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 From the Desk of The Incredible Yorkshire Tea  Making a LP of Mega Man 9 was a blast: Firstly, it’s a great game on its own merits, from gameplay to soundtrack; secondly, our playthrough and analysis helped me to understand, on a more fundamental level, why it works so well; and thirdly, hanging out with your best bud is a perfect way to spend any evening. I was eagerly looking forward to the sequel. Fast-forward to the second week of playing through Mega Man 10, and I was telling Natural20 the only way he could make up for inflicting this crap on me was to let me pick the next game. Choosing a game was tough. Any eligible title from my eclectic range of esoteric poo poo had to fulfil three very important criteria: 1) It must not be a horror game, otherwise Nat will go into Maximum Overwuss and derail the whole thing. 2) It must be fast-paced enough that Nat does not fall asleep at the controls. 3) It must be simple and straightforward enough to avoid baffling Nat, who is a very uncomplicated man with a very basic nervous system. Out went Resident Evil HD and all the many episodes we would have spent arguing about keys, camera angles and why taking a detour halfway across the map just to avoid that one Hunter is a terrible/perfectly sound idea; out went Grim Fandango and my attempts to explain how the puzzles were totally fine and sensible and made sense, no shut up, YOU’RE the dumb one GEEZ; out went killer7 and… well, pretty much any Grasshopper Manufacture game, really. Eventually, it struck me: Castlevania. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve grown to love Castlevania. As a kid my only option was Castlevania 64, and since this was in the days when you had to take out a mortgage to pay for a single N64 cartridge I decided to spend my money on Yoshi’s Story instead (totally worth it). It wasn’t until Circle of the Moon that I got hooked, but even then, it was several years before I finally got round to playing Symphony of the Night, probably the most famous installment in the series. Even then, SOTN still managed to impress me with its mixture of intricate 2D art and creative 3D effects, its memorable cast, its simple-yet-effective storyline and its excellent soundtrack. There’s a real sense of majesty to Alucard’s journey, but there’s also a charming goofiness which belies its Hammer-inspired roots. A perfect choice. Symphony of the Night is a story about many things: the undying nature of evil, the inescapable bonds of destiny our heritage places upon us, and how a few good people can turn the tide in the fight against darkness. Alternatively, it’s a story about an angsty half-vampire with no junk and a serious inability to eat peanuts. I think Nat will like it. From the Less Amazing Desk of Nat20  This is set to be a video LP of Symphony of the Night. I will be running the game entirely blind whilst Yorkshire Tea acts as my guide, helping me by explaining mechanics I might not understand and ensuring that the run hopefully keeps a relatively brisk pace. Videos are set to release three times a week, usually on some combination of Monday/Tuesday Wednesday/Thursday and Friday/Saturday. To my chagrin, the blind nature of the run does not lend itself to voting, so unfortunately thread interaction will be limited to laughing as I flail at the game horribly. (The fortunate upside of this is that Tea and I can now afford to bank episodes meaning we shouldn’t see large content breaks) With that in mind, part of the fun will necessarily be talking about spoilers in the game. As I have to monitor the thread to make sure updates get correctly posted here and that everything with the discussion is fine, I would make the request that spoilers about aspects that I have not encountered be discussed with spoiler tags, like this!. Tea will happily read along and chat about these things with you guys, but I will pointedly always ignore spoiler tags until after we’ve completed the run. This is most important if I've managed to miss something along the way. Please don't highlight it without spoilers. Tea informs me that the intent is that we clear all the enemies within the game. I have also made it clear that he is not to tell me about hidden rooms or secrets in the game. So if I miss an upgrade I won’t be told about it. The aim is ideally to see how a player entirely new to the game would progress with as little input as is reasonable, whilst hopefully providing at least a little illuminating commentary on the nature of game design. We are of course flexible and if people have suggestions about a different way to deal with the run that can be integrated easily, we’ll be happy to include them.                                         
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 01:03
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Reserved for Fanart/Whatever we might need here.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:03
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 Episode 01 - Can I die in This? A quick aside for this episode, I've included a small introduction bridging the discussions that I've had across my other LPs over to this one. I'm not planning on doing it for any other episodes, but equally if people find it completely obnoxious I'd be willing to edit it out.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:05
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Huh, so you're completely blind to metroidvanias in general? I wasn't really interested when I just saw the thread pop up, but knowing this I'm glad I decided to at least have a look. I'll be following for sure. It will come up later, but I played the Prime series all the way through and I remember playing some of Super Metroid, but if you asked me anything about that game all I'd be able to say is that speedrunners do weird poo poo with it and there's something about animals and saving time. It's enough that I'd feel dishonest not mentioning it, but also enough that really, I have no idea how this is going to work at all.
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Jun 22, 2018 17:26
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 Episode 02 - Best Murdering Buds Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 22:00
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Ick, small error with the video (it's still fine to watch, it's just not framed properly). I'll be fixing that up and reloading in a bit.
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 22:11
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Video's all fixed up!
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Jun 25, 2018 23:58
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Ah yes, another small update. Since Tea and I can now queue episodes, I've taken to preuploading videos and setting them for timed release. What this means is that there might be some lag between episodes appearing there and me posting here.
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Jun 27, 2018 00:13
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 Episode 03 - Eat Book
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Jun 28, 2018 00:50
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 Episode 04- Woof! Woof!
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Jun 30, 2018 02:20
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 Episode 05- Why Game!?
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Jul 3, 2018 00:04
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Pierzak posted:It physically hurt watching you flail around the blood skeleton elevator and I want my brain cells back I'm sorry Symphony of the Night Blind only accepts brain cells up front. No refunds.
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Jul 3, 2018 08:30
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Cerebral Bore posted:Since you've already done it the hard way, I'll just point out that there's a much easier method for getting up that lift. You just need to kill the blood skeleton on the switch to send up the lift, then stand under it and wait until the skeleton gets up and the lift starts lowering, and if you time it right you can jump to the lift when it's about halfway down and have just enough elevation to make a second jump up to the ledge. OH GOD loving DAMNIT.
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Jul 3, 2018 10:16
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We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to suggest that it might in fact be coming home.
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Jul 4, 2018 00:39
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Black Robe posted:Please record a session during the next match so we can hear you and Tea screaming at random intervals. It would just be me! Tea isn't a fan of football. (Or any sports)
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Jul 4, 2018 12:25
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 Episode 06 - No Shame In Dying Here
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Jul 4, 2018 23:38
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Pierzak posted:Natural 20 my rear end, more like Rerolled 20 It's Alucard's little known time control ability.
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Jul 5, 2018 09:37
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Don't apologise! I'm really happy to see everyone chatting about the game and it'll be a bunch of fun to go back over when we're done.
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Jul 5, 2018 17:29
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 Episode 07 - That's It, I'm Done
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Jul 7, 2018 00:52
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Episode 08 - There's no save point!
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Jul 10, 2018 00:16
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 Episode 09 - Who's That Pokemon?
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Jul 12, 2018 00:14
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 Episode 10- I hope you feel like a dick now.
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Jul 14, 2018 02:01
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Jade Star posted:Got lucky that youtube recommended me episode ten, cause I was still waiting for eight to come out. Just a friendly reminder to update the op/table of contents for us quiet non thread following lurkers. I'll bear it in mind. I've been getting a little lax with these amazing youtube auto updates I've got going.
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Jul 15, 2018 01:54
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 Episode 11- What did I just do?
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Jul 16, 2018 23:58
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 Episode 12- SHORYUKEN!
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Jul 19, 2018 00:47
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 Episode 13 - Alucard Cares! Oops! This went up yesterday and is meant to go up today!
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Jul 21, 2018 01:55
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Gimbal lock posted:Dawk metamorphfsshsh Dawk metamorphofish?
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Jul 21, 2018 10:45
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 Episode 14 - Scree! Scree! Apologies again guys! Editing got shelved yesterday as I had guests over.
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Jul 24, 2018 15:05
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 Episode 15 - This is Amazing!
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Jul 26, 2018 00:23
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 Episode 16 - Where's The Cheese? Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jul 28, 2018 |
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Jul 28, 2018 01:35
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 Episode 17 - Less Comically, More Tragically
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Jul 30, 2018 22:07
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As an aside, I'm loving the number of people that have picked up and are playing through along with us.
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Jul 31, 2018 14:22
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 Episode 18 -Why does a skeleton have a pork bun?
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Aug 2, 2018 01:05
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Jade Star posted:it irrationally bothers me that Nat keeps going out of his way to collect hearts when he's full on hearts. And doesn't bother using his subweapons 99% of the time anyway. It's like a cruel time wasting joke to watch him faff about hitting torches and jumping after hearts that he can't collect cause he's full and doesn't use anyway. I have played a lot of Zelda in my life.
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Aug 2, 2018 12:35
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 Episode 19 -The Bingo Laser!
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Aug 4, 2018 00:33
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 Episode 20 -How is this so amazing? Royal W posted:This has been amazing to watch and catch up with! Thanks for putting it on! And thanks very much for watching and catching all the way up!
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Aug 6, 2018 22:31
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Gimbal lock posted:There is a solution to the mystery of the water. Having seen the way you've been attacking this so far, I'm positive that if left at your own devices, it will remain a mystery forever. I solved the mystery! The solution is get enough health to tank the water.
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Aug 7, 2018 10:03
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I mean, broadly speaking I'm happy for the thread to effectively self-police on this. So please don't worry too much, but obviously the fun is in me not knowing things, so I rely on you guys to be judicious. Tea hasn't seen anything he's particular perturbed about not being in spoilers so far.
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Aug 7, 2018 16:50
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There'll always be a few private videos in the list. Tea and I record on Sundays for a minimum of an hour usually. Once I've edited everything I upload all the videos to youtube and set them on timed release for 11pm GMT on Monday/Wednesday/Friday until I'm out of 20 minute chunks. On a practical level this means that if I've got drunk out my mind on Friday and forgotten the LP exists, the videos will still release even though I don't update the thread until a hungover Saturday morning. So yes, if you're expecting a video to be out and this thread hasn't updated 95% of the time, the video will be out.
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Aug 8, 2018 13:36
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 Episode 21 - Maybe I should take a nap
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Aug 8, 2018 23:59
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