaching for a dictionary, i really do. But could you try and keep your ramblings of teh vidya to around a page please :D
Bahahaha I’ll see if I can keep things a bit more concise, but sometimes I just have so much to say!
If you folks read Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy books, you can blog about them. I’d love to read your takes on old classics like Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, the Robot series and whatnot.
Same for movies really.
As for games, Any old PC game will get me reading. Never been one for consoles so I tend to gloss over the Mario posts and stuff, but that’s just me.
Oooh, we’d be good at sci-fi posts. I’ll see what we can cook up.
I miss the classic video game Mondays from Clockwork Hare….as one who grew up on C64 games and on old 16 bit RPG’s, I enjoyed the trip back in time
I think a lot of people liked those. I’ll see about resurrecting them in some form.
I loved Classic VG Mondays.
I enjoy reading this for pretty much the same reason I loved reading AoTH/CWH. Makes me happy to know that there are other geeks who love their geeky hobbies as much as I love mine. Mister Adequate’s posts often times cause me to think about things I never would have even thought to think about. It’s mentally stimulating, something I’ve been sorely lacking as of late.
And yes, Civ IV is far superior to Civ V. I haven’t touched Civ V since I downloaded Civ IV and Beyond the Sword. The only thing I do like from Civ V more is the individual units rather than stacks. It’s much more intimidating to see a huge army amassing on a city than one or two stacks of ten units each approaching. (And has caused me some embarassing losses due to me underestimating the size of the army >_>)
Aww, thank you for your compliments!
And yes, Civ IV is <3
You have made me blush rather deeply at these complimentary words.
Yes, bring back classic video game mondays! They were cool! (And one day you will have to write the Super Mario RPG one. Maybe go through each map section and hit the high points so you can do the game justice lol. Why did they never bring Booster back for one of the endless Mario spin-offs? He had more background than Waluigi. Or the nimbus guys?)
And yes, Mister Adequate posts are quite intellectually stimulating, keep em coming!
I’d also like to second Armond’s suggestion of a little music discussion. It is really amazing how much AMAZING music can come out of simple MIDIs! I don’t know if either of you are terribly musical, but it would still be cool.
Also, I don’t know if either one of you is into WoW right now, but just in case you are, some WoW posts would be cool. AotH had some pretty neat PuG stories, and those brighten my day lol.
If you’re looking for votes, I would say cover more RPGs. And, if you’re looking for a topic suggestion, I have this one:
Have RPGs in particular lost some of their storytelling depth with the current generation of systems? Most big name RPGs now, such as Fable and Oblivion, are more about open endedness over story; Fable has lots of neat morality puzzles in it, but slaughtering the whole town just for lulz so that people will call you king is rather devoid of any real story, and there isn’t that much story to play through. It seems like the old 8-bit games could convey a better story and more emotion than we can now with more realistic 128 bit graphics! Am I right, or am I just ignoring some of the newer games with great story? (Note also the old WoW zones, where questing was more open ended with less story, as opposed to the new Cataclysm zones, where everything is on rails with no openness but much more story?) Thoughts?
Oh, and I have another one! Mr. A’s faux post on the “If you’ll forgive the soapbox” post, brings up an interesting question; do books make you use your imagination more than video games? Or, to rephrase the question, do old 16-bit games require more use of your imagination than modern ones, because 16-bit games have poor graphics, (requiring your imagination to fill in the blanks), while newer games have amazing graphics, (requiring less mental effort on the part of whoever is playing because there are less blanks to fill in). Thoughts?
Anyways, keep it coming!
I’ve never really understood the way “imagination” is perceived and argued about. I don’t use my imagination to ‘fill in the blanks’ as it were, I use it to think “What if?” What if I sent my units here rather than there, what if I used this weapon instead of that one, what if they had implemented X mechanic, what if the story had gone differently, so on and so forth. This is just me of course, but for me the argument is quite a strange one. Anything can provoke ideas.
Ohhh! Very interesting! That’s a completely different way of looking at it! I don’t think that way at all, I can’t usually look at two divergent paths than my units could take (which is probably why I’m not all that great at starcraft, lol).
What I was talking about is, say you are playing the original NES version of Final Fantasy 1. It’s just a bunch of squares stuck together on the screen, you have to abstract the squares into the shapes of people in order to get what’s going on, that’s what I meant by “fill in the blanks”, you have to produce a mental image of something that is there only in the barest sense. You might not do that consciously, but you do it nonetheless while you play (or, maybe at least, I do).
You’re thinking on a whole other level, a much higher one. I’m trying to get at something a little more basic. When you play an old 8-bit game, do you need to abstract the squares into a coherent object? Do you need to visualize something slightly on top of the squares on the screen? Do you need to imagine that that bunch of squares is a monster on the screen? Think about how you perceive an 8-bit game relative to how you perceive a modern game, where the images are very realistic and you don’t have to abstract as much.
If you don’t perceive the two any differently, then maybe I’m just crazy, lol. I’m curious now to see if other people perceive 8-bit and modern games differently, though.
Hahaha, no, I do understand where you’re coming from, it’s something I’ve seen mentioned around plenty. It’s not something I personally have much trouble with, I guess I just don’t approach things in that manner, but it is a legitimate question – I’m unfortunately just not the one to address it! xD
Hey, I’m a long time reader but a rare commenter.
I would love to see more posts recounting a play session you guys have had, I really enjoy reading them, not only are they entertaining but they also teach people nuances of the games, which leads onto my second wish…
… I would like you guys to cover more recent games. I love that you love retro as much as I’m sure you love that I love retro (TL:DR We all love retro) but I also love newer games as I love to explore new worlds, vibes and economies.
In other words I love what you guys are currently doing, I’d just like more of it.