A blog, mostly
I wanted to enjoy Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore , and I even did sometimes. But, mostly, it was just too early 2010s. Let me explain. Do you remember when tech was cool, when a job in Silicon Valley was a dream job, and when Google's motto was "Don't be evil" and we believed them? This book solidly lives in that time with those ideas. To me, in this age of enshittification, that makes it pretty…
This is my first weeknote post, and I'm already cheating a little bit by including some things from the week before. Whatever—it's my blog, so I make the rules. Also, as this is my first one, I have no idea how I want to format these yet. I'm sure they'll evolve over time. (Or this will be my first and last weeknote post. Who knows?) Media (See Media for more details, other than concerning movies…
I don't have much context for NES games. I started with the SNES. Maybe all of those old games are insanely difficult. Even many SNES games were pretty hard. But Malasombra feels like it's on another level. At first, I tried playing it on original hardware, but after it took me an hour just to reach the first save point, I switched to emulation so I could use save states. The game looks great and…
I keep trying to play modern games and failing. Occasionally, I'll make it through one and enjoy it. But the game has to have something extra special for me to succeed. Otherwise, I just end up quitting before the end. So I've made three "simple" rules for choosing what games to play. And, feeding off of that, I've come up with a system I'm calling the Personal Recommendation Index . Three Gaming…
I really used to think the Game Boy peaked at Pokemon. As a kid, I even owned The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, but I had no idea how wrong I was, because I never even played it long enough to find the first dungeon. Well, this is it, folks—moment to moment gameplay, puzzles, and story—this is the best Game Boy game I've ever played. I strongly recommend it.
I'm currently (off and on) going through all the "Expanded Universe" Star Wars media, starting with the release of Timothy Zahn's 1991 masterpiece Heir to the Empire . Children of the Jedi was no masterpiece. While it did have it's moments, most of them taking place in the final hundred pages, the majority of this book was simultaneously slow and hard to follow. There were some interesting ideas…
Star Wars: Outlaws was a good game that could have been great. It was close. The bones were great. And so was the muscle. But there was just too much fat on that meat. While the open world and side quests started out fun (the aforementioned fat), both grew tedious eventually. Follow the quest marker, sneak in, do the thing, fight your way out. Again and again. Granted, there were a few side quests…
I wasn't even shopping for a Game Boy Pocket. I was looking for a good deal on a Game Boy Camera. The best price I saw at the time was an auction for a bundle that included the Camera and a pair of Pockets—red and blue—plus a Game Link Cable, GameShark, and Pelican Flip-n-Light. It started with a modest $35 bid, but by evening I was $92 in and the proud owner of way more Game Boy stuff than I had…
I've been trying not to buy new games (the size of my Steam library makes me blush), so despite Titanfall 2 having been on sale for $2 for the better part of the last decade, I haven't played it yet. Then it was gifted to me, so I no longer had an excuse. (Thanks, Jordan!) This game is a game game, if you know what I mean. It's part Halo, part Half-Life, and part Call of Duty. (We'll forgive it…
I often struggle with graphic novels. It's probably because I usually read them on a $50 tablet that's as slow as a slug and not quite big enough. With Lucas Wars it was a little different though. I enjoyed reading it enough to finish it in two sittings. And I even learned a few things (did you know R2 met Jesus?!). While I still prefer the massive tomes that are Paul Duncan's The Star Wars…
I just read Cats Have No Lords 's post Tyranny of the Crawl (as well as the accompanying topic on The Cauldron ), and it got me thinking about the relationship between hexcrawls and pointcrawls. First, in response to the post linked above, I agree! Not every OSR adventure needs to be a hexcrawl. Not even every open-world, choice-heavy adventure needs to be a hexcrawl. And while my preference is…
My only experience with Super Mario World was accidentally (on purpose) overwriting my older cousin's save during a visit after playing for a few hours and not wanting to lose my progress. It didn't matter in the end, because he never let me play it again. So it was back to Super Mario All-Stars for me. Finally getting to play it all these years later has been fun. I hadn't realized back then that…
I'm in the process of collecting cartridges of all the original launch titles for the Game Boy (both Japanese and North American). So far, Yakuman is pretty fun (see my mahjong page for a bit more on that) and Baseball is annoying yet somehow compelling, but Super Mario Land is the first one that I've really enjoyed. It's short (only four worlds with three levels each) and weird (aliens and…
I've heard some folks only allow characters in dnd to wear two magic rings—one on each hand. Well, I say that's dumb. I've got ten fingers, after all (and that's before we even get to toes), so why can't I wear more rings? In the spirit of my bountiful phalanges, I present four TTRPG webrings followed by a well-intentioned sermon and a magic item: The first one I learned about, and I think the…
I've always meant to keep up with, read, and vote on the Bloggies. Sadly, I've only ever managed to read a few of the winners after the fact. Time to catch up, and then do better next year! (Find this past year's Bloggies here .)
This seems incredibly useful (especially in light of my recent abandoning of read later apps). It inspired me to make a bookmarklets page. Find a bookmarklet for using this there.
I blame this post for my recent return to Pokémon via the Nuzlocke Challenge .
I just started playing Pokémon LeafGreen for the Game Boy Advance. It will be my first playthough of a generation 3 Pokémon game. (I'm opting to play the 3DS remake of the mainline gen 3 games because I actually own a physical cartridge.) Since I've already played both the originals for Game Boy and the "Let's Go" remakes for Switch, I've decided to do something different: The Nuzlocke Challenge…
Goodboy Galaxy is a metroidvania released for the Game Boy Advanced on the console's twentieth anniversary (and also available on Steam). It's also the first game I played on my new-to-me GBA (i.e., I don't have much to compare it to, so take my review for what it is). And what a game it was! It's got everything: backtracking, puzzles, platforming, shooting, swords, drills, minesweeper, Star Fox,…
I was introduced to TTRPGs by the bassist of the band I was in right out of college. This was back in 2012 in Akron, Ohio (USA). We started with D&D 4E , premade characters, and a simple three-room dungeon full of combat. I was amazed and instantly obsessed. It was like a video game but using imagination (hah!). Modern Beginnings When it came time to actually start a campaign and make our own…
This topic over on The Cauldron talking about hexes (originally, in reference to this blog post has me thinking about the purpose and, by extension, size of a hex in dnd 1 . To me, hexes have always been spaces on a game board, essentially. Sure, stuff happens inside of them, but the hexes themselves are for counting movement. They're abstractions. But, to my surprise, to some (see this blog post…
Hey, this website is todays Blog of the .Day! Fun!
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I blasted through Enshittification by Cory Doctorow in just three days. It was a great, if mostly infuriating, read. I was already familiar with Doctorow and his idea of enshittifiction , but it was illuminating to see the whole concept and what's actually happening laid out in so much detail. And it was mildly uplifting to see the positive changes slowly being made recently. My only problem with…
Search on the web is so broken right now. Ads, auto generated "answers", "related" searches, LLM slop—the list goes on and on. In an effort to curb some of this crap, I spent Friday hacking together a little extension for Chromium-based browsers. I call it Good Web Search . Right now, all it does is adjusts search parameters for potentially better results and offers a few alternative search…
Kero Kero Cowboy is a great little platformer for the Game Boy Color (which I played on my Anbee, aka my Anbernic RG 35XX Plus). The first half of the game is near perfection, but there are some problems with the later levels: the game's framerate drops during some tight spots, the timing for the super jump off of enemy heads—and especially mushrooms—is a little too unforgiving, and the difficulty…
I didn't get a chance to participate in the The Rankin Bass Hexmas Crawl , but it sure looks like an exciting project. I hope to run some games in it next holiday season (probably using this map and index from Bakenshake). (Also, important reminder that Christmas didn't end until yesterday. It lasts for twelve days, you low church heathens!)
Back when I was messing around with an emulated C64 and reading through the user manual, I made this little dice roller. Forgot to post it back then. Now that the new C64 Ultimate is out (and I am once again wanting one), I figured I'd post it now. 10 PRINT " ❤ "; 20 PRINT "TIME TO ROLL SOME DICE!" 30 INPUT "HOW MANY FACES"; F% 40 INPUT "HOW MANY DICE"; N% 50 PRINT "ROLLING "N%"D"F%"..." 60 T% = 0…
If you're into old-school dnd and not already reading "You see this." (not to mention using their excellent tokens ), you definitely should be.
Another great recurring collection of TTRPG news, links, and discussion to add to the growing list (already containing Indie RPG Newsletter , Shiny TTRPG Links , OSR News Roundup , CATMAIL [new!], and a few others on Substack so I won't link to them). A sad thing it highlights though is how much interesting conversation is missed because so much of it is trapped on Discord. (The quote above is a…
Looking back on twenty twenty-five as I was making this list, I kept thinking of things I wanted to put on it, only to realize they're from two thousand twenty-four. This past year has blown by without so much as a hi-how-are-you. But here we are: Some of my favorite things. Please let me know everything I got wrong. Best album : Wolfroy Goes to Town by Bonnie "Prince" Billy. I stopped using…
Eko has done some good work here. If I hadn't already hacked together my own setup using Eleventy, I'd probably give it a try. Regardless, looks like a great option for new folks. Blogs, baby!
I'm in the process of turning my old website (if you know, you know) into my more professional home on the 'net. To that end, and during that process, I've brought over all my old blog posts to this site. (I apologize for the RSS feed deluge anyone may have experienced.)
The 3D on the 3DS was really cool. I got every gold trophy on every difficulty, but couldn't quite manage three gold starts on all the 150cc and mirror cups. Still, solid Mario Kart game.
You know I had to load this puppy up on my Miyoo Mini Plus for some festive holiday fun! (So what if my high score is currently only nine hundred something—I'm still getting the hang of it.)
Robert shares two great tools here (in addition to his beautiful vision of the internet): Blog Quest (for finding RSS feeds as you browse the web) and StreetPass (the same but for finding Mastodon profiles). I've already installed them both.
With a winter weather advisory in effect here in the foodhills of Appalachia, I'm feeling pretty festive. So, inspired by Dávid's Snowfall post (and using most of his code ), I added falling snow to this website.
It could be argued that Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the original Star Wars trilogy. The same could be said for the Super Star Wars trilogy of Super Nintendo games. And yet, just like when I was a kid, I enjoyed the last one the most. Though it wasn't because it was the best game of the trilogy—it was just the easiest. Listen, I like platformers, but I don't think I like run and gun games.…
I've heard if monks making beer, wine, and even fruitcake, but never have I heard of an order of monks making websites . I kind of love it. (Too bad they're not still coding .)
I guess this is a retro game review blog now.
The sequel is better than the original in this case (as with the movies, arguably). Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is an improvement on Super Star Wars in almost every way. Now there are level codes to get back to where you left off, force powers (though somehow I missed most of them), and special moves for Han and Chewie (grenades and a spin—how fancy). In general, the level design is…
I was gifted this and the rest of the Super Star Wars trilogy along with my Super Nintendo for my eighth birthday (or somewhere around there). Super Star Wars was the only one of the three I didn't beat as a kid. Unlike the later two games, it doesn't have level codes, so when you get a game over you have to start again from the beginning. I'm sure this game was great at the time of its release—I…
At what point does a blog need to be paginated? Asking for a friend.
I kind of really don't like reviewing media. Every book, game, et cetera is special in its own way, right? Still, I'm slowly working my way through my past media, writing reviews. (Plus it gives me coins in my little " gamified intentional media tracker " thing, so that's fun.)
My first game console was the Super Nintendo. I got it for my birthday just as the N64 was coming out. It didn't bother me at all that I was rocking last-gen hardware—a benefit of the pre-social-media age, most likely—because I finally had a Nintendo! You'd think that among my first few games I collected, I would have the critically acclaimed The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. But, as…
I've got a long history with this game. I first played it as a child back in the early 90s on my uncle's computer. I had no idea what I was doing, and it's doubtful that I solved a single puzzle. I tried the series again later, sometime in the early 00s, when I got both Myst IV and Uru. I made it further this time, and I really enjoyed what I played of them, but I was still absolutely stumped…
This is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, and one of only a handful of books I've read more than once. While its progressive-at-the-time notions of gender feel almost quaint now, I feel it still has something to say to a modern reader. Plus Game of Thrones has nothing on this political intrigue. I strongly recommend it.
Only one of the foul creatures remains—abominations forged by the meddling hands of wizards. After generations of slaughtering us, we've finally driven them back to the brink. Let the final hunt commence: the hunt for the last Owl Bear. Hunt for the Last Owl Bear is a 16-page A5 fantasy hex crawl adventure for B/X and other old school games. I wrote it as part of a game jam last year. It came in…
Enjoyable movie/walking simulator/quick time event game. Made me jump a few times. Never truly scary, though. I recommend it .
I love reading about what it was like to work in tech in the 90s (and 80s and 00s), though it's also depressing to see the direction things have gone. This book seemed to predict some of that. (There was also a surprising amount of sex.) I recommend it.