Arcade Project 04: Ball Decisions and July 21st, 2014

Arcade Project 04: Ball Decisions

(Larger Post at my Gaming Blog)

 What you see there is the new "standard" of these kinds of things.  Its easy to stash a lot of those in a truck, there's not a lot of maintenance, and they're cheaper all around.  They also did not exist much in my childhood, and on top of that they are not very versatile.   If one of those were to break(which happens), then the other two are sitting by an ugly unused one with an "out of order" sign on it.  I much prefer the classic, and to be honest you only spend another hundred or so, and then you can do things like mix and match colors and designs.

Looking at manufacturers, I think I want to get a mix of 2 styles, but in the same decor.  I want two of the "1 inch" dispenser types that let you use gumballs and bulk candy like runts.  In fact, that's probably the two I will have.  Everywhere I went had the "Runts" candies inside, and for good reason; they last forever.  They are also very hard and will not tend to break into pieces as much as sweet tarts and the like.  Some people like super sour gumballs, but not me, I want the regular looking ones, though I may get tropical flavors.  Face it, this is going to be free, I don't want the candy to be "too" good.  Besides, I love hearing "omg, I broke my tooth on a banana"

That leaves me 2 machines that I will order to use the 2 inch "shells" for toys.  I loved collecting a couple of things in my childhood.  I remember the little plastic men you could get in the machines that you would put in water and they'd expand and get bigger.  I remember the sticky hands that you could slap and sling against walls, and the ones filled with goop and slime.  For some reason, despite me not ever liking Football all that much, I collected the football helmets.  I am not sure what I'd have(I know some of you are screamin' HOMIES!), but for sure two of the machines would be for the shell toys.

Not going Ebay with these.  Its just too nice to be able to get custom features(like token use instead of quarters, custom colors, or free spin so you don't need quarters at all).  It looks like for 4 custom made machines and a steel "no tilt" frame to lock them in to is around $300, and these things will outlast my life time, so I think that's pretty damn nice.

July 21st, 2014

Again with the Anime side of things.  I watched the first episode of Sword Art Online.  The show is a bit ridiculous on the premise, and its definitely not the first to tread its territory, but it doesn't matter, I still couldn't help but like what I saw.  The people doing the English version are MMORPG fans, as whenever there's crowds you can hear them shout things that only MMO players would get a kick out of(someone yelled "is this an event?" when a GM appeared).  I guess that's not all that special after World of Warcraft opened the floodgates and now 10's of millions of people play MMO's, but still its nice to see people that like their stuff working on bringing us neat stuff too.  Anyways, the first episode does what all of us that played MMO's have done, get taught how to play by someone that knows more than us.  I remember when Daveron taught me the basics of Everquest, and gave me a magic tagged sword so I could kill things that gave other people trouble(Will o wisps were nothing big, but they could only be damaged by magic weapons).  Anyway, its really cool that it opens like that, and will surely give any MMO fan some memory flashbacks.

I pretty much hate anything to do with "free to play" games.  I would rather have 2 or 3 complete and done games that I can play to its fullest than have 10,000 free to play games that nibble at you here and there.  So the fact that Google will stop saying games with in-app purchases are "free to play" in Europe I think is a good step in the correct direction.  Free to play, especially in the MMORPG world, has been nothing but a disaster on the communities it gets involved with.  LOTRO is limping along reusing assets and set pieces, tacking on new areas because they can't guarantee a future to any developers working on the thing.  I'm sure they got a good injection of cash at the start of the free-to-play era, but it can't be as strong as Moria was.  Almost all the expansions I see to games that have gone "free to play" are limp rehashes of other areas rearranged in other configurations.  Now if we could just get retailers to start labeling EA's bullshit like Simcity and the new Sims4 as something other than "full retail purchase" we might see some consumer rights work done.

I'm reading through the Dungeons and Dragons "Basic" PDF, that you can get HERE legit and 100% legal.  The Basic set is a small introduction and instruction booklet for D&D that will get you going.  It is limited compared to the full game, but will let you get to level 20 with the included material.  The base 4 classes are represented; Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue along with the races of Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling.  There's plenty here for you to make your own sub-classes if you wished, btw.  I'm into character creation right now, and I have to say that bringing in story telling help with character creation is great, and that it ties into answering a lot of questions for players makes it even better.  Your skills, your starting equipment and even your motivation is tied to answering these Background questions, and it reminds me a lot of "Kits" from 2nd Edition D&D.  I'll have a huge write up about Basic later on when my que clears.