Oh my

[Kefka]

Well, this could be interesting.

I'm Kefka, I guess. I haven't used this name in a very long time! I've made my way here, randomly, through the ether of the interwebs by way of nostalgia. I think I first stumbled upon LunarNet back in...'97? That sounds about right. My primary link to what seems to be the deal here is through the old official Working Designs message boards, of which I was a member for, well, very nearly their entire history. Joined sometime in '98, if I recall. I recognize some names around here, people I haven't seen in years (sup Alun, G1, nobi, lunartic, hopefully others?). The internet is a funny place.

I have a strange relationship with RPGs. The genre is endearing in its quaintness, I guess you could say. I've been playing video games for nearly as long as my memory holds. I remember playing Afterburner, Space Harrier, and other old Sega arcade classics back when I was kid. It stuck. RPGs are what devoted me to games, either merely because they were what I was playing when I became old enough to have something of a critical/intellectual/artistic conscious, or because People Writing Words is kind of my passion, and video games, as the chief interest of my youth, were a likely means to deliver unto me that revelation.

I hold a fairly strict and maybe idiotic philosophy on the nature of video games these days which generally holds the RPG as the antithesis of where the model should be going. And yet I still play them. JRPGs are like my comfort food. I always come back. I've also developed a bit of a thing for Numbers in these here video games (3 years of serious World of Warcraft play will do that to a man) which may explain why I keep coming back to this genre, though western games are better suited to that particular expression.

I don't know.

Pre-ordered Shin Megaten Strange Journey today. Looking forward to some h0t dungeon crawling with piecemeal mythology and overbearing aesthetics.

LIST OF FAVORITE JRPGS:

FFVI
Earthbound
Mother 3
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

I guess those are probably the best. After that, we got a mess of stuff like zomg LUNAR (original EB being my particular flavor of choice), Dragon Quest V, Suikoden II, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Tactics, Persona 4, and God knows what else.

I don't really know if I'll post here much or anything, but I might! Good to see faces I remember; come holla at 'cha boy in this thread, dawgs.

[MaroonChan]

Hello and welcome!

Lunar 2 is one of my absolute favorites. Chrono Trigger is up there too and FFVI. Oh and Suikoden II is great too. My favorite of the series.

[Alunissage]

You know, when I saw that this account had been created I thought "I wonder if.... nah, couldn't be." OMG, Justin. I still permanently associate you with this username, but I didn't think you'd still use it. I've wondered what you've been up to! Still writing, it sounds like.

Zq has an account here but has almost never posted, since anything of interest to him, and hs responses to same, gets relayed through me. We were married in 2006, btw. He's sitting next to me doing FFXIII fetch quests as I type.

I should let you know that the Lunartic here isn't the same one from the WDMB; she's a nice young lady who has been here for several years now, I guess. JediLeroy pops up every couple of years or so. MENash has posted here infrequently as ShadowAce, though not recently. Parn/Synbios has just recently shown up after something like 5 years since his last post. Rudo from RPGFan has also posted here a few times recently, and Silver Phoenix has been around a lot lately. The only other person I can think of offhand from the WDMB used to post there as Scrambler, I think? He's ImperialKnight here.

It's really cool to see you again, and unexpected. Though a few days ago I was dreaming about DeadElf, of all people. Who knows, maybe he'll emerge again someday.

[Dark_Fairy]

Welcome! *gives Kefka a cookie*

Wow, you've been around the Lunar scene for a very long time!

I happen to like the Shin Megami Tensei series myself. I was going to get Strange Journey, but I'm already backlogged on games so I decided against it. >_<;

[Kefka]

Oh man, what's zq up to these days? Besides, uhh, being married to you? I remember you guys being engaged, obviously, but I think we fell out of contact before you got 'er done. Tell him hi!

What are you doing these days?!?!?!

DeadElf was around at the old refugee board that nobi ran for a while. Did you ever know about that place? The one that popped up after the plug got pulled at WD? It took me a few months to find it and I never really posted much, but it was nice to know the place existed. Then it didn't. That was a weird feeling, being suddenly cut off completely from a community I had hovered around for so long. I had some contact with Radhil and Andrew for a little while--traded a few emails with evaron, even--but that was really it. Man, what a kick. I really wish we at least had an archive of those boards. I can guarantee you I'd waste a night every six months or so combing through them like an idiot.

I wonder what ever happened to Yuug. That place was like the only thing between him and complete insanity, I think. Poor -Fatal Hopper---I'd give him a hug if he were here. You should have seen his posts on nobi's board

Writing, yes. Writing, writing writing writing. Cruel mistress. Scared me right back to school once I realized it was time to stare her down. Something great will come out of how she bends me to her whims, no doubt. Just not yet. Though I have to write a script for my friend's video game due, uhh, this week. Not like he has his degree riding on this or anything (OH WAIT HE DOES). Nothing better than writing a script for a video game you haven't seen, especially when you don't think games should have words unless they absolutely need them! Ah well, I can at least amuse myself with Rilke and Dante references.

Anyway, Ms. Lunar, how is that PSP game, anyway? I just recently bought a PSP (as in, like, two days ago) out of a horrible desire to play Monster Hunter. I hear crippling things about the loading times, but rather nice things about the rest? Are the loading times a product of the stupid UMD, or is the downloadable version inexplicably hampered too?

ATTN: FORUM: I WILL MAKE A STRANGE JOURNEY THREAD SO PLEASE BUY THE THING I DON'T WANT TO BE POSTING ALONE (BUT SO HELP ME GOD I WILL). WE CAN TRADE MONSTERS AND WHISPER CUTE SECRETS IN OUR CLUBHOUSE AND GIGGLE AND PLAY DRESS UP IT WILL BE FANTASTIC

[Sonic#]

Welcome!

Just one quick note: I don't want to get into it here, but I'd like to talk about your idiosyncrasy sometime. I've been reading some video game studies works lately (Ian Bogost and Espin Aarseth especially), and I've been seeing your side of the argument a lot (obsolescent RPG, text-minimal gameplay as the ideal).

[EliteKiller234]

how is that PSP game, anyway? I just recently bought a PSP (as in, like, two days ago) out of a horrible desire to play Monster Hunter. I hear crippling things about the loading times, but rather nice things about the rest? Are the loading times a product of the stupid UMD, or is the downloadable version inexplicably hampered too?

Welcome to the boards! I've read everything you guys posted so far, and I have to agree with you! All the RPG's you mention are of many greats! I also saw that you mention Monster Hunter. I like to play sometime on xlink kai.

[Vyse of Arcadia]

I'm unsure whether to welcome you or not. You seem to be an old friend of everyone but us newbies.

Oh, what the hey. Welcome anyway!

Also reminds me that I need to sit down and play though Dragon Quarter. I've only owned it for over five years.

[Alunissage]

Oh man, what's zq up to these days? Besides, uhh, being married to you? I remember you guys being engaged, obviously, but I think we fell out of contact before you got 'er done. Tell him hi!

Have done, and he says "hi" back. He's doing well, and as geeky as ever; works for Nvidia and has liked that well enough. He got into photography a few years ago, around the same time as we acquired six cats, (a friend of his called him hexacatl, the Aztec god of owning too many cats), so we have tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of cat photos. I'd wanted a cat all my life, and he'd never had pets at all, and we've been very happy with the little furballs. Three of them are in the 20 pound vicinity, so I guess they're not that little now.

I've been knitting a heck of a lot, and started spinning yarn last summer. I just today had my first knitting pattern published, so that's been exciting for me. It was far more work making the design comprehensible to other people than it was to figure it out in the first place and note it down for myself. Onlinewise, this has been my primary haunt for a while, though for a few intense years I was at a Metroid speedrunning forum at which I participated a fair bit even though I'm a really slow player. (Remember talking with me on IM when I was first playing Super Metroid?)

I was registered at Nobi's board, I think, but only remembered about it once or twice. I seem to have an upper limit of about two when it comes to online communities; I just don't remember about more than that even when I'm really interested in the people or topic. At one point I thought it would be amusing if Evaron posted here since we have a member here who's even more Lucia-obsessed than he was. I've thought about Radhil occasionally too. It really is a shame that there's no current incarnation of the old WDMB community, although my few visits to later versions made me feel like one of those Les Mis songs, looking around for people that were no longer there. Man, more than anything else I want an archive of the WDMB; it was such a formative place for me.

Nobi mentioned to me once that Yuug had gone nuts. I think I actually have his posts from Baghdad that he made on the Lords board saved, before he got really weird.

I had no doubt that you'd keep writing, so I'm glad to hear you have. Haha, something that got YOU back to school would have to be pretty compelling. After I wrote my first post in this thread I remembered brightly asking you how your first day of school was and being answered with DO NOT TEASE THE KEFKA, that being right when FF9 came out. Hehehe.

I can't tell you much about the Lunar PSP loading times because I've played very little of it from disc. I imported the Japanese version, of course, and played the Japanese demo before that, and zq had to do something to make that work. That required playing the game off mem stick instead, which has been just fine and probably much quicker. There are still load times between rooms, though. I'm used to it, but a number of people like to complain about it. In a nutshell, the game is pretty nice, with completely new graphics (except for the cutscenes, of course) and new town and dungeon design, very pretty. Music is very nice. I'm embarrassed to say how little I've played of the NA release since I'm still working on the JP one, but everything I've seen, and some behind-the-scenes conversation, has told me that it's a very good localization, blending a fair bit of WD's script with some updates and clarifications. I think you'll like it. No Graphite though. (That joke even predates my WDMB experience.) Oh, that reminds me, did you know Seyven is married? Or at least engaged last I heard, and I've no reason to think it didn't happen.

Are you still using the same IM account? I haven't been on in ages, but would be nice to catch up and reminisce someday without having to bore everyone else here.

[GhaleonOne]

How's it going man! Nice to see you back around!

[Kefka]

Cats! I definitely know all about big cats. I got this thing, he's probably like 25 pounds, I don't know any more, just that he's huge. He got hit by a car and I was a little surprised the car didn't flip over. He has about a hundred and six different meows based on what he wants, about ninety percent of which come out at like a hundred decibels. He was my friend's cat originally, but she had to move back in with her parents for a while and she's like "can you take my cat for a couple months?"....yeah. Two years later.

Yell at zq for nvidia taking like six years to release fermi. Does he know how expensive commercial gaming grade video cards are these days? Because there's no competition? YEAH THAT'S RIGHT ZQ I'M CALLING YOU OUT. ENGINEER HARDER.

Knitting scares me. I don't understand how it is possible to make the proper shapes and patterns. I guess I just have no spacial skills. Which, you know, I don't. I'm surprised I don't get lost in my own room sometimes.

I had no doubt that you'd keep writing, so I'm glad to hear you have. Haha, something that got YOU back to school would have to be pretty compelling. After I wrote my first post in this thread I remembered brightly asking you how your first day of school was and being answered with DO NOT TEASE THE KEFKA, that being right when FF9 came out. Hehehe.

Yeah, I was wondering if you'd have remembered my, uhh, unique relationship with school. But whoooooaaaaaaa, the days of FFIX? I was still in high school! Right in the thick of it!

I graduated high school a full nine years ago now. damn. I don't really know what to say about my aversion to school anymore. I could cop out and say it was simply immaturity, but that's just not really the case. It was well reasoned. And high school certainly was and is a bit of a joke. And the pratfalls of college that I wanted to avoid certainly exist. But, you know, one day I just sort of decided "yeah I guess I should go to school," and that was kind of that. I knew that I needed to be pushed into writing, for real, head first, and deadlines of school help, as does the whole legitimacy thing. Like, no excuses, no you aren't good enough--just go. And that's part of it. But I also needed...something more vague that scholarship helps with. There was a little bit of the whole competitive nature thing going too. Like, I needed people to know that I wasn't not going to school because I couldn't handle it. And now, hey, the haters can all jump off a cliff because I just sort of ended up with a 4.0 GPA and now I'm trying to get into like ivy league schools lol. That even sounds ridiculous to me, given my past. I wish they'd just give me an MA (or an MFA, probably) already. I'm too old for this.

looooooooooool Graphite. I barely remember that. There's a lot I barely remember, I guess. I always used to fixate on how it didn't matter what you remembered and what you didn't on the internet, because it was always all right there. So...permanent in its transience. Something I never could quite get my head around. Then, you know, it went away anyway lol.

Seyven! There is a name I haven't heard in years and years. Married! At first, when I read that, I thought: what, no way--but it strikes me that he always had this goofy twinge of romanticism to him that has probably served him well over the years. Looking back, he was just straight up weird as hell, honestly. But in the most endearing way.

That AIM account is long lost. I tried to recover it once, but who knows what kind of stupid things AOL has done with fifteen year old login information. I have a google talk thing that I only recently figured out how to make work at the behest of a friend after I got banned from a different forum (THAT I WAS ONLY POSTING AT FOR ALMOST EIGHT YEARS but that is a different story). My gmail account is extralife. I can only assume the google talk thing is tied to that like I at least know google docs is.

[Kefka]

I'm unsure whether to welcome you or not. You seem to be an old friend of everyone but us newbies.

Oh, what the hey. Welcome anyway!

Also reminds me that I need to sit down and play though Dragon Quarter. I've only owned it for over five years.

Nah, I only know a few people around here. I just happen to know them from long, long ago.

I think I remember when these boards were first founded, back on some other site...? But yeah, I never joined, or at least I never joined with an account that I remember. I'm as new as anyone else. It is a little strange to see all these places that I used to associate with still kickin, though, yeah. Like, I was browsing metacritic (of all places) recently and I'm seeing links to reviews from RPGamer and RPGfan and I'm like--I remember when these sites were founded! I hadn't been to either in years. Things like that.

You should really, really play Dragon Quarter, by the way. I bought it sort of on a whim for like ten bucks about a year after it came out, popped it in maybe a week later and promptly blew through the thing in like three days, then started over again immediately. It's just great. Amazing sense of place, all structured around the uniform idea of driving the player forward (and upward). It's a structured little cathartic gem of an experience.

[phyco126]

I remember you Kefka, though I don't think we ever talked even in passing. Oddly enough, I had the same reaction as Alun did... "Is that? Nah..." Even weirder that I remember you at all. O_o

[Jenner]

y'know, you can't steal this username and then not post. "M just sayin'

[Asmodean]

Greatest Villain Ever! I'm with Jenner.

Also HI! I've turned into quite the Lurker myself, back in my days of Glory I was the Lunar-Net Court Bard. I STILL AM I SAY!

[Kefka]

y'know, you can't steal this username and then not post. "M just sayin'

Boo