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        Somewhere in the wilds of 'southern Europe' lies a desolate mansion where three students have gone missing and it's up to you to find them and make sure they're alright. A fairly simple premise for a horror game, but underneath that The Note has some very interesting and unique ideas (albeit presented in a very flawed way). Released in '97 for the PS1, the game presents the user with a world of light and darkness with a fairly dynamic lighting system, a day/night system, and a customizable control setup that easily could have been amazing for the time. But for all the positives there were a number of things actively working against 'The Note' ever being remembered as being a cult horror classic. First and foremost, it had a fairly limited release; in fact it seems to gained quite a bit of infamy for the mere fact that it seemed to be one of the rarer titles for the PS1 (though I can't seem to find exact numbers anywhere as info on the game is fairly sparse). Secondly, the game only saw release in the Japanese and PAL regions; which was more than likely due to Sunsoft not really having much faith in the title being popular in other markets and really it was surprising that Sunsoft would even touch this product as they mostly seemed to work with licensed games. Lastly, even with it's limited release, the most damning issue that 'The Note' has is well....it's not really fun to play. For all it's interesting ideas, it easily goes one step forward and two steps back. Cumbersome combat, vague puzzles and objectives, and while it's control scheme is great it's also hampered heavily by the fact it gives you about 16 different things that you might need to map with only four buttons available. But hey, that's why I'm here; to give you a safe and comfortable ride through this mostly forgotten title, right?  The main man, Akira; freelance paranormal investigator, lovely marksman with a shotgun, and generally thick headed nitwit. But beggars can't be choosers, especially when it comes to finding missing children in Europe in a spooky mansion.  Akira's right hand helper, Angela; formerly Daria's best friend, she assists Akira as best she can....which is mostly saying people are unpleasant and shady. Usually though she's pretty much right on the money.  The mysterious lady in red, Necromeda; the malevolent mistress of muerte. Just why did she need her stone so badly and what evil machinations does she have in store for those missing children? Only time will truly tell.  A mysterious man in black, Paulo; the very essence of late 90's coolness and the only real friend we've been able to meet in 'southern Europe' so far. But we already mess it all up by giving away his coveted soul stone...hopefully we can kiss and make up.  Cool as a cucumber and twice as green, Dave; a well-meaning and endearing member of the trio of kids that went missing who is probably in over his head but he doesn't seem to mind. He's just that cool.  The yin to Dave's yang, Toshi; quick to accept the inevitable and even quicker to blame others for his current predicament, Toshi is the wild card of the trio. You just never know what he's going to do next...whine or whinge.  The one who took all the pics, Linda; without Linda none of this would have been possible, though it's a bit of a toss up if that's a positive or a negative since it's led to demonic imprisonment. discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jul 4, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 06:49
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 Spoiler warning but there's no note in this video. Also this game has strange levels of detail and there are some additional run-in's you can have with Necromeda: Bonus: Alternate introductions with Necromeda
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Jun 1, 2017 06:52
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I really like you showing off these old & obscure horror games, especially the one that are either dead ends design wise or where whatever it inspired is just as obscure or was never available in English. While I love lot's of verbs in adventure games The Note really shows off why most of them have consolidated into Look & Use(Or even just a single interact button), by the second room You've already run out of buttons for even to most common commands.
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Jun 3, 2017 09:54
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Everybody's just so undisturbed by all these disturbing events. This lady turned into a floating torso? Oh, she's some sort of monster. Well, that explains everything. To repeat what Hel said, I really enjoy you showing off these more obscure games, and having an almost academic indifference to them. I feel like I can appreciate them more with the way they're presented instead of being overwhelmed by their flaws.
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Jun 3, 2017 17:07
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Yeah, I was only really able to find one other full LP for the game and it was just overwhelmingly negative...and I mean granted, it is fairly cumbersome and it can be bad but there's so much worse out there. I mean comparatively you have something like Countdown Vampires which was way better received and came out like three years later, and it's way worse to me. But yeah, haha, I'm fairly lenient as we all know. edit: I will say though that we'll be getting an added challenge at the end of the next video that is pretty much complete bullshit and I have no problems admitting that it's terrible. Mr. Highway posted:Everybody's just so undisturbed by all these disturbing events. This lady turned into a floating torso? Oh, she's some sort of monster. Well, that explains everything. Hel posted:I really like you showing off these old & obscure horror games, especially the one that are either dead ends design wise or where whatever it inspired is just as obscure or was never available in English. discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jun 3, 2017 |
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Jun 3, 2017 18:41
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 The challenge increases as well as the bullshit (status ailments, nasty enemies, and a new timed annoyance), but one thing still remains very true....there's still no note in this video. Now I will be keeping Angela safe in the room for the next couple of updates but I will make sure to include a bonus video showing what happens if we don''t.
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Jun 6, 2017 07:59
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discworld is all I read posted:
I was considering trying to get my hands on a copy and play along, and then you got to the oil management part and instead I really appreciate you playing this even more. While I don't know how extensive the time management is going to be I really like the idea that the threat against the player character isn't the big danger since you can just go and shop at the town, instead you have to make sure the other characters don't get hurt. Being given a safe place and having to willingly enter danger to save others is a pretty neat way to do a horror game, especially a game where you can actually defend yourself .BTW if Angela needs a can of oil every hour do you actually have enough time to go and shop for some? is the town visit "Free" time wise as long as you don't stay in the hotel?
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Jun 7, 2017 14:58
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Yeah, time kinda stops when you go to town (unless you specifically stay at the inn to rest up and force time to progress) but I guess I should have specified regarding the timer for Angela. The oil will roughly last about six in game hours, so you have roughly one real world hour to do whatever and get back to her as well. So, if you manage to keep the areas lit and the enemies don't respawn, it might only take 3 minutes to get to town from Angela and another 3 to get back to her; or as I'll be keeping stocked up on most things, we just need to drop what we're doing and get back to her. Thankfully Akira will keep track of when the timer is running down and he'll give you a five minute warning to get back to her. But it doesn't help the fact that it's a bit of an arbitrary hurdle to get over and as you can imagine it does make exploring a bit dire to do....which makes matters worse as the next area is large, winding, and a bit of a difficult spike.
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Jun 7, 2017 16:35
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"You know what challenge would add some spice to our game? Routine backtracking every hour exactly." I mean if they had said it out loud maybe they would realize how miserable it sounds. This could kind of work if you could give her all she needs at once and then so whatever without concern. Or if one oil can was enough. Then not giving her the oil can is basically you saying "I want the bad ending this time." Which is fun sometimes. I like killing the people who depend on me in games when I have the option to actually do that instead of it just being a game over condition.
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Jun 7, 2017 20:15
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 Two hours in and we finally get our first piece of reading material...but I get a feeling it's still not the titular note. Also the original length of this video before editing was a whooping 52 minutes; I edited out two trips to give Angela oil and edited out ummmmm let's say failures. And I know people love watching failure, so here's a bonus video: Bonus 2- Over and over and over again marshmallow creep posted:"You know what challenge would add some spice to our game? Routine backtracking every hour exactly." I mean if they had said it out loud maybe they would realize how miserable it sounds. The best I can think of is they wanted to really make sure the player remembered there was a time mechanic in the game cause dammit they worked hard on that and the lighting. That's why every loving corridor is dark as a coal miner's rear end in a top hat.
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Jun 13, 2017 06:14
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It certainly wasn't designed to pack every second with intense interest - very much the type of game I'd like to SEE played.
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Jun 13, 2017 07:36
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Bacter posted:It certainly wasn't designed to pack every second with intense interest - very much the type of game I'd like to SEE played.  Bonus 3- What's it like in Japanese So immediately you can tell the voice acting is better (minus the weird distortion they put on the opening narrator), but there's other changes as well. Like the control setup is different in that left and right on the d-pad are for strafing and two of the face buttons are for turning. Also it seems like the enemies took more damage to take down (like the feral wolves took six bullets to take down instead of three). But I think what stood out most to me was that Akira is just constantly smoking; it actually explains his weird sneer in the intro and it's because it was holding a sweet smoke there originally. It's still a bit strange how much better the game comes across with good voice acting and less goofy Western names. Still not sure why they also changed the Japanese names to other Japanese names though; like Akira in the Japanese game was Kazuya? Though Toshi was still called Aikawa Toshihiko, which is a reasonable shortening I guess.
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Jun 13, 2017 17:12
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I tried my best to watch the previous episode but it spends so much time fumbling in the dark I think it strained my eyes. The more of this game I watch the angrier I get.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:19
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marshmallow creep posted:I tried my best to watch the previous episode but it spends so much time fumbling in the dark I think it strained my eyes. The more of this game I watch the angrier I get.  I mean I personally would enjoy not having to light up lamps anymore or fumble about, but it does seem to detract from the atmosphere to have everything so visible. But if it is a hinderance to the LP, then I will gladly up the brightness. Also for an extra bit of anger inducing annoyance that the game has, every time you load into the game from a fresh boot (whether it be you're starting a new game or loading a save) the game will make you go through that "Can you see this button nonsense". It just does not save it anywhere or make it any easier to do and I have no idea why.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:47
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So did no western game devs/publishers care about decent voice acting at this point? Did they think players didn't care? Was it just to save money? Genuinely curious.
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Jun 15, 2017 02:20
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coleman francis posted:So did no western game devs/publishers care about decent voice acting at this point? Did they think players didn't care? Was it just to save money? Also I recorded the footage tonight for the next bit of the game and boy howdy are you guys going to be in for a treat. We got action, we got puzzles, we got cutscenes with your favorite characters, and the best part: we will be done with giving oil to Angela! But on a bit of a goofy, and sad, tangent I decided to run google hangouts today from my youtube account. It's basically chat setup for whatever little traffic comes from Google+ and I realized I had a couple messages on there. They were mostly saying hi, but one of the messages had some fan art for an LP I had done before and I feel bad that I missed it when it was originally sent two years ago. So for your viewing pleasure, some nice fan art from Alen Blazekovic for the *redacted* LP: 
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Jun 15, 2017 07:56
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On the lighting I personally would have an easier time watching the videos with the brightness up even if it kind of defeats the (poo poo) game mechanics.
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Jun 15, 2017 19:40
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marshmallow creep posted:On the lighting I personally would have an easier time watching the videos with the brightness up even if it kind of defeats the (poo poo) game mechanics. VVVV Yeah, I can't even begin to describe how much I was loving up with the Japanese controls since they put strafing on the d-pad and turning was the X and O buttons. I was like "gently caress, I gotta face this wolf biting me in the rear end....but instead I'm strafing!" discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 15, 2017 20:58
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discworld is all I read posted:Then that works out, cause I also decided to give myself an easier time and went with a higher brightness for the next video. Hopefully that does help and I'll probably stick with that for the rest of the LP. Yeah, don't make this tougher on yourself than it has to be! I'm enjoying the LP so far. Man though, those controls, while interestingly flexible, just look super unpleasant to actually deal with. I can imagine fumbling through this without a walkthrough and getting really frustrated.
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Jun 16, 2017 02:26
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Probably a bit late, but I'll also chime in that the lighting where you can actually see poo poo is preferable. Because it's not like I can see anything anyways, I'd sort of taken to just listening to the videos.
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Jun 16, 2017 21:39
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It's never too late and the next video (and the rest of the LP will be brighter).
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Jun 16, 2017 21:57
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 Sorry for the delay but I'm babysitting cats and they need love and constant staring at. Also I'm going to try to record two quick bonus videos to show what happens when Angela isn't given her constant supply of oil...gently caress, over these last two videos I had to make like six trips to her and that's literally like 30 minutes wasted of my life and then that's doubled cause of the test runs and then the actual recording. This is what I choose to do with my time. And finally I think we're actually about half way through the game and spoiler alert: still no note... discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 08:03
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I can't tell if its bad graphics or intentional that Paulo has no neck. His head just floats above his collar. No one has commented on it so I must assume it's just graphics but it's just one more thing that makes me leery of him despite how helpful he has been. Same as Angela and her oh so cheerful voice. I am sure it's just the complete absence of va direction but she is too drat cheerful for any of this.
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Jun 22, 2017 11:55
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So just a quick lil bonus video with some poo poo I had in mind to do (though one of those things ended up not working out in the end) but still, it's got a good pay off I'd say: Bonus 4- Loose ends in the Spirit Castle If anyone really wants me to try to figure out how to get rid of Angela I can, but apparently all it leads to is Dave being found dead in the dungeon and gently caress that noise marshmallow creep posted:I can't tell if its bad graphics or intentional that Paulo has no neck. His head just floats above his collar. No one has commented on it so I must assume it's just graphics but it's just one more thing that makes me leery of him despite how helpful he has been. Same as Angela and her oh so cheerful voice. I am sure it's just the complete absence of va direction but she is too drat cheerful for any of this. edit: I'm a loser to I decided to waste my Friday night re-running through the entire game so that bad poo poo will happen (click the picture for the bonus video) 
discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 24, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 07:59
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This game seems like a bit of a gem, if one hidden in a hell of a lot of rough.
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Jun 28, 2017 03:55
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 It's time for things to get poppin' in the South Tower as we get introduced to some interesting puzzles, new additions to the dangerous enemy menagerie (including a very unexpected mythical nemesis), and on top of all that still no note. Pladdicus posted:This game seems like a bit of a gem, if one hidden in a hell of a lot of rough. VVVVVVV Hey! Are you okay?! discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 09:23
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Wow the voice acting in this is terrible. 
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Jun 28, 2017 09:37
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Synthbuttrange posted:Wow the voice acting in this is terrible. It's so bad that it wraps around to amazing. I love it
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Jun 28, 2017 20:04
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Did the dev's on this game ever go on to do other stuff?
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Jun 29, 2017 13:48
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Doesn't seem so. They don't even have a wikipedia article. edit: Wait, the wiki for the Note is unclear, but Team Bughouse was involved with just this game, while NK System Co., Ltd. was involved in a few more titles. Link. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 14:29
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Synthbuttrange posted:Wow the voice acting in this is terrible.
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Jun 29, 2017 14:31
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Yeah, the most disconcerting thing to me is that the voices you hear the most (Akira and Angela's) seem to be the least experienced voice actors in the game. You'd assume they'd have put more effort into their actors specifically since you hear them so much...but nope. Angela is screechy as gently caress and Akira has no emotion whatsoever.marshmallow creep posted:Doesn't seem so. They don't even have a wikipedia article.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:38
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VA charges by the line, so if you're going to have someone read a lot of lines, they need to be cheap! That's just math! (There are so many smilies now that I can't find the one that's  but with a bent stick and cross eyed)
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Jun 29, 2017 18:44
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marshmallow creep posted:VA charges by the line, so if you're going to have someone read a lot of lines, they need to be cheap! That's just math! Is this what you wanted? 
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Jun 29, 2017 19:54
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Yes, thank you.
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Jun 29, 2017 20:20
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So larger question for the lovely people in the thread, but where do people think this game's story is going? Like in all honesty there's maybe two main videos left before the game is done and as of right now...well, we don't really have any idea of what's going on. Like to be perfectly honest, I still have no idea what even the title of the game means. I tried to run the Japanese title through google translate (公開されなかった手記（こうかいされなかったしゅき)) which came back with: A note that was not released (Shuki that did not go through). So maybe it was 'The Unreleased Note'? But that still makes no sense in the context of the game.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:05
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I think suspiciously helpful guy Paolo is a ghost and that's all I've got.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:12
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discworld is all I read posted:So larger question for the lovely people in the thread, but where do people think this game's story is going? Like in all honesty there's maybe two main videos left before the game is done and as of right now...well, we don't really have any idea of what's going on. Like to be perfectly honest, I still have no idea what even the title of the game means. I tried to run the Japanese title through google translate (公開されなかった手記（こうかいされなかったしゅき)) which came back with: A note that was not released (Shuki that did not go through). So maybe it was 'The Unreleased Note'? But that still makes no sense in the context of the game. What? I got the feeling that the main part of the game just started, is it really just going to be finding the other kids in the new dungeons before finishing off Necromeda and leaving Pablo to his work as maintainer of the castle? Doesn't Japanese use the word "note" for notebooks? Not that we've seen any of those either. Also I really like that the teleport markers were used in more puzzles than the one they were introduced in, even if it was just a simple use item on thing one. Far to few games actually let you use teleport powers to solve things, instead just letting them be a fast travel system.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:20
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 And the game decides to throw a bit of a softball with this our penultimate update. With a relative small area to explore, some fairly safe puzzles to solve, and fairly easy to dispatch Hunter rip-offs from Resident Evil the Additionally, I've continued on with my save to see what changes when you let the kids get murdered and it's not that different but there are a few ways that the game handles that side of progression: Bonus 6- The failure path keeps on giving Hel posted:What? I got the feeling that the main part of the game just started, is it really just going to be finding the other kids in the new dungeons before finishing off Necromeda and leaving Pablo to his work as maintainer of the castle?
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Jul 3, 2017 08:40
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The incredulous way Akira says "Room of Death?" pretty well reflects how I felt when that line was spoken...
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Jul 3, 2017 12:20
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