u/ReaperCrewTim

By now, some of you may or may not be aware of a food establishment known as Wonder. I only became aware of them because I sometimes work near Parkchester. The one in Fordham opened very recently, and my wife and I were intrigued by the thought of ordering from a single location but ordering drastically different things. I had a sinking feeling in my gut whenever I thought about this place for some reason, but I saw a good coupon so I figured even if it was trash, they wouldn't get too much of my money.

I'm creating this post to hopefully reach as many people in or near Parkchester or Fordham as possible: Wonder is a soulless kitchen that puts out mass-produced crap. I would venture to guess that every single thing in the entire food hall has been refrigerated or frozen and reheated. Nothing is made with love, it's all overpriced, and I would be very surprised to find out that there is even one truly standout dish in the whole place.

Something that always bugged me a little is the use of the term "Jack of all trades." Meant to imply someone that can do it all. What gets lost in translation is that the phrase actually goes, "Jack of all trades, and master of none." That's exactly what Wonder is. I can't recommend highly enough that you don't even try the place. No coupon makes it worth it. The food is mediocre, the prices are insane, and the love is just not there.

I've been unable to sleep tonight, and I decided to sit up and just research things that interested me. I found an article stating that Paper Mario just got a native PC port through static recompilation. And right away, I thought, "If it's possible for them, why not for us?" What I found was just awesome.

I found out that a decompilation of AKI wrestling games is already in full swing, and in fact, is being headed by Freem. Yes, that Freem. Freem released a statement with his last update of the Freem Edition of VPW2 that "after this update, this mod will be in the sunset phase of its life." He cited the reason as extreme burnout, which is scary to hear, until you hear why he was experiencing burnout.

Basically, what he was doing -- and indeed what all of our awesome modders are doing right now -- is taking and modifying an existing package. They can change moves, wrestlers, attire, etc. to something different, but all of these processes are replacements, not additions, because by the time you try to test the mod, everything has to fit perfectly in the container that it came in. So if the game sees a section of the move set where 44 moves are available to the creator, then 44 is the number. There will not be a number 45. If there are 18 CAW slots, there will never be a number 19. This is the limitation of modifying an N64 package. This was the source of his burnout. Trying to accomplish bold new things in an environment that doesn't want to welcome his change.

Decompilation is something else. Decompilation will give our creators the freedom to do whatever they want with the game. If a move set section has 44 moves available, the game can be programmed to say "44 moves are available to you right now, but the limit for how many moves can be added to this section is however much space is available on your hard drive." 44 can become 90, or 900, or 9,000. Same with CAWs. We won't need to overwrite existing wrestlers in order to add in more creations. We can just program it and will it into existence.

Freem's current decompilation project, which unfortunately does not have a target date, is more work on Virtual Pro 2, which is the big brother to WrestleMania 2000 and the Japanese twin brother of No Mercy. I feel like I heard a collective groan when I said that, but here's why you shouldn't fret: Once the game is decompiled, the things that can be done are limited only by your imagination. So if we wanted to lift the story mode, ladder matches, the backstage areas, or ANY OTHER ASSET from No Mercy and place it into Virtual Pro, it can be done.

Freem is doing this as a passion project, as the leader of the AKI-Club GitHub project. He has chosen not to accept donations to the project for multiple reasons. Most notably is to keep Nintendo from crawling up his anus and living there. His other reason is that he doesn't want this passion to become a job, because a side effect to it being a job is that people will get pushy and demand updates, results, and target dates. With no donations, he works at his own pace with no pressure, and there is no repercussion to him walking away from the project entirely.

Assuming he does stick with the project, it could be completed today, or it could take another five years. Maybe longer. But the fact is that we AKI wrestling fans are among the loudest communities in the N64 realm, and our pleas for decompilation of one of these games are not going unheard. There is an awesomely capable group of coders working on this project that could give us a wrestling game experience beyond our wildest dreams, and I'm so excited about it that I wrote up a long ass post on Reddit to express myself.

I hope you're as excited for this project as I am. If you are, just support Freem and AKI-Club however they need it. Pay attention to their GitHub, contribute code, etc. We can't support them financially, but we can let them know how deeply we appreciate their devotion to making something amazing for this holdout community, the one that knows that for the last 26 years, nobody has managed to create a wrestling game that could recapture the magic of the N64 era.

EDIT: SOLVED. SOLUTION AT THE END OF THIS POST.

Hi folks. Long time listener, first time caller. So, I'm trying to install CFW on my PS3, it's the fat boy with 4 USB ports with PS2 compatibility. I'm at the part where it's time to boot the system into safe mode so I can install the Evilhen 4.93, but no matter how many times I try to hold the power button the correct way to get me into safe mode, it doesn't happen.

The closest I get is that sometimes it'll ask me if I want to use the HDMI connection, but when I select yes, it just boots the PS3 as normal after that, and the normal boot won't allow me to install the CFW since 4.93 is already installed.

Any thoughts? I'd hate to give up on this project.

SOLUTION: What I was failing to do that none of the guides really explained in full detail:
If your system is powered on: Hold the power until the system turns off. Release the button. Hold the power until the system turns on, then beeps, and maybe beeps a few more times before it turns off fully. Once it turns off fully, release the button, hold it again. Very shortly, you should hear a beep, and then the double-beep of safe mode.
If your system is not powered on: Hold the power button until the system turns on, then beeps, then beeps maybe a few more times before it turns off fully. Once it turns off fully, release the button, hold it again. Very shortly, you should hear a beep, and then the double-beep of safe mode.

Basically, I didn't realize that the system had to do one full power cycle before you could enter safe mode. I thought I could enter it directly from powered off state, which is not the case. The full power cycle was the key that I was missing. Once you make it into safe mode, you'll be able to install your 4.93 CFW over the 4.93 OFW.

Thank you to everybody that tried to help.

Hey y'all, I'm new here. So, okay. Anyway, I drunkenly ordered a couple of different items a few nights ago. The delivery dates got spread out over multiple days. Three of them were to be delivered today. One was delivered earlier today, and the other two were meant to be delivered later on.

The second package showed up, and it's missing one of the items. Ah, God damn it. So now what? I told Amazon about it, and they offered me a refund. I said "I don't want a refund, because I didn't pay for it because it's a Vine item. I want the item." They said they couldn't send out a replacement because they weren't the seller for that item.

They kept asking me if I wanted a refund no matter how much I kept explaining the situation, and I finally said "Fine, refund then." I knew I wasn't gonna get any money back, but I figured they'd at least remove it from my Vine history since I clearly never put my hands on the item.

Unsurprisingly, my Amazon account won't show that the order was refunded, probably because the system wouldn't allow the CS rep to issue me a refund of $0.00.

So, what the hell happens now? I can't get the item again, because I'm damn sure not going to pay for it, and I can't review it because, *where is it?*