#coin dreck

[mudwerks]

(via Free 10 Hitler Stamps - Pencil Ink)\

...These valuable stamps were issued by the short-lived nation of Bohemia-Moravia. They are much sought after. Now they are becoming SCARCE.

Littleton was one of the premiere stamp and coin hobby companies, out there pushing dreck onto the unsuspecting public...

#Free 10 Hitler Stamps #ad #comics #vintage #1950s #Bohemia-Moravia #back pages #coin dreck #also stamp dreck

[valdomarx]

It’s been months since the mountain, and Jaskier is trying to heal. He knows logically that what Geralt said was untrue. He knows Geralt’s woes aren’t his fault, that he was lashing out because of his own hurt and guilt over Yennefer. He understands that. He forgives that, even.

So he travels onward. He sings of Geralt’s adventures like he always does. He composes new songs.

But everything he writes is dreck: maudlin, self-pitying, and flat.

The problem is that Geralt’s words struck something deeper inside him, a festering anxiety he’s never been able to quash. Because he is a burden, really, isn’t he? Can’t fight, can’t hunt, can only earn coin where people have it to spare. He’s known it all his life, which is why he tries so terribly hard to be entertaining. Perhaps, he used to think, if he was charming enough, if he was diverting enough, people wouldn’t notice what a hindrance he was. Perhaps they’d think it was a trade worth making.

He’d convinced himself it was that way with Geralt. That he brought something worthwhile to Geralt’s life, some colour and music, even though Geralt never expressed any affection for those things. As if a few meager coins from odd performances and a few sugar-spun tales about witchers’ heroic deeds could be recompense for tolerating him.

Clearly, he was wrong. There was nothing he had that Geralt needed, and it seemed nothing that he wanted either.

Jaskier is not unfamiliar with the pain of unrequited love. It has happened more times than he can count that he has laid eyes on some beautiful stranger, some compelling vision, someone with whom he has fallen instantly in love, only for them to return his gaze with an upturned lip and an expression of distaste.

But this is wholly different from those fleeting hurts. This is years, decades, of devotion to a man who only ever tolerated his presence at best. What Jaskier feels, most of all, is stupid, and embarrassed, and lonely in a way that has settled into a dull, flat ache in the pit of his stomach.

His new attempts at work are all disasters, so eventually in desperation he digs out the old notebook he’s been carefully avoiding and finds the song he’d been working on before the dragon hunt. The lyrics are all wrong but the melody is solid, and sad, and playing it feels cathartic even when it hurts, like binding a wound to staunch the bleeding.

The fairer sex, they often call it But her love’s as unfair as a crook

It’s petty, and a little mean, but it’s satisfying to lay those words out on the page. She was always bad news. He hadn’t been wrong about that. He lets himself write more. As if he can transpose his pain onto Yennefer, to purge himself by reworking the story so it’s her fault. It’s not true, but it feels good to pretend for a moment.

Tell me love, tell me love How is that just?

It’s the phrase that’s been drumming in his head for weeks. It’s not just, it’s not fair, it’s not right that he should feel this way. He knows this is a fiction too - since when has their world had any interest in justice? - but he’s enjoying the pretense. As he writes, though, inevitably he can’t help but show himself.

I'm weak my love, and I am wanting

He stares at the line.

He scribbles it out. It’s too obvious. Too crass. Too revealing.

He writes it back in. It’s true.

He finishes the song that night. He plays it the next day, both to rip the wax from the wound and simply because he has no other material. The audience seems to like it, the young women especially. He tells them it’s about doomed love which, of course, it is.

He plays it often from then on. He'd imagined playing it might lessen the knot of shame and misery in his chest, but it doesn’t. He keeps playing it anyway.

He keeps playing until, one chilly autumn evening in a small village, he’s wrapping up the evening with the song, looking forward to a quiet ale and a soft bed for once. He barely registers the faces in the tavern, the shhh shhh of the door swinging open and closed. He barely notices anything at all until he sounds the final notes, lets them ring through the smoky air, and looks up to find an achingly familiar figure in the doorway: dark cloak, white hair, two big scary swords.

His heart twists violently as their eyes meet across the room, amber on blue, and there’s an expression on that familiar face not of anger but something akin to curiosity. To puzzlement. To wondering what the fuck was that he was singing about?

Suddenly there’s not enough air in the room and his skin is crawling and it’s too much, all too much, and something inside his chest rips and cracks. There is something fundamentally broken here, and he thinks it must be him.

#today is officially let's all be sad about jaskier day #geraskier #the witcher #my writing #octoberfest #alex's prompt day 26: i think i've broken something #(perhaps stretched a little. forgive me. it has been a long day.)

[daniloqp]

“Mendel’s Quest,” also known as “Angry Jew,” helped me embrace my heritage

“Mendel’s Quest,” also known as “Angry Jew,” helped me embrace my heritage

https://theministerofcapitalism.com/blog/mendels-quest-also-known-as-angry-jew-helped-me-embrace-my-heritage/

In 2014, three Liberated Israeli friends Angry Jew, a game about a furious but brave Jew, who was delayed through time to Russia in 1894 to kick the Cossack tuchus. Originally an app for Android, the latest version is also available in the Apple Store. The tiny hero, Mendel, seeks the recovery of stolen religious books: punches and twists that make villains sick with scythes as they shout “Goyim!” “Dreck!” “Gevald!” or “Sheigetz!”, with a thick Yiddish accent, just like me in my dreams.

When Avishai De Vries introduced the idea of ​​the game to his programming friends Gil Elnekave and Edo Frankel, he found it funny and crazy. “It’s the perfect trick,” Elnekave thought, but “he has no reason to make money.” Still, he believed in the talent of his friends and was looking for a side project, so he jumped on board.

The most important aspect of the game is the appearance of Mendel. He wears a shtreimel, the fuzzy fur hat worn by Orthodox Jews, and has a beard that would make Drake jealous. Her hair is black and her nose is ginormous. When I was younger, I was taught that those traits were horrible: that people who looked like me, who came from similar backgrounds, were not heroes, but we are lightning bolts.

Jews have used humor to process trauma in vaudeville, movies, books, and theater. But Angry JewThe creators hadn’t seen it in video games. “It’s another representation of the same game,” De Vries said. The struggling nephew. He explained that it was the non-Jews who created this stereotype, “so I’ll take power from him.”

In my case, the stereotype was introduced to me after my parents moved my family from Niskayuna, New York, where there were many Jews, to Voorheesville, New York, where I was singled out as one of the only Semites of the my fifth year. -class. During the 90s (and all other eras), children were (are) appreciated. I put myself very defensively on the normalization of “locker room talks” (I see you Trump) because I know how racist, homophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, i he is anti-Semitic. In high school, I had a few pennies on me. Once, I saw a classmate place a quarter between his thumb and ring finger and blink. The coin spun down the hallway, sawing my eyebrow and leaving a scar.

My family is a typical story of Jewish immigrants. My grandfather traveled to America from Poland in the early 1900s to escape the pogroms and the rise of anti-Semitism. In New York, he went from selling scrap metal to owning his own wallpaper store, which my father took over. After my bar mitzvah, I became the kid of cisterns, splashing cans of paint, hitting price stickers, and dusting shelves.

Deitcher’s Wallpaper Outlet ads aired sporadically on local TV stations. My classmates came out behind me in the hallways of the high school, mocking my father’s nasal voice from the ads: “Come ta Deitcha’s Wallpaper Outlet. We will not be sold below ”. I despised the kids who grabbed me, but I also hated my family, questioning how we got to white Christian America. Even though my dad worked 60-hour workweeks, he felt like we hadn’t earned our success.

I tried to defend myself, but I didn’t know how to throw a punch that my opponent felt. In 11th grade, I came up with a new way to survive: making fun of myself before others could. I hurried to pennies in the hallway. I called myself the Hebrew Hammer (years before the movie), the Killer Kike, and the Jewish Juggernaut, all funny because I was a skinny bean.

After graduating from high school, I accepted that it was tied to my heritage. I even studied it in undergraduate students, while I drank every night and went in and out of detox. There were many Mendels who protected me during those years, many Mendels who helped me heal after being sober at 25 years old. They fed me wild boar dinners. I studied the Torah with myself. He taught me how to wrap tefillin.

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[mscompany]

The Top 5 Must Play RPGs for Every Video Game Console

The gaming market is monstrous. Right now there are six consoles, three handhelds, and the ever present PC you can buy games for. That's 10 different ways you can get your game on, so if you're someone who doesn't have the ways or means to buy all 10 platforms and every halfway decent game that arrives for any of them, you're probably wondering which way you should go to get the most bang for your buck. I'm a bit of a gamer nerd, and so for you I've collected the top five available games (in the stores now) for each console for each particular genre. Based on reviews, user comments, and my personal experience, these are the best ways to go. This round: RPGs. The Japanese RPG market exploded in the 32-64 bit days, blowing out with a new game seemingly every week. You can blame Square for that one, bringing to the stores amazing game after amazing game, which immediately spurned every other company to release whatever dreck they could muster to keep you pumping money into their pockets. Nowadays there are hundreds of options out there, and the Japanese market isn't the only one around. North American companies have their own answers to the RPG boom and now it's a veritable flood of options. Here are the top five for each option you've got. PlayStation 2 - The PlayStation brand name has been the home of quality RPGs since PS1 first roled out with Suikoden and Final Fantasy games in the mid- 90s. This list was hard because there are so many left off. Dark Cloud 2, Final Fantasy X, the Shin Megami Tensei games and many more deserve recognition, but alas these are also long as hell, so if you had more than 5, when would you ever finish them. You may notice I exclude the PS3, but I can't really offer any PS3 RPGs for you until they've actually been created. We're waiting. 1. Shadow Hearts Covenant - The Shadow Hearts series took on a serious following after this entry, one of the greatest RPG releases of the generation. It's take on the fantasy RPG genre blended into the realms of reality, bleeding over in church and demonology lore. Taking place in the 19th Century and following the legend of a young woman and her unfortunate destiny, it can be enjoyed alone or along with it's predecessors Koudelka and Shadow Hearts (I). 2. Disgaea - This is probably the best strategy RPG released for any console ever. Released by Atlus, a brand name that has grown in and of itself of recent years to the respectability that names like Square and Level 5 now carry with their games, Disgaea is about the young prince of hell and his quest to regain his domain after being awoken. With more than 200 hours of gameplay here, count on playing for days on days. And it's funnier than hell. These are great characters. 3. Suikoden III - The Suikoden series is the cult series. Of course it's slowly sliding out of cult status and into the mainstream with releases occurring every couple of years since this one. The best in the series with the possible exception of Suikoden II, Suikoden III tells the story of a huge cast of characters, all intricately entwined with one another. You play through the tale of their war, but as seen through each characters eyes. Truly epic. 4. Final Fantasy XII - The newest release, released only two weeks before the PlayStation 3's release, this game redefines the epic scope of prior Final Fantasies, literally reaching for the stars. Each character is fully realized and a part of the action, their story an intricate part of the game. There's no fluff here, and the rebuild of the decades old RPG formula was all for the better, working for the complete and total betterment of the game and hopefully the series. 5. DragonQuest VIII - Dragon Quest has always been huge in Japan, but only now did it find the same success here in the US pubg mobile hile. Dragon Quest VIII is the huge (extremely huge) result of Square Enix's jump to full 3D glory in their series. The graphics are incredible, the characters hilarious and deeply involving, and the story arresting. The battles aren't half bad either. And the usual monster catching glory is intact. A long game, it will keep you busy for days. Gamecube (and Wii) - The Gamecube got shorted on the RPG options, much like its big brother the N64. Nintendo lost a lot of their clout with the RPG crowd when Squaresoft jumped ship in the 90s and they're still trying to earn it back...so far to little success. But, the future looks bright, as Square Enix is finally producing games for the Big N, and Nintendo's own work includes more forays into the RPG market. Here's hoping for more, because the Wii is perfect for the format. 1. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - The newest Zelda adventure, Twilight Princess, is by far the best reason to own a Nintendo Wii. The game is a masterpiece on almost every level, to the point I'm almost willing to call it the greatest game ever made. We've heard this a lot, that this game is the greatest. That it surpasses what Ocarina accomplished 8 years ago. And as my own favorite game, it's hard to ever put anything above Ocarina in terms of scope, depth, and innovation. No need to go into detail. Read my review of it here for more thoughts on why it's so amazing. 2. Tales of Symphonia - The first really good RPG for the Gamecube, and still one of the only ones really. The newest entry in the hugely popular (in Japan) Tales saga, Symphonia was a huge, fun, well told game. The characters were fun, the battle system is one of the best around, and the action was fully inclusive and crafted a long game. Symphonia was the Gamecube owning RPG fan's one saving grace. 3. Skies of Arcadia Legends - Originally released for the Dreamcast, Skies of Arcadia was given a second life on the Gamecube, again fated to anonymity due to the failure of the console. This is a great game. It tells the story of two sky pirates who must traverse the sky ocean and save the world from a shattering war and so on. You attempt throughout the game to build your pirate rank and build up your ship. It was one of Dreamcast's must have games and the same for Gamecube. Unfortunately so few actually had it, and now it's not exactly easy to find. 4. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - The infamous Wind Waker. Nintendo's foray into cel shading and the horrible foray into ocean mechanics. This game is still amazing. It's Zelda afterall, but it's flawed on more than the basic levels. It's hard to get around. The ocean is huge, and the game is short. But the parts you play, in between sailing around Hyrule are beautiful and incredibly fun. 5. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - The Big N rounds out the five with another in house effort. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was a return to the Paper Mario fun they coined in the N64 days, this time around with the RPG elements the game seems to work best with. Incredibly easy yes, but fun as hell at the same time. Xbox (and X360) - The Xbox, not surprisingly saw no Japanese development. Every game listed below was produced in English Speaking countries, mostly Canada actually. The style is noticeably different, but the quality is equally incredible. The strive for realism by Western developers can be seen in each of these entries. Although the lack of humor is equally as prescient. 1. Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion - The Xbox 360 has some serious horsepower. Not only is there room to spare, but the graphic output is insane at time, and what better way to show this off than with an Elderscrolls game. Monstrous, huge worlds in which you can freely roam wherever you want and interact with your environment. This game is huge and intense. Hundreds of hours can be spent just wandering around and completing a main quest. As for getting the rest done. Who knows how long you could spend on there. 2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Star Wars games were starting to get a bad rap for a while, until Bioware arrived with the first full fledged Star Wars RPG. Built on the click and wait action of the D&D ruleset games, KOTOR was a brilliant game that took Star Wars fans back a few thousand years to the height of the Jedi/Sith wars. It also had one of the most surprising and amazing endings in any game..ever. 3. Elderscrolls III: Morrowind - And another Elderscrolls game. This one was equally as huge as its sequel, and had just as amazing graphics for its time. Elderscrolls truly stretches the imagination in terms of open world RPG exploration and making a game that will take a long time to finish. A truly wonderful game. 4. Jade Empire - Set in a fictional ancient China, Jade Empire comes from the makers of Knights of the Old Republic, and while not nearly as large in scope or length, the game utilizes an array of different combat styles and elements that make it sheer fun to play. It's shorter and simpler than the original games from Bioware, but they make up for it with the attention to detail and the battle system upgrades. 5. Fable - Touted as an amazing achievement in world interface, Fable turned out to be a little bit of a letdown. It was smaller, shorter, and less engaging than what was claimed, but it was still a solid, fun game to play. Starting as a bland adventurer you could become either entirely good or entirely evil through the actions committed during a quest. The characters are generic, the quests forgettable, but the options given to play through them all are still fun. The ending however leaves something to be desired, and they could have done with a few more reasons to openly explore. For a sandbox RPG, it was surprisingly linear. Game Boy Advance - Yup, no DS games. I imagine soon, with the release of the new Pokemon game, and the surprising announcement of Dragon Quest IX coming exclusively to the DS, the RPG options there will explode, but for now your best bet in the RPG realm on handhelds is with the Game Boy Advance. Here are a few of the best.

[kayla2moon]

Woeful Romances

I’ve said this before but Chicago Med’s romances are poorly written. This season epitomizes it more for me than any other so far. The only pair I’ve found compelling were the young ones who couldn’t be together because of their immune systems. Everything else has been pretty eye roll inducing.

I don’t care that Will and Natalie are on a break (no matter how many times I read or hear it’s over, I know they’ll end up together and probably married by the end of the series. If I were in charge of this show the first episode wouldn’t have made it tat obvious. But then again, I would not have written a pregnancy as a roadblock. Grieving, pregnant, widow Natalie could not get involved with Will but look a grieving new dad can get involved with her.  I guess their point is grief is processed differently or just ignore what came before because it’s totally irrelevant.

April and Ethan are one big bag of conflict, obstacles and unnecessary drama. I don’t see why they could not have developed a friendship that grew into the romance. Conflict over sibling Noah was the catalyst for their attraction and conflict over sibling Emily was the catalyst for their break-up. The worst part for me so far is how Vicky Glass was totally wasted on this dreck. I hate that she was part of a cliche break-up scene and how unlikable Ethan is made in order to facilitate the non-stop miscommunication/drama that is April and Ethan’s relationship.

Connor’s clearly being tormented for some reason. Uhm no....it’s not great at all. If they intend for him to end up with Ava then they’ve wrecked that. Even if she turns out not to be the jealous obsessed woman they’ve gone out of their way to make her seem, the damage was pretty much done when she asked Connor’s father to fund his project. They can go around all they want about what she might have had to do to convince him to part with his coin, that she went to him at all tainted her relationship with Connor.

#Chicago Med #Natalie Manning #Will Halstead #Ethan Choi #April Sexton #Connor Rhodes #Ava Bekker

[cryptnus-blog]

4 Low Market Cap Altcoins That Should Be in the Top 50

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/10/4-low-market-cap-altcoins-that-should-be-in-the-top-50/

4 Low Market Cap Altcoins That Should Be in the Top 50

Are you tired? I’m tired. It can be daunting, day in and day out, being taunted by marginal price swings, busted projects, and predatory actors.

However, just as market variance and volatility swings towards the bleak, vapid, and exasperating, causing one to wonder when they may be granted reprieve from the ICO and blockchain project dreck of our present-day cryptosphere, it also swings towards the profound, seditious, and invigorating, (hopefully) instilling an impending sense of exculpation and eminence.

Or, at least it should for those who truly recognize blockchain’s potential to correct and overhaul traditional (and ineffective) mechanisms and institutions dictating nearly every facet of life.    

As Chumbawamba says, “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.” Hopefully this piece serves as a pick-me-up for the crestfallen and forlorn, as their reminder that opportunity is at its ripest, and that sometimes you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.

Keeping with several past articles, which have explored projects with potential to reach the billion dollar market club and penny cryptos set to explode this 2018, we’re taking a look at 4 blockchain projects which we believe should be in the top 50 of all market capitalizations.

And, it always bears repeating, when investing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects, it’s extremely important that you do your own research. This article is here to serve as your introduction to projects you might otherwise not have heard of or looked into in depth, and not your Gray Sports Almanac with all the answers and concrete future outcomes.

Now, let’s get into the meat and potatoes. Below are 4 low market cap cryptos that should be in the top 50 of all cryptocurrency market caps based on their overhaul of traditional institutions and blockchain infrastructure.

This article should NOT be taken as investment advice and altcoins are not ranked in any specific order.

4 Low Market Cap Altcoins That Should Be in the Top 50

1. Kyber Network ($KNC) – $45 Million

Kyber Network Project Breakdown

Striving to become THE premier decentralized liquidity network in our fragmented blockchain ecosystem, Kyber Network is connecting the tokenized cryptosphere by enabling seamless and instantaneous transactions between ecosystems, platforms, and projects. Simply put, Kyber Network is authorizing nearly anyone to tap into a liquidity network for countless inter-token use cases while utilizing on-chain liquidity pools for DApps and other applications.

Specifically, the Kyber Network protocol operates based on 3 fundamental design philosophies:

Platform Agnostic: Any protocol or application may be powered by the Kyber Network liquidity pools, regardless of platform, network, or token.

Instant Settlements Without Transaction Uncertainty: Kyber Network eliminates settlement risk (the possibility of one party failing to deliver their end of the bargain) through a decentralized architecture.

Ease of Integration: Running fully on-chain and with guaranteed transparency, Kyber Network’s protocol is developer friendly and “highly compatible” with other platforms and systems.

Think of Kyber Network as the glue connecting all isolated and dissimilar token projects and ecosystems, sanctioning utility far beyond the reach of a project’s specific ecosystem. Bitcoin originated as one of the first cryptographic cryptocurrencies, followed by Ethereum, which allowed for easy creation of tokens and tokenizations of assets. Unfortunately, such tokens were confined only to the walls of their respective ecosystem.

So, how exactly does Kyber Network work?

Kyber’s “open reserve architecture” incentivizes platforms and projects to put forth their idle token assets in return for a slice of transactional spread. Proffered tokens are then available across any platform participating in the Kyber liquidity network, increasing not only token utility, but liquidity as well.  

For example, Kyber’s decentralized liquidity network provides an opportunity for vendors to now accept payments in various different tokens on their, say, e-commerce platform, while retaining control over the preferred token they actually receive.

Why KNC Should Be in the Top 50

Having launched their mainnet in Q1 of this year, Kyber Network has since hit the ground running, onboarding projects and tokens left and right (now boasting over 50 tokens on the platform). Most notably, from mid-2018 on, Kyber Network has established their KyberDeveloper Portal – which provides a framework of elaborate documentation and APIs for any platform or application looking to tap into Kyber’s liquidity network – made significant strides towards expanding their global presence (opening a Vietnamese office and entering of the Japanese market), and begun touring blockchain conferences in Europe and Asia.

Furthermore, they’ve locked up over 20 notable partnerships with cryptocurrency wallet titans ranging from MyEtherWallet, to Trust Wallet, all the way to imToken.

For cryptocurrencies to fully permeate the mainstream and serve as a true alternative – or, dare I say, replacement – of traditional fiat currencies, liquidity needs to be amplified and irreproachable. Kyber Network is in the midst of building the infrastructure for connecting an otherwise disparate ecosystem and delivering liquidity, which if executed properly, could be a major step towards “making a truly decentralized world a reality.”

As of date of publish, Kyber Network sits comfortably in 102nd place on Coinmarketcap.com’s rankings by overall market cap, and in the 8th spot for top decentralized exchanges on Etherscan (responsible for nearly 3% of transactions on the Ethereum network). Furthermore, KNC price on Coinmarketcap is US$0.39 or 5,860 Satoshis. 

2. Ravencoin ($RVN) – $28 Million

Ravencoin Project Breakdown

Just as the ravens of the fictional world of Westeros acted as messengers of truth and information, Ravencoin is a “use-case focused blockchain” striving to establish and disseminate statements of truth concerning ownership of digital assets in today’s cryptosphere.

Built and based on the UTXO [19] model of Bitcoin, Ravencoin’s decentralized peer-to-peer network is striving to correct the inefficiencies and vulnerabilities associated with Bitcoin’s costly and latent network, differing from Bitcoin in several notable areas, including:

Reduced block reward time of one minute

Creation and issuance of assets

Coin issuance (21 billion RVN)

Secure messaging capabilities and channels

User voting capabilities

ASIC mining resistance

Payment of rewards (dividends) in the native RVN token

Ravencoin’s open-source and free protocol emphasizes transparency, prioritized security, privacy, user control, and censorship resistance, employing the x16r [13] Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining with the overall goal of preventing collusion and monolithic dominance by unscrupulous mining pools. To check out the history and reasons behind Ravencoin’s algorithmic change in greater depth, we strongly recommend reading Ravencoin’s algorithmic paper here.  

Moreover, Ravencoin is emphasizing organic growth, a simple concept rarely employed in today’s volatile and “first to the top” blockchain ecosystem mentality, meaning they’ve enacted a few radical changes on the process of launching a cryptocurrency:

ICO: They’ve done away with the ever popular and highly fraud-prone ICO process,

Pre-mine: eliminated pre-mining, to ensure a fair launch and distribution of tokens,

Artificial Marketing: opted against using paid marketing and other artificial incentivized marketing schemes to drive traffic, and

CEO: chosen to keep protocol power in the hands of developers through having no private or public founder.  

Finally, the Ravencoin project can also serve as a core base and starting point for projects, secon- layer solutions, and other business ideas looking to benefit from Bitcoin-based code or the entirely unique features of the Ravencoin blockchain.

Why RVN Should Be in the Top 50

Not even one year old and still yet to have launched on any major exchanges, Ravencoin is still in the midst of catching traction. Ravencoin’s white paper opens with a “thank you” to the Bitcoin’s anonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto and developers, which is only fitting due to the platform’s origination out of the continuous efforts of over 420 Bitcoin developers and their 14,000 commits pre-Ravencoin fork from the Bitcoin protocol.

However, the point at which Ravencoin has separated itself from Bitcoin, and is doing it right, is through their emphasis on organic growth, ensuring malicious and concentrated actors aren’t disrupting and harming the network. Ravencoin’s ASIC resistance is seeking to redemocratize mining, making it a prime candidate for cryptocurrency users and investors seeking to align themselves with virtuous and fair projects.      

It also doesn’t hurt that Overstock.com’s CEO, Patrick Byrne, has reportedly invested millions of dollars into Ravencoin, citing its ASIC resistance and energy efficiency as 2 core reasons for doing so. Specifically, in an interview with BusinessInsider, Byrne stated:

“There’s an open-source project called Ravencoin, which Overstock has put millions of dollars into teams. We have people contributing to this open-source project. We think this coin actually has a future. It’s about – it’s Bitcoin, but a thousand times more energy efficient.”

Additionally, with notable interest in dividend coins and projects in the market (think NEO, KCS, NEBL), Ravencoin offers an attractive option for users and investors looking to generate passive income.   

As of date of publish, Ravencoin is ranked number 162 by market cap on Coinmarketcap.com, with a nearly $30 million dollar market cap. For those curious about price, 1 RVN is roughly US$0.014 or 212 Satoshis.

3. ARK ($ARK) – $76 Million

ARK Project Breakdown

“Point. Click. Blockchain.” That’s ARK’s motto, and it’s not far from the truth. ARK’s all-in-one blockchain solutions platform is bringing cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to the masses by way of a decentralized ecosystem for literally anyone to easily “create, customize, and scale their own blockchain networks.”

Striking a hard-to-achieve balance between power and ease-of-use, ARK’s all-in-one ecosystem is tailored for maximizing developer productivity in hopes of making blockchain technology easily accessible to consumers, even to the point where consumers are completely unaware they’re actually using it. Specifically, ARK boasts 3 defining features, all of which are simplifying blockchain integration and creating a “virtual spiderweb of endless use-cases” for a highly scalable, adaptable, and flexible platform.

SmartBridges: a mechanism to bridge validated and proprietary blockchains, enabling communication and transmittance of informational data and transaction notices between different chains, along with connectivity to “centralized” services. For example, “Server A” on the ARK blockchain can now send X amount of ETH to “Server B” on a separate blockchain or service.

Robust Programming Languages: easing creation and deployment of blockchain technology is ARK’s integration of numerous alternative programming languages (e.g. Ruby, Python, Java, Elixir, and more), so any developer can feel confident creating and building on top of the ARK platform.    

Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) Consensus: ARK’s DPoS consensus mechanism creates a representative democracy for users to utilize their stakes (ARK holdings) in order to nominate delegates who subsequently validate transactions and further protocol development. Bestowing true voting power with its users significantly increases the cost of a hostile takeover and eliminates the overall chances of it ever happening, solidifying ARK as a secure and trustworthy network to operate on.      

And, the true beauty of ARK?

It’s not limited to just a few specific use cases, but is applicable to nearly any business or industry looking to leverage and implement blockchain technology. Several potential candidates ARK cites for profitable niche services include digital gaming platforms, broadcast streaming platforms, community sales, and card printing,    

Why ARK Should Be in the Top 50

As mentioned above, ARK is geared specifically towards bringing crypto and blockchain technology to the masses, offering a true all-in-one solution for nearly every industry looking to integrate blockchain technology into their operations.

While a good portion of projects in today’s cryptosphere have taken this bear market as a cue to slow down and start liquidating ETH, ARK has kept building, hitting milestone after milestone. Specifically, in mid-August of 2018, ARK rolled out their core V2 DevNet in order to “squash any final bugs” in their codebase prior to the ARK Core hard fork. Additionally, they’ve secured several notable partnerships with Marachain – a platform enabling the secure exchange of digital documents – and Ø Crypto Union – a crypto banking and security token platform – both of which are integral for solidifying ARK’s position as a comprehensive provider of blockchain solutions.    

Think of ARK as the ultimate turnkey solution, packaged and ready for those looking to integrate blockchain technology into their business, but unable or unwilling to expend exorbitant development and training costs.

As of October 1, 2018, ARK is ranked #83 by market cap on Coinmarketcap.com, with one ARK going for US$0.71 or 10,845 Satoshis.  

Looking for 5 major reasons ARK is primed and ready to permeate the top 50 of cryptocurrency market caps in the future? Check out our article breaking down 5 core features of ARK and why it has positioned itself for a bright future ahead.

And, if you’d like to read up further on ARK’s utilization of DPoS as a consensus mechanism even further and acquaint yourself with running delegates, or, are looking to set up a delegate node yourself, check out this post from the ARK blog explaining DPoS in greater detail, along with several links to current ARK delegates and how to submit a proposal.

4. Bloom ($BLT) – $4 Million

Bloom Project Breakdown

Powered by the Ethereum network and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Bloom is a global decentralized credit scoring and risk protocol tackling the limitations of our modern day credit scoring industry by authorizing:

Attestation-based identity verification, and

Creation of networks of organizational and P2P creditworthiness vouching.

At the very heart of the Bloom protocol and realization of fairer, cost effective, and more transparent credit scoring system are 3 core components: the BloomID (secure global identity attestation), BloomIQ (reporting and tracking debt obligations tied to a person’s BloomID), and BloomScore (metric of a consumer’s creditworthiness).

Specifically, Bloom is tackling 5 core issues plaguing the present-day credit scoring industry through:

Cross-Border Credit Scoring: Bloom’s credit scoring protocol creates a globally inclusive and portable credit profile, meaning individuals no longer need to re-establish credit “track records” after relocating.

Accomodation For Those New to Credit: Users who would otherwise be denied from accessing credit, may now quickly receive a credit score and increase creditworthiness through bilateral stakes with trusted friends, family members, and colleagues. For example, a person without a rich credit history may now utilize the financial history, patterns, and indicators of their peers to ultimately establish an expected repayment behavior.   

Global Loans: Bloom’s all-inclusive protocol enables borrowers in less developed markets to access credit lenders thanks to developed regulatory and financial infrastructure.

Curbing of Identity Theft: All individuals have a unique global secure ID generated, which does not require borrowers to expose highly sensitive personal information. Furthermore, a user’s friends, family, and peers may also attest to various identifying traits of an individual to assist in building a complete and less vulnerable user identity.

Competitive Credit Scoring Ecosystem: By decentralizing the credit scoring ecosystem, users are no longer at the hands of a monolithic and coercive credit scoring entity, allowing for decreased costs and an overall more competitive environment.   

Bloom’s innovative approach to credit risk assessment sanctions both digital assent lenders and traditional fiat lenders to “issue compliant loans” on the blockchain network, while not only serving as a catalyst for lower fees (which increases competition in the market) but for improved borrower experience as well.

Why BLT Should Be in the Top 50

With 90% of the credit scoring industry dominated and controlled by one major player – FICO – US credit scoring is ripe for overhaul and diversification. Most notably, FICO’s credit scoring system leaves nearly 26 million Americans “credit invisible,” meaning roughly 1 in 10 adults has no actual credit history with any of the nationwide credit reporting agencies.

Simply put, America’s “credit invisible” face numerous uphill battles in everyday life, including difficulty purchasing a home or car, renting an apartment, and even opening a credit card (over 2 billion people worldwide are unable to procure a credit card).

For example, 91% of citizens in developing countries are denied, or have trouble, receiving financing from traditional banking and financial institutions. And, for those borrowers who are actually afforded credit, they’re often required to take on debt before actually obtaining a credit score. Bloom gives the invisible (and marginalized) a fighting chance to open lines of credit and access necessary goods and services they might otherwise be excluded from. Simply put, Bloom is equalizing the credit scoring playing field.   

Still unconvinced? Bloom saw record signups in March of this year after a massive Equifax data breach, which was estimated to have affected nearly 150 million consumers. A safer alternative is much needed. Cue Bloom.

Also, keep in mind that credit loss due to identity theft exceeds over USD $21 billion each year, with an estimated 19 persons per minute falling victim to malicious hacks and attacks. The removal of a single, centralized entity in charge of highly sensitive personal information in favor of a decentralized system not only decreases common network attacks (e.g. Sybil attacks), but minimizes the corpus of information available should anything go awry.   

As of October 1, 2018, Bloom sits at 493rd in Coinmarketcap.com’s market cap rankings, and is priced at US$0.10 per BLT or 1,540 Satoshis.  

Final Thoughts

You’ve been given a nearly one-year reset in terms of overall market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market this 2018, so it would seem imprudent to be unprepared for correction this 2018 or 2019 (or who knows, maybe even much further down the line).

There’s no set formula when investing in cryptocurrencies, as the market has shown to weed out even legitimate projects (which proved unsustainable due to lack of funding), on top of the far too common scams and decentralized snake oils we know all too well.

When investing in cryptocurrencies, all you can do is take the information available to you at the time, and make your best decision based on it.

So, if you’re deciding to take a gamble on some low-market cap cryptos this bear market, keep the aforementioned projects in the back of your mind, as they are not only tackling industries ripe with fraud and identity theft, but also seeking to connect the present-day blockchain ecosystem in unprecedented ways.

A little gamble never hurt anyone, but make sure you’re properly allocating funds when investing in lower cap altcoins and associating yourself with projects you believe to have true utility.      

We’d love to hear your favorite low market cap crypto of the above four, if you think we missed any particular low cap projects, and any other projects or altcoins you think are worth watching this 2018. Let us know in the comments!

Related: 10 Coins Under 10 Cents With High Potential

[njawaidofficial]

How 'Sharknado' Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/03/how-sharknado-casts-its-c-listers-and-nearly-landed-trump-as-president/

How 'Sharknado' Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President

Months before he declared himself a candidate, Trump was set to play commander-in-chief in the schlocky Syfy film franchise that has lured everyone from Ann Coulter to Charo for cameos while regular Tara Reid makes a quarter of one male co-star’s pay.

In January 2015, two years before he was sworn in as president, Donald Trump was set to step into the same role in a very different capacity: He had signed on to play the president in 2015’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Producers’ first choice to play the leader of the free world in the Washington, D.C.-set disaster film was Sarah Palin, but negotiations with the former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee had fallen through. That’s when Ian Ziering, the gung-ho star of the schlocky Syfy franchise, had the inspiration to capitalize on the special relationship he’d developed with Trump while taping Celebrity Apprentice (Ziering made it as far as the penultimate task). His reality TV boss would make a good commander in chief, he reasoned. An offer went out. Almost immediately, it elicited a response.

“The Donald said yes,” recalls David Latt, the 51-year-old co-founder of The Asylum, the off-brand assembly line behind the Sharknado series. “He was thrilled to be asked.”

Alas, Trump never did get to fend off a swarm of hammerheads in the Lincoln Bedroom. (More on why later.) But his story is far from unusual — just one of thousands of familiar faces who have been approached to star in a Sharknado, in what has grown over the course of five films into Hollywood’s D-list answer to a federal jobs-growth program.

“It’s the long-lost love child of The Love Boat and Hollywood Squares,” offers Scotty Mullen, the bubbly casting director responsible for wrangling more than 80 celebrity appearances in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, which airs on Syfy on Aug. 6, with a splashy live viewing party in Las Vegas that night. (In true low-budget form, Mullen does double-duty as the newest installment’s screenwriter.)

It sounds like the recipe for a fatal drinking game, but fret not: You’re not expected to spot them all. Some of these faces are famous only overseas, while others haven’t been seen in decades. But you probably will recognize a few, including Charo as the Queen of England, Fabio as the Pope, Clay Aiken doing a spoof on Q from the James Bond films and Olivia Newton-John in her first screen role in 17 years, playing a scientist who gives star Tara Reid a Grease-style makeover.

If this terrain is familiar to anyone, it’s Charo, a fixture on such stunt-casted 1980s escapist fare as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. The 66-year-old star was already a Sharknado fan when she was approached to play Her Royal Highness. “I think the Sharknado movies are hysterical,” she says, pronouncing it “shark-NAH-doe.” “Nowadays especially, we need shows that put a smile on your face. Coochie coochie!”

Coochie coochie ka-ching, that is: Sharknado has become an invaluable, if unlikely, crown jewel for Syfy, watched by tens of millions around the world (the globe-hopping new film capitalizes on that international popularity), registering billions of Twitter impressions and popping up in everything from Jeopardy! questions to The New York Times crossword puzzle.

But it began as just another title in a string of B-movies commissioned by Syfy — no-budget thrillers with names like Bats: Human Harvest and Mongolian Death Worm. Its path to the screen was fairly straightforward: An executive at Syfy heard the word “sharknado” and said, “I love it. Let’s make it.”

Asylum, which has cornered the market in this strain of cinematic dreck, was brought on to produce. They paid screenwriter Thunder Levin (his real name — “It was the ’60s,” he says) $6,000 to turn the word “sharknado” into an actual story — which he did, concocting a tale of a freak cyclone that scoops deadly sharks out of the Pacific and flings them at unsuspecting Angelenos.

With Sharknado script in hand, producers approached more than 100 actors to play male lead Fin Shepard, including Kevin Dillon, Dave Foley, Seth Green, John Stamos and Fred Durst. All of them passed — even the Limp Bizkit frontman, after being told he could also direct. The closest anyone got to signing on before Ziering was Back to the Future‘s Crispin Glover.

“I ended up in this 30-minute conversation with him during a location scouting in San Pedro,” recalls madcap director Anthony C. Ferrante, whose genuine enthusiasm for the franchise — he coined the word “sharknado” and has helmed all of the films — calls to mind a slightly more self-aware Ed Wood. “He wanted to play Fin like he had brain damage or something. And in my head I’m like, ‘OK — my job here is to make sure he says yes to the movie.’ ” Glover said no anyway.

But then something exciting happened: A legitimately talented and famous actor — John Heard — signed on as the movie’s comic-relief barfly, George. (Heard died July 21 while undergoing back surgery; there was barely a mention of Sharknado in tributes.) Reid was next to board, playing Fin’s ex-wife, April. This was after Teri Hatcher, Rebecca Romijn, Tiffani Thiessen and several others had already passed. Still, Reid was considered a big get for the project, whose title was proving to be a potent actor-repellent. “Tara had a profile,” says Gerald Webb, an actor and casting director who worked on the first three films (and appeared in the second). “Syfy liked her.”

With production commencing and still no Fin, a frantic Asylum went back to Ziering, who had already passed several times, and raised the offer to $100,000, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. Also a key conciliation: The title was changed to Dark Skies. (Syfy later changed it back to Sharknado, much to the cast’s dismay.) At the urging of his wife, who had just given birth and wanted Ziering to qualify for SAG medical insurance, he finally said yes.

And then a funny thing happened on the way to the DVD bin: Something about the movie’s ludicrous title and its cast’s commitment to the equally ludicrous premise (the film climaxes with Ziering’s ex-surf champ diving into a great white with a chainsaw) made Sharknado an instant cultural phenomenon when it premiered on July 11, 2013.

While ratings were modest — 1.37 million tuned in — the film lit Twitter on fire, with everyone from Patton Oswalt to Mia Farrow (“Omg omg OMG #sharknado”) singing its so-bad-it’s-good praises.

As a result, Sharknado 2: The Second One was a very different animal. “Everybody wanted to be involved,” recalls Webb. “Every C-list and D-list actor on the planet.” With the unlikely franchise’s new cachet, Asylum decided to take a kitchen-sink approach to casting, with Latt instructing Webb “to literally ask every celebrity we could think of. We came up with a list of a thousand people, including many A-listers.” Most passed. James Franco was a nonstarter. (There was hope he might be up for a cameo after his arc as a serial killer on General Hospital.) William Shatner’s agent replied with a single word: “Sharkna-no.”

But there were a few notable turns in the New York-set sequel, including Judd Hirsch and Airplane‘s Robert Hays playing into type as a taxi driver and jet pilot, respectively; rapper Biz Markie as a pizza chef; and Richard Kind as a Mets legend who bats a shark into the scoreboard. In many cases, their lines were written when they showed up on set.

Sharknado crews are nonunion (they staged a strike on the third installment and were replaced), but the films are SAG-AFTRA-compliant. “Everyone makes the same amount — a flat rate — and nobody was making close to their quote,” says Webb of the cameos. Asked if the pay — for anywhere from two to four hours of set time — would cover the cost of a Ford truck, Webb responds, “Absolutely not. Well, maybe a really beat-up one that would be at the junkyard a week later.”

Bigger roles, which require several days of shooting, pay more. Chris Kattan, whose career has seen some hard knocks since Saturday Night Live, was reluctant to take a cameo in Sharknado 5 — but was open to playing the meatier role of the U.K. prime minister, a part he approached “dead seriously. They were into me doing it that way.” He has gotten good feedback from his co-stars. “Ian said, ‘You’re going to be really, really happy with it,’ ” says Kattan. “So it’s not like Mariah Carey in Glitter — where nobody said anything.”

Mullen, 37, was a struggling screenwriter working as a publicist when his spec script Double-D Island (“It’s like The Hunger Games but topless”) got him noticed by Asylum, which first put him to work writing jokes for Kelly Ripa on Sharknado 2. “They said, ‘We forgot to write something for her,’ ” he recalls of the fateful phone call. “I said, ‘How soon do you need something?’ They said, ‘Well, we’re lighting her now.’ “

But it’s Ann Coulter whom Mullen credits with his big break. Asylum wanted the conservative firebrand to play the vice president in Sharknado 3, but was having no luck through her agent. Mullen suggested the company go through her publicist — “Sharknado‘s more of a publicity opportunity than a thespian exercise” — and Coulter “jumped at the chance. So then they asked me if I was interested in doing more of this.” Asylum agreed to pay Mullen a per-cameo bonus.

He sees his role as very different from that of most casting directors — people whose calls, typically, are eagerly answered by agents and managers. Instead, Mullen says, “you’re always selling them on the publicity value. An agent won’t care because they just want the money, and there is none. But if you pitch it to the publicist, they see all the value to be gotten out of it. You’re here to ride the hell out of that crazy publicity train.”

If it’s really true that there’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Sharknado is determined to test those boundaries. Some of the most reviled figures in pop culture have popped up as chum. In Sharknado 2 alone, there was Andy Dick (who “was having a tough day that day,” says Webb — Ziering had to hold up cue cards with Dick’s lines on them), Perez Hilton (swallowed whole on a subway platform) and Jared Fogle (“You should really be eating fresh, too,” says Subway’s then pitchman, currently serving 15 years in a federal prison for child porn possession and having sex with minors). Among the few stars Asylum has rejected: porn legend Ron Jeremy, who once stopped by the offices to pitch himself.

Sharknado 3 features a cameo by Anthony Weiner, the disgraced ex-congressman who in May pleaded guilty to sexting with a 15-year-old girl. “I guess I am on that C- to D-level cusp of celebrity that they were looking for,” Weiner told THR in 2015. “But I wouldn’t have conceived of doing it if I were going to play myself.” In fact, a sexting-scandal spoof was exactly what the producers wanted; when Weiner refused, he was enlisted to play a dull NASA administrator instead. Most of his performance was edited out.

For Sharknado 5, everything is bigger, starting with the budget ($3 million, double the cost of the original) and star salaries — Ziering now makes $500,000 per picture. Asylum manages to limit costs when it comes to Reid’s paycheck — she makes about a quarter of what her male co-star earns on each installment. She protested the disparity during the filming of Sharknado 3. Syfy later asked fans whether or not to kill off her character — but the network flatly denies that the two incidents are related. (Fans voted to let her live.) “I think Sharknado cares more about their ‘extra of the day’ than they do about their own cast,” Reid says, clearly weary of the franchise. “You work at something for five years and you don’t get treated as well as someone who shows up for a single day?”

She may be on to something, as the piled-on cameos haven’t added up to higher ratings for the franchise, which peaked at 3.87 million viewers for 2014’s Sharknado 2 before dropping to 2.77 million viewers for 2016’s Sharknado 4. The newest installment — which introduces the concept of wormholes to the, uh, Sharknado mythology — shot on location in London, Tokyo, Rome, Sydney, New York, Los Angeles and Sofia, Bulgaria. Some cameo players were flown to those far-flung places (Greg Louganis jetted off to Sofia to play an art thief), while others (Fabio, Poison’s Bret Michaels — also a Celebrity Apprentice alum) shot a few close-ups at home in L.A., with their stunt doubles in rocker wigs doing the heavy lifting overseas.

Lee Mountjoy, a London-based casting director, was brought on to fill out the ranks and went about enlisting local talent Katie Price (the “Kim Kardashian of the U.K.”) and diving champion Tom Daley — Mountjoy randomly “bumped into him in a train station in London. I said, ‘Do you know Sharknado?’ And he said, ‘Oh, my God, definitely!’ “

Similarly, the Asylum guys ran into George R.R. Martin at a Comic-Con event in 2014, whereupon the Game of Thrones author confessed to being a Sharknado superfan. “I own a theater in New Mexico, and they wouldn’t let me play it,” bemoaned Martin. The producers pulled some strings, and Martin was able to screen the original movie at his theater. (He later showed up in Sharknado 3.)

“We look for cameos from all areas of pop culture to appeal to every fan watching the movie,” says Josh Van Houdt, Syfy’s vp original co-productions. “Whether we’re casting a professional athlete, reality star, actor, musician or politician, our goal is to include a wide variety of stars for viewers to either get excited about or, on the flip side, witness getting eaten by a shark in a spectacular fashion.”

And so it might have been for our 45th president. “We got pretty far,” says Webb of the Trump negotiations. “It was serious talks.” A contract was drawn up and sent to Trump attorney Michael D. Cohen — the same attorney currently under FBI investigation in connection with the Russia inquiry.

But enthusiasm turned into weeks of silence from the Trump camp. Eventually, a reason for the stalling emerged. “Donald’s thinking about making a legitimate run for the presidency, so we’ll get back to you,” Latt recalls Cohen saying. “This might not be the best time.” With the production clock ticking, Asylum pulled the trigger on a backup plan, offering the role to Mark Cuban — a modest casting coup that Syfy trumpeted with a press release.

“Then we immediately heard from Trump’s lawyer,” recalls Latt. “He basically said, ‘How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We’re going to sue you! We’re going to shut the entire show down!’ ” Contacted by THR, Cohen acknowledges a dinner with Ziering to discuss casting Trump but says he has no recollection of the angry correspondence.

Webb, now at his own production company, is philosophical about the dustup. “I took it personally, but I get it now,” he says. “That was my moment of doing business with Donald Trump. And that’s Sharknado.”

This story first appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

[netmaddy-blog]

The Top 5 Must Play RPGs for Every Video Game Console

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The Top 5 Must Play RPGs for Every Video Game Console

The gaming market is monstrous. Right now there are six consoles, three handhelds, and the ever present PC you can buy games for. That’s 10 different ways you can get your game on, so if you’re someone who doesn’t have the ways or means to buy all 10 platforms and every halfway decent game that arrives for any of them, you’re probably wondering which way you should go to get the most bang for your buck. I’m a bit of a gamer nerd, and so for you, I’ve collected the top five available games (in the stores now) for each console for each particular genre. Based on reviews, user comments, and my personal experience, these are the best ways to go.

This round: RPGs. The Japanese RPG market exploded in the 32-64 bit days, blowing out with a new game seemingly every week. You can blame Square for that one, bringing to the stores amazing game after amazing game, which immediately spurned every other company to release whatever dreck they could muster to keep you pumping money into their pockets. Nowadays there are hundreds of options out there, and the Japanese market isn’t the only one around. North American companies have their own answers to the RPG boom and now it’s a veritable flood of options. Here are the top five for each option you’ve got.

PlayStation 2 – The PlayStation brand name has been the home of quality RPGs since PS1 first rolled out with Suikoden and Final Fantasy games in the mid- the 90s. This list was hard because there are so many left off. Dark Cloud 2, Final Fantasy X, the Shin Megami Tensei games and much more deserve recognition, but alas these are also long as hell, so if you had more than 5, when would you ever finish them. You may notice I exclude the PS3, but I can’t really offer any PS3 RPGs for you until they’ve actually been created. We’re waiting.

1. Shadow Hearts Covenant – The Shadow Hearts series took on a serious following after this entry, one of the greatest RPG releases of the generation. It’s taken on the fantasy RPG genre blended into the realms of reality, bleeding over in church and demonology lore. Taking place in the 19th Century and following the legend of a young woman and her unfortunate destiny, it can be enjoyed alone or along with its predecessors Koudelka and Shadow Hearts (I).

2. Disgaea – This is probably the best strategy RPG released for any console ever. Released by Atlus, a brand name that has grown in and of itself of recent years to the respectability that names like Square and Level 5 now carry with their games, Disgaea is about the young prince of hell and his quest to regain his domain after being awoken. With more than 200 hours of gameplay here, count on playing for days on days. And it’s funnier than hell. These are great characters.

3. Suikoden III – The Suikoden series is the cult series. Of course, it’s slowly sliding out of cult status and into the mainstream with releases occurring every couple of years since this one. The best in the series with the possible exception of Suikoden II, Suikoden III tells the story of a huge cast of characters, all intricately entwined with one another. You play through the tale of their war, but as seen through the eyes of each character. Truly epic.

4. Final Fantasy XII – The newest release, released only two weeks before the PlayStation 3’s release, this game redefines the epic scope of prior Final Fantasies, literally reaching for the stars. Each character is fully realized and a part of the action, their story an intricate part of the game. There’s no fluff here, and the rebuild of the decades-old RPG formula was all for the better, working for the complete and total betterment of the game and hopefully the series.

5. DragonQuest VIII – Dragon Quest has always been huge in Japan, but only now did it find the same success here in the US. Dragon Quest VIII is the huge (extremely huge) result of Square Enix’s jump to full 3D glory in their series. The graphics are incredible, the characters hilarious and deeply involving, and the story arresting. The battles aren’t half bad either. And the usual monster catching glory is intact. A long game, it will keep you busy for days.

Gamecube (and Wii) – The Gamecube got shorted on the RPG options, much like its big brother the N64. Nintendo lost a lot of their clout with the RPG crowd when Squaresoft jumped ship in the 90s and they’re still trying to earn it back…so far to little success. But, the future looks bright, as Square Enix is finally producing games for the Big N, and Nintendo’s own work includes more forays into the RPG market. Here’s hoping for more, because the Wii is perfect for the format.

1. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – The newest Zelda adventure, Twilight Princess, is by far the best reason to own a Nintendo Wii. The game is a masterpiece on almost every level, to the point I’m almost willing to call it the greatest game ever made. We’ve heard this a lot, that this game is the greatest. That it surpasses what Ocarina accomplished 8 years ago. And as my own favorite game, it’s hard to ever put anything above Ocarina in terms of scope, depth, and innovation. No need to go into detail. Read my review of it here for more thoughts on why it’s so amazing.

2. Tales of Symphonia – The first really good RPG for the Gamecube, and still one of the only ones really. The newest entry in the hugely popular (in Japan) Tales saga, Symphonia was a huge, fun, well-told game. The characters were fun, the battle system is one of the best around, and the action was fully inclusive and crafted a long game. Symphonia was the Gamecube owning RPG fan’s one saving grace.

3. Skies of Arcadia Legends – Originally released for the Dreamcast, Skies of Arcadia was given a second life on the Gamecube, again fated to anonymity due to the failure of the console. This is a great game. It tells the story of two sky pirates who must traverse the sky ocean and save the world from a shattering war and so on. You attempt throughout the game to build your pirate rank and build up your ship. It was one of Dreamcast’s must have games and the same for Gamecube. Unfortunately so few actually had it, and now it’s not exactly easy to find.

4. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – The infamous Wind Waker. Nintendo’s foray into cell shading and the horrible foray into ocean mechanics. This game is still amazing. It’s Zelda after all, but it’s flawed on more than the basic levels. It’s hard to get around. The ocean is huge, and the game is short. But the parts you play, in between sailing around Hyrule are beautiful and incredibly fun.

5. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door – The Big N rounds out the five with another in-house effort. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was a return to the Paper Mario fun they coined in the N64 days, this time around with the RPG elements the game seems to work best with. Incredibly easy yes, but fun as hell at the same time.

Xbox (and X360) – The Xbox, not surprisingly saw no Japanese development. Every game listed below was produced in English Speaking countries, mostly Canada actually. The style is noticeably different, but the quality is equally incredible. The strive for realism by Western developers can be seen in each of these entries. Although the lack of humor is equally as prescient.

1. Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion – The Xbox 360 has some serious horsepower. Not only is there room to spare, but the graphic output is insane at the time, and what better way to show this off than with an Elderscrolls game. Monstrous, huge worlds in which you can freely roam wherever you want and interact with your environment. This game is huge and intense. Hundreds of hours can be spent just wandering around and completing the main quest. As for getting the rest done. Who knows how long you could spend on there.

2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Star Wars games were starting to get a bad rap for a while until Bioware arrived with the first full-fledged Star Wars RPG. Built on the click and wait for the action of the D&D ruleset games, KOTOR was a brilliant game that took Star Wars fans back a few thousand years to the height of the Jedi/Sith wars. It also had one of the most surprising and amazing endings in any game..ever.

3. Elderscrolls III: Morrowind – And another Elder scrolls game. This one was equally as huge as its sequel and had just as amazing graphics for its time. Elderscrolls truly stretches the imagination in terms of open world RPG exploration and making a game that will take a long time to finish. A truly wonderful game.

4. Jade Empire – Set in a fictional ancient China, Jade Empire comes from the makers of Knights of the Old Republic, and while not nearly as large in scope or length, the game utilizes an array of different combat styles and elements that make it sheer fun to play. It’s shorter and simpler than the original games from Bioware, but they make up for it with the attention to detail and the battle system upgrades.

5. Fable – Touted as an amazing achievement in world interface, Fable turned out to be a little bit of a letdown. It was smaller, shorter, and less engaging than what was claimed, but it was still a solid, fun game to play. Starting as a bland adventure you could become either entirely good or entirely evil through the actions committed during a quest. The characters are generic, the quests forgettable, but the options given to play through them all are still fun. The ending, however, leaves something to be desired, and they could have done with a few more reasons to openly explore. For a sandbox RPG, it was surprisingly linear.

Game Boy Advance – Yup, no DS games. I imagine soon, with the release of the new Pokemon game, and the surprising announcement of Dragon Quest IX coming exclusively to the DS, the RPG options there will explode, but for now your best bet in the RPG realm on handhelds is with the Game Boy Advance. Here are a few of the best.

1. Golden Sun – It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not legendary. But, it’s good solid fun, and for the size and expectations o f a handheld console it’s still pretty fun. I enjoyed it for a few reasons. First off, the gameplay is top notch. The battle system is built around a simple premise and sticks with it, but it’s still fun. The story is nothing special but it reminded me a lot of the 8-bit glory days, keeping me involved without making it impossible to keep up when I have to turn the game off every 20 minutes. Solid play and go action

2. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire – Pokemon has been around for almost 10 years now, a regular entry in the Gameboy RPG market, really the only entry in that market, and a damn good one. By the time this pair was released (the usual duplicate games with slightly different monsters in each), the same gameplay was reused a good four times and starting to get a little old, but it’s still sound gameplay, and who doesn’t like to collect as much of something as they can. I’m older yes, but I still enjoy the mindless capture and battle system of Pokemon. It’s cathartically simple.

3. Final Fantasy IV – It’s technically a port, but a damn good port at that. I loved this game back in the days on the SNES and the idea to bring the 16-bit Final Fantasies to the GBA made me as happy as can be. This was a game I love to play, but feel goofy loading into my PS2 and sitting down to play. It’s a perfect bus play, and it plays just as great as in 1992. The classic tale of Cecil and the Red Knights never fails to capture my attention from start to finish. Of course, when Final Fantasy VI is released, I might have to replace this with that one, as we all know that VI is the greatest of them all.

4. Riviera: The Promised Land – Atlus has been bashing the PS2 market with top notch games for three plus years now, with their fantastic strategy and alchemy RPG games. They bring Riviera to the GBA with the same pedigree, a solid RPG that plays to the GBA’s strengths as well as any. It’s essentially a screen to screen game. You don’t control your surroundings so much as go from page to page within them, but the battle system is amazing and the different options and acquires immense. The story, like any Atlus game, is the real selling point and actually got me to play through it twice.

5. Final Fantasy Tactics – The portable version of the PSone classic has sucked more time from my life than any GBA game I’ve ever played. The 300+ missions are each 30-60 minutes long and the customization options equal length. This is a long game with a lot of gameplay and a fun little story. You’re Marche, you’ve been sucked into a book into the magical land of Ivalice and now you are a knight. Go!

PlayStation Portable – When the PSP first released fanboys dreamed of amazing ports that would bring their favorite games now out of print back to life in handheld format. At least one made the leap, but for the most part, RPG development on the PSP has been lackluster, and while Japan gets the Suikoden I and II pack and promises of Final Fantasies, we wait for a decent anything to play. Final Fantasy compilation anyone? Anyone at all?

1. Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth – One of the most sought after games from the PSone days, Valkyrie Profile was an amazing RPG that no one played and then no one could play as it was out of print. Ranging from $100 and up on eBay, the promise of a re-release for the PSP was a godsend for fans out there always interested but too poor to afford it. It’s a solid game at that. With rebuilt cinematics and PSP controls, this entry leads into the new PS2 game wonderfully and finally lets the rest of us play through Lenneth’s adventure.

2. Monster Hunter Freedom – Never a real big fan of the Monster Hunter games, I can still see their draw. You go and you hunt monsters. Simple as that. There’s little to hold you up, and there’s online play. It’s like Pokemon without the pesky storyline or purpose.

3. Ys: The Ark of Napishtim – A port of a port. This was originally released for the PS2 and before that, the PC, and has been watered down in between. The same classic Ys gameplay is intact, overland map, onscreen battles and fun little characters in a charming, if simple story. It’s good solid fun for a portable and tells a decent story. Even if the controls are a little broken.

4. Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade – One of the launch releases with the PSP, Untold Legends is an overhead hack and slash RPG without a conscious. It doesn’t strive for amazing storyline or gameplay, just simple hack and slashes glory and it does it pretty well. It was fun because it was simple, made in a very short development cycle from the time the PSP was announced. Oddly enough, though, the sequel was nearly as good.

5. Tales of Eternia – Alright, technically it still hasn’t been released in America, but you can import it from Europe and play the English language version (or Japan if you speak Japanese). But, it’s a tales game, a pretty good one at that. Technically it has been released here too, as Tales of Destiny 2 in 2000. Unfortunately, it got completely ignored as the gaming world moved on to the PS2. This is a great game though and perfect for the PSP. Complete and intact are the great Tales battle system and one of the better Tales plots. Saving the world from the Great War was never quite so fun as in this one.

PC -The PC has always been a home for the more hardcore of gamers. The cost of constant upgrades and intensity of a PC game are legendary, and only the most hardcore amongst us are capable of keeping up. Accordingly, the games below match that mindset, though more than one of these games managed to break free of the limitations and become monstrous worldwide phenomena. I’m looking at you Blizzard.

1. World of Warcraft – Okay, so duh right? Well, some of you are probably palpitating over my choosing this above some other MMORPG, but too bad. Everyone plays this one, including myself and it’s just plain fun. Having spent hours of my life in this game and knowing that I can go back whenever I want without fear of being destroyed because of the MMORPG laws of survival (never leave), this is a great pick up and play a game in a genre where that almost never exists. Huge, tons to do, and always fun even when you’re grinding, WoW is still the best.

2. Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn – The Baldur’s Gate games are some of the best RPGs to come out of the PC age of D&D ruleset RPGs. It’s big, it’s long, it’s fun as hell. The challenge of figuring out what to do, how to upgrade your characters and make the game the most it can be were always the number one reasons to play these. The story is pretty awesome too. Don’t forget the Dragon. That dragon is a bitch.

3. Diablo II – Diablo II stole my entire summer my sophomore year of high school. This game was amazing. It took everything Diablo did and blew it up times ten. The ability to find and receive unique weapons that 1000 of your friends would never find kept you playing over and over again. And it was simple. Click, click, right click. F1. That’s it. Nothing to it. And when you finally unlocked the Cow level, then you were the true God of Diablo.

4. Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion – Many of you probably can’t even play this yet. I still can’t. I only know of it because I have a friend who upgrades his computer ever three weeks seemingly. This game is a beast of the highest order, demanding a lot from your system but delivering even more. Monstrous, huge worlds in which you can freely roam wherever you want and interact with your environment. This game is huge and intense. Hundreds of hours can be spent just wandering around and completing the main quest. As for getting the rest done. Who knows how long you could spend on there.

5. Neverwinter Nights – Another D&D ruleset game, but one of the best no less. It’s huge, monstrously huge. And tack on the expansions and you’ve got 200+ hours of action to play through. The biggest seller on this one though was the ability to craft and write your own adventures as a DM with the toolsets and host them online, ala D&D, but with graphics. The sequel doesn’t quite hold up to the original, but still, carries the same weight and fun factor.

I’m a self-avowed unemployed writer, working on a semi-constant basis to try and overcome the need to go and work a real job.

[matthiasthewarlock-blog]

Dear Diary - 1

Today was the first day of spring, and the responsibility of performing the sacrificial ceremony fell upon me for the third time since I returned from my time in the wilderness. I had done everything I could to properly prepare for the ceremony, every little incantation and prayer was memorized and every bit of movement gone over again and again until I was sure to get them all right. In addition Gwen, the huntsmaster, had done a good job finding the elk and deer for the sacrifice, she and her helpers found 6 incredibly healthy and worthy animals that will have pleased the gods greatly, of that I have no doubt. Time will tell.

Before we got as far as to to the ritual though, a merchant ship finally arrived at the docks. It lay as deep in the water as one might imagine a pregnant whale would lie, especially if one, like me, has never seen a pregnant whale or even properly filled ones lungs with the salt breeze of the ocean blue. We hadn't seen a merchant ship here all through the long, cold winter, our only trading opportunity during that time being those few, hardy traders who dare travel the badly kept paths and trails that pass for roads around these parts during the winter months. And let me tell you, those traders known to charge a hefty fee for their hazardous travels, though I suppose few people would begrudge them they extra coin for all the effort. So you might imagine the line that formed down by the docks now as this big, fat whale of a merchant ship finally slid into our port filled to the blowhole with the exotic smells, feels and tastes of the south.

I had very little coin to trade with, although the last harvest had been good and the chieftain had rewarded me well for my part in keeping the gods happy. But during the winter months I had to hand over a fair bit of my own coin to one of the winter traders to make sure my medical supplies did not run out, after a family of rats somehow managed to find their way into my storage chest and make a meal out of my collection of healing herbs. Luckily I managed to trade away the nice silk pants that had been taking up space in the clothing chest for a while for a handful of pearls, 10 gold pieces and a good collection of southern herbs the merchant ship was carrying. With these herbs and valuables, I should be able to make due for quite some time. Meanwhile my companions managed to sell off some of the skins and leathers they had managed to gather, and Bareris and Brokkr looked particularly happy as they got what can only be described as a very good deal on their wares. I believe the two walked away with 30 gold pieces on a pile of leathers barely worth 20. Gwen traded some of her furs as well, and Dreck returned from the docks mumbling something about needing three axes for whatever reason.

Later in the day, as the ceremony was about to begin, neither Bareris nor Brokkr were to be seen anywhere, unsurprisingly I might add. Knowing those two they were most likely sat somewhere throwing back a brew or two to enjoy their newfound profits. Rarely have I seen men throw back brew with the speed and thirst of the two northern men, nor have I ever seen their constitution matched. They both seem to shake off any of the hard-felt effects other men would be left with the next morning as though all they had been drinking the night before had been nothing but pure water. Dreck was nowhere to be seen either, but I suspect he was walking his rounds in the village as usual. I honestly don't know if he is fueled by a desire to serve and protect the village or if he is just paranoid far beyond what is healthy for any man. But he serves the village well I suppose, and the chieftain has entrusted him with the position of executioner. Maybe Tukums sees something in him, maybe he's been too quick to trust an outsider again. Time will tell.

Nevertheless, the ceremony went well. The elk and deer had been well prepared for the ceremony ahead of time and all of my cuts were clean and true. For some reason the cooks were nowhere to be found once it was their turn to take over the animals and start cooking the food for the harvest feast. Chieftain Tukums gathered all five of us together and asked us to search for them, and thanks to Gwen and her dog we found their tracks in no time. With the tracks leading out of town and into the forest, we were tasked with the job of bringing them back. Alive, preferably.

While we ventured into the forest, I saw Bareris slip into the mind of his bird multiple times. Using the bird for scouting is a fine idea, but I don't understand how he can leave his body behind so willingly. I will admit I'm somewhat jealous that the ancestors have not seen fit to grant me such a power, but leaving your body behind like that seems quite dangerous to me. Should anyone approach him with ill intent, he would be totally defenseless and left completely at their mercy. I suppose he feels safe while among the group though, so we must be growing on him. I must remember to ask him however, what it feels like when the animal is knocked unconscious or dies while they are sharing a mind. It seems like a most troubling experience.

And ironically enough just as I was thinking those very words, the young wizard suddenly threw his eyes open as in shock. He pointed along a small path going off the main trail deeper into the forest and mumbled something I half paid attention to, as I still found myself somewhat lost in my chain of thought. Brokkr and Dreck headed first down the path, with the rest of us following closely behind with weapons and minds on the ready. Suddenly Brokkr, his keen northern eyesight never failing him, spotted an enemy and engaged him in combat.

The all too familiar sound of steel against steel and weapons smashing into shields quickly filled the air, and Dreck took a hit that drained a fair bit of color from his face. Brokkr traded blows with one of the enemies, while Bareris and Gwen managed to down another. Just as he fell to the ground however, two more came running out of the forest to engage us drawn to our location by the sounds of combat. As they came running out of the bushes however, I summoned a pure blast of eldritch power that struck their other friend square in the chest and sent him flying. Seeing the numbers change from a fair fight to a four-on-two, they tried to make a break for it the, but before they could get away Bareris was upon them and they both fell screaming to the ground enveloped in the flames spewing forward from his hands. Knowing the chieftain would rather have prisoners than corpses, we were quick to stabilize and help the men back from the brink of death before we bound them up with some rope.

I write this as we take a quick rest and the others plan our path further into the forest. Clearly we must keep our eyes open and our senses with us to avoid further ambushes, but we have no idea still who these men swear their loyalty to, what they are doing out here nor if they are connected to the runaway slaves. Only time will tell.

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