Let's Play / Master Classes Archive

VP2 would be great, I could even see myself trying it. There's a ton of room to show off tricks and shortcuts and various bits of knowledge about the game systems.

You just want to see me suffer.

I'm still undecided on which version to do. I'm thinking the Mac version for (my) nostalgia's sake, though.

And I have a great idea for how to open but am totally worried about it petering out as I get more into the game.

It won't be any worse than someone missing out on a game they wanted to cover. I also don't really get the whole "can't follow more than two threads at once" argument. There are a lot more active threads than that on the boards, and on every other message board someone may or may not read, news sites, et cetera. "Too difficult to keep track of" sounds like quite a lot of bullshit. =p

I just chafe at the sudden need to organise what should just be a fun thing that someone does for a game they know tonnes about and would like to share. Considering the fact that many of these games don't necessarily have a lot of room for audience participation in the first place, or even a lot of variation in their playthrough, you'd then need some person or group to say, "This game is good for coverage. This game is not." And where does that authority come from, and who gets it, and what are all the criteria for inclusion, and what happens when someone disappears for a couple of months, and, and, and...

My point being that making an actual go of organising this has a lot more angles, and it may just be better to let folk play and post what and when they want, rather than trying to control the dang thing.

You make good points. The last thing I want to see is drama originating in what's supposed to be fun for all involved.

Sorry, I think I see what you mean now. I got a little carried away, I guess; I didn't mean to try and systemize everything like that. The best approach might be to just list what everyone plans to do and let everyone go when they want to go; let people decide for themselves.

Perhaps a simpler policy is to indeed list them as has been done so far - but as more of a list of noted intent than as a strict schedule. People can (and probably would anyway) start these threads when they feel like it, but discretion is obviously advised. If there're three LPs/MCs going on at once, perhaps it'd be better to wait until one or two of them have finished - and you can say as much, "After the next one's done, I feel like doing one", in this thread, so that people can also be aware of who and how many people are thinking of attempting one after the current LPs/MCs are done.
There's no reason there needs to be a formal system to run this when open communication and discretion can be used to get the same result.

...Though now that I've written that, it does feel like a lot of self-evident fluff. Hurm.

Yeah, I was thinking exactly that. Letting people talk it out and decide for themselves when to start their Let's Play is probably the best policy, and it's obvious enough that I'm ashamed I didn't realize it at first.

Anyway, I changed the list around to reflect that. Though does anyone know a better word than "claim" for the second list? It makes it sound too much like one person per game.

"When no word will suffice, invent your own." I vote 'Tap'.
But yes, a claiming, er, Tapping policy allows for not only multiple Taps per person, but also Tap overlap (rhymes for bonus points) between people. Since you can always change your mind before eventually attempting one, and it's always good to keep your options open. Again, communication would be key to avoid duplicates.

Does "proposed" sound too PowerPoint?

Proposed sounds solid to me, and less invented than my spur-of-the-moment filler word.
Other useful synonymous phrases include; prospective, speculative, expressed interests, intended. Though they're all a bit meaty, those words.

Proposed sounds good to me. Thanks for the input, guys.

I was originally thinking of doing SQ1. Make sure you do the VGA version of SQ1 - it's a good deal funnier, and you'll probably get better screenshots.

Also, run them in DOSBox. You'll go mad trying to get screenshots for them any other way.

I very well might change my mind in due time, but for now I'm going to, uh, propose FFVI. I don't have the stat and technical knowledge of a true master, but I've played it so many times that I think (hope) that I could provide an entertaining and informative commentary.

I hereby declare that a Let's Play on SaGa Frontier II shall commence in several months' time, to be executed by Gredlen.

I almost picked BG1, so I'm glad we've got someone representing on BG.

Awesome, I am really looking forward to this. Good luck at the Battle of South Moundtop. Even if you use an FAQ, you've still only got a 25% chance of winning. Maybe even less.

As far as my Let's Play goes, does anyone know any good emulators for N64 games? I own multiple copies of OoT, but I don't know of any way I'd be able to take screen caps of my TV so it seems like emulating it on my PC would be the easiest way to do it (plus, as far as my understanding goes, it technically wouldn't be illegal since I own a legit copy of the game...I think that's how it works anyway). The only games I can truly say that I am a true master of are OoT and Starfox 64 (and Suikoden III, but I've beaten that game a million times already and don't want to do it again), but they're both N64 games so I need to figure out some way to get this to work. So...yeah, any/all ideas are welcome.

And if that doesn't work, then I'll just play KOTOR. Because KOTOR is awesome.

Last time I checked Project 64 was still okay. There might be one with better compatibility out there these days, though.

Wait a minute, I too crave acceptance from complete strangers! With that in mind, I'd like to take a stab at Silent Hill, as it's one of the few games I've actually beaten on all difficulty levels. Plus, it's fairly short.

I don't really crave acceptance so much as an opportunity to let some steam off by playing through a game with a mind to snarkily deconstruct it for an audience, grinning the entire way.

I grew up playing the original so I'm probably going to stick with it... I could do both and compare and contrast though...

Last time I checked this is what passed for acceptance 'round here.

Incidentally, you just described something like 89% of toastyfrog.com's content throughout its entire history.

Why shouldn't everyone play their games at once? It's not like they all have to post at once. Do your playthrough now, get screencaps, maybe record what you're thinking while you play, then when another LP is finishing up say "Hey guys, I got one ready" and take your turn posting? You could still just post one chapter a day, but we wouldn't have to watch too many threads at once and everyone could play their choice now while they're still enthusiastic about it (plus less odds of real life getting in the way of their updates in the middle of the thread).

It does kind of cut down on the forum interaction part, but for the most part - especially if this ends up more as a "let me show you how awesome I am at this game" thing than anything else - I don't know if that's so horrible. Did the forum decide anything in Brickroad's FF1 playthrough besides the character names?*

*Not saying that's good or bad, just using it as an example.

I'm already doing this.

And wondering about this.

After some consideration (and not being able to get System Shock to work on my lappy), I propose that I play a game or two of Fallout sometime in the relatively near future.

But, I do have some questions! Is there any amount of audience participation expected from these (a la allowing the audience to create my character for me versus them telling me in what order to do things versus me doing it all on my own), and are these just going up in Talking about television games? The answer to two seems to be "yes", but it seems like they'd get lost in the other messages.

Also, could we request games? Because I'd love a TT version of Oregon Trail.

I think the more customization involved, the more audience participation would be appreciated. It puts the forum's unique stamp on the whole thing!

Ha! TT Oregon Trail is pretty much how I'm planning to play my Bard's Tale playthrough.

I think audience participation is up to you, but it certainly makes it a lot more fun. It also depends how non-linear the game is.

Speaking of which, the reason I originally wanted to do Ogre Battle 64 was because you get to name roughly a hundred characters, and this forum would've been the source of the names. Of course, there's a gender imbalance, and some forum members would've ended up as transvestites, but it still seemed like a fun idea.

I VOLUNTEER, SIR.

I call Destin.

Edit: So I experimented with that Project 64 emulator and a ROM of OoT. Everything works great (the game looks a lot better too...it's a lot sharper than the N64's super blurry version). So you can get rid of that "maybe I'll do KOTOR" thing, Papillion. I am now 100% going to do OoT at some point after finals.

I got going on X-Com over the weekend just to bring myself back up to speed, and wound up with a GREAT game - I captured a Sectoid navigator (knocked out by concussion force from a grenade) on the second mission, and therefore had the Hyper-Wave Decoder earlier than just about any other playthrough.

Of course, I then realised that there's just so much about the game that needs a backstory / explanation that I'll probably start off with a bunch of text pieces with highlights from the UFOapaedia.

That's probably a good idea. Also, remember to include every single autopsy and research report. They're the game's big payoff.