Well, since I did my hater's list, I suppose I could do a lover's list as well. Again, no particular order:
- Elissa
- Law and Order + Pizza + Beer
- A really good book
- Elegant code (man, I wrote some awesome stuff today too!)
- Bowling with friends
- Racquetball!
- Any time spent with my family
- My new house!
- Pixel, even though she comes into the office
- The chance to play with new technologies (what can I say, I'm a true geek!)
- Bitterly cold weather or blizzards
- Elissa
- Old-school RPGs (FF II and III are still the best games ever)
- A job well-done
- Italian food
- Various memories from my past
- Helping people learn something new
- Learning new things myself
- Non-contaminated city water!
- The smell of new cars (come on, who doesn't?)
- Old family photos
- Magic the Gathering (:: grins ::)
- Good techno music
- Oh yeah, and Elissa!
Just so everyone knows -- I'm flying down to Austin today, so my posts may be sporadic. I'll try to blog about REAL World and see if I can snag pictures. :-)
"no particular order" ???? My Elise would cause some trouble about that kind of remark. ;-)
> Old-school RPGs (FF II and III are still the best games ever)
Grah. Those aren't even RPGs. What's more disturbing is that you cite Final Fantasy games as the best ever when, at the same time they were being published, Wizardry V was in stores. Philistine!
You could at least say "CONSOLE RPGs," then you might actually have a point.
Hey. Where's REALbasic on that list?
Have to agree on this one. FF3 is the best game ever made. I actually just bought the soundtrack from itunes, and it's not a bad listen.
@Aaron, James: I would somewhat agree with both of your positions... but seriously, Star Tropics and Star Tropics 2 on NES... probably not the MOST popular out there but definitely the best action/adventure/RPG games out there!
Ever played Bubble Bobble? I've got a friend that collects Bubble Bobble memorabilia, games, etc. for the NES. He's insanely good at the game, since he's played it since the early nineties.
@James -- What are you smoking? FF *not* an RPG? Sheesh!
@Will -- somewhere on there. ;-)
@Jake -- I never owned an NES (was never allowed), so alas, but I missed those.
@Adam -- Bubble Bobble rocks, I have played that one (or a reproduction of it).
You should add Italian wine too and not only Italian food :-)
"Elegant code (man, I wrote some awesome stuff today too!)"
Could you be more specific?
In all the world... Pizza is my favorite food. I can also agree with both the job well done and well written code.
Pixel, cute name for a cat. But I have to tell you the image that comes to mind is the Pixel from the Tron movie. Does she run around your house saying YES and NO? :)
Umm... when wasn't any of the Final Fantasy games not an RPG?
Pizza? Just had some! :9
Tetris is still my addiction...
now if I only had a pet...
For me, the defining aspect of an RPG is that you get to create your own character. In Final Fantasy games, the character is pre-created and you can't do anything except change their name.
So by this logic:
Final Fantasy is not an RPG, but a CRPG (Console RPG; same thing except you can't create your own character) (Of course, now that term is misleading, because there are "console" RPGs that are true RPGs, at least on Xbox: Morrowind, KOTOR, Jade Empire but not Sudeki.)
Diablo/Dungeon Siege is not an RPG, but a Dungeon Digger (Dungeon Digger is an old 'genre' that nobody talks about anymore, and somehow these games got mashed up with RPG games when they're not really all that similar.)
@James -- that's some pretty convoluted reasoning my friend. ;-) An RPG is traditionally defined as a... role.. playing... game. So playing in a story-based role within a game would be an RPG. ;-)
But by that definition, EVERY game is an RPG. In the adventure game "The Longest Journey," you play the role of April Ryan (I think that was her name...), in the FPS Half-Life 2, you play the role of Gordan Freeman, in Doom 3 you play the role of a space marine, in the strategy game Homeworld, you're playing the role of the planet's leader, etc.
In fact, even you qualify it by saying "story-based." But again, Adventure games usually have much *stronger* stories than CRPGs or RPGs, so that doesn't fit either.
You'll find that my definition of an RPG being a game where you can create your own character is probably the most accurate if you're ignoring consoles and console ports... it doesn't imply turn-based (like old Wizardry games) or real-time (like Might and Magic games), it doesn't imply third-person view (like KOTOR) or first-person view (like Morrowind), etc. Before Morrowind, I might even have argued that a true RPG always has a party and not just a single character, but my viewpoint there has changed.
I'm sure Nintendo started *calling* their games "RPGs" so console companies could advertise that they had RPG games just like the computers they were competing with at the time. (Let's be realistic: maybe 5% of Commodore 64 users did anything except play video games with the computer!) Since the NES didn't have enough memory to implement what a computer user would think of as a RPG, they just got as close as they could.
Yay bowling! :)