Reality

I think while 18-20 playable characters is the upper limit(12-14 base), they might still use character names to fill out the generic officer name pool.

Anyone can apply - this usually involves sending in a commentated submission video, and writing a one paragraph submission, as well as the time estimate. Then the submissions are vetted by 5 people. When I submitted they still had time to write short pms to rejected games, but I'm pretty sure that is done on a request only basis now. And if you've ever looked at a submission thread, you will see that anyone does apply- I remember seeing a garfield kart submission next to a grand theft auto submission last year. I've been rejected before for submitting a run that was hard to watch, admittedly it had a lot of off-screen activity. Overall criteria are not really static, but you read a little about it from the AGDQ FAQ "Once the submission period closes, games are chosen for the final schedule through a multi-step process of elimination. The overall goal is to craft a schedule with the most broad appeal for viewers and ability to draw support for the charity." Once the submission period closes, games are chosen for the final schedule through a multi-step process of elimination. The overall goal is to craft a schedule with the most broad appeal for viewers and ability to draw support for the charity.

Normal, Flying, Water, Fire, Grass, Poison, Nidoking- Bug, Golipsopod. I didn't expect it, but I quickly fell in love with it because of its ability. Before him my favorites were venomoth/heracross, but he passed them in no time. Electric, Ground, Gliscor. It was fun while it lasted. Rock, Psychic, Fighting, Machamp. DPP Dynamic Punch leads. Nuff Said. Ghost, Ice, 5 way tie. Dragon, Steel, Dark, Fairy

Team Rocket blame the special adventures manga

After the praise they got for Hyrule Warriors mixing up the Warriors formula (granted that the giant bosses had problems), I doubt they would use a series like Fire Emblem that kind of lends itself towards all characters having a humanoid build. As to what series they will use, I have to admit that I'm kind of drawing a blank. Leaning towards mario though.

The 3-D Gex games- The constant one liners do wear your patience thin, and the games are ropey, but no-one is asking them to compete with stuff like Banjo Kazooie. I really like some of the levels too. The looney tunes inspired levels in Enter the Gecko, the detective level, in G3, and the beanstalk level in G3, stand out as the best for me. The vehicle/minigames weren't' TOO bad either. I think it's unfair to condemn games for being derivative, and honestly it still manages to be fun over half of the time despite it's faults. Gauntlent Legends and Gauntlent Dark Legacy I first played this in an actual arcade, but the home ports are enjoyable too. They're as repetetive as you get, but they still manage to be a lot of fun, especially in co-op (well not on stages like swamp and egypt) where people get stuck due to being too far away from each other/ elevators).

The first advance game is a little questionable. I don't really get the sentiment of playing from worst to best. Advance 1 is extremely low difficulty, and the story is the weakest in the series. It's just a take on "gaining strength to face real world and reject escapism". It has bad gameplay decisions if you play without a guide- each class learns abilities by equipping items,(equipping brigandine teaches counter) but no item has its ability in its information screen and most items can be equiped by multiple classes, but only give you an ability if equipped as the correct class. The game is still easy if played "vanilla" just with attack commands and movement though, I remember my first time through I ignored the job system and left the main character as a paladin and just by doing about 1/3 of the sidequests, he somehow gained enough experience to simply facetank the bosses with his sheer defense. Also the maps are a little repetitive and not particularly creative since 90% of the game is either 4 on 4 or 6 on 6 battles, which are so short as a result that units like healers are literally ignorable, since battles simply don't last long enough. Granted I think all three games are low difficulty, but A1 takes it lower than the other 2. FFT can kind of be challenging in the middle, but the second half of the game is basically a "victory lap" because it starts giving you overpowered equipment and characters. A2 just has questionable enemy composition and same unwillingness to let enemies outnumber you to make up for their AI. I would recomend starting with A2, then doing FFT second, and playing A1 last, I think it would be a turn off to completing a 140ish hour project(all three combined) if you started with such a lukewarm game as A1.

Fire Emblem 4 It's tedious, AND easy. At least FE1, sacred stones, blazing sword, and path of radiance make plowing through weaklings relatively fun. The mainline Kirby Games I kind of like some of the art styles, especially when compared within its own generation (NES and SNES kirby especially) and I really love most kirby soundtrack. Just hate the dumbed down gameplay- I really wish the near infinite flying were removed, or that the powerups and puzzles became as important as in wario land 2&3. Dota 2, League of Legends, Smite, etc Kind of gets drawn out. Starcraft: Brood War, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer. etc I just suck at base management and tech trees. Sonic Colors It's supposed to be a "return to form" for the sonic series, but honestly I find some of it's levels have multiple routes in name only, and also some of the Sonic Adventure -esque levels lend themselves to being "one and done with" and I had no motivation to replay them. Also the humor was too much... I honestly prefer some of the experimental sonic games or even the overly safe ones to Colors. Minecraft Somehow, Roller Coaster Tycoon did the same thing for me, and I just didn't like trying to make giant buildings and landforms in the minecraft engine. Kind of iffy, but Psychonauts. I love it now, but the first TWO times I bought it and traded it back in to the local gamestore before reaching agent nein (basically world 2). I don't remember the details but I think I had the volume on too high during the voiced cutscenes. Jet Set Radio Played the hell out of the neversoft era Tony Hawk, and bought this game in 2013 or so, but it just wasn't the same experience. I did have fun with how over the top the enemies were though. Borderlands 2 I've gone in depth about this on a few sites, but the main thing is that it simply closer to being an RPG than an FPS, and difficulty is relatively Gear and not accuracy, or health management dependent. Also general lack of quality of life stuff- having to play through TVHM on all new characters to get to the meat of the game, the shallowness of the game on low difficulty modes, the shallowness of the game on high difficulty once you have proper gear, etc.

Nohr's Corrin is basically Superman from the Red Son elseworld comic, but written without the irony / ultimately realizing what a monster he was. Because of the plot's structure he is not the antagonist, but that shouldn't be a requirement for villainy anyway. I will probably make a Corrin vs Mark Millar thread later. just to show a bunch of eerie similarities in dialogue between Conquest and Red Son, as well as for the comedy value of seeing which Fates characters match up with Lex Luthor, Braniac, and Bizarro.

The Adventures of Cookies and Cream Developed by From Software It's technically "intended" to be played co-op, probably with the philosophy that the parent will help the child through. The problem is, that co-op makes many of the later stages harder than they already are, because for a lot of the later platforming, the two characters must be in sync. Single player takes longer to get hard, but controlling both charathers with half of one controller each and having to watch both requires unexpectedly high coordination. Sky world part 3, and Bonus world part 2 standout as ridiculous even for single player. The game is also difficult because you lose 20 seconds off the timer for taking damage/falling instead of using a health system. The level timers in this game are typically not generous to begin with, and losing a minute because of trying to partner with a child makes it worse. I'm counting beating all worlds as too difficult for a child... getting all (possible) S ranks is more comparable to Great Giana sister's Hardcore mode. Some levels in this game blatantly aren't possible to S rank on. The blurbs describing the game on the back of the box are absurdly insulting or at least misguided once you've beaten it for yourself. You can see it on one of the AGDQ bonus streams, where it turns into a Let's play because the original runners leave after the 4th world and the audience complete the rest of the game. People like me bought it by checking From Software'se list of published games and thinking it would be funny to own a kiddy game made by the developers of dark souls.

Canvas Curse is the best kirby game. Chain of Memories has the best mechanics of any Kingdom Hearts Comics are an amazing medium, and should not be seen as hard to get into. Comics exist outside of Marvel/DC/Image Can't shorten this but I've become an Anglophile- I just love British stuff to death. Manga/Anime should be likened more to counterculture instead of used to reflect an imaginary picture of Japanese norms. The overall difficulty of RPGs fell between the third and fourth console generations. Since the 4th and 5th generation, the difficulty of most mainstream RPGs has remained static and outside of specialist products don't even venture into medium territory anymore. Hack and slash platformers and Run-n-Gun games haven't lost their charm and make excellent presents for children. Tales of Phantasia isn't worth checking out- It's distracting because of thematic similarities to parts of final fantasy 6 (magitech) and secret of mana (tree) and while the plot and characters are decent, they are more notable for showing prototype material for later "tales of" games. Stun locking everything in the game to death and excessive backtracking basically makes the game tedious and low difficulty. The best way for newcomers to get into "Tales of' is to start with the critically acclaimed games in the series and not play them in order. Playing games out of order is often the best approach in other contexts too. The older sprites and portraits in Battle for Wesnoth were more memorable than the professional ones ushered in after Jetrel stepped up quality control.

Bellosom's base speed is too low- It's still out sped by positive base 100s at +1. In the context of Grass mono type, it would only have a coverage advantage over say, a similar CM virizion. Also the lack of SpA EVs would hurt it's use outside of weakness policy.

Favorite game I played - Meteos for the DS. Maybe it was because I didn't have much time for games this year, but I ended up playing a lot of short games. I also buckled down and unlocked everything, and then I tried to score attack every single planet. I really appreciated it as a puzzle game, since while it the gameplay is technically consistent, all the planet's in the game have their own physics, with some rewarding vertical lines more than horizontal, others being floaty, and still others holding the blocks in place unless you got a chain. The speed up function helped for someone like me, since it let me play the game at my preferred pace, and let me get to the intense part of the game faster. I also really liked that every planet had its own music. Much better than the typical ambiance of other games of this type. Favorite game released this year - Stephen's Sausage Roll I had actually bought the developer's previous game, English Country Tune back in December 2012. I don't remember WHY. But I remember enjoying it. After I finished, I posted a screenshot of the victory screen and the dev actually commented on it. I liked how hard the game was relative to other puzzle games I had been playing. Of course, I saw the cryptic sausage on his website, but I didn't think much of it. Later the game would become a critical darling- But I would not buy it just because other people liked it- I saw people debating about the price- In my opinion, it was a charming callback to when indies thought of themselves as the same as other third parties- I only knew one other indie who sold games at "release price" and it triggered memories of the snes and n64 where I might have my parents buy a game every 4 months, and would somehow make it fill that time. I admit this was a little ridiculous and nostalgic, but oh well. I only decided to buy the game after finally getting through lemmings-- while playing lemmings I encountered a lot of things I did not expect- puzzles could be designed that taught you how to do something, and then the same map would come up again, but the tools you used the first time would be taken away(like the columns level). It was so bizzare- It was like the game was teaching me things and then unteaching me. I did not expect it at all. I call games like The Talos Principle good, but they never did anything like this. And LEMMINGS of all things- I had always known it was a nice game and worthy of its classic status, but apparently I only ever remembered up to level 40 or something- I never suspected it to have that kind of depth(at least in it's second half). And now here was Stephen's Sausage Roll- I became fixated on the idea that this game would share the design philosophy of Lemmings And after playing it, I can say that in many ways it does.

Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time. Followed by Road Redemption finally leaving early access ! Also the Star Control game has been vaguely hinted for Q3, but we don't know enough about it for a game with that much work already done on it, so I think it's release will be pushed back to 2018. Maybe Descent Underground? Well I can't quite compare my enthusiasm it to the above 4 games or even certain 2018 releases.

Fire emblem is kind of weird as a speedgame, especially in the ways it differs from LTC. I'm not surprised it has a timeslot like that- It's kind of problematic to commentate when you assume that most of the audiences isn't familiar with the game given the amount of stuff going on. I'm almost surprised it didn't get something even worse, like a 2-4 AM. I'll probably watch it anyway, because I watch everything , lol. I actually think that a lot of stuff got in this year that isn't really that exciting to watch (Psychonauts- sure it's a cult game, but the flying glitch kind of makes the second half of the run samey) Mega Man Legends, LittleBigPlanet, and Super Bomberman also stick out as offenders as games vastly less entertaining as a speed run than firsthand.

How did you play IV that made it harder than Apocalypse? I remember being angry with the game for being easy. Minotaur and Medusa were a great start but I kinda feel like everything afterwards up till Pluto and then the endgame bosses was really easy....

Early, I don't usually have promotion items in storage anymore. Kinda make an exception for 6,7,awakening (only for characters recruited up to ch16 I think) later unite like the children and reclasses beyond the first one just get promoted at 10. the GBA games get slow promotion mostly by nature of availability.

There was this toy company called Tomy or something that did Pokemon mini Figures. I had the poliwhirl gold playing card, the ball, and poliwag as the little plastic toy. I don't know if that was the intended way it was packaged or what. May have had burger king / Mcdonalds stuff earlier, but I don't remember owning any until the 2nd and and 3rd gen games. My first real trading card came from, the 61 cards of the original starter set, so bunch of machop and ponyta. Later I took squirtle the first time I played pokemon Red.

New rougelikes with FTL. Some editors seem to treat it like the staple rougelike nowadays, which I always found bizarre given how streamlined it's equipment system and the kind of on hands approach to combat it has. It dosen't help that binding of issac and spelunky are also rougelikes, while being even further than a vanilla experience outside of their procedural generation.

I kind of feel like it's hard to reproduce the "robotron zen" in geometry wars. While still a vicious game, it doesn't force repositioning in the middle between waave, so you can more comfortable kite enemies in circles and don't have to constantly break out from the middlle in order to start the pattern. I also don't like some aspects of the scoring, since with collecting geoms, you are kind of encouraged to kill enemies in small groups when you can get away with it, so that you don't miss pickups, instead of firing constantly. Also despite the more complicaated enemy patterns, you aren't backed into a corner so often as robotron because all enemy types are shootable and there are no invincible hulks randomly cluttering things up. I also personaly feel like chase type enemy waves aren't mixed with things that hang around the edges, which leads to the player controlling enemy movements for a larger percent of their scoring run. (robotron's tanks and spheriods) Geometry wars doesn't force you to look for information other than enemy position very and openings. It's a contrast to the tanks that can bounce their shots off walls to circumvent the player's ability to shoot down their projectiles and basically forcing you to be ready to shoot away from enemies while in the midst of weaving through them to get the edge and begin circling to prevent being cornered.. I like geometry wars, but I'm confused about my ability to feel calm during a twinstick shooter... it just seems off to me.

I think I prefer monsters just because it's a good way to kick off a video game, since there strength ensures that the final battle can be cinematic and still provide uphill odds even though in most cases you are already marching into the enemy capital and have proven your army to be unstoppable. It might not be as fitting in a comic or anime, but I think that the gameplay personality and the sense of power that every player will be getting toward the end of an FE game lends itself more to monsters than humans.

Worms Armagedon, especially on rulesets like super banana. But even on standard, everyone can be overpowered if the random placement on the map decides it really hates someone. The prod and firepunch can be more consistent than the dynamite and super sheep if a convenient pit or minefield is available.

I just feel that saying that a game adds to the number in a series has strong connotations. If you want to go with "same concept=same series" You can consider the case of banjo kazzoie.. I hardly see people claiming that it has a 3rd game in grunty's revenge for the GBA, despite also being a 3d platformer with collecting notes,jiggies and powerups as the core gameplay. Let alone Nuts and Bolts or a clear-cut spinoff like banjo pilot. It can't really justify calling chrono a 3 game series when people call banjo 2 game series fairly frequently, and of course, Western Fire emblem sites still tend to number the games 1-14 and ignore BS fire emblem....

Radical Dreamers can hardly be used to claim that there are three chrono games. First of all, it was for Satellaview and wasn't really meant to be a visual novel... It just ended up that way since it' development was so short. It's little more than a tech demo really. It's story is also basically just a variation of the first viper manor sequence in chrono cross, albeit with more explicit ties to chrono trigger. I'm pretty sure official chrono artbooks and things claim it was non cannon or happened in an alternate universe, but technically that just brings up the whole "chrono cross isn't chrono trigger 2" comment It's true that it cameos in chrono cross (Nikki's band is called magical dreamers, ending credits feature radical dreamers as a song, the another world overworld theme appears in Radical dreamers, shared story elements, etc....) But at the end of the day I'd hardly call it a game at all, and even if I did, I wouldn't say the "chrono series has 3 games" . Especially since that's kind of misleading statement as it implies the 3rd game is also a 40+ hour rpg... You mine as well try to get someone excited by saying their are more than 18 zelda games and then talk about the wand of gamelon or something...

FE9 is doable in 0% if I remember from this thread.. http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=37382&page=1 Running away from the black knight is obviously mandatory, and not being allowed to abuse resolve for the major chapters because of needing it for ena's endgame setup is annoying, but doable. As for FE8 I think I killed the demonking with a near-base dozla in my casual playthough. he has something like a 40% hit with garm equipped though, but I don't think that burning rns for crit abuse is strictly neccesary. I think Audhaumla gerik, Eirika route Duessal (could hurt it at base, although it would take several turns and lots of healing / rescue support. Also Tower of Valni's very feasible with some of the later base charathers, so I guess you could make money and load up energy drops if you didn't want to also LTC with your 0%... I heard someone say that every game was possible in 0% on its highest difficulty except awakening. This was before fates was released though.