Recent Hauls 3: The quest for more stuff

Tankred · Postby **Tankred** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:53 pm

Ordered yesterday, came today.

caragnafog dog · Postby **caragnafog dog** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 6:01 pm

Enjoy volume 5 buddy

Postby **Monk Ed** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 8:25 pm

And yes that price tag you can barely make out on Xenoblade Chronicles does say only $49.99. Even used on Amazon isn't that low. I felt like I made out like a frickin' bandit.

Only question now is whether to play it on my Wii or my Wii U. I'm leaning toward the Wii U because my Wii spins discs noisy as fuck for some reason now, but I'm worried that the Wii U's BC might have unforeseen limitations.

Dataprime · Postby **Dataprime** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 8:26 pm

Good Haul, Man

Nuclear Lunchbox · Postby **Nuclear Lunchbox** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:07 pm

How's the Wii U? I haven't played one.

Shinoyami65 · Postby **Shinoyami65** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:18 pm

^The Wii U is a pretty decent console. I adapted to the large controller surprisingly easily, and the graphics on both the controller screen and the TV are great. For me, however, the main incentive was not having to pay for online multiplayer.

Postby **Monk Ed** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:36 pm

Between it and the Wii its only real downside (aside from the downsides common to all consoles) is that it doesn't play GameCube games, which is such a pity because my Wii spins discs so loudly (even the tiny GC ones, but not as loudly) and my GameCube doesn't have non-shit-quality hookups for use with an HDTV. If we're comparing it to other consoles, though, it's not even as good of a buy as the PS3 released years before it. It has tiny, tiny storage space for a 7th gen console let alone the 8th gen console that it is, and I'm talking about the deluxe version with the added space. I would not use it .

You get it for the games, obviously -- and they're Nintendo, so what more is there to say?

Well, a lot, actually.

Nintendo has always been intent on doing its own thing, and sometimes it comes back to bite them. I'm talking about button placement standards in this particular case; Nintendo is the only company which makes you press the right-most face button to do a menu confirm, and the bottom one for cancel, which goes against the standard established by both competitors. It's the Japanese standard and Sony actually does it that way in Japan, setting a different standard for each territory, but they have the benefit of using inherently arbitrary shapes for their face buttons, rather than letters as Nintendo and Microsoft do, so I can understand why they stuck with the scheme because "A" makes more sense as a confirm button than "B". (Of course back in the SNES era most menu-driven games like Chrono Trigger let you actually choose which button to use to confirm or cancel, but apparently control customization is becoming increasingly a thing of the past on consoles.) And yes I know the SNES came first but standards are not about who's first. But this is an issue that almost nobody else seems to care about, and it's not something to knock the system for.

Something much more worth knocking when it comes to the gamepad would be the GamePad itself -- as Nintendo calls it, for reasons that make about as much sense as naming your console Console or your son Human. In every game I've played so far, the screen in the GamePad has been used for nothing worthwhile. Most of the time, it's just a second screen duplicating the action on your TV, and, worse yet, you can't turn it off (you "can", but you'd have to stop using it entirely), which means it drains power while doing nothing for you. This is not minor -- screens are energy hogs, and I can only imagine how much better the battery life would be if I could turn it the fuck off, but apparently Nintendo really really wants me to have something shining at my face that I'm never looking at. Why anyone thought this was a good idea remains beyond me.

The upside is that it's a Nintendo system and that means Nintendo games. And that's all anyone ever really buys these things for, right? On that front, there's nothing to complain about. But you asked my opinion of the system itself, so here it is.

I was a huge fan of the Wii, but there are no mysteries here as to why the Wii U isn't doing so well.

All of that said, the GamePad is not required anyway -- it's just that it's all that the system ships with, so to have any other input options you need to shell out yet more money for something you'd have wished the damn thing had shipped with in the first place. And not small money either -- the Wii U Pro controller I went in there to buy and the Xenoblade Chronicles I bought instead of it cost the same.

Dataprime · Postby **Dataprime** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 7:52 pm

Picked up more Dragonball Z dvds:

Battle of Gods
Dead Zone
Tree of Might

riffraff11235 · Postby **riffraff11235** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:43 pm

Back from NYCC 2014. Got myself two more Bandai Evangelion Portrait figurines - one of Asuka and one of Rei - as well as a few posters from Artist Alley.

Nuclear Lunchbox · Postby **Nuclear Lunchbox** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:59 pm

Very nice. How was the rest of the con? Any good panels?

riffraff11235 · Postby **riffraff11235** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:06 pm

There weren't that many panels in which I was particularly interested. The few that I did consider attending would probably have required a 1- to 2-hour wait in order to get a decent seat. I did a rough survey of both the main show floor and Artist Alley in the morning, had lunch, then went through both again to make some purchases. Throughout all this I met up with some friends from school. One of them actually entered a custom Gunpla to be judged in a contest (sadly, he didn't place). Other than that, I saw Monty Oum in the flesh and got myself 3D-scanned. You could pay the people at that booth to make a 3D printed figure of yourself (a bunch of cosplayers did this) or you could get the 3D scan files sent to you via e-mail for free. I chose the latter option.

So yeah, since I had only one day at NYCC I didn't really feel like spending a large chunk of it waiting in line.

Also, a funny story about that Asuka figurine: this morning I was going through all the Eva figurines I've bought at conventions (I think I may just try to collect all the Bandai Portraits at this point), I kinda freaked out because one of the Asuka figures I bought open-box at Boston was in exactly the same pose as the one I bought yesterday. After doing some digging I found out that the two figures were from two different series of portraits. The one I just bought was from Series II (no wonder it cost $22 instead of the usual $15) while the other one was from Series VII (much more recent). They have differently colored bases and one Crisis averted.

Nuclear Lunchbox · Postby **Nuclear Lunchbox** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:11 pm

Huh! Could we see the scan? Sounds interesting.

riffraff11235 · Postby **riffraff11235** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 1:34 pm

Sadly I haven't gotten the e-mail yet. I may decide to upload the picture I took on my phone at some point.

CJD · Postby **CJD** » Tue Oct 14, 2014 8:05 pm

What more needs to be said? :love:

Will post pics when done building.

Dataprime · Postby **Dataprime** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:23 pm

Just picked up the John Carter of Mars books from Amazon, the first 5 in fact!
I always wanted to read them after seeing the movie a few years back.

Blue Monday · Postby **Blue Monday** » Fri Oct 24, 2014 6:41 am

Lil' Blu-ray haul:

Nuclear Lunchbox · Postby **Nuclear Lunchbox** » Fri Oct 24, 2014 11:59 am

Godzilla: rated 'M' for Mild.

Postby **pwhodges** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 3:40 pm

I'm just waiting for things at present (the "quest" of the thread title)...

Open pre-orders at Amazon right now:

20 Nov - FMA manga 3-in-1 edition, last volume.
4 Dec - Sadamoto Evangelion manga, last volume.
21 Apr (put back from Dec) - Scott Pilgrim colour hardcover edition, last volume.
2 Feb (they say!...) - Evangelion 3.33 English dub.

Also Sadamoto vol 14 LE preordered from CDJapan.

InstrumentalityOne · Postby **InstrumentalityOne** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 12:41 pm

Took the plunge and got a Macbook Pro 13.3 Retina for school and shit after finding out that comparable laptops (Priorities = Portability and Battery) are almost just as if not even more expensive than the mac version and I already got a powerful desktop so why not

Gotta say, I am actually pretty impressed so far. SSD is pretty darn small but most of the 1TB I used on my desktop is basically used for games and anime and shit which I won't be doing on this machine so yeah, the paltry disk space's no problem. Also got Netflix and Spotify subs so it's all good. And you can't play games on it anyway so yeah whatever. I got Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, Risk of Rain and Super Meat Boy installed but I don't think I'll ever bother to whip these out on the go.

(Apparently Revengeance is compatible with Mac OS X and so is my x360 controller with the mbook but hahahahaha how about no)

Machine itself got okay weight to it. Not too heavy for lugging around, not too light to feel cheap.

Display is pretty, but not *that* much prettier compared to my budget 24 incher on my desk at home from a layman's point of view.

The whole app store apple id crap, the tiny enter button, the command button layouts and the track pad gestures took some getting used to but overall I am pretty satisfied although for me it'll never be able to replace my trusty desktop machine running at 1920x1080.

Shamsiel-kun · Postby **Shamsiel-kun** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:43 pm

InstrumentalityOne wrote:The whole app store apple id crap, the tiny enter button, the command button layouts and the track pad gestures took some getting used to but overall I am pretty satisfied although for me it'll never be able to replace my trusty desktop machine running at 1920x1080.

If you want to install normal Mac Apps (so non-App store ones), you can disable the "App Store"-only setting in System Preferences...

The track pad gestures are quite customisable (I tend to disable those that are annoying).

Recent Hauls 3: The quest for more stuff

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