TheOnlyGuyEver

A random character I thought of:


I wanted to try and give it a dated feel with the style somewhat, I think I succeeded

Yesterday I got to preview the new Epic Universe park of Universal Studios, I have a friend who works there so he was able to invite me and a few others. The park is made of 6 areas: Celestial Park (main original area themed after astrology), Dark Universe (gothic horror area with Dracula, Frankenstein, werewolves, and other monsters), Isle of Berk (How to Train your Dragon), another Harry Potter area (themed after 1920s France ala Fantastic Beasts), and Super Nintendo World (which has a Mario section and a separate Donkey Kong Country section). More below:
 

Fellas I feel compelled to share that I became a dad recently
 
My boy is doing great and it has been awesome bar the tummy ache nights where me and my wife get literally 0 hours of sleep

Been a while, not drawing digitally that much these days, but I have been doodling on paper when bored. I like to believe there was some improvement.
 
 
I'd like to eventually get a digital tablet.

Two random characters based on species of palm common to Florida, the saw palmetto and sabal palm tree. They were really fun to think up and design!

Some more creature sketches:

Remember this? I do! I never forgot!

 
Took just under a year, but I finally finished this thing. Why did I start this in the first place? I dunno, I just liked her design and wanted to challenge myself to make a full turnaround sheet. In the end it wasn't too tough, but it ended up taking so long for a couple reasons. I went extremely thorough on the sketch. I sketched this 1 year ago and I would say it is still on-par with my current level of skill 1 year later, just because I really did pour that much time and effort into perfecting the sketch, because I wanted a very clean final drawing. It ended up kind of burning me out and I got sidetracked with some other drawings instead, and it's always hard for me to come back to something in-progress after so long.
 
But, now it's done! Maybe I'll draw her some more in the future. I also have these additional reference sheets to show more details which otherwise get obscured:

I do hope Toby isn't crunching too hard to meet that release date.

Hades 2 doesn't even have Dusa, why even bother lmao (No, Dora isn't a good replacement)

My list:
 
IN CONCLUSION:
 

My list:
 
IN CONCLUSION:
 

Happy new year ol' subspuffers! I hope 2025 will be great for you all

When I am made supreme leader, it shall be law that any dialog with the option "remind me about this later" must also contain the option "shut the fuck up about this forever."

Had eye surgery yesterday for my life-long strabismus in my left eye. Went really well according to the doctor, just recovering now and trying to get past the temporary double-vision while my brain adjusts. Apparently I was a bit exceptional, since I did vision therapy for 10 years which kept my affected eye from weakening, so the muscles were still all good and I have 20/20. The doctor was also the successor of the doctor who performed a previous strabismus surgery on me when I was 2, and that guy was basically the best in the U.S., so he was very familiar with his work and knew what to expect going in.
 
Seeing my face in the mirror afterward was so weird, like looking at an alternate universe! My first thought was "Wow, I look like the people on TV or something!"

Had eye surgery yesterday for my life-long strabismus in my left eye. Went really well according to the doctor, just recovering now and trying to get past the temporary double-vision while my brain adjusts. Apparently I was a bit exceptional, since I did vision therapy for 10 years which kept my affected eye from weakening, so the muscles were still all good and I have 20/20. The doctor was also the successor of the doctor who performed a previous strabismus surgery on me when I was 2, and that guy was basically the best in the U.S., so he was very familiar with his work and knew what to expect going in.
 
Seeing my face in the mirror afterward was so weird, like looking at an alternate universe! My first thought was "Wow, I look like the people on TV or something!"

Had eye surgery yesterday for my life-long strabismus in my left eye. Went really well according to the doctor, just recovering now and trying to get past the temporary double-vision while my brain adjusts. Apparently I was a bit exceptional, since I did vision therapy for 10 years which kept my affected eye from weakening, so the muscles were still all good and I have 20/20. The doctor was also the successor of the doctor who performed a previous strabismus surgery on me when I was 2, and that guy was basically the best in the U.S., so he was very familiar with his work and knew what to expect going in.
 
Seeing my face in the mirror afterward was so weird, like looking at an alternate universe! My first thought was "Wow, I look like the people on TV or something!"

Had eye surgery yesterday for my life-long strabismus in my left eye. Went really well according to the doctor, just recovering now and trying to get past the temporary double-vision while my brain adjusts. Apparently I was a bit exceptional, since I did vision therapy for 10 years which kept my affected eye from weakening, so the muscles were still all good and I have 20/20. The doctor was also the successor of the doctor who performed a previous strabismus surgery on me when I was 2, and that guy was basically the best in the U.S., so he was very familiar with his work and knew what to expect going in.
 
Seeing my face in the mirror afterward was so weird, like looking at an alternate universe! My first thought was "Wow, I look like the people on TV or something!"

Install German game with apparently no English version available.
 
Click quit (which is in English for some reason).
 
Message: "Spiel verlassen?" i.e. "Quit game?"
 
No buttons on screen to hit, so I hit enter, only for the message to go away.  Then I assume it wants me to answer on the keyboard, so I press "Y."
 
I did that about a dozen times before I realized that I was supposed to press "J" for "Ja."

Tomoko would later join WWE.

Vibe drawing I did last night:
 

Dunno why, but I felt revisiting the twins, which are now named Rochelle Rivers and Aurelia Rivers.
 
 

I also saw that movie recently when a friend took me along, and I think you're pretty on-point.
 
 

For the first time in two years I got dragged to another superhero movie, that being the new Deadpool movie.  I went in with the attitude of "as long as this has Ryan Reynolds being irreverent and Hugh Jackman killing people, it will be bearable."  It delivered on both of those requirements, but actually surprised me.  In fact, I think the surprise adds it to the extent that I'm putting the rest of this in a spoiler.  Also warning, a lot of this may be turbo-autism since I'm talking about the movie below the surface level.
 
 

I guess I've developed an interest in historical game packs like the SNK collection, since I picked up the Atari 50 collection.  This is an interesting contrast to the SNK collection because to be frank it's something that if you don't have a historical interest in Atari or the early days of video games, it's really not worth it.  Most of the SNK games still hold up so you get a solid collection of games, but many of the games in the Atari set are not things that most people would be interested in playing.  There are a few reasons for this:
 
Since we are literally at the dawn of video games (reports at the time called them part of the "pinball industry") some of the games are extremely primitive.  For example, "Touch Me" is basically just Simon (i.e. push a series of buttons in response to what blinked.)  Games like Breakout are certainly playable, but since they invented a genre later games innovated so much on the basic formula that going back to the original will feel lacking if you've seen anything from later on. Many of the games are two player only, like Pong, Combat and Air Sea Battle are meant to be played 2 player.  There is no AI at all, so no real game unless you have someone else playing.  These games actually do hold up if you are willing to look past their age... but since we are talking about local multiplayer with two controllers only, you will need to find someone to agree to play a mega-old game when you could easily be doing something else.  Not an easy sell. Many of the games are arcade games.  In a way this is nice, since they punched higher than the console games of the time.  But the downside is that sometimes they used special peripherals that you won't have on PC or modern consoles.  In particular, Missile Command, Centipede and Crystal Castles all used a trackball.  I guess there are trackballs you can use with PC, but who has one?  Missile Command and Centipede work pretty well with a mouse and Crystal Castles is at least playable with a joystick, but you are missing a key part of the experience.  Similarly there are some arcade racing games that are meant to be played with a steering wheel, some games meant to be played with a paddle (i.e. a rotational dial like what you use in Pong), etc. Some of the games are just not good.  Sometimes this is due to technical limitations, like what you have on Atari 2600.  Sometimes it's just because the library sucks, like what happened with the Jaguar (but at least you get a historical perspective of why the Jaguar failed.) Some of the actually fun and innovative games are so far back that you really have to stretch your modern imagination to get into them.  Adventure is an example of this; it's a pretty neat little top down action adventure game, but it's also a game where you are a dot carrying an arrow to fight ducks. The collection also suffers from the fact that this is Atari only.  In particular no Activision (made by disgruntled Atari ace employees) so no Pitfall, River Raid, Kaboom!, Keystone Kapers, etc. This is a shame, since those are some of the best games for the 2600.  No tie ins with other companies like Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Pole Position.  This in particular hurts the Jaguar, since you won't be getting games like Cannon Fodder, Aliens vs. Predator, Theme Park or Rayman, leaving Tempest 2000 as the only great game on the system.
 
With all that being said, there are many games you can have fun with here.  I think that Asteroids, Centipede, Tempest and Missile Command all hold up and help to see how people got obsessed with the arcades in the early 80's.  Cloak and Dagger, Warlords and especially Food Fight are some great arcade games from later.  (Crystal Castles would be perfect if I had a trackball.)  The consoles include a mix of mediocre (but high selling) stuff, experimental games like Club Drive, Ninja Golf, Basketbrawl, Haunted House and Solaris, and even some home brews and unreleased games.  I imagine that you will find at least a few games that you will legitimately enjoy (I recommend starting with Food Fight and Tempest 2000 since those are both pretty straightforward to understand and well done.)
 
There are a lot of repetitions through ports and the like.  For example, with Asteroids you have the original arcade game, the sequel Asteroids deluxe (really more of a remix of the game), ports for the 2600 and 7800 systems and a combined port of Asteroids and Missile Command for Lynx.  Similarly, there are 5 version of Missile Command.  Normally I would say that this is just padding, but there are 109 games in total if you include ports, and if you only include "original" games you still have 77 games.  But what makes this interesting is the historical perspective.  You can see what Asteroids was like in the arcades, then play the 2600 port to see what was available at home.  In some ways the games are very similar, but in other ways the home experience was obviously inferior.  Very unlike today when you can get everything you want on a PC or modern console.
 
In terms of emulation, it has what you would want.  You can mess with filter and border options depending on whether you want a clear view or a simulation of what it would like at the arcade.  Arcade games have DIP switch options to let you change starting lives, freeplay options, etc.  The games for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 systems let you control the difficulty switches on the console for similar results and you can mess with the controls.  My only real complaint there is that you can't remap controls for multiple players to a single keyboard; you need a controller for everyone which can get annoying on the 4 player games since I generally don't have 4 controllers connected.  Having two people on controller and two people on opposite sides of the keyboard would work fine.  But let's be honest, I'm never going to get 4 people to agree to play these games so this is a rather minor complaint.

Where the collection shines is in the historical aspect.  You get a good feel for that from the games themselves, but the collection has a timeline mode that is loaded with features.  Digital Eclipse did something similar for the SNK collection, but there it was really just a brief description of various games with some idea of the context, some screen shots, and maybe some promotional art or manual pages.  The Atari collection has that too, but also includes a wealth of video footage including historical interviews, retrospective interviews done for the collection, historical news footage, etc.  They go into a lot more detail on important games that were not included in the collection to give a real feel for how Atari was doing on a year by year basis.  This is particularly the case with Atari's ill-fated Pinball games (the only pinball game in the collection is a virtual table for the Jaguar.)  I like that they aren't shy of saying where there were flops and where there were successes.
 
Like I said with the SNK collection, you can emulate this stuff rather easily, but the historical presentation of the collection really adds to the experience.  Digital Eclipse has found a niche and is doing their best, when they could have easily just slapped a bunch of roms together in a cash grab.  I'll probably pick up their Jeff Minter game collection if it goes on a good sale.  They also have a "Making of Kareteka" collection, but that might be too niche for even me since it focuses entirely on one game (and its many, many, ports.)