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Paul rides solo as he hangs out with the chatroom, and shares games he loves. Action, strategy, point-and-click adventure titles: all these things are on Paul’s stream.

Now a regular part of the schedule!

Really glad that Things on My Stream now has a regular time slot. I like Paul's take on games and Things on My Stream tends to be really chilled out and relaxed.

Yeah, that was totes worth it; new and slightly improved overlay, dedicated slot for paul's awesomeness...great time!

I love that you outsourced the 'action movie witty tagline for boss fight win' to chat...and chat stepped up admirably.

Since the last stream kind of spun into a bit of a discussion about They Might Be Giants, and I am very much obsessed with all their music, I feel like making a rather lengthy post about them for those interested.

For starters, a chart I found on reddit (/r/tmbg) for those wondering where to start:


(My entry point, admittedly, was The Else, but that did jog my memory of hearing them a bunch on Tiny Toons when I was younger, as well as that Doctor Worm video.)
(Also, Here Comes Science is awesome, regardless of whether you have kids or not. But feel free to use it to introduce the band to your kids if you do have them. Not that I honestly know from experience.)

From there, some of my choice videos from their recent albums (I'm pulling from their YouTube page):

• Icky from Nanobots
• Can't Keep Johnny Down from Join Us
• Technically, a recording of their cover of Chumbawumba's Tubthumbping from AV Club's Undercover was on their recent rarities collection "Album Raises New & Troubling Questions", but I have to give this one to their Electronic version of Istanbul, Not Constantinople. Best use of a Speak & Spell.
• I'm Impressed from The Else
• Since the chat mentioned "Am I Awake?" from their EP Indestructible Object, TMBG put together a contest to make a music video of the song when they released their most recent best-of collection. This one is my favorite, though this one won. This one also took top 3 for managing to make the judge, John Hodgman, remember the Kennedy Assassination... or something. I may have forgotten the details.
• Back to normal list mode! Here's Damn Good Times from The Spine. Not their greatest album, but it's got some catchy tunes. (Though that album was one to have a video done by Homestar Runner. Experimental Film, if you're curious.)
• Older from Mink Car
• Surprisingly, I can't find anything from Factory Showroom on their YouTube channel. Odd. I like that album.
• And the only video from John Henry was Snail Shell.
• Beyond that, we're getting into classics territory. So I'm just going to throw you to the videos for Birdhouse in your Soul, Don't Let's Start, and The Statue Got Me High

In addition to all that, their YouTube channel has a bunch of their albums available to listen to in full. And they relaunched their old Dial-A-Song hotline as well as made a companion website for it, dialasong.com.

...And now I just wrote the longest advertisement for TMBG ever. I shall leave gracefully.

I don't know what my exact entry into TMBG's music was, as friends of mine were routinely singing songs from Flood and Lincoln well before I bought any of their albums, but the first actual album of theirs I got was Mink Car, strangely enough. Then I sort of worked backwards to Flood and Then: The Earlier Years (effectively the pink album, Lincoln, and Miscellaneous T all stuffed together), then eventually they started to dominate my music collection. More when I started grabbing their rarities and oddities from various places (and hoo boy, do they have a LOT of rarities, demos, and b-sides).

The great thing about them is that though they do have some themes they like to go back to regularly, they have an incredibly wide range of styles at their disposal. They just love to make music, and it shows.

On Monday (Jan 26, 2015) I will be starting the stream a little early and doing some AskPaul Q&A before getting down to gameplay. This would be an excellent opportunity to ask any questions that may require a more detailed response then you can get in a tweet or during a group podcast/panel, especially if they are questions specifically for me or about the LRR website design or infrastructure.

Post your questions in this thread to make sure I read them, but I will also be taking questions from the chat during the stream.

I was wondering if the forum could be changed from fixed-width to dynamic-width. And, if so, whether that would be what people want or not.

Any plans for a "Thok Smash" or "Thok him up" shirt?

How did your character in Commodore Hustle end up being a super (dangerous) scientist?

Who do I have to bribe to get you on Feed Dump more often?

Can you explain process of translating your sketch scripts to actual filming: when and how do you choose camera angles, locations, transitions between scenes etc.?

Have you ever thought about selling digital versions of your DVDs? If yes is it something you could do now you have more time?

Do you find new sea shanties to sing? If so what's your favourite of last year?

What's the difference between letting an actor's charisma carry a performance as a mark of respect and requiring an actor's charisma to carry a performance to cover for other problems, like a duff special effect or a dodgy script?

To what degree is the former a sign you're on a roll and the latter a sign things are going off the rails?

Were Joseph and Mary in A Little Drummer Boy meant to look that much like Graham and Kathleen?

Are you going to make efforts to pull ads and things like that from around the internet that still advertise the weekly sketches, or are all those beyond your control and done by The Escapist or other companies?

Have you ever thought about doing a duet with Tycho from PA, you guys both have surprising singing voices, like to burst in to song, and have similar song choices when you do.

How did you enjoy LRRcon? Being less crowded and more LRR focused, was it more comfortable for you than something like PAX?

I wasn't able to attend last May.. but if you guys did it again I would definitely want to go and it would be cool to get to meet you there.

Did you have a nice Burns supper last night?

Did you get any killer swag from the others at PAX South?

Can we get a rendition of Little Drummer Boy at a suitably inopportune moment in the stream?

Will you bring back the Music section of your online store?

Paul, now that Grim Fandango has been re-released, will you be playing it on stream?

Bad News: Graham and Kathleen are out of town on Monday, so no Checkpoint this week
Good News: ToMH starting an hour early at 2:00 PM PST for lots of Grim Fandango action!

(see the schedule for start time in your timezone)

I'm not revealing what I'm going to play today, but let's just say that Lord Hosk will probably want to tune in

I tuned in as much as I could. It was amazing!

Im going to highlight every line of dialog!

Your stream is on while I am in my monday night class so I was watching on my phone under the desk and for awhile in the computer lab next door.

a couple of general tips:

a trip to the surface does not cost 1 fuel unit it varies planet to planet based on the atmosphere, when you select "dispatch" to go down to the surface when landing site targeter appears a "fuel consumption" will appear just under your ships picture replacing the date. Most Vacuum worlds like the moon take .1 fuel units.

your lander has a capacity of 50 mineral units, a small mineral blob is 1-13 (average 10) medium is 14-20 (average 16) and large is 21-30 (average 25) Generally speaking 5 or more Grey or better mineral blobs are worth a trip to the surface, 1 or more if its Gold Orange or purple.

Most life forms will chase you, so a great method is the run and turn. drive strait away from them until they get JUST to the edge of the screen, then turn and start shooting until they get close then turn and run again, you can hit them 2-3 times with your stunner depending on their speed.

Planets that are "safe" are 3 or less weather, 4 or less tectonics and less than 100 degrees C. if you are careful you can avoid those earthquakes and lightning by just continually moving, never sit still on a planet, dont pivot in place make a driving turn around.


Now a couple of little spoilers

1 system good resource trip 1-2 cargo pods full super close ~3000 RU



Several system trip 4 cargo pods full ~10,000-12,000 RU requires about 100 fuel



Rainbow worlds

I can do a key must do points off the top of my head, or a complete every significant event and location if I look at my notebook.

I wasn't planning on doing this because half the fun of this game is the exploration but I can if you would like hide each one in a collapse tag like above?

So with Soulblazer done, have you considered playing any of the Ys games on stream Paul? Ys I & II (Chronicles), III (Oath in Felghana), and Origin are all on Steam. Ys V: Kefin, Lost City of Sand also has a fan translation if you can get an SNES rom of it.

Edit: Technically the original 2 Ys IV games are also available as roms (The Dawn of Ys and Mask of the Sun), but they were replaced by Memories of Celceta on the Vita anyways. Also the original Ys IVs weren't by Falcom anyways.

The Ys games are quite fun, especially if you like Zelda-esque titles. Worth noting, though, is that there are essentially three styles of Ys games that I've come across:

Ys I and II: wherein there is no button to control the sword, instead, you auto-attack enemies by "bumping" into them, but they also auto-counter-attack, so combat consists of finding the right angle to hit them from so that you damage them but they don't damage you. Probably the most Zelda-esque games.

Ys Origin / Oath in Felghana: Much more action-oriented, with combos and magic. You now have control of your sword and have to do lots of dodging and attacking. Kinda God of War-meets-2D Zelda.

Ys Seven / Memories of Celceta: Like the Origin/Oath system, but now with a full party and a slower pace that focuses more on setting up proper sequences of moves. Plays a lot like the combat in a Tales game.

However, Ys VII and Celceta aren't available on PC, so unless the LRR crew possesses a method to stream PSP or PS Vita games they'll have to stick with the others.

Since the order of games is a bit confusing (most of the titles have been remade multiple times, and the remakes sometimes drop the sequence number) the release order (with remakes being placed where the original game would be) is as follows:
Ys I
Ys II
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Ys: Memories of Celceta*
Ys: Kefin, The Lost City of Sand**
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim**
Ys Origin
Ys Seven

*Apparently there are multiple games that were originally called Ys IV, but this is now the canonical one.

**Not released in English, so far as I'm aware.

The in-game chronological order is, I believe, identical to the above, so long as you move Ys Origin to the first slot, as it's a prequel. That said, it's full of references to Ys I and II, so it doesn't really make sense to play it first. Confused yet?

That said, the games are pretty plot-light, so the above list doesn't really matter.

TL;DR: Ys games are fun Zelda-like action-adventure RPGs that don't get anywhere near the attention they deserve, and four of them (I, II, Origin, and Oath in Felghana) are available on Steam for not very much.