The Useless Facts Thread

[lgb]

Breaking news! GRIN pulled a Toaplan on us.

In Battle Garegga, the stages are fixed at all times unless you turn on Stage Edit. In Batrider and Bakraid, the stages actually come random unless you turn on Stage Edit and this is why the Bakraid OST (at least) mentions this. However, turning SE on in these two games will allow you to pick a particular order always. Thus, the following is the "default" stage order:
-Batrider: M.CITY->AIRPORT->SKY HIGH->SEWAGE->HIGHWAY->Z.CITY->BUILDING
-Bakraid: FOREST->DESERT->NAVAL->SEASIDE->RAILROAD->CLOUD->VALLEY->EMPIRE

In Batrider and Bakraid, the penultimate bosses (stage before the last) are fought to the surface battle tune. I'm not sure about Garegga, but I think it's the same.

Speaking of the Bakraid OST, the tracks appear to be printed twice: the first set is in stereo, the second is in mono (taken straight from the PCB); on the OST back cover, the latter is tagged with the situations.

Speaking of OSTs, a selection of Banjo-Kazooie music was released in Japan under the Nintendo Sound Series label. Nice cover.

Cho Ren Sha 68K had a very comprehensive OST released for it, containing the music from an apparent spinoff (Chobi Ren Sha, also composed by Loser Kashiwagi), a complete CRS remix from Loser, and various other CRS remixes.

The beta versions of HellSinker had tate.

[neorichieb1971]

Ok smart asses.. I got some questions I always wanted answering -

First to the Americans - Why is Arkansas pronounced Ark-in-saw?

To the scientists - Why does light not show in space? Example, if I shine a flashlight/torch in the dark in the woods, its beam from the source to where ever its pointed is visible to the naked eye.. Yet the sun shines the most light and yet you don't see its rays between itself and Earth. Before anyone says its because its a vacuum or there are no particles to light up, your basically saying that light what makes us see is invisible, so I don't think thats the right answer.

Have any poisoness properties been known to have a good taste?



Useless fact - Motorycycle tires/tyres like corners, cars tires/tyres like straights. Road tyres have grips to allow the rain water to filter into them. Without them the water would try to disperse and if a fast enough speed was reached the tyres would literally leave the road. On a hot sunny day the perfect tyre is one without any grooves at all.

Once you were a sperm and you won. Well done.

[Ed Oscuro]

First to the Americans - Why is Arkansas pronounced Ark-in-saw?

I thought it was pronounced "ark-an-saw."

To the scientists - Why does light not show in space? Example, if I shine a flashlight/torch in the dark in the woods, its beam from the source to where ever its pointed is visible to the naked eye.. Yet the sun shines the most light and yet you don't see its rays between itself and Earth. Before anyone says its because its a vacuum or there are no particles to light up, your basically saying that light what makes us see is invisible, so I don't think thats the right answer.

Because it's a vacuum and there are no particles to scatter the light. Light has properties of both waves and particles, but a photon will happily travel along unobtrusively unless it hits something and is deflected.

Have any poisoness properties been known to have a good taste?

Well, alcohol is mildly toxic, and $300K McMansions seemed to appeal to people during the recent real estate bubble; credit default swaps too.

Once you were a sperm and you won. Well done.

Easiest 1cc ever.

Actually, that reminds me of a recent Useless Research Finding Fact: Sperm from the same father will swim together to help each other along. It's like they're all from the same high school and they want to beat the others.

[neorichieb1971]

So light is only visible upon deflection of an object. So light is quite clever in the sense that it only works when there is something to light up.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

To save money and wear 'n' tear on the brown colored UPS delivery trucks, UPS drivers don't make left hand turns.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BIL]

In Batrider and Bakraid, the penultimate bosses (stage before the last) are fought to the surface battle tune. I'm not sure about Garegga, but I think it's the same.

It is, but then Junkey Monkey is a surface boss, anyway.

[neorichieb1971]

To save money and wear 'n' tear on the brown colored UPS delivery trucks, UPS drivers don't make left hand turns.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

~whats the significance of that statement?

[Stormwatch]

I thought it was an urban legend, but it's true. Doing a left hand turn takes idle time, therefore gas. So, before the truck goes out to do a delivery, they calculate the route with the fewer left hand turns.

[lgb]

"Deathsmiles" is one word, as well as "Dariusburst".

In Batrider and Bakraid, the penultimate bosses (stage before the last) are fought to the surface battle tune. I'm not sure about Garegga, but I think it's the same.

It is, but then Junkey Monkey is a surface boss, anyway.

I'm pretty sure they're all supposed to be, I just worded my post to be a safeguard.

[BIL]

Oh, thought you meant Batrider/Bakraid used the surface BGM regardless of the penultimate boss' type. Yeah, all three of those bosses are ground targets.

[esreveR]

Have any poisoness properties been known to have a good taste?

Amanita mushrooms (I think that's how they're spelled) actually taste great. One guy cooked a dish with them, ate it, spat it out, and admitted it was indeed delicious.

In Metal Slug, the aliens that debuted in MS2 are officially referred to as "Mars People".

In Metal Slug Advance, the first Rebel you come across will never hit you if you stand still. Ever.

According to MAME, I've played Raiden Fighters Jet for 93 hours, 4 minutes, and 15 seconds. And I had reset it only three months ago!

Never eat peach pits. Apparently they contain arsenic. I once ate one not realizing this, and yes, it does taste like bitter almonds. Fortunately I survived...and I didn't even realize I had been poisoned!

The Saturn port of Metal Slug has some items not present in the NeoGeo version. Additionally, there are some effects not present there either. For example, depending on whether you took the top or bottom path on the final mission's bridge, a Melty Honey may appear, which acts normally in the NeoGeo game, but in the Saturn version, the missiles it fires are actually blown away in the wind!

Ever since Metal Slug X, fire effects have been done by a different spriter, apparently. They still keep the original effects for their older sprites and edits of them.

[Stormwatch]

Donald Duck's car is a "1934 Belchfire Runabout". Its real life inspiration is the 1938 American Bantam.

[ncp]

In Dodonpachi, with laser type, when you laser, a dragon(?) head appears for a couple frames.

[Specineff]

GaijinPunch seems to be the forum member most often quoted in other member's signatures.

[worstplayer]

HDMI is actually just DVI with rearranged pins. It only exists so you can't use computer cables for your TV and have to buy more expensive ones.

Hardware tesselation, a "big new feature" of DirectX11 was already in DirectX9, and even appeared in a couple of Xbox360 games. Microsoft lies.

Only 7 cores of PS3 Cell processor actually work. 8th one is there, but it isn't connected to anything. Sony lies.

The Wii remote has only 5 axis, it can't detect moving forward and backward. Nintendo lies too.

Quad Damage only does triple damage in Quake Live. You can't even trust videogames these days...

Bioware was originally formed to make medical software. That would explain the mess that is Dragon Age interface.

Atari 2600 is the only gaming system with no input lag. It has no video memory and output of the processor is sent directly to the TV (that's where "racing the beam" comes from). Everything else has at least 16ms lag.

A pizza with depth A and radius Z has a volume of Pi*Z*Z*A. At least math still works.

[guigui]

In Dodonpachi, with laser type, when you laser, a dragon(?) head appears for a couple frames.

Nice, as in your avatar ?

[EPS21]

HDMI is actually just DVI with rearranged pins. It only exists so you can't use computer cables for your TV and have to buy more expensive ones.

HDMI carries an audio signal as well as video, whereas DVI typically doesn't (it can technically if you plug in some HDMI adaptors for it, but that kinda defeats the purpose).

HDMI also has the advantage of not tangling on every damn cord like a fish hook that DVI and VGA do with their screw-in connections. Vastly superior for that reason alone imo

[Stormwatch]

The idea of countless ruined investors leaping to their deaths after the 1929 stock market crash is pretty much an urban legend. Only four suicides related to the crash are confirmed, two by jump.

[ED-057]

Atari 2600 is the only gaming system with no input lag. It has no video memory and output of the processor is sent directly to the TV (that's where "racing the beam" comes from). Everything else has at least 16ms lag.

Meh. The 6507 does have the tedious job of stuffing display data into registers in more-or-less real time. But, as long as it is busy doing that it is probably NOT polling the input. And it has no interrupts. It's possible for it to continously poll the input and change something on the display during a single scanline, but that is true for a bunch of other systems as well (ever hear of raster effects?)

[worstplayer]

(ever hear of raster effects?)

Heh, totally forgot about those. Only seen them used to make colored borders on the C64. Is there any game that actually uses them as a part of the gameplay?

[ZOM]

The Wii remote has only 5 axis, it can't detect moving forward and backward. Nintendo lies too.

Technically, it could. If you go to your Wiimote's calibration screen you can see how the lights get smaller, respectively bigger, while changing the Wiimote's distance to the sensor bar.

[worstplayer]

The Wii remote has only 5 axis, it can't detect moving forward and backward. Nintendo lies too.

Technically, it could. If you go to your Wiimote's calibration screen you can see how the lights get smaller, respectively bigger, while changing the Wiimote's distance to the sensor bar.

That also changes as you move the wiimote left and right so it's not usable (well, you could calibrate it from various positions , but I doubt it would be reliable).

[ZOM]

^^True.

[esreveR]

Abul Abbas dies.

[Dragoforce]

Woddy Harrelsons father, Charles Harrelson was convicted for murdering a judge and sentenced to life in prison in 1979. He died at the ADMAX prision in Florence 2007.

Sorry if this is common knowledge, I had no idea myself.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Those red colored RedBox kiosks that you see everywhere in the USA was originally developed by McDonald's to see if it was feasible to rent DVDs alongside selling McD's food back in 2002 in order to generate more traffic (and thus more profit). Eventually, Coinstar bought the RedBox company outright. It took lots of trial & error to reach the magical pricepoint of renting out a DVD for a dollar per day, thus RB was on to something. On a typical RB rental kiosk, it's powered by Windows XP Professional OS (although that is running in the background, the daily rental customers don't see that displayed, of course).

Coinstar is seriously pondering giving Blu-Ray rental discs a try with it's RB subsidairy considering the growing number of customers whom have since upgraded to that high-def disc format. Some movies are rentable 28 days later due to signed deals between RB and major Hollywood film studios even though those same movie titles have been released previously weeks before on DVD, Blu-Ray, digital d/l, On-Demand (digital satellite & cable) & Pay-Per-View (digital satellite & cable) formats.

According to RB, it says that 23% of all DVD rentals nowdays are from it's own RB rental kiosks, up from 16% in 2009. That has got to affect Blockbuster's profit margins, indeed, when it comes to their more expensive DVD rentals. There was a time when the two American based video rental chains known as Major Video and Blockbuster Video co-existed. Blockbuster ended up acquiring Major Video chain and thus, it was no more. This was back in the late 1980s. There's even a Blockbuster rental store parody scene in "The Last Action Hero" flick.

It was possible to rent the Atari Jaguar 64-bit system at your local Video Park rental store back in 1993-1994. Of course, they required that you pay a $250.00 USD deposit + the standard console rental fee just case you decided to keep it for yourself rather than return it. The real cincher was that the Video Park associate at the front counter would ask for your social security number (SSN) to identify you on their POS (Point Of Sale) systems if you wanted to rent a movie or even just a simple VHS movie rental. Just fucking crazy but true. Just the perfect recipe for "identity theft" back in the early 1990s. Even Major Video, Blockbuster Video nor Hollywood Video rental franchises never asked for your SSN when signing up for free membership for rental purposes. "The Video Park" rental franchises were the exception though.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[neorichieb1971]

Does anyone know how Braun electric tooth brushes charge up?

[Skykid]

Once you were a sperm and you won. Well done.

Easiest 1cc ever.

Best post ever!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Does anyone know how Braun electric tooth brushes charge up?

They charge by using the electric induction charging method which is similar to how pace makers operate without the need to expose wires to make them work. If the electric toothbrush unit is seperated too much from it's charging base, it won't charge in the first place. The older electric toothbrush based induction chargers made in the late 1980s gave off a slight hum and/or vibration when charging but today's newer induction chargers are virtually silent due to better manufacturing methods and components used to make them.

The cordless electric toothbrushes still are powered a by single old-school Ni-Cad based battery as well. Wouldn't it be better to upgrade to a longer lasting battery such as a Li-Po based one? Of course, that would have to mean making an all new induction charger made to charge a Li-Po battery rather than a Ni-Cad battery setup...which naturally leads to higher manufacturing costs and results in "passing the buck" to the consumer (meaning a higher MSRP due to newer battery technology).

Braun Factoid: In the USA, Braun produced electric toothbrushes are sold under the "Oral-B" brand name moniker.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[EPS21]

The longest title length for a single anime episode goes to the 26th episode of the first season of School Rumble:

A sudden "farewell"... a lost labyrinth... who are you?... tell me. My feelings are "Passing each other" "unrequited love". Reaching, my thoughts. Probably I only have one chance in youth`s single page. This is my last chance, I want to confirm... your feelings. The words you say, the thoughts you think. On the day of the confession, that day of eternity, but... continuing forever, is our time right "now". And till tomorrow... "School Rumble Forever"

In the second season of the show, they then proceed to have the shortest possible title length of their final episode:

.