The Man in Blak

I'd actually argue that they're getting shorter and shorter and it's just that the plots have become so predictable that it makes them drag for us "older gamers." It's definitely a situation I'm in, though. I don't know if it's burnout from playing so many of them as a little kid, or just outright disappointment in the entire genre. After having my manic fanboy interest crushed by games like Chrono Cross (which pissed me off on so many levels), I think I just started looking in the genre in a different way and I haven't turned back since.

Of course, Austin's character would have probably given Jericho a stunner about halfway through that tirade. He hasn't put up with shit before - why do it now? </WWE logic> Awesome promo, though. Too bad it would never happen in a million years.

I take it you haven't played Xenosaga? Love it or hate it, almost every RPG operates as a "clickable movie" due to the fact that there's so much character exposition that has to take place. The cutscene is a core component of the RPG experience that has been overdone or overblown in a lot of recent efforts, thanks to the overwhelming success of Final Fantasy VII. But even before FFVII came out, you would find yourself clicking through a truckload of text dialogue in most RPGs, so grinding through character exposition is just a part of the game. To each their own, of course. But can you really sit and say that video game companies should stop making those games just because you don't like them, even while they've been wildly successful and thousands of other people have bought them? Just something to think about.

My two cents: Out of all of the classic "Castlevania formula" titles, I would actually have to say that I enjoy Castlevania: Bloodlines the most. The storyline that harkened back to Bram Stoker's dracula, the option to play as two different characters (including a badass with a spear), and the different stages based on European cities made for an awesome side story to the series. And while SotN is easily the best overall package that the series has offered, I would actually argue that the gameplay in Aria of Sorrow is a little deeper and more enjoyable. The fact that there's only a couple of clunkers (the N64 abortions and that fugly SNES port of Dracula X) in a series that has lasted around 15 years is just a testament to the concept and the developers. Just an awesome series.

If you're not allergic to good shooters, Don Pachi and Do Don Pachi could be worth checking out on MAME.

You're kidding, right? Outside of the big four of Madden, Tony Hawk, Mario, and Zelda, the Final Fantasy moniker is probably the most marketable video game franchise out there. It's absolute money in the bank, even when the SquareSoft product is ailing. And it's not like Square isn't trying. Final Fantasy X was a great departure from the beloved/aging formula in the series and, considering the "self-contained universe" paradigm that all of the games have (except, ironically, for FFX-2), there's no reason that they'd run out of stories to tell. Sure, they haven't been the premier developer in RPGs like they were when they exploded into the mainstream in the late 90's. But the games they're putting out are still comparable or better than some of the other so-called RPGs swimming around out there.

Glass and Pohlad may be making billions outside of baseball, but they're certainly not even close to Steinbrenner in terms of Baseball. Even if they spent a good majority of their baseball profits on baseball, they still couldn't outbid the Yankees in a war for any meaningful free agents. Uh, yeah. And, like I said, if that same core nucleus of young talent would have emerged anywhere else, that team would have had to sacrifice at least one player and they certainly wouldn't have had money to go out and grab the best free agents on the market. And, if you would take a second to read the original post, you'd find out that *gasp* I'm not vilifying Steinbrenner for doing what any person would do. I'm pointing a finger at baseball for allowing it to happen. The Yankees have so much money because they're in New York. If you need additional proof, take a look at the Mets, who are in second place despite being ran by a team of chimpanzees for the last couple of years. When baseball doesn't have a system that prevents the Yankees are signing up all of the prestigious free agents like Clemens, Mussina, and Giambi, then it's baseball's fault. Once again, even if all of the owners decided to spend all of their baseball profits, they certainly couldn't outbid the $215 million Yankees for the important free agents. Good counterpoint - the Mets are trying to be competitive. The issue is that almost all of the important free agents are going to the Yankees and, thus, the Mets are spending money locking down second-tier guys that aren't nearly worth half the salary they're paid. But the Mets paid it because they had the money (from being in New York) and they wanted to do the best to compete, but they couldn't because there were no guys left that were really that desirable. That is a result of the system being abused by the Yankees, and that's entirely the fault of baseball for refusing to regulate it. Maybe you should read my post again. Try looking for the words "collective stupidity" and "it's not the Yankees' fault"; they're in there, I promise. All I'm saying is that baseball should try to keep a competitive balance for all of its teams and, while it is punishing the business savvy and rewarding the stupid, it's also guaranteeing to reward the fans with more competitive baseball. I apologize for railroading the discussion away from the series, but I saw that post earlier in the thread and I reacted.

And, without the deep pockets, there's no way they could have kept this core group together. Let's just take a look at the 2002 salaries of this "core group" (credit: Baseball Reference.com): Derek Jeter $ 14,600,000 Bernie Williams $ 12,357,143 Andy Pettitte $ 9,500,000 Mariano Rivera $ 9,450,000 Jorge Posada $ 7,000,000 Alfonso Soriano $ 630,000 Add 'em all together and you get approximately $53 million, which is higher than the entire payrolls of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Montreal Expos, Milwaukee Brewers, and Kansas City Royals. (credit: ESPN.com)We're not even counting some of the bigger free agents of last year: Raul Mondesi $ 11,000,000 Mike Mussina $ 11,000,000 Jason Giambi $ 10,428,571 Roger Clemens $ 10,300,000 Robin Ventura $ 8,500,000 There isn't much financial data available on baseball teams from that time period, but one thing to consider is that the 40's and 50's era teams had their success before free agency reared its ugly head in the 70's. The Yankees had amassed a great nucleus of homegrown talent and there wasn't much danger of Berra or Dimaggio leaving to play for Boston or some other team, since players rarely moved between teams back then. In the current economic climate, many smaller market teams either lose their most pretigious free agents to other teams with considerably higher payroll, or have no financial footing to make a worthwhile offer to other free agents in the market. Case in point: Jason Giambi. You just answered your own question, but just for additional evidence, let's just take a look at that luxury tax (found on the same ESPN site I quoted earlier). For having a payroll of $180 million, the New York Yankees were taxed $10.7 million, which is only 15% of the difference between the Yankees and their nearest competitors (which, coincidentally, happen to be the New York Mets). For a team that made $215 million in total revenue (which happens to be about $60 million over the second place Mariners), there's still a huge amount of profit to be had after said luxury tax. How is a luxury tax supposed to stop a team that has profit margins that rivals the payroll of some small market teams? Firstly, the amount of money that they spent was much more comparable to the other teams back in the day, a huge departure from the $50 million+ difference between the 2nd Place Mets and the Yankees. Secondly, free agency still hadn't evolved into the yearly migration ritual that baseball players would undertake each year in the 90s. Thirdly, the idea that the Yankees "sucked" in the 80's is actually somewhat of a misconception. From 1982-1988, the Yankees averaged about 88 wins a season, which is certainly competitive. You can, however, make a case for the period from '89-'92, where the Yankees were having terrible luck trying to replace former Yankee standouts like Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield. (Danny Tartabull, anyone?) They've both made the playoffs and Mussina was part of a team that lost a ridiculous 2001 World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks in seven games. To say that these guys have had no success with the Yankees is a little bit of a misnomer. Plus, take a close look at the statement in my post - no one can consistently compete with the Yankees in the current economic climate and, thus, the overall competitive balance of the game is distorted. Er, considering that O'Neill averaged about 20 HRs and 85 RBIs a year through his Yankee tenure (as well as the emotional leader of the team), it certainly didn't work out that way. Cincinnati got cornholed on that deal and, looking back, this bargain might have been the catalyst that turned things around for the Yankees. In ye olden days of baseball, a dynasty came from brilliant talent emerging from the minors as well as keen trades bringing in outside talent. If you got a huge talent from a team in those days, it typically wasn't because the team couldn't afford that player - it was because you either gave up a huge talent in return, or you got a steal of a deal. Dynasties were far more "legitimate." However, I'm not debating the successes of the past. I'm here to examine the present and, since the advent of free agency, there's actually been considerably more parity in the league...until the 90's, where the salaries skyrocketed out of control and the Yankees, with the highest amount of revenue, were able to take advantage. There were eleven different World Champions in a fourteen year period from 1980 to 1993. However, since the strike and the emergence of outrageous salaries, the Yankees have appeared in six of the last eight World Series, losing only one to Arizona and never failing to make the playoffs. Also, consider the teams that won the World Series in those periods. Both the '97 Marlins and the '01 Diamondbacks were huge payroll behemoths. Only the Anaheim Angels, who just got hot at the right time, weren't in the top ten in payroll. (though they're not far away - 13th in the league this year). This disparity should be considered an indictment of the current economic system and the New York Yankees have been the biggest beneficiaries of this, due to their imcomparably large amount of revenue. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that Barry Bonds is not really a marketable superstar, true. But the other part of it is that teams that aren't big money teams have a hard time establishing a fanbase outside of their local area, and that's due to the fact that these big spending teams permeate the baseball market at every given turn. Nobody knew who the Anaheim Angels were until the press started circulating stuff about the Rally Monkey. And neither team had been to their respective league championship series in the last ten years. I'm not debating whether the Yankees are the best team or not. Actually, I'm going to great lengths to reaffirm that claim. I'm just questioning how it can truly be considered a dynasty, when most of the credit goes to a little bit of business savvy and general collective stupidity. Take, for example, Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. Here's a team that is always consistently competitive with a low payroll that continually loses in the playoffs and ends up watching its players walk away to greener pastures. If the Oakland A's weren't in the bottom third in payroll and revenue, how would this team do? How would any team of that stature do? We'll never know, because the divide is probably only going to get wider unless the current economic situation is changed.

It's probably also worth noting that Winamp has a DiskWriter plug-in that allows you to create WAV files out of mp3s, just in case you hate MusicMatch.

Yeah, someone pointed it out right after I posted, but thanks. *needs an editor* Point still stands, though.

"Florida again?" Right. Because it's not like the Yankees haven't been seen in the World Series year after year after year after year. The Yankees have won four out of the last seven World Series. Other than the miraculous Anaheim Angels' run last year, every year that the Yankees have not made it to the World Series, the National League has won the championship. But it's not because the Yankees are some kind of mystical baseball think-tank. It's not because the Yankees are a dynasty. It's because baseball is broken and, due to old men who harp about nothing but tradition, the Yankees can abuse the system to all its fullest. Nobody's ever going to consistently compete with them. Nobody's going to be able to match revenue with a team centered in the capital of the free world. Hell, no one else was smart enough to keep the Yankees from creating their own proprietary medium (the YES network) to create an even larger divide in terms of capital. Thanks to the collective stupidity of the owners and baseball management, the Yankees have been allowed to eliminate competition by continually hand-picking the best players on the market while keeping their own stars. And you know what you are when you've abused the system to the point where there's virtually no hope for consistent competition? You're not a dynasty. You're a monopoly. There's nothing special about what the Yankee's have accomplished, due to what they've been given. Every team is a small-market team, compared to the Yankee machine. Having $180 million around makes it fairly easy to keep a nucleus of the finest players in the league. And home-grown talent? The Yankees are allowed to spend more money for scouting and recruiting personnel, more money to throw at worthy prospects that come up through their system and, when they make mistakes, enough of a compilation of talent to allow them to abandon mediocre talent freely and without worry. Imagine if Derek Jeter had came up with the Kansas City Royals. Sure-fire prospect at an important skill position, official posterboy for the league, a yearly lock for the All-Star game. But after his contract runs out, Jeter has two choices: stay in small-market Kansas City and make decent money (while keeping the Royals from signing other key members that would help them improve the team), or go to a big-market club for more money and a chance to win (because they can pay for the better players). The New York Yankees have the money to keep the players that their highly-paid scouts and analysts rate as top performers while going after top free agents that other teams could never realistically afford to pay, acquiring them at a cheaper rate just because they offer the best chance to win a ring. For all of the Yankees fans who have a hard time understanding why your team is universally despised, that's the reason right there. Too many fans have seen their local heroes like Paul O'Neill, Robin Ventura, David Wells, Roger Clemens, and Mike Mussina leave for the pinstripes, only to turn around and beat the brains out of their old team on their way to another World Series. When those other teams won, people celebrated not only because they may have been their local team, but because they grasp onto momentary hope that perhaps "the evil empire" has made a mistake and baseball will be a great sport with true competition once again. It's not your fault for being fans of a successful team, nor is it the Yankees' fault for preying upon the collective ineptitude of the entire league. It isn't even the fault of the players, who are merely looking out for their own interests like anybody else would in the marketplace. The fault lies upon baseball, and its group of ignorant owners who have much more pressing matters to attend to than regulating the quality of the game. When baseball went on strike, the league had the opportunity to adapt to the changes that had been occuring through the marketplace in all sports (or even all businesses in general). They had a chance to mend their wounds but, instead, they merely caved into the whims of the players and old men who don't want to accept the notion that their national pasttime needs to evolve with the times. And now, as New York takes a 2-1 series lead against a team that has one-third of its payroll, baseball management secretly frets about television revenues and desperately grabs onto any minimal sign of recovery (oooooh, ratings are up 16% from last year, which happened to be the worst rated World Series of all time) while having absolutely no idea that they are the ones who are responsible for their own downfall. Because, even if the Florida Marlins win this World Series, the business-savvy Yankees will be back next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. Take it to the bank.

Of course, this year's ridiculous postseason is probably the best postseason since '91, so it's not like you're picking out a normal sampling of baseball postseason goodness or anything.

I'm really interested in seeing what the Yankees do for the Johnson/Giambi situation dilemma once they get to Florida for Game 3. And, while you can you say that it was easy pickings for them to get a win on "No. 4" David Wells, he had close to a 2.00 playoff ERA walking into that start and the Marlins started Brad frickin' Penny, who's ERA was somewhere in the 10.00 range. I'll definitely second the notion that Florida stole one tonight. The Yankees squandered a golden opportunity to grab an early lead and put some mortality into "these meddling Fish."

I don't think I saw it earlier, but I'm surprised nobody's been bringing the "dilution of MLB talent" argument into the deal. In terms of quality, there are probably a hundred mediocre guys like Omar Infante in baseball who start on major league squads, but would never even get a roster slot on teams with larger payroll. It's not like football where there are 22+ different everyday positions to fill for a starting lineup. There are only eight everyday positions in baseball and, therefore, a single upgrade to the lineup at a given position can typically provide a decent boost to the overall production of the team. Why is that idea important? Not only do the big spending teams have more to offer free agents in terms of monetary benefits, but there's only so many marquee free agents out there to even be lured away. If Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez all hit the market at the same time, it would be highly unlikely that any team (even the Yankees) could afford more than one of them. But that's still only three huge all-star-caliber players on the market, which means that only three out of thirty teams - a whopping 10% - will be signing these all-star caliber players and (potentially) gaining an increase in production, while the other 27 teams lose ground. When only a small number of teams can make noticeable improvements year by year, of course the divide in quality is going to grow, as the ones with the money continue to put themselves in a position to constantly upgrade and feast off of the limited free agent market. A salary cap could potentially help curb spending, but it wouldn't even come close to fixing the issue that there aren't enough premier free agents out there for all of the teams to remain consistently competitive of one another. The solution, of course, is to take down the number of teams. The solution is the universally-hated contraction idea. Now Baseball probably isn't explicitly losing money, but I'd wager that they're bleeding out truckloads of potential revenue just due to oversaturation. Too many teams, too many games during the regular season, too much of everything. But, like any bad investment, Major League Baseball needs to pull out now before it loses any more money. Yes, it will undoubtedly alienate fans (much like teams moving from city to city alienate fans in the original town), but the long-term effect that it would have on the talent pool would help baseball tremendously and go a long way towards making a higher percentage of games watchable and actually appealing. I realize that I'm rambling at 3:30 a.m., so some of this may not seem immediately logical or understandable, but I think the general idea of what I'm trying to say (the problem is the dip in the overall talent) comes through well enough. Hopefully.

I'll second that. Boston and Florida would be considerably more entertaining as a series (Upset Kidz vs. Cursed Sluggers) than to see the Marlins tangle with the Yankee Machine, in my opinion.

EDIT: *whistles innocently*

You're so close, but no. I think they sold off their Disney DVD collection for hot dogs and coke money a long time ago.

Not quite. Positive reinforcement maximizes the possible potential performance, while negative reinforcement garners just enough to get by (i.e. just enough to avoid an unwanted consequence). Plus, mixing reinforcement techniques distorts the recipient's process for motivation. *throws psychology textbook back in the laundry pile* *edits post late again to carefully add in subliminal condescending remarks*

And intellectual discourse breeds knowledge and new ideas. There's not much positive reinforcement for somebody who's trying to sift through fiery insults in search of the truth. Odd. They come up that way but, for some reason, they don't come up whenever I try to search for all my prior posts. My guess is that the "personal post" search engine is limited to posts within the last thirty days. *shrugs* *flames*

...right. I'm going to conjure up an entire 13-page manifesto just to support my contention. People don't do that (as I've learned quite clearly in the past). Please give me some credit. I don't need to fall back on that kind of trickery in an argument. Would you like a cookie? Nope. Considering that you inferred that I didn't do it with your earlier post, I just wanted the recognition. Technically, you could have just left my opening remark in the vapors and nobody would have cared or even realized what was going on since, after all, it was private. I hinted to get your attention, you chose to elaborate, and then I chose to elaborate. Sorry, don't agree. When you've got a bunch of teenage wrestling fans coming onto this board, you could forego the condescending tone whenever they say something ignorant or factually inaccurate and actually move towards educating them a little bit, instead of indulging yourself with a bunch of petty insults. As far as I'm concerned, you're just missing an opportunity and painting a poor picture for your political alignment when you do that, but that's just me. Actually, I'm not sure if you could find the post anyway. When I was looking for our original flame war through my own posts, it only listed three of my 1,000+ posts (OMG MIB POST COUNTING) on the server...so I'm guessing they deleted it. Which means its old news.

You have an interesting take on history. First off, if you truly contend that you didn't read my PM because of the first insult on the first line because I had sent you some vicious diatribe, then you have some major sensitivity issues...because, save for a "potential burn" at the end, the PM didn't flame you at all. Yeah, I was here when FK Teale unloaded into cfici and, while it is probably one of the greatest flames of all time...yeah, I'd say it was ridiculously inappropriate for the forum. But that was also at a time when the mods weren't so ban happy and (catch the similarity) they apparently liked the post so much that they decided to disregard it. Past that, I don't think you're getting what I'm trying to change and, obviously, the mods don't either. A lot of these past atrocities from "less mature" are so trivial that I don't really think it's necessary to ban them. Plain and simple. But I'm enough of a stickler that if the powers that be are going to hold that kind of a watch over the forum, then you're damn right I'm going to bitch and kvetch when they sit back and let you do the same things that they've trashed other people for. In any other situation, I honestly wouldn't care - I really didn't care when FK Teale did it. But to me, I get the impression that a lot of the people in charge (particularly Tom, bless his soul) are actually being protective of you against claims that they would have listened to in any other circumstance. And that's a bullshit double standard. If that's where you're getting some inferred quest to get you banned, then so be it - I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder whether I'm arguing against people getting banned in the first place (truth) or whether I'm saying everybody should be banned (an easy misconception). But there's never been an outright request to have you kicked to the curb and I'd really like to see you pull out a quote somewhere...anywhere that I explicitly say that I wanted you banned. Humor me. Consider it the straw that breaks the camel's back. Coming and discussing things on the Smarksboard has always been a labour of love, but right now, it doesn't matter how much fun I used to have with her because the bitch is delusional and won't listen to reason. So I'll agree with you - I've got no reason to post here and, outside of discussing events with my Fantasy Football team, I'm not going to. I'm more than happy with that being my last post and, hell, when people are hard up for topics three months down the road when all forms of discussion have been neutralized and sanitized to the moderators' specifications, maybe someone will pick it up and be entertained for thirty to forty-five seconds. By the way, those "trite zen quotes" are actually from Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do and I thought they applied quite well to the situation at hand. But I suppose (and admit) that arguing about pretentious on the internet is all one big pissing contest in the first place. After all, we all know that arguing on the internet accomplishes so much, especially when one side absolutely refuses to even acknowledge valid arguments being made. So, congratulations - you've successfully grabbed almost all of the mods by their collective balls and convincing them to enjoy it. You should consider selling them some ocean front property while you've still got the chance. I sent my complaints to Dames through PM, I sent a PM towards Tom saying that I appreciated him trying to lend logic to the argument (even though he was wrong), and then I sent the PM to you because I wasn't going to start up another thread, just to watch it get closed by the moderators. In retrospect, I probably should have just raised hell ad nauseum until I got banned for "trolling." Ah, well. Secondly, I jumped in when Goodhelmet was making a civil complaint in the feedback folder about how people were getting flamed in the Current Event folder. I backed him up and quoted one of your posts without even mentioning who you were or calling for your head. You and the mods basically rolled out the doublespeak and nothing happened. We took it to flaming and commenced, which seems to be the only part of the story that you've got right so far. Thirdly, I didn't just "pop up" - I had been posting since thesmartmarks was a crazy yellow-and-black EZBoard that was owned by Scott Keith. And, fourthly, while Incandenza's "I dislike this board" quote is really funny (and true, for a lot of people), I had already been popping in and out, making little cameo posts here and there and making a joke of it because it's been a whole year and I had already moved on. You certainly didn't flinch before dropping my name one year later, did you? And, if I was so bloody obsessed with you, why did I just walk away? Why didn't I go to even further extremes to irritate you, after you sent your "warning" to me? Your logic is positively stunning. You want to lecture me on class, when you sit and condescendingly flame people in political discussions? You want to tell me how I assume an air of superiority in all of my posts? Give me a break. What a disappointment.

Re-read your post.

At the risk of getting pedantic, let me try this again. It's instinctive. The ball is hit to you. You look at ball. You cannot look at ball and at outfielder at same time. Chances are, you are not a professional ball player, so you are probably thinking that it's going foul. You conclude the ball is coming to you, so you physically commit and try to catch ball. Ball turns and your hand goes with it - once again, your eyes are on the ball, not the outfielder. I realize that it's considerably easier to shirk the responsibility of losing the game onto one person, but you could always challenge yourself and just realize that the team lost the game and that they still have one more chance to win the series.

Heh.

Heh. "Thinking fans," eh? Your devotion to your team is heartwarming, but you're so sure that, given the chance to catch a piece of history, you're going to take your eyes off the ball to make sure your hands aren't in the field of play? Besides, there's no reason that Cy Young Candidate Mark Prior couldn't have just struck him out on the next pitch, is there? You can run with potential scenarios in either direction.