The Wii’s control scheme lends itself to more than waggle if you do it right in certain genres of games, such as the genre of… cheerleading! But do some games do this better than others, or do they all fail? I’ll go through a couple of the most high-profile Wii cheerleading types of games: All Star Cheerleading, High School Musical 3, Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour and We Cheer. I have played these four games in singleplayer and multiplayer with a (b-boy) friend for a different perspective on the genre.



All Star Cheerleading
Also known as All Star Cheer Squad in the US, this game takes itself the most serious as a cheerleading game. Consulted by cheerleading choreography hero Tony G (of Bring It On fame), you are put in the position of a hard working male or female cheerleader. The gameplay is pretty simple, as it is in most games of this kind: a bar shows icons moving from right to left, and you have to do the right movement or pose when it passes the critical area on the left side of the bar.



What you do is: move the wiimote and nunchuck to the right position at the right time. So, you will have arrows pointing up, down, sideways or front/back and you just have to mimic those positions. However, this can be pretty hard to do if your big manly or nerdy arms are long, making it the single most important reason that this game seems to be made for girls under the age of 13. I just can’t move my right arm to the right and my left arm to the top-left without worrying about my nunchuck cord’s length, sorry.

What’s worse, the controls are shit. They don’t register most of the time or they register while you are doing something completely different. Because the gameplay is made up of chunks of positions, you don’t really get the feeling you are taking part in a dance routine either. To be fair, DDR and Guitar Hero/Rock Band have their note charts made up of separate notes or positions to, but they are made in such a way that you “flow” from one position to the other as you become better at the game. In here, it’s more like a technique chart with you as a confused adult male in the body of a confused adult male. No lolis were available for this review.

A good feature of this game is the ability to make your own move sets. If you are serious about cheerleading, this may be an interesting feature for you, Nick Chester. However, the animations of the models on screen are horrible, and the way the developers tried to make the background dancers lifelike while failing, doesn’t really convince either. In the end, you just move as wooden as the dancers you are looking at and you feel like a Kyousuke Nanbu while doing it (offtopic: what happened to that guy anyway, his account seems non-existent now!).

All in all, All Star Cheerleader/Cheer Squad is crap. You do not feel like a cheerleader at all, it’s not really fun to do in single or multiplayer. We ended up just feeling bored in multi, which is a terrible thing for a Wii game. At the least, you have to laugh at how silly or ridiculous it is. This was not the case for this game :P



High School Musical 3: Senior Year
However, that was the case for HSM3: the game. We made it through the first of around three songlists before we reached the breaking point. In this game, you have 6 locations that are mapped to 3 to the left (nunchuck up-middle-down) and right (wiimote up-middle-down). Dots or lines move from the center to these positions, and you have to move your right or left arm to those positions in time to score points. Once in a while you have to do a WILDCAT POSE! This means you unlock your inner douche and make some metrosexual pose as shown onscreen. Hold this pose and you fill up the onscreen figure for maximum points.

That’s basically the whole game. You get to see some cheesy on-screen action, some of which came from HSM3 the movie (which I watched for this review). While most of the music is from HSM3, some music from HSM1 and HSM2 is also included (I also watched most of HSM1…). In multiplayer, the focus is on getting the dots and lines of your specific color for points. Get enough, fill a bar and unleash an attack on the other player so their moves don’t register for a while. It does keep the game kind of fun and competitive, so it’s a nice addition to the usual multiplayer modes.



One side effect of playing this game is that you will actually recognize songs when you watch the movie afterwards. I can only guess at the educational effect this would have on a 12 year old girl that has seen the movie 5 times and got this game for Christmas from her cool uncle. It would probably involve her uncle having to take seat…

This game is also on the 360, which probably would require you to use the analog stick in the 6 directions. The cheevos were too hard to whore it, so I will never know. All in all it does its job as a movie game for the target audience. It’s not hard, not too easy and it can be quite fun when playing it multiplayer. It’s still High School Musical on the Wii though, and you still have to do Wildcats poses.




Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour
This game follows the same format as All Star Cheerlearding and fails even harder. There is not a whole lot to say that isn’t apparent from watching a vid like this:

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The gameplay is lame, half the stuff still doesn’t register and the animation is wooden. Also, there are a lot of invisible walls around things like racks of clothing or boxes of shoes. No Euphoria physics when stepping over a box of shoes? Weak…

Worst of all, this game makes Miley Cyrus look like not-jailbait. No, not the kind you illegally download, perv! Just an unfappable version of Miley, quite the achievement and double the fail.



We Cheer
Last but not least, We Cheer. While All Star Cheerleading was a THQ title/side project for the tween girl crowd and HSM3 was a movie tie-in, We Cheer is an actual solidly produced Namco Bandai title. Really! With anime eyes and a creepy western/japanese mix of anime character design, it feels much more like a videogame from the moment you start it up.

They key element that sets apart We Cheer is that it makes you do ridiculous moves, but it’s really fucking hard to do them properly. In a way, it’s like DDR or Guitar Hero in that some time to get the dexterity to pass the harder songs. You don’t ask your non-gamer friend to play DDR on Heavy, or to play any Metallica song on Expert guitar or drums.

In We Cheer, you use two wiimotes so you don’t have any issues with cord lengths or anything. On screen, stars move in rainbow formations that you have to follow one-on-one at the exact right speed. You can move them in any direction in a 2D plane, or towards/away from you. This way, you are basically doing what All Star Cheerleading failed to do: dancing with pompoms/wiimotes.



I don’t know how the girl/guy does it in this video, but it’s really fucking hard!! You have to match the movements to fill out a meter in the bottom-right in order to pass a song. Fail to fill it, and you fail the song. There’s no 3 stars or 5 stars, there’s just “fail”, “pass with X points” and “pass like a cheerleader worthy of the quarterback’s cock”.

Most importantly, it’s one of the few Wii games where the motion controls make you feel like you are actually doing something in your living room that is like what you see on your screen. Wii Sports already did this to an extent, but you could waggle through most of it if you wanted. You have to make some pretty wide moves all over the place in We Cheer, so that option is off the table. If you know a girl that thinks Wii Fit will be a good workout, get her We Cheer instead because it will make you sweat like a dirty pig.


Apparently, this is a cheerleader

Multiplayer is harder because you’ll need four wiimotes, which I don’t have. Still, watching a friend play this game provides many many lulz. Imagine seeing a friend do all the dances of 70’s Hollywood musicals… to Hilary Duff music. It’s as funny to watch as it is shameful to be seen playing this game on your own.

You get to interact with some random cheerleaders before every song, with some of them going “something something EL-OH-EL” which is always nice. Your career mode is split over a number of unlockable locations that each have around 10 songs to choose from. The difficulty requires you to put in some serious time to see all the songs in the game, and it’s pretty good value in this regard. If you play DDR, you know it can make you pretty quick on your feet after a couple of months/years, and this game does the same thing for your arms. So if you use DDR for your bottom rock stamina, you can easily use this game for your top rock. Or to fap longer to loli game characters, either way works.



Look, I know this game looks “gay as hell” but if you know someone with a Wii who has a birthday coming up, and there’s no Boom Blox 2 yet, grab this game for cheap and have many lulz. You might be surprised at how well made this game turned out to be. It’s one of the most hardcore games on the Wii in terms of how much effort you have put into it to get ahead, shameful yet fun to do and it even does that whole ‘Wii health’ thing. Some reviewers (1up and Gamepro) have given this game really low scores for being so hard and/or unresponsive. I’ve noticed that it’s actually quite responsive, but requires you to be spot on with the movements. Then again, looking at a 1up video podcast… I’m not surprised they failed at it harder than I did.

To be fair, the game is far from perfect, but there is a lot of untapped potential here. It could easily become a niche game that slowly grows if it had some Arcade version in Japan; weeaboos would fap the hell out of it if it contained some anime loli characters in cheerleader outfits.



Conclusion
Although not as much of a cancer as most family games are for the Wii, these types of cheerleading and dancing games still have a long way to go. While most are badly made or cheap cash-ins for tween girls, We Cheer showed that you can make a really remarkably fun game based on cheerleading if you want to. You just have to balance effort and reward, offer enough modes and progression to make it interesting as a game, and create a core gameplay that is there to stay. DDR did it, Guitar Hero did it, and apparently there’s still room for more. Seriously though, you read through all of this? Congratulations :)

Wildcats yeah!

/wrists

Also, here is some delicious jb Miley Cyrus that I have heard was missing from this blog:

Who needs Fallout 3 or Fable 2 or the Mirror’s Edge demo when you have glorious games like My Horse and Me 2? Not me! Let me tell you about this game. My Horse and Me 2 is pure win. What other game this holiday season brings you the joy of riding your horse and jumping it?

No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle. -Winston Churchill



Gaming with Horse Power!
The core gameplay revolves around a complex but easy to understand control scheme for the hardcore player. The Left Stick moves your horse in the direction you want, that means that if you hold it to the left, you steer your horse to the left. Of course you don’t play the horse itself, silly goose. You are a rider that is on top of the horse! You can name the horse, which was called Cockbreath in my version. The left and right triggers control your throttle. There are 4 speeds, each denoted by 4 colors in the right side of your screen. A series of impeccably designed training missions guide you through the controls, which is a good thing since it can be pretty hard to use both the left stick and the triggers at the same time.

A lovely horse is always an experience.... It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words. -Beryl Markham

The main part of the game consists of finishing 8 tournaments and maintaining your horse. A tournament has three parts: Dressage, Jumping and Cross Country. Dressage puts you in a rectangular area in an exciting locale such as Béarn. You will have to walk over colored circles that form a path, in the speed that the colors coincide with. After a few of these paths, you will have to do a set of QTE’s by moving the left stick clockwise, counter-clockwise, sideways or up and down. This can be pretty challenging, but after an hour of training you get the hang of it pretty well.

Jumping requires you to follow a dotted line to hurdles and then jump over them. If you play the game on Amateur, the game will jump for you. If you play on the infinitely harder Professional difficulty, you will have to press A to jump yourself. Since I like living the risky life, I carelessly chose the Professional difficulty. Sometimes jumping over a hurdle is hard, if you approach it under a hard angle for instance. Each hurdle has a small area in front of it and you have to press the A button when it turns green. Wait too long, and it will turn red and make you fail the jump. Move while in the area, and you will fail. After some training, you’ll notice that you don’t actually have to approach it under any angle, since the game automatically corrects your angle if you just press A inside the box when it’s green. Easy!

A horse which stops dead just before a jump and thus propels its rider into a graceful arc provides a splendid excuse for general merriment. - Duke of Edinburgh

Cross country is an exciting track through a wild and rugged terrain, shaped by man for the sole purpose of equestrian elegance. In this part of a tournament, you can use the 4th and highest speed: Gallop. You will notice how fast your horse will go by the amount of speed lines that will appear in gallop. It’s fast enough to put Burnout Paradise to shame! While galloping through the course, you will have to jump the occasional hurdle too. It’s not too hard, but it’s a lot of fun to do.



Horse maintenance!
Now, your horse won’t just want to go from tournament to tournament. It has 4 status bars that you will have to manage between tournaments. You will need to ride your horse in a free riding area to keep it relaxed. During the riding, you collect stars that fill a gauge. When it’s full, your horse will be relaxed!

The other 3 status bars are caring, cleanliness and hunger. You must stroke your horse regularly and in all the right places to keep it happy. Actually, the stroking animations are spot on and really well done. It’s not easy to motion capture someone stroking a horse you know? You can also call the vet who will tell you what to look for when caring for your horse. Put a thermometer in its behind to make sure its temperature doesn’t rise above 39.5 degrees Celcius! Also feel the legs for bumps and ticks, and check the breathing rate.

A man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot. - John Steinbeck

Cleaning your horse is fun! You can spray it with water, and it will go “huuuuu, pfflflflflflf” when you spray it in the eyes. You can also brush dirt off your horse. Or use a little jackhammer thing to remove small rocks from the hoofs and then brush the hoofs. Finally you can pick up hay from the ground and put it in a wheelbarrow. You can fit 4 pieces of hay in one wheelbarrow, and there are 16 pieces of hay. After removing the filthy hay, you can fill the stable with fresh hay again. Mmmmm, smell that fresh hay smell!

The last thing you can do is feeding your horse. You will need to select grains, fruit and vegetables depending on how much work your horse has done. The game pretty much pre-selects what you have to select, but ah well. One can’t be too careful when it comes to proper horse feeding!

Horse Fun and Horse stories!
Throughout the course of completing tournaments, you unlock various Fun Games. These include racing against a storyline friend (press A and B till you win), riding a Bull (pretty hard but awesome to watch), navigating a labyrinth without Tom Cruise in it, herding foal into a gate and pushing a big ball through gates. Playing 10 Fun Games nets you 70gs while mastering each Fun Game gives you 10gs per game. Sweet!

He flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions. ~Stephen Leacock

The storyline is an epic tale of farmboy romance, making friends with Katelyn and helping your Uncle keeping his ranch by winning the final tournament. It’s not the best story ever, but it beats the one in High School Musical 3.



Horses on the Wii!
The Wii version is the same in all respects except graphics, sound and controls. Instead of using the left stick to steer, you need to twist the nunchuk and Wii remote to go left or right. This is a bit weird at first, but when you get into it, it feels a bit more like horse riding. Instead of the triggers, you use the B and Z buttons to manage your speed. To jump, you can either press A or flip the remote + nunchuk upwards like you were holding the handles. For the QTE’s, you will have to move the remote to the side or up or down. This is pretty unresponsive and kinda fails.

The graphics lack the next-gen polish of the 360 version. There is a lack of quality to the models, although the animation is the same. The grass is also less detailed in the Wii version. More importantly, there is not 5.1 on the Wii which makes horse riding a lot less fun.

Horse Conclusion!
That’s not to say that this is a perfect Horse riding simulation though. It’s obvious that Tate Interaction, a polish developer, took the FEI license and did with it what it could. The also managed some perky breast physics and bum movements. Although your character’s arms are really thin and blocky, she does ride her horse with girlish majesty. It’s just a shame that you can only customize the name, skin color, eye color and hair color of your protagonist. The same holds true for your horse: you can only choose body and tail/mane colors. Although you can customize your clothing and horse gear a lot with unlockables, it still leaves some stuff to be desired. Maybe we will get to see that in My Horse and Me 3?

O! for a horse with wings! - William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

The biggest drawback is that you do not get the achievement for finishing the game on Amateur if you finish the game on Professional. Since you get 140gs for this, it is very disappointing for the achievement whore. VERY disappointing!

Overall, it’s a solid horse riding game on the 360. The Wii controls are fun when they work, but since the QTE’s are very important in Dressage, you will fail a lot because of the unresponsiveness. It's just no Barbie Horse Adventures, but can any game really ever reach that level of horsey greatness ever again? I think not.


Check this glorious video in phone camera vision with Mumble(TM) audio since there are no trailers or official screenshots of this game at all, not even on the Atari website

Final Grade: 11/10

Interesting note: If you just keep pressing A to start the game, the game won’t select a storage device and those 5 hours you put into it late at night will all be UTTERLY GONE. For more screenshots, check this dutch site..

Stay tuned for a multigame review for two of the greatest Wii titles of 2008!

Welcome to the guide for the Unofficial Destructoid IRC channel. You may have heard about IRC or seen some banners in the profiles of a couple of community members. IRC is an easy way to communicate with other community members, especially if you are bored at work and can't use a headset for Vent.

This guide will cover a variety of things, from what program to use to how to connect and finally what advanced methods you can use. Go to Part 1 or Part 2 depending on if you use a PC or a Mac. If you are new or if you have been in the channel a couple of times, you might want to check out Part 3 for IRC basics. If you are a regular, you should definitely check out Part 4.

Everyone should read Part 5!

Contents:
Part 1: IRC on Windows: mIRC / X-Chat 2 / Trillian / Pidgin / browser based IRC
Part 2: IRC on Mac: Colloquy / Ircle
Part 3: IRC basics
Part 4: IRC advanced methods
Part 5: Rules and etiquette



Part 1: IRC on Windows
If you don't have an IRC client yet, install mIRC or the open source alternative X-Chat 2.
mIRC is recommended because it offers the many options and is pretty easy to get the hang of. Most people in the channel are using it, which is useful in case you need any help with anything. mIRC is not entirely free, so you need to find a not-serial on the internets if you don't want a "Trial over" popup after a week or so. However, if you just wait a couple of seconds and press OK, you can use it as if it were registered so it's not that big of a deal. Other than that, you won't lose any functionality by not entering a serial/purchasing it, so the mIRC trial is still recommended over X-Chat 2 if you are new to the whole thing.

- Go to Section A for a mIRC guide to connecting or go to Section B for an X-Chat 2 guide.

- If you already have Trillian or Pidgin installed, go to the relevant guide section at Section C and Section D.

- If you don't want to install a program, or can't at work, go to the browser-based IRC section at Section E.



Section A: mIRC
0. Start up mIRC!
1. Go to Options



2. Go to the Servers menu
3. Select Dynastynet: Random server from the dropdown box.
4. If it's not there, select Add and fill in the details, or edit the details of some random server, as follows:



5. When you are done, go to the Connect menu in the same Options menu, just 1 option above the Servers menu. Enter your Dtoid nickname here. Insert a fake Full Name and e-mail address. The "Alternative:" box is just a way to have a second nickname in case you can't use your normal nickname for some reason.



6. Close the Options menu and select the little lightning symbol in the top-left.
7. You are now connected to the server, yay! Type in /join #destructoid to join the channel.



A WINNAR IS YOU! It should look a bit like this, only not in glorious 550p :



Note: I'm not ThuperHardcore, these are just old screenshots :P



Section B: X-Chat 2

0. Once installed, open the X-Chat 2 program. You should see something like this:



Fill in whatever names and nicks you want.
1. Dynastynet is not a standard server in the list, so you'll have to add it first.
2. Rename the network to Dynastynet or just Destructoid or something, whatever will make you remember where you kept it. Your new network will stay on the top of the list regardless of name.
3. Edit your just added network.
4. Now enter irc.dynastynet.net where "newserver/6667" used to stand. If it keeps changing back to "newserver/6667", just press enter after typing it in and it will accept it. Add #destructoid at Channels to Join. Ignore the rest of the options if you don't know what they are. It should look like this:



5. Close the edit window and press Connect in the previous window. You will now join the channel:



6. If you close down the program and you chose to not show the server list on startup, it doesn't automatically join the room again. You can select Server > Reconnect to get back to the server list and press connect to get back in action.



SWEET!


Section C: Trillan
Trillian opens the IRC window in a separate window, so there isn't really any reason to use this program over mIRC. You end up with two windows for IM and IRC in both cases.., But here we go anyway:

1. Go to the far-right icon in Trillian and select Manage Connections like this:



2. Alternatively, or if this button isn't there, go to the Manage Connections menu in the usual way:



If IRC is not among the connections to manage, add it under plugins first: Go to Trillian preferences, then select Plugins:



3. Now that you are in the Manage Connections menu, select Add new connection > IRC



4. Enter some name, irc.dynastynet.net:6667 for server, a nickname and some other crap. In this case, the box with ProfPew will be your nickname:



5. Now that you've entered all the info, click on Connect, close the window and go back to the Trillian main window. Click on the IRC button again. Now select Join a channel



6. Enter "#destructoid" in the Join Channel box. If all went well, you should have a new window like this:



AMAZING!



Section D: Pidgin
1. When you first start pidgin, you should see the following window. Click Add.



2. Select IRC as protocol.
3. Enter the nickname you want to chat with and the server info as follows (no that is not a drawing of a boob next to 3!):



4. Save your info. Close the buddy list and the other windows, so you only have the IRC window in front of you. Type /join #destructoid in the bottom box. Press enter.



5. Now you are in the channel, just ignore all the crap tabs that pidgin throws at you and go to the #destructoid tab. You can now talk! But you are still using Pidgin to do it! Booooo...






Section E: Using your browser / Firefox plugin
Java chat
If you don't want a standalone client, you can use the browser-based Java chat at the Dynastynet website. Just enter a name and "destructoid" as the room name. Without the quotes of course..

Mibbit
Another option is to go to mibbit.com and select Dynastynet.net as server. This will take you to a new page where you enter your nick and #destructoid as room:



Mibbit looks a bit better than the Java chat too:



Chatzilla
You can also install the Chatzilla plugin here. After installing it and restarting Firefox (boo!), open the plugin from the Tools menu.



1. Change your nick to your Dtoid nick. If you don't have one, please go back to joystiq.com?
2. Type /server irc.dynastynet.net, press enter

Now type /join #destructoid where you just typed /server and....



SUCCESS!!

If you want to change other things in Chatzilla, look on the official Chatzilla FAQ for more info. After you are done reading this guide of course!





Part 2: IRC on Mac (by Necros)
Unfortunately, the best IRC client, mIRC, is Windows-only. If you're a Mac user, you should be used to dealing with disappointment in exchange for your fancy visual interfaces, so get over it and try out some alternative programs. If you're looking for a mIRC-like experience, your best bet is probably Ircle. The one drawback is that you need to pay for it after 30 days or else you can't do much of anything, so either pony up the cash for a program that's never updated or find a not-crack.

Otherwise, you've got a few options from some lesser-known clients, such as Colloquy and X-Chat Aqua, which operates in a similar manner to its Windows-based cousin. There are probably a few more, but the ones I cover here should be fine. You can also use the same Java-based chat options that are covered in Windows Section E, both the actual website of DynastyNet and mibbit.com; just follow the earlier directions. Also, as far as I know, Chatzilla works fine for the OS X flavor of Firefox, so go to Windows Section E and do the same thing, but with a shiny white mouse.

Section A: Ircle
0. Start up Ircle and you'll see four windows pop up.



For a full sized image of what it looks like, click here

This is the configuration I use, at least. The Console is in the upper left and is where you see all your server messages show up. The Inputline for typing is in the bottom left. The window in the upper right is the Userlist for a channel once you're connected.

1. Below that is the Connections window, which is where you're going to want to start, so select the first connection and click Edit.


2. It will bring up the above window, specifically Identity. Under Server, click on Select. DynastyNet is usually not there, so click Add and make it look like the following screen:



3. Back on your Connections preferences window, fill in your Nickname and Username (just put in the same thing).
4. Enter a Password. This won't do anything right now, but if you decide to register your nickname on the DynastyNet server, this will save you the trouble of adding a password later.
5. Check Auto connect to server. This means you will connect to DynastyNet every time you start up Ircle.
6. At the top of the Connection preferences window, switch to Autoexec:



7. Type in "/join #destructoid" without the quotes, then hit OK.
8. All options should be closed and you should once again only have the first four windows visible. (Keep in mind that anything other than the console and channel windows will only appear if Ircle is on top of your other windows, so as to reduce clutter.) Your nickname should now be listed as the first connection in the Connections window, so click Connect.


For a full sized image of what it looks like, click here

9. See that new window full of green automated text pop up in the upper left corner? That's the Channel window. You're in!


Section B: Colloquy
0. Start up Colloquy and you'll see this start-up window:



1. Enter your Nickname.
2. Under Chat Server, enter "irc.dynastynet.net" without the quotes.
3. Click Details. This will open the rest of the settings.



4. Check Remember this connection.
5. Under Username, enter the same thing as your Nickname, then hit Connect.



6. Your Connections screen will now have the server entered. In the upper right, click on Info.
7. At the top of this new screen, click on Automatic.



8. Check both Connect on launch and Open console on connect.
9. Under Join Rooms, enter "#destructoid" (no quotes), then close the window.
10. On your Connections screen, hit Connect.



11. As you connect, a bunch of notice screen will pop up on your right. You can just click on them to make them disappear. (If they bother you, there's a way to make notices appear in the console.)


For a full sized image of what it looks like, click here

12. The screen above will appear, and you're in! Click the down arrow in the side bar to see who is in the channel, then consider going to preferences to customize the appearance, which can range from iChat-like bubbles to pure old-school text.





Part 3: IRC basics
Now that you are all set up, you're ready to go. You may want to check out a couple of things if you are planning on staying though. If you are not very tech savvy at all, you can ignore this part and just have fun in chatting :)

Registering your nick
You can register your nickname so others can't steal it. Although that almost never happens *cough*, it also allows you to be added to a list of regulars in the channel. Once you become a regular, that is. Luckily, registering is not that hard:

1. Anywhere in mIRC (or other clients): when you are connected, type: "/ns register password email" without the quotes and starting with a /. As long as you start any line of text with a / , it doesn't go into the chat window. Of course, 'password' means your password of choice, and 'email' means your email.

If you are not sure about typing your personal info in the #destructoid room without fucking up, most clients have a status window or tab where you can play around at your leisure without noticing it.

2. You'll get an email with a confirmation, the nick is now yours.
3. To prove you are indeed the owner of the nick, you need to identify by typing /ns identify password. You need to do this every time you connect or change your nick back to the one you identified (after you took on a different nick for instance)! This can get tiresome after a couple of times, so there is a shortcut to this that will be covered in Part 3: Advanced methods.
4. If you are a regular, ask King Necros to add you to the list of autovoiced people and you will receive "voice' whenever you join the channel after you've identified yourself. It sounds harder than it is, just follow the steps and don't worry about it.
5. If you don't identify yourself within 90 seconds after connecting to the server, Dynastynet will gheyly change your nick to Dyn_User923895 or something. This happens so that other people can't steal your nick. If this happens, type /nick your_nickname and you will change your nickname back to what it was. You still have to identify or it will change your nick back to the Dyn_User923427 crap.

Practical IRC workings
In the channel's user list, you will see that some people have a symbol in front of their name. This shows who are Ops (@name), Half-Ops (%name) and Voiced members (+name). Ops and Half-Ops are the IRC police or gods. They might kick you if you fail, ban you if you fail consistently and they set the topic for the channel. Having "Voice" (+) doesn't really do anything except that in the case of spamming, the channel can be set to +m(oderated). This means that all people except for those with Voice can't say anything.

In practice, it's only used for showing who is a regular and who took the trouble to register his nick.

/me commands
Every line you start with /me will let you do an 'action'. This is basically just a way of doing other stuff than just talking. So let's say you type /me sexually assaults Necros' sister, this will results in the line "YOURNAME sexually assaults Necros' sister" in another color. It never gets old.

/nick command
You can change your nickname at any time using the command:
/nick "newnickname"

Karma and quotes
There is a karmabot in the channel: AlsoCocks, which collects quotes and karma.

Karma is a rating you can give to any word. It's just a way to keep track of what the crowd thinks is cool, over a period of time. There is a 20 second delay between karma changes as a spam protection.

The commands are:
!karma "word" : to see the current karma for any thing
!word++ : to add +1 to any thing
!word-- : to add -1 to any thing

If you down the karma Christian Bale, you automatically fail.

Quotes can be added and viewed like this:
!quote : for a random quote
!quote "word" : for a quote containing "word"
!addquote quote : to add a quote. Note that if you copy paste a number of lines straight from irc, only the top line gets added because of the break between lines. You can add anything with any number of words and numbers, as long as there is no enter/break between them.




Part 4: IRC advanced methods
If you are a regular or you want to set everything up straight away, here are some extra tips for when you are using mIRC. There are probably ways to do it in the other programs, but you can probably figure them out yourselves. If you use Chatzilla, go here for a guide.

Auto joining on startup
Go to mIRC Options > Options. Here you can check the boxes for connect on startup and reconnect on disconnection. They do exactly what the words mean. Psh, semantics!




Auto joining the channel on connecting
1. In the same Options window, click on Perform
2. Under "Perform commands:", type "/ns identify password" so that the moment you connect, you will identify yourself
3. Also add "/join #destructoid" here, under the identify line.
4. Check the "Enable perform on connect" box. This will automatically execute whatever commands you entered in the Perform box. Now you'll automatically get into the channel as a registered member in the future!




Aliases (or shortcuts)
An alias is basically a shortcut for a command that can be configured in any way you like. They work as follows: you start by giving a command that you want to use as a shortcut, say /emo. You can tell mIRC to do something whenever you type /emo, for instance you can have it do /msg #destructoid Snaileb makes all emo's cry. This way, whenever you type /emo it will make you say "Snaileb makes all emo's cry" in the channel. Easy no?

First, click on the green /a icon in the 1st row of icons:



Now fill in some crap you want as shortcuts, here are some example ones of the kind that I could use:



This way, you can always reconnect if you get disconnected or something. You can also identify yourself without having to type in all that stuff again. And you can easily change your nick back without typing /nick Nickname.

Play around with this if you want, but try not to disrupt any communication in the channel. If you want, you can always /join #dtoidtest and play around there if you are not sure what something does.


Auto-rejoin and Highlighting:
You can make your nickname show up with a different color in mIRC, to make it easier to notice when someone is asking you something or whatever. It's also a good idea to enable auto-rejoin in case you get kicked for some reason. To enable this:

1. Go to mIRC options (View > Options, or the hammer+folder button near the top-left)
2. Go to the IRC section in the list on the left.
3. Check "Auto-rejoin channel on invite" and "Rejoin channel when kicked" to make things easier
4. Go to the Highlight section under IRC
5. Check "Enable highlighting"
6. Click on "Add" to add your nickname and assign a color and/or sound, whatever you like.
7. You can add as many things as you want with various reasons. If you want to play a sound of a groaning Chad whenever someone says "rape", go right ahead!




Part 5: Rules and etiquette
Ok, this part should be pretty easy. There shouldn't really be a need for any rules for most of the community here at Dtoid, but from now on we will have some anyway. Obey these rules, which are subject to interpretation by the ops (Necros, ProfPew, Coonskin, RiserGlen) and half-ops (Hitogoroshi, itemforty):

1. Don't suck!
2. Don't be a negative nancy "ALL" of the time. Sure everyone get pissed at one thing or another at times, and discussions are encouraged. People are gonna disagree with you. Just don't get pissy and turn into a broken record ;)
This is not just for any person, it's just a general rule to fall back on without the need for endless bitching back and forth.
3. Don't ask for ops, Necros gets enough rape from hot otaku girls so NO, you don't have anything to offer him!
4. Don't abuse karma by upping or downing something. We can just reset it anyway so it's useless to try
5. Don't add lame quotes. Please...
6. This IRC channel is not a safe haven for failed community members. You can set up your own little room and go cry in a corner there.
7. People will rape you many times!

Kicks are for the lulz, for you fucking up while toying around and/or for failing. Usually it's just lulz or a mix between the three. Don't whine about it or you'll break Rule 1.

Finally, let it be known that the IRC channel is unofficial. This means that you don't go and run to CTZ to whine if you failed and got kicked/banned. It also means that no topic is taboo, unless you are just there to hate on Dtoid. Finally, please don't come to bitch about community members you don't like. If you have a problem with someone, deal with that person directly or don't deal with it at all; just don't complain about it everyday.



This concludes the guide on most of the things you will need for IRCing on the Unofficial Destructoid Channel. Feel free to join at any time and have fun!

Thanks Necros for the Mac sections, Coonskin for final feedback and everybody who has been active from the beginning of post-Bluewolf IRC and stuck around to this day!!