http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMKKCVPOGh8

Some quality electro is always a treat. 

On a related note,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9y9Snt1g5E

The sad truth is that only games with huge fanbases (by which I mean Half-Life huge) ever get good mods. Even though  and LA-MULANA are rather popular, they're still pretty niche compared to something like big-name FPS's.

I mean, in all honesty, before I put any great effort into a Cave Story mod, I'd rather make a "real" game. Or The Underside. 

I didn't say that and I'm not that young.
Plus, there is a difference between being good at drawing/spriting and having an interesting/charming art direction or style for a game.
What I was saying is that, most of the time, ASCII graphics are a case of "programmer art".

Fair enough, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with programmer art though.

What did it do?

Make roguelikes more accessible. Sorry, I should have been clearer. 

I think instead of trying to make Rogue-likes modernized, or otherwise more aesthetically appealing, people should try to apply design fundamentals of Rogue-likes into their games more often.

You mean like Spelunky? That'd be great. And with procedural generation and stuff becoming more and more popular these days, it won't be long till someone makes a game that "breaks" roguelikes to the mainstream (Diablo doesn't count, most Diablo players I met don't even know what a roguelike is).

Anyway, IVAN makes great use of graphics. I actually think parts of it look genuinely good. I also like the "default" Nethack tileset (the one with the blue-ish floor tiles), not because it's particularly good looking, but because it's minimal enough that I can think of the characters and objects as "icons" rather than sprites. It's also very readable and doesn't compromise the gameplay.

I did that with Pinknoise. It had more to do with losing faith in the project though, and regaining it later. But still, I played it 2 weeks ago and I honestly didn't enjoy it. Not because I think it sucks but because of the things I mentioned in my earlier post.

What's so bad about tvtropes? Am I missing something? 

I was looking up logos, and turns out that Pygame's logo isn't much better:

Well, at least it doesn't reference an internet meme and somehow symbolizes what Pygame is about. The new GM logo on the other hand is mainly dumb.

I mean, I can't really understand the "I'm never using GM again because of this" crowd, but still...

I didn't read the thread thoroughly, so I don't know if this has been said already, but I find it very difficult to judge whether my own games are fun, mainly because I can't play them the way I would play games by other people.

When I play one of my own games, my thoughts usually aren't "hey that's is a cool boss" or "dude, this puzzle is just impossible", but "Oh, I did this there",  "I coded this that way" or "Does this work the way it's supposed to?". I automatically get into this hyper-analytical "playtesting" mentality that makes enjoyment in the normal sense almost impossible. Besides, by the time I finish a game I've usually tested it so much I'm kinda sick of it anyway.  

Albert lives in Vienna, Austria and has been using Game Maker for almost 5 years.  Albert is a big technology fan and wants to be a Game Developer when he leaves college.  Please join me in congratulating Albert and thanking ALL of you who submitted so many fantastic designs to the competition.

Holy shit, this guy is from the same country and city as me. 

Diablo already did that, even though it's debatable whether it's a "true" roguelike or not.

(I only just noticed now that if you squint a little you can read "2012" in the squiggles.)

You can also see Lisa Simpson give somebody a blowjob...

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it! 

Yeah, with that color scheme it looks a bit like a WoW spell icon.

How about Flixel? I personally don't have any experience with it but I keep hearing it's good.

Nietzsche has to be the most overrated philosopher of all time.

And I also find that they are usually a cheap alternative for people who can't draw/sprite for shit.

Since when is being good at the visual arts a requirement for making games? 

Maybe it's just me, but when I play Super Mario Bros. I don't imagine a heroic plumber plowing through bricks and battling fierce Koopas, I just see the game as it is.

Agreed. This sort of thing only seems to work for RPG/adventure type games.

Anyway, I play roguelikes (and Dwarf Fortess) almost exclusively in ASCII because most tilesets/frontends either look fucking horrible or hinder the gameplay or, as in the case of Nethack Falcon's Eye shown in the original post, both.
I'm surprised by how many people generally think that bad graphics are better than no graphics. I mean, without any real graphics, you can at least make up your own imagery in your head, whereas you're pretty much "stuck" with bad graphics, unless they're really, really minimal.

BTW: That Link's Awakening pic is from the official walkthrough, which is one of the best-looking walkthroughs I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Serious game is serious.

To be fair, I don't think the old logo looks that good either. In fact, it looks pretty cheap.

Also, I'm almost 100% sure this is somehow fake.

Tamagotchi + Metroidvania: Samus needs food, badly!

The Gothic series does something similar. By the end of the first game, you turn into some kind of demigod but get stuck under a rock (literally!). You get saved by a wizard but lose all your epquipment, not to mention your memory (i.e. experience points), which means you start from zero in the second game.

“Clearly, if Sony tried to use the mark ‘iPod by Sony’ they would hardly expect Apple not to take action to protect their mark ‘iPod’.

All of this is just so... bizarre. Every time I read news on the whole Langdell/Edge thing, my first thought is "this shouldn't even be happening".

Also, I'm not exactly an expert on law, but doesn't all of this stuff he does cost money in some way? Possibly more than he could ever get from Mobigame should he win the legal battle? If that were the case, it'd prove that he's not only greedy but also completely batshit insane.