Quotes

“Parrying Temporal Thunders? You got the hot air to mouth off on THAT? I’ve parried Gill’s angel super, hell I’ve parried his resurrection super and he fell to the ground. I can parry a Raging Demon. I’ve hacked into the SFA3, X-Men and KOF games and added the parry and parried their asses to kingdom come. I’ve parried crayons thrown at me by kindergarten kids. Hell you can come at me with your @#g Toyota Corolla and I’ll parry it. Come back and brag when you’ve memorized each character’s artificial intelligence and learned to parry every move the computer throws out. Then maybe you can start mapping the human brain and start playing against some REAL players.”

“Nuke ’em till they glow, then shoot ’em in the dark.”

“The price of total freedom is total anarchy. The price of total security is total enslavement.”

“Friends may come and friends may go, but enemies accumulate.”

“If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by the page number.”

“Human Error – Because The Computer Doesn’t Lie”

“A Smith & Wesson always beats four aces.”

“A neurotic builds castles in the air. A psychotic lives in castles in the air. And a psychiatrist is the guy who collects the rent.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

“The weak and the failures shall perish and they shall be given every possible assistance.”

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“What does ‘it’ mean in the sentence ‘What time is it?’?”

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” – Clive James

“There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing he was educated in.”

“By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect ‘Hungry’…” – Gary Larson

“War is not about who is right, it is about who is left.”

“You might as well stand and fight because if you run, you will only die tired” – Vern Jocque – Sei Shin Kan.

“In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few” – Suzuki

“Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?”

“If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the door?”

“I’m gonna go watch the Brady Bunch, and I don’t mind telling you I find four of those children very arousing.”

“Forged from the essence of awesome.”

“Maybe greed is good, but generosity is better.”

The Law of Inverse Ninja Strength

The strength of any one ninja is inversely proportional to the number of ally ninja able to assist the original ninja.

“In martial arts movies, a lone man will easily clear the room of dozens of ninjas. It was certainly strange that I’ve probably taken out thousands of ninjas in my two and a half decades of video gaming, isn’t it? Aren’t ninjas supposed to be nigh unstoppable? Hey, they are every time I ever control a ninja in a video game.

For the most basic example, let’s consider the Shinobi games. Your solitary ninja takes out the entire ninja population of Japan in the various Shinobi games – that’s obviously only possible if the solo ninja is that much more powerful than the massive group of ninja. Even better, look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games. At most, you have four ninjas on your side, counting yourself. And you have a whole host of wimpy ninjas that can’t take nearly the number of hits you can take. However, as you eliminate more of them, they start taking more hits. Finally, when it’s just down to the Shredder, he’s the only ninja left against four of you, and suddenly you’re succumbing to one-hit kills and taunts about becoming soup.

Think, in games where you don’t get to choose your party members, you only get one ninja. For the longest time, it was thought it was to increase the “cool” factor of the character, a la Edge or Shadow in the Final Fantasy series, Nel in Star Ocean 3, or Scias in Breath of Fire IV. However, the simple fact is, too many ninjas is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Look at Final Fantasy Tactics, for example. If you make a party of all ninjas, you’re only going to defeat the most incompetent of foes. But if you only bring one ninja, you’ll discover that he can deal with so many things nobody else can handle.

Of course, if you want the ultimate proof of the Law of Inverse Ninja Strength, one source stands head and shoulders above the rest – The Tick, in his original comic book incarnation. When the Tick dealt with the Night of a Million Zillion Ninjas, who do you think came out on top? Naturally, the Tick did. But it wasn’t his nigh-invulnerability, his apparent insanity, or any of those factors. Quite simply, when you gather a million zillion ninjas together, they’re going to be as effective as a wet sponge against global warming.

Now, the important thing is not just to know of the Law’s influence, but to use it well. Never leave one enemy ninja alive – take them all out in one shot, while they’re all weak.

The last ninja standing will gain immense power. Never bring many of your own ninja – one if you can get away with it and always be ready to cut down a ninja on your side at the earliest convenience. After all, if they’re going to run a cliche into the ground, you might as well abuse it.”

Originally written and posted on the very awesome (and very dead) Netjak website.