• 27Nov 09

  Don't blame me. I voted for Walrein.

  I haven't been blogging on a consistent basis lately, in part because there hasn't been that much going on lately. I've uploaded only one new FAQ in recent months, for an obscure slot car racing game called Carrera Power Slide. What's more, I don't have anything new planned, except for a huge batch of updates to my earlier guides. These updates are everything from small touchups to spelling and grammar to entirely new sections and features. Up to half of my guides and maps are due for an update, so stay tuned.

  I'm now a Veteran User on the GameFAQs message boards, for what that's worth. I really don't post there as much as I do on MFGG.net, but that's another story. Apparently what posting restrictions I once had are now gone. Freedom.

  Here's something else I haven't done in a while. I just beat Pokemon Sapphire, the last of the 11 GB/GBC/GBA Pokemon games I hadn't completed, so here's the team I used to beat the Elite Four:

  1. L58 Walrein(F)-Hardy (Aurora Beam, Body Slam, Hail, Rest) (Leftovers)
  2. L56 Grumpig(F)-Bold (Psychic, Rest, Confuse Ray, Snore) (Amulet Coin)
  3. L56 Swampert(M)-Naughty (Surf, Earthquake, Take Down, Protect) (Mystic Water)
  4. L54 Dusclops(M)-Modest (Shadow Punch, Confuse Ray, Curse, Mean Look) (Macho Brace)
  5. L33 Camerupt(M)-Bashful (Ember, Magnitude, Rock Slide, Amnesia) (Charcoal)

  The last memeber of my team is a HM Slave, usually either a jack-of-all-trades Wailmer or a Flying Taillow. The Camerupt was a late addition and isn't strong enough to stand a chance against the Elite Four. I never said this team didn't have weaknesses, and choosing good natures was never a consideration.

  And I finally caught the Pokerus, after 11 Pokemon playthroughs.

  That's all for now. Perhaps another post will be in your stocking around Christmas.

  - Vinny

  • Posted Nov 27, 2009 5:14 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 2Oct 09

  Staring at the Water at the Reflection of My Beautiful Dead Sister

  Yes, it is Narcissus I'm referring to, for those who don't know anything about Greek mythology. It seems that I've slipped a spot in the past month in the prolific writers' rankings, dropping from 14th place to 15th. The submission of nine new screenshots has left me steady in the screenshot rankings, however. Sad as this may be, VinnyVideo is contemplating retiring from writing guides for older games - emphasis "older." There's a good chance I might write a guide for a fairly new game in the near future. Also, I've just about finished cutting down my old backlog of guide-writing notes, which will allow me to finally release dozens of updates for my older guides.

  Two more VinnyVideo games are now available on the opening screen at the Mario Fangames Galaxy (www.mfgg.net), and another has been released on the Fangame Discussion section of the forums. I've been a bit more active there lately, occasionally making stupid contributions to their message boards, which are surprisingly fun sometimes.

  I believe I derive an excessive amount of pleasure from conducting Web searches for unique strings (like my e-mail address) found in the guides I've written. This gives me a good idea of where my guides are being posted. I'm not interested in playing copyright police (my guides say you can post them wherever you want as long as you don't edit them or put them on porn sites). One of my Madden guides has appeared on a Web site for plumbers (not Mario), for example, and many of my guides have appeared on sites based in unusual countries.

  Similarly, a search for "VinnyVideo" would, at least for a while, lead to several YouTube videos of the movie "My Cousin Vinny" on the first page of search results. You would also find a British site for directories of people, which also had links to some of my guides.

  One of my fangames has also been put on a site besides MFGG. Not that I'm complaining.

  ~ ~ ~

  Googling the names of the videos I've put on YouTube can be quite amusing. My Darunia-Saria 2008 videos have appeared briefly on a number of politics sites, especially around the time of last year's election. They also seem to have attracted the attention of someone using the screen name "Saria's Song," as well as a site for Iraq filmmakers and even the Sri Lankan Embassy. I'm not making this up. I know the copyright notices in my FAQs have something against sites containing "flattery of totalitarian regimes," but it's just a link, and I don't really care anyway if it gets me more exposure (30 hits isn't much).

  My "Motorsport Tribute" videos both appeared on a rally-racing Web site thanks to LilGhettoSmurf, who also seems to enjoy all-girls social-networking sites.

  Even though none of these videos have generated substantial interest (not one has topped 500 hits), I've enjoyed using the Insight feature on YouTube to observe demographic information for the scant viewership of my videos. Some of the more interesting findings:
  * Videos containing the words "tornado" and especially "football" are watched almost exclusively by Americans.
  * The primary audience for both of my "Tornado Warning" videos is overwhelmingly older men.
  * The Gator Bowl rehearsal videos are watched primarily by teenagers, especially girls, and less frequently by their parents.
  * My Cubs video has generated interest as far away as Venezuela, thanks to a link on a Carlos Zambrano page on a fan site.
  * Very few Chinese residents have seen my videos, with the PBC Motorsport Tribute attracting the most Chinese interest.
  * Middle-aged women apparently love the Darunia-Saria 2008 series and watch multiple entries in the series.
  * Viewers of the D-S 2008 videos were usually searching for Darunia, Saria, or Mario fangames, but there was one who was looking for anarchists. Why no Libertarian, Tory, or Prohibition? There was also someone looking for archaeology and anthropology, two of the tags used in the World Origins video.

  Yes, that was a boring, long, narcissistic post. Maybe I'll do better next time - assuming I post again soon.

  - Vinny

  • Posted Oct 2, 2009 5:18 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 11Sep 09

  Blogging for the fifth time

  After a month of waiting, I've got another blog post ready. I haven't been writing a lot of FAQs lately, but I've still advanced in the prolific-writer rankings, up to 14th place. And I'm back in the Top 20 for screenshot contributions, currently placing 18th. Another one of my fangames is finished and should soon be available for download on the front page of MFGG.net - and another already is. Plus, I finally got Note.TXT - where I store most of my notes related to FAQ-writing and other stuff - back down to 3.3 KB, which is much smaller than it had been (50 KB at one time).
  
  This blog doesn't have quite as much content as usual - a lot of my bloggable stuff is now appearing on the message boards at MFGG, where far more people are going to read, appreciate, and complain about it.
  
  Since I'm writing this post on September 11, I probably have to pay tribute to the victims of 9/11/01 in some way, especially since I sort of made fun of the incident (or, more to the point, Michael Chertoff) in one of my fan games.
  
  Anyway, stay tuned, and if you're lucky, there'll be another blog post waiting for you in a month or two. I'm not sure if I'm going to want to post for a little while, or again, so keep your fingers crossed. Post a comment or two and you'll probably rekindle my blogging fire. - Vinny
  • Posted Sep 11, 2009 7:50 am PT
  • Category: Games
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