Saturday, February 2, 2008

Legend Force Archive

The entirety of the original LF is archived below. Be warned, it's long.

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Legend Force: A Legitimate Strategy
That's right! Only seven hours after the approval of my column!
A lot happened over my summer. I played Metroid, I beat Mega Man Star Force, and... oh yeah, I went to Otarockman. More on this after the jump.
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OtaRockman is a yearly gathering of Rockman fans organized by REO. We get together, do a photo shoot of the cosplayers, and then... there's the tournament. Everybody brings a copy of the chosen EXE game and a folder and we all beat the data out of each other. In-game, of course.
The chosen game for OtaRockman 07 was EXE6. I went to work making a folder (read: customizing an RFF folder). It worked reasonably well, and I named it "Data Drain!" (mainly because I was cosplaying as Kite from .hack that year.) (Also, no, you can't see it. :P)
[[scriptmode]]
MegaMatt: Okay! Let's do this!
A gamer is approaching!
MM: Uhh... Attack?
*cool pixel into-battle transition*
MM: Okay then. What have I got here? *looks at chip selection* Hmm... Okay, that oughta do it.
Opponent: IMMA GONNA PWNZOR JOO!111!1!1111!!!!1! SUNM00N!!11!!
MM: Oh expletive. *pwned* 20 HP left. Let's see what we've got here... That'll work.
O: H4MM4 T1M3! POI5ON 4NUBI5!
MM: LifeAura! (I hate to do something so cheap, but it's all I've got.) BodyGuard + WhiteCapsule!
O: O, ITS JUST BODYGUARD. ILL TAKE ONE HIT AND THEN BE BACK TO PWNI- WHY C4NT I MOVE?!!?!/1//1/?!1/1?1 HAX!1! H44444X!11!11! O NOES! *pwned*
-Next Battle-
Opponent V2: Hah! My grammar module was fixed! Now I can speak correctly!
MM: BodyGuard + WhiteCapsule.
O V2: *pwned*
-Same thing happens next time-
Opponent V4: Now is the timeth of thine pwnage!
MM: This is getting ridiculous. BodyGuar-
O V4: SunMoon.
MM: Darn you and your shorter PA names, Opponent V4. *pwned*
The moral of the story? The cheapness of BodyGuard and WhiteCapsule is directly proportional to who's using it. And that I got second place! *huggles trophy*
Next time, on Legend Force:
"You know, I fail to see how a small plastic cone can stop two tons of metal traveling at over 100 miles per hour dead in its tracks."

Legend Force Extra: A Hedgehog Is Approaching!
Unless you've been under a rock since October 10th, you probably know who was recently confirmed for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. What does this mean for our beloved Blue Bomber?
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Yes, Sonic. Sonic was confirmed, making him third-party character number two (behind Solid Snake). So what's the probability of MegaMan?
Some people think that, with two third-party characters, MegaMan will never get in. However, most of these people said that Sonic wouldn't get in because we already had one third-party character, so I have my doubts. Who knows? Maybe he will get in.
Another thing: people seem to think it's MegaMan or X or EXE or Omega-Xis. Why not have all of them as alternate costumes?
Meh. I'm all outta rant-fuel. Discuss. Or don't. Whatever.

Legend Force: You Say Goodbye, and I Say Halo
SO I HERD U LIEK HALO?!?!??!?!11/
My friend tried to get me into Halo a while ago. Yeah, Halo. A first-person shooter with some survival-horror elements. I'm the kind of guy that likes Tetris and RPGs (Role-Playing Games, not Rocket Propelled Grenades). It was, to say the least, interesting.
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The conversation went something like this [with my friend denoted as L337 DUD3, his Gamertag] [and no, he's not accepting friend requests]:
L337 DUD3: Hey, wanna play Halo 2??MegaMatt: Not especially.?LD: Cool! I'll set it up.?MM: What just happened?
In his infinite wisdom, he also decided it would be a good idea to have us play Campaign, the single-player mode. The final level. On Legendary*.
*Legendary is to Hard as Bubbleman V3 is to a Mettaur.
After learning that I wasn't supposed to shoot the person with the green arrow over his head and that yes, you can stick plasma grenades to yourself, I was getting good. And by good, I mean absolutely, atrociously terrible.
I confess, though, that I was addicted to the multiplayer. Being a mainly strategic mind, I was better at staying in a position with a good view of what was going on and commanding around teammates. Capture the Flag was my favorite game for a long time.
Why, you may ask, am I posting this? Well, the Powers That Are (Powers That Be is gramatically incorrect, I believe) recently came out with a tabletop RPG called Halo ActionClix. Eager to get my revenge on him, I challenged him to a game. Or, more accurately:
MM: Hey, wanna play Halo ActionClix??LD: Not especially.?MM: Cool! I'll set it up.?LD: What just happened?
I completely obliterated him, just like he obliterated me in Halo 2 Multiplayer. This has lead to a weird symbiotic relationship: I pwn him at Halo ActionClix, and he pwns me at the Halo games.
This does have a dark side, though. Since I beat him at something Halo-related, all that remains before Armageddon is for Duke Nukem Forever and Halo DS to be released.

Legend Force Reviews: Out Of Cake
Here's a new subsection of Legend Force I'll be trying out. [read: I spent all the time I should have been writing this article listening to music and playing games, so here's a cop-out article.] In this installment, I'll review whatever I want, and we'll take a look at a remix of Zero Wing music and one of my new, favorite songs: Still Aifvnfjvbc---*kvshhuhvvvssssh* SPOILER BARRIER ACTIVE. [musical spoilers for the game "Portal" have been contained behind break. spoiler barrier unstable: a RECLAIMER should proceed with containment protocol before the spoilers breach containment.]
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"Still Alive" -- Portal (PC)
"This was a triumph. 
I'm making a note here: 
HUGE SUCCESS. 
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction."
So starts the ending theme to "Portal", Still Alive. The perfect example of the spirit of the song, however, occurs a few lines later: "But there's no sense crying over every mistake./You just keep on trying till you run out of cake./And the science gets done/And you make a neat gun/For the people who are still alive."
The song is a weird fusion of techno, a touch of "Weird Al," and possibly some hallucinogenic drugs (the lyrics are rather nonsensical). It's a funny song, though. Recommended with four physics-defying portals out of five.
"Zero Wing Medley" -- VGMusic.com
Invasion of the Gabber Robots. Those words may mean nothing to you, but if you Google it, you'll get the infamous "All Your Base" song (one of my personal favorite songs). A VGMusic user by the name of Mars Jenkar mixed together almost every (if not every) song in Zero Wing into one awesome MIDI. It's an excellent listen, and great for Game Maker placeholder music. A solid five "ZEEEELLLLOOOO!!!!!" Wings out of five.
"FEAR" -- Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, mostly
A very cheap technique. FEAR stands for "Focus sash, Endeavor, quick Attack, Rattata," and it's one of the cheapest techniques ever. Here's how it's usually deployed:
Red sent out Venusaur! [Level OVER 9000]
Blue sent out Rattata! [Level 1]
Red used PWN! [It takes away all but 1 HP, because...]
Rattata hung onto its Focus Sash!
Blue used Endeavor! [makes opponent HP = your HP if your HP is lower]
Blue used Quick Attack! [it does 1 damage, but that's all Venusaur has left.]
Venusaur fainted!
Five out of five for effectiveness, but one out of five for cheapness. Final verdict: Three loeved mudkipz out of fiev.

Legend Force Extra: Why I Should Never Be A Stockbroker
Hey! Sorry for the wait; it took me longer than I expected to find the newly-placed Admin button. So, what's with the title? Find out after the jump.
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My Personal Finance class started playing the Stock Market Game a few weeks ago (a simulation in which you must buy and sell stocks with virtual cash). Care to take a look at my team's portfolio?

Yeah. My luck is terrible, to put it delicately.

Legend Force: On Subtitles and Sequels
Not much to say, really. I'm going to review some anime and then I'm going to do a short little piece on the future of the ZX series.
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Hayate no Gotoku
The first undubbed anime I ever saw was Hayate no Gotoku, or as it was translated, Hayate the Combat Butler. (Side-note: Since Hayate's his name, and "no" means "the", does that mean the Japanese have a word for "Combat Butler?")
The story centers around Hayate, an unfortunate boy who tries to kidnap a rich girl because his irresponsible parents left him gigantic gambling debts to pay. The girl becomes smitten with him and pays his debts in exchange for Hayate's servitude. Each episode is freestanding (for the most part), so, if you've seen the first few episodes, you can really understand almost any of the later ones. There's a lot of fourth-wall breaking and references to other anime and manga in the series, and the fansub I watched (only if it's legal, of course) even explained a lot of the pop culture references (no wikipedia required!). There's not much action, but the humor more than makes up for that. I highly recommend this anime, and it wholeheartedly gets the Official Legend Force Walrus of Approval.
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MegaMan ZX 3
I love ZX as much as the next guy, but if what the previous post here said is true, then ZXA has until the end of the year to sell 2000 copies. How do we do this?
Get everyone you know to buy a Japanese copy of ZXA. Hopefully, the grassroots effect will take hold (i.e. they get two more people to buy, who get two more people...). Heck, if you don't already have ZXA, get a Japanese copy! Please! For those of us who love ZX! For sequels! For everlasting peace!

Legend Force Reviews: 11 Track 11
My friend recently gave me a CD of songs he wrote. A review of one of the tracks after the jump.
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This one's known only as "11 Track 11", as far as I know. It's a neat little trance-techno piece that sounds almost like background music to some trance puzzle game, like Lumines or something. I dunno. Anyways, download it here. I have more from the same album, so if you guys like this, I might review some more.
PLUSLE: A nice song, great for Halo 3 campaign.
minun: Repetitive.
Also, this'll be my last update for a while because of Thanksgiving break. See ya later!
--Reminding you that the internet is not a big truck (it's a series of n00bs),
MegaMatt (Gamertag: MegaMatt SP)
DISCLAIMER: I am posting this under the belief that my friend actually wrote this song. Should this turn out to be false, I'll gladly take it down.

Legend Force Reviews: Halo Cubed
In this special edition of Legend Force Reviews, we'll take a look at three Halo-related things: Halo 3, the Halo 3 soundtrack, and the Halo 3 Limited Edition Xbox 360. Judgement shall be issued after the jump!
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360 Degrees of Pwn
The Halo 3 360 is pretty nice. It comes with a special edition 360, hard drive, headset, controller, Gamer Pics, and a theme. The last two can only be acquired by exchanging a voucher code from inside the box via Xbox Live. Also note that this 360 has the newer, cooler processor (w00t!). Using a little trick I learned, you can also get a free month of Xbox Live Gold (the one that lets you play games online). (All you have to do is accept Silver and it gives you a free month of Gold.)
So what does it have that makes it so much better than the other 360s? First, it has awesome UNSC (the human force in Halo) stylings, so even if you're not crazy about Halo, it still looks awesome. The free headset is a nice touch, and the controller's rechargeable battery and free Play and Charge Kit together make for an excellent deal. The only real problem is the price ($400 US). This bundle gets a solid four sentient-life-destroying superweapons out of five.
Wearing The Helmet Does Not Make You Play Better
Let me be honest here: the only reason I bought Halo 3 was because my friend wanted to play online with me. I have to admit, though, that even though the Legendary Edition was a bit pricey, it was well worth the investment. The two supplemental discs contain all of the cinematics from Halo 1 and 2 remastered. This is a nice bonus for people like me who like the plotline of the games, but don't like the gameplay enough to actually play through the first two. Watching the cutscenes only takes about two hours, but it plays out like a cross between Star Wars and Aliens (which is is really what it is). The helmet is nice, but the price drops the final score down to a still-respectable four pwned n00bs out of five.
You Say Goodbye, and I Hear It In Surround Sound
The Halo 3 soundtrack is a two-disc set. The dynamic music from the game has been "frozen" to accommodate the format change. The CDs range from beat heavy techno-esque rock to piano pieces that sound like something from a concert hall, not a first-person shooter. Also included is a bonus rock piece entitled "Kill Your Friends" about multiplayer. It's a bit jarring from the rest of the CDs, but it's still a good listen. And who thought that (almost) all of this would come from the guy that wrote the Flintstone Kids theme? Five creepy, screeching violins during the Flood theme out of five.

Legend Force Preview: Fly High, FreeRice
I'll be posting an article on FreeRice later today (maybe tomorrow). Also on the schedule: Halo 3 OST Review, Director's Cut.

Legend Force: Why You Aren't Getting An Article
Vendorman's sale, plain and simple. Expect those two articles in the near future.

Legend Force: Article Schedule
Halo 3 OST Review: By Friday
FreeRice: By Friday
Special Bonus Article!!: Sometime this week
Mega Special Bonus Article Mini Series!!!!: By the end of December

Legend Force: Always Bet on MegaMatt: Part One
Sorry it took forever, but here's the first of the two promised articles.
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Fly High, FreeRice
Every five seconds, a child dies from hunger. Almost eleven million children under the age of five die each year in developing countries. Sixty percent of those deaths are due to malnutrition or other hunger-related causes. About twenty-five thousand people die each day because of hunger or related causes. The United Nations estimates that the cost to completely eradicate world hunger is approximately $195 billion per year. FreeRice (www.freerice.com) promises to fight hunger for free through building vocabulary.
The website displays a random vocabulary word from its database (SAT vocabulary words are included) and four possible meanings. If the user chooses the correct meaning, the website donates twenty grains of rice to fight world hunger. The website originally donated only ten grains per correct answer, but due to its popularity, FreeRice doubled the amount on November 28 in addition to promising that new words will be added to the database.
Players earn the rice through the presence of small advertisements below the game. These advertisements earn money for FreeRice. The money is then used to buy the rice (near where it will be distributed, if at all possible) and distribute it. FreeRice has donated over six billion grains of rice since its creation on October 7.
The website is a sister site to Poverty.org and is under the parent organization World Food Programme (www.wfp.org), an nonprofit organization that has fed over 1.4 billion people since its creation in 1962 and distributed almost 4.5 million tons of food last year. The organization has invested more than $30 billion to date in fighting hunger, malnutrition, HIV and AIDS, and emergencies in developing countries.
With the holiday season fast approaching, websites like this can be a way to give something to someone who needs it. FreeRice stands out because it requests nothing more from people than their time and gives something to all involved: advertisers get the occasional bought product, the user gets an improved vocabulary, and the people in developing countries get a meal.

Legend Force: Always Bet on MegaMatt: Part Two
Soundtrack to blockbuster game lives up to expectations... mostly
I can only imagine what other people do while playing Halo 3, but I like to occasionally stop and listen to the music. Of course, the “dynamic music” feature that changes the music depending on what you’re doing often makes me go back out into the fray to get the music playing again. When I heard that Bungie was to release the soundtrack to Halo 3, I was ecstatic, as I was getting tired of playing through the final level over and over just to hear my favorite piece of music.
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The soundtrack certainly does not disappoint. There are two discs and a total of thirty-two songs, all of which are available via the iTunes Music Store. Each level of the game is separated into as few as one and as many as four individual songs, depending on the length of the level and the number of different song snippets present in the game. Five bonus songs are also present: “Choose Wisely,” “Movement,” and “Never Forget,” the three different tracks from the menu screens of the Halo games; “Finish the Fight,” an arranged version of the music from the E3 announcement trailer; and “Love Your Friends,” a song about multiplayer.
The composers used a twenty-four voice choir and a sixty-piece orchestra, a tremendous step up from the simple synthetic instruments used for some of the first game’s music. Don’t let this fool you into thinking that the soundtrack is all the standard rock-classical music, though. Although it is the majority of the soundtrack, there is plenty of style variety here. From the Halo theme remix and pounding techno beats of “To Kill a Demon” to the fast violins and drums of “Behold a Pale Horse,” the soundtrack excels in variety in styles.
However, the variety really only is in styles. The entire soundtrack feels like the same few songs remixed over and over with minor variations. Although the remixes are rather different in style, there are only so many ways “One Final Effort,” “Gravemind,” “Keep What You Steal,” or “Farthest Outpost” can be remixed on different instruments or in different styles.
Even though I say that, the soundtrack has successfully kept me coming back for just a few more minutes every so often. I’d say that this soundtrack certainly has something for everyone, although unless you’re either ready to purchase for $16 ($14 via Amazon not including shipping, $20 via the iTunes Music Store) what are, more or less, the same songs eight times over or a Halo junkie like I am, I wouldn’t purchase the entire album. If you can, I recommend using the iTunes Music Store to get the best of this album. If you absolutely need the Halo theme, try “One Final Effort” or “Finish the Fight,” my two personal favorite tracks.
Final Judgement: 8.5 out of 10
Pros: Good variety in styles, remixes of classics and menu screen music are nice additions.
Cons: Album is repetitive, a bit expensive.

Legend Force: Blast from the Past
I was doing some spring-I-mean-winter-cleaning the other day, and I found an old guide I made for PET World way back when.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I present... The Transer Visual Guide Version 1.1!


Legend Force: Update
Sorry guys, with the semester wrapping up, I've had a lot of projects to get done. Expect the next LF on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Legend Force: Requiem for an MMO
It's over.
On December 26th, as I discovered today, my favorite MMO will be shutting down.
I know almost nobody's probably even heard of it, but it was awesome while it was still up. [Warning: Depressing thoughts beyond the jump.]
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It was called Space Cowboy Online. It was basically World of Warcraft, Star Wars Rogue Squadron and Grand Theft Auto all mixed together. You could fly around and go to different cities where you could get new missions, which, although they were usually "kill x enemies and get x of these items," were usually pretty fun.
It's shutting down due to a rights issue. The way I understand it, a new publisher bought the rights to SCO and refuses to let US players play on the old servers or port over their characters. I'll really miss it.
Still, I suppose almost anybody who ever plays an MMO will eventually outlive it. Auto Assault, .hack//Fragment (even if it wasn't a true MMO), even Resident Evil: Outbreak... and, someday, World of Warcraft. All you've worked for... gone in a moment when the servers shut down.
Heheh... I once heard life compared to the largest-scale MMO ever. I suppose that's right. One day, the server's going to shut down (I'm betting on global-scale nuclear war) and we'll be the Forerunners- we'll leave behind our technology, but nobody will know who we were...
*MegaMatt goes over to the TV and plays some Portal*
My faith in humanity has been restored, but only to the extent that I have faith that they will do dumb things. Need more Portal.

Legend Force: Creation of an Avatar
You probably haven't noticed this, but I just finished a new avatar. The construction process is after the jump.
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Step 1: Idea
First, I figured out what it was going to be. In my case, it would be AntiNavi, AntiSword, AntiDamage, WhiteCapsule, and then a slide reading "PWN3D".
Step 2: Pictures
I grabbed the sprites shamelessly off Sprites Inc. I also downloaded an image editing program that I highly recommend for sprite editing, Pixen (Mac OS X only, AFAIK), which I used to create the "PWN3D" slide.
Step 3: Animate
Pixen made this extremely easy. I just opened a new animation, put in the slides, entered the time for each, saved, and uploaded it as my avatar.
That's all there is to it, really.
-Wishing you a merry Christmas and a new year full of pwnage,
MegaMatt Reborn

RMS RPG Update
Update here.

Legend Force Reviews: Rocking On
Up for judgement today: Rock Band (360, PS3, PS2) and "Blue Valley" by Karsten Koch.
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Rock Band
I got the opportunity to play Rock Band a few days ago with three friends. It feels like a cross between a far more immersive version of Guitar Hero and, in a way, Final Fantasy (need Overdrive plz kthx). Star Power has been replaced with Overdrive and is now rechargeable during use, and if any of your bandmates fail out of the song, you can resurrect them up to three times by deploying Overdrive. Played alone, it's nothing more than glorified Guitar/Drum/Microphone Hero, but played with some friends, it's truly awesome. I give Rock Band five steampunk-goggled Blue Man Group members out of five.
"Blue Valley"
Don't worry if you've never heard this song. It's from the original soundtrack for a PC game called "Uplink." Uplink was an excellent game (still is- check it out, even if the community's long dead) that turned the player into a hacker. Behind this primarily text-based action was some of the best techno music I've ever heard. This is the first song that plays upon loading the game and the iconic Uplink song. This track and the rest of the soundtrack is a free legal download. This track makes great web surfing music. I give this four haxx0r3d n00bs out of five.

so i herd...
you lieked sco? do some legwork.
www.freewebs.com/m364m4773x3/5c0puzzl3tr41l
that's not the real url of course. think l33t.

Legend Force: Game On! Call for Beta Testers
Some of you who have been around for a while might remember that I used to program computer games.
Not "used to."
I've been working on this game off and on for ages, but I'm not ready to release it quite yet. What I need is a group of a few beta testers to help me figure out how this game works on other systems and to give me feedback in general.
I'm thinking about three or four testers, so leave a comment and a way to get in touch if you're interested.
Oh, and one last thing. This game was developed for Windows XP, so you can't be running anything below that or a Mac. I'd like to see how/if it runs on Vista, though.

RPG Staff Change
As of right now, I have officially been promoted to RPG Project Lead by FlashMan.
"I HAVE THE POWEEE-" er, nothing. >.>
So, guys, now that I'm project lead, well... Nothing's going to change, really. Rendan, PM me with times that work for you for meetings. Everybody else, keep waiting and we'll have that RPG done in no time!
Of course, that's a MegaMatt "no time"...

Unboxed: Blues DX
Here's the photo album (56K EPIC WARNING!!). Follow along.
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Sorry, but all of these are horizontally flipped. Just flip them in Paint or something.
Slide 1: Woot! Blues DX action figure GET!!
Slide 2: Back of the box.
Slide 3: The contents. Looks like we've got us some model frames, not unlike the FCR figure.
Slide 4: The main GigaCannon housing.
Slide 5: The figure. Pretty cool, but why's he looking down?
Slide 6: Ooh, shiny! The Boomer-rang.
Slide 7: The viruses, a BoysBomb and a Meteo.
Slide 8: Woot! Progress Muramasa GET!!
Slide 9: The BoysBomb's bomb. Explosives not included.
Slide 10: The cool background. Wait... what's that on the other side?
Slide 11: Ooh... This looks helpful.
Slide 12: Uhh... Something written in Japanese GET!!
Slide 13: Instructions GET!! Those would have been nice to find BEFORE putting the model together.... >.>
Slide 14: The Muramasa blade. Manga style, I see. Pretty cool.
All in all, this figure's pretty cool any way you pose him. The awesome display stand has room for all the weapons and the Boomer is really shiny... er, I mean, uh... Anyway, it's a good buy, even if the parts aren't interchangeable with the FCR models. I give it five "SHOOP DA WHOOP"s out of five.

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