1) Lyra: Isn’t that kinda sexist?

Bon-Bon: No, I used to have that dream too. Grew out of it, though.

2) Wow! Thanks! You make it sound so great!

I’ll be honest, when I first started taking the pictures, I sort of thought they were pretty good myself. But I like to keep the ego in check.

3) Lyra: You were the one I thought might watch. Bon-Bon could care less.

Bon-Bon: It’s true!

Lyra: I don’t know… Keep reminding/pestering me about it and I’ll look into it. Don’t even know how it’s done right now.

4) I hadn’t at the time I got this message, but I saw some stuff for it and wanted to. Didn’t want to yar-har fiddle-dee-dee, though. Ended up doing it anyway, but I’d rather pay for stuff like this to support the company. I hate having no money.

But yeah, I’ve played it. It’s AWESOME! Like, wow! Am I ever having a good time! Decking is sick and super fun! And the mission I just did was crazy! Not going to spoil anything, though.

Some obvious issues; in particular you can’t use walls for cover-fire for some reason. And it crashed on me once. But yeah! Kickin’ rad!

1) Lyra: Sometimes I wonder if scrunch battle was worth tasting a book over.

Bon-Bon: Just be glad it didn’t go up the other end.

2) Bon-Bon: That’s happened all of, what, twice? Usually I’m the one that’s gone. I have a full time job and a business to run.

3) About one-and-a-half times bigger in overall size. He’s only about a head taller than me standing, though. Most of his size is in his body mass. He’s actually small for a bear. Having seen his family I think it’s hereditary.

The banner on my page is pretty good. His head is a little bigger. Sort of makes it look like my head is bigger/same size as his.

4) I’m pretty sure I’d have one pony that would watch for like five minutes and then go “boooooriiiiiiing” and disconnect. I mean, the only thing I’m really playing on my computer right now is Warframe. Although I do have this one really cool automatic shotgun I’ve modded so that it fires like a machine gun. It’s pretty fun.

5) Hey! That’s pretty cool! I like hearing stuff like that, where the team put some real thought into even the simple things.

1) Salut! Hello! Good to hear from you! I’m fine. How are you?

2) Bon-Bon: Sorry. I’ve seen commercials for it, though! If I do watch it, it will probably be after it’s finished and I can marathon all the episodes. I just hate getting wrapped up in something and then having to wait to see what happens.

Lyra: Too much production and not enough content.

Bon-Bon: Again, nopony asked you.

Lyra: I’m just sayin’.

Bon-Bon: And I’m just “sayin’”, shush!

3) Uh… Not that I know of. Interesting story, though.

Well, I mean technically every system up until the current generation was illegally manufactured. They were all recreations based upon studying schematics. But there was never a new system created to play games on.

4) Aw… Sorry about your save file. I’m sure that party was a blast, though!

Sorry I didn’t really do anything for three days. It’s not like I’m busy. I’m just playing video games.

1) Transformers is alright. I don’t really know the characters very well.

I’m going to a birthday dinner in Canterlot for a friend tomorrow. It’s my online buddy. Bon-Bon went to hang out with a friend of hers. Nothing else I can think of at the moment.

Bon-Bon and I can both swim. In fact, the place I was house-sitting for had a pool! Rich ponies love to have pools. I swam in it a few times.

2) I doubt she’d want to. Fortunately, I know most of the story. She was playing as a rat hunter; that means she killed bandit NPCs, sort of like you would in a traditional MMO. Sometimes she’d get attacked by a player. One time it happened she blew up the ship and while retrieving the cargo of the other player, found a ship log. It contained information about the player’s corporation selling contracts to unaligned players to have them attack this other corporation. There were a bunch of player names in the log, and it listed the leader of the other corporation.

So, she sent a message to the leader and got a reply. They went back and forth over details and agreed to a meeting out in unprotected space, which is about as shady in the game’s world as it sounds. They meet; guy had a huge ship with enough firepower to blow my friend up before she could even lock on. But it all went down civilly and she hoofed over the log.

And you know, it’s all serious business, because it’s a hardcore game. But at the same time it is just a game. So the whole time the leader guy was reading over the log he was just saying, “This guy was such a [omitted] idiot. Why would you write this ingame? She could have just windowed out to look it up.”

So he handed some astronomical sum of money to my friend, because it was hayseed to him. She gets herself all set up in a pretty decent ship and everything. Then, as she tells it, the following starts. Ships just following her around in protected space. If she hangs around too long in lower security sectors, a ship or two would show up and start locking on her. She wound up so paranoid she had to quit all together because she couldn’t do anything!

Anyway, yeah, those Digimon World games always seemed to have pretty questionable quality. And I only played the first one, but I never knew what I was doing. Anything I accomplished, which was a fair deal, was a complete accident.

I just got Dynasty Warriors 8 yesterday and… It is way more awesome than I thought it would be. But… Gotta do somethin’.

1) Yeah! Gotta let it go! Not like we didn’t pay for it! Although that scorch mark did take a while to grow back.

Not in Ponyville. And Canterlot doesn’t need anything like that. They just use magic. Places like Trottingham and Manehatten probably use snow blowers.

2) It was some third party thing that had partitioned save slots you could switch around by pressing buttons on the device itself. When it corrupted the data it erased everything, but it happened while I was playing Legend of Mana so I at least resaved that. Small consolation. I played the original Digimon World. That game was so crazy. Eating porta-potties.

And yeah. I don’t like hardcore games. EVE was a nightmare. My gaming buddy has a huge story she could tell you that basically ends with her quitting because she inadvertently started a war between two corporations and one of them had a silent hit on her.

But that’s entirely the point. No death runs aren’t much of an accomplishment. It just took practice and learning the appropriate sequence. Most of the trouble you have in Contra is when you stop moving. Once you know where everything is the boss fights are all you have to worry about. And I had a good sequence for X2, but all I can remember right now is to start with Wheel Gator. Hardest part was getting the secret weapon, because if you mistime either slide you hit a spike and insta-die. That’s a painful way to end a run. Still managed to do it twice, though.

I don’t really do stuff like that anymore. There’s so much to play; not much point in wasting time on pretend limitations and replaying identical content.

3) Sure. Sure. Have Redbox too, but good luck finding any in Ponyville.

Yar har fiddle-dee-dee. Should it still be considered piracy when it can’t be found any other way?

1) Yes. EVE Online. Sorry. I did like Parasite Eve, though. I was all set to finish the Chrysler Building when my memory card reset and I lost everything except my Legend of Mana data. This is why I avoid third party products.

The fundamental idea behind hardcore is that your reward for doing well is nothing special; it’s just the ability to play the game. Your punishment for doing bad is taking that way. I’ll give you a perfect example: XCOM Enemy Unknown’s hardcore mode removes the ability to load and saves everything you do. If somepony dies, they die. If you fail a mission, you fail. If you lose all support, you start over. You could lose some thirty hours or more of work and have nothing to show for it. EVE isn’t a textbook example, but it is very much hardcore in the scale of how much you can lose.

“Nintendo hard” isn’t really hardcore. I’m not all that at video games, but I’ve beat Contra without dying. All it takes is practice and memorization. That conditioning, basically.

[omitted], I beat Megaman X2 without dying and getting the secret upgrade; and that took 3 hours! 3 hours of not dying once!

2) Bon-Bon: We don’t even have a leaf blower. And last time she used one she-

Lyra: Oh! Hamtaro and Bijou were my favorite! I liked Oxnard too! Cels, I want to watch it again! I wish it still aired…

3) No! That’s not me! That’s not who I am! [/Chowder]

1) Overestimated? No. I think you just have no idea what exactly you should be afraid of. Which is how it’s supposed to be. At least I always thought so…

2) I don’t know for certain what this means. I’m going to guess “no” but I reserve the right to change my answer if need be.

3) Well… Casual games are certainly all about having fun. If a casual game isn’t fun then it has failed as an electronic form of entertainment. But not all games are necessarily very fun. They can offer other things instead. Usually a sense of accomplishment. I might not be having any fun clicking through menus to twink upgrades on weapons and armor, but I can get a great sense of accomplishment once I see the fruit of that effort.

The problem is when casual games, like what Call of Duty actually was (maybe even still is, I don’t know I haven’t played one in a while), get inundated by “hardcore demographics” looking for a sense of accomplishment in a game that’s supposed to just be fun. And of course, if those mic-chewing pricks tried to pick up a real hardcore game, like EVE, they’d get ground up and used for space fuel.

And thus we have the brown/gray, washed out games that are supposed to be “big name titles” catering to this “hardcore demographic” with games that are about as hardcore as J-Pop. Congratulations. You know where to stand, where other players will spawn, and the most efficient method of killing them. Once you get there, you’re not playing anything. You’re just acting on your own conditioned responses. This is also why I hate MOBAs.

4) Well, yes. But you have to remember that prisons in Equestria aren’t just cages. They teach real skills and can even hire prisoners to work on public projects.

1) Is that really important?

2) Bon-Bon: I prefer the smoother taste of milk chocolate, but I see where you’re coming from.

Lyra: I like white chocolate. I know it’s not chocolate, but it’s awesome.

Bon-Bon: Nougat that you find in candy is usually table sugar, corn syrup, and what is known as a whipping agent. There isn’t a uniform recipe for it between businesses, but some of them use egg whites. After you have the core substance together, you can flavor it a number of different ways.

Bon-Bon: I don’t personally care for nougat; it’s basically filler so that a candy bar is cheaper to make. If you want to eat chocolate and caramel with possibly some nuts, I’d recommending eating a little chocolate and caramel with possibly some nuts. If you want to eat something filling, I recommend eating food. But money is money. Whatever ponies eat is what I stock.

Lyra: For the record, I like Milky Way and I think it would taste awful without nougat.

3) For some reason, the demand for “gray-[omitted] shooter” is large enough for multiple companies to fight over. There’s even room enough for the same type of “gray-[omitted] shooter” and have several still be successful. That’s not the companies’ fault; that’s the consumer. When folks stop buying crap, companies will stop making it.

If Soul Reaver/Blood Omen left any legacy (of Kain), it’s evidence that the demographic for action/adventure/puzzler doesn’t want competition. Which is great for Neightendo! For everypony else… Well, sometimes we get a new Deus Ex game.

Found this on Something Awful.

“Somehow I don’t think this Deus Ex ending is canonical.”

That’s the trouble with Dentons these days. No sense of Proportion!

1) Well, I’ve only seen Binding of Isaac, which is needlessly crude, violent, and explicit. I also tend to not like roguelikes for the same reason I tend to not like fighting games; I’m not very good at them. Based upon that, not really a fan.

2) It’s alright. It was fun while it lasted! From what you showed me it seemed like a much more interesting story than Fallout 3 was. I may yet play it someday. And if I do, it will be because of this.

3) The Everfree Forest isn’t controlled by magic, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist there too.

4) Sorry. I’ve never held an allegiance. I concede that the PS2 and SNES were the two best video game systems thus far, but that was due to their available library. Many, if not most of the games that made those systems great were created by third-party developers. And with the regrettable direction video game development continues to spiral towards (that is, one focused on visuals and movie-esque narratives), it’s doubtful any future system will ever approach what those two systems achieved.

I’ll probably wait a year or so and pick whichever system has what I want to play the most. If I can even afford it.

And it’s fine! I probably just misread something.

1) I’ve heard the initial announcements. I’ve heard clarifications. I think they even announced some major change today. I’m staying out of it for now.

Granted the reveal was the worst for any video game system ever. That had to have done some major damage to their marketing no matter what happens.

2 & 3) Sounds more like a regular RPG with a visual-heavy graphic element during combat. Having control over unit placement is sort of the defining feature of a tactical RPG. Phantom Brave showed that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a grid, but you do need the option to manually move your characters D&D-style. It still sounds cool, though!

—

Also, hey Bon-Bon! Glad you like the pictures! That dragonfly one was awesome to take! I took three as I slowly got closer and the moment I took the third, it flew off!

1) Was it made by humans? Zen-esque followings have existed in our world since… well further back than I can trace. But Buddhism-style teachings as a whole have always seemed a little too thick for me. It’s fluid, which is nice, but really just too thick to penetrate.

I don’t adhere to an organized following or religion. I believe what I believe based on what I’ve come to understand and that sometimes intersects with or even borrows from various spiritual movements.

2) I can certainly understand playing a game for the story. Front Mission 2 is an alright game, but the only reason I’ve made it to the last 3 missions is for the story. The battles in that game just take way too long. And they only get longer! Where I am each fight is so exhausting I dread playing it again. Haven’t touched it in months.

And yes, I am. Not really comfortable with where I am right now, though. I have a tumblr set up for it that I’ve posted information to, but I don’t want to release it publicly until I at least have a walkthrough of how combat is supposed to work typed up. Right now it’s almost entirely concepts. I have more in my head, but it’s much harder to organize those thoughts into something technical that makes sense without repeating itself. Like a manual.

3) Bon-Bon: I can think of some more interesting adventures I’ve had then eating spaghetti and orange juice flavored jelly beans.

Lyra: There you go again!

Bon-Bon: [Whistling]

Lyra: … Anyway… I like eating fruity candies. Usually sweet but sour works fine too!

Bon-Bon: If you think about it, that was really a pretty silly question to ask me. I like candies that have chocolate or creamy casings with a variety of carefully thought out flavors inside. In other words, bonbons!

4) Earth pony, for employment reasons. Wouldn’t want to be a human.

I suppose pegasus would be the usual choice but ah… just not all that interested in flying.

1) I think I just didn’t like the battle system, though to be honest it’s been so long I can’t even remember why.

2) Lyra: CC:GG!

Bon-Bon: Ennn… Ponyville is a smaller market. Black licorice is a little too niche. I mean, I could produce some upon order, but it’s not something I’d just stock. I’ve never heard of those jelly beans before. Frankly, it sounds like a pretty terrible idea. But then again I hate buttered popcorn jelly beans and I swear regular variety packs are full of them.

3) Oh certainly! I’ve been working on a pen and paper system of my own on and off for a little while now. Haven’t physically touched it much lately but I’m still rolling around ideas.

Also, if you were wondering why, I still consider that slang to be a swear.

4) B: If the idea is that no one will ever see them again, then there’s no reason not to destroy the copies and the originals, unless you want them intact so that someone can come along for them later. If that someone doesn’t wind up just being you.

B: Alternately, if you turned them in they could be researched, categorized, and stored in a much more secure location. Should the day arise that the contents are ever needed, as authorized by the royal family, they would be intact and easily located amongst the vast, restricted, royal libraries.

1) Bon-Bon: Haha! Well, I don’t know if anypony is eating the stuff, but candy corn is a pretty reliable seller around Nightmare Night.

Lyra: I like candy corn!

2) Well, there isn’t really that much to maintain. I’ve never had to replace anything on any of my lyres other than the strings, and I don’t physically touch them so even then only rarely.

I saw Battle Network being played quite a bit when it first came out. The combat style was completely uninteresting to me. The whole reason I played Network Transmission was because it didn’t play at all like Battle Network.

3) B: How very illegal for you to possess. Also convenient that you’ve no desire to share what you shouldn’t have in the first place. Though I suppose if you were responsible enough to realize that you wouldn’t be attempting to justify it. In vain, if you were wondering.

Strawberry, I thought these were just old spell books. B’s right; that stuff is outlawed and illegal to own. You have to get rid of them. Turn them in, destroy them, whatever you have to do.

4) I’m sorry, but I already know how to bowl! I’m not pro or anything, but I almost got a 150 last time I played. And that was after not playing for a lo~ng time.

1) Oh, I’m far from great; as things could certainly be better. I said I was close to spectacular.

2) B: The public doesn’t really know much about us. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest what they think. PR had never been a concern in the past. I also wouldn’t call it fair to say we work outside the law.

3) Not that I know of, but ponies don’t talk about it much. I doubt anypony that was ever involved wants to be reminded of it. I certainly don’t.

If you live in Canterlot you’re either rich or you aren’t. I don’t know what hives in 40k were, but lower Canterlot is a notch above a slum. Narrow streets, closely-nit buildings that further obscure the sunlight, alleyways crowded with stuff their owners have no place to store but no pony would care enough to take. It’s pretty safe these days, but it’s never looked as good as upper Canterlot.

4) Sure! Ponies love theater and acting!

5) Not really, because that’s still reading. While it might hold my attention better, I just prefer things that I can directly interact with.

Trying to play the new Neverwinter Online game right now. It’s got some story stuff in it but I still get to smack things and jump around. Really hard to get immersed into the world, though. D&D proper is… pretty intimidating in size.

6) Bon-Bon: All kinds! You should drop by sometime and see what I’ve got! I can do special orders to! Just let me know what you’d like!

Bon-Bon: I’m not the best, but I’ve heard of a Bon-Bon that’s really gifted!