Gyokuyoutama

I'll write a more detailed review of Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard in the future, but for now I just have to note that not only does it allow you to climb a ladder straight into a vat of acid, but if you do this the main character will pause halfway through the climb, say auf wiedersehen, and cheerfully jump to his doom.
 
10/10

I had a dream that I was on the top bunk of a bunk bed and I wanted to get down but there were babies on all of the areas where you'd drop down. Like I'd look on one side and there's just some toddler hanging there. There wasn't a ladder or anything either.
 
Basically it's that one comic panel where the bad guy has baby armor. There was no winning move. I couldn't even shimmy down one of the posts due to them being too slippery. Harrowing stuff

I remember wanting to go with my dad to the (horse) racetrack, because they had an "arcade" there. It was super small and just in a corner somewhere, and I don't remember what was there other than the Simpsons beat 'em up, but that's all I ever played anyway. I was really young so I never got past the first stage, sadly.
 
I also remember the local bowling alley in my hometown had a pretty decent arcade, including a light gun game with like robots and shit that I can't remember the name of and that had a lot of text in Japanese. Me and my friend back then would pretend that the enemies were teachers we didn't like. It's a bit fucked up now that I think about it, but kids are evil.
 
EDIT: And of course I almost forgot CarnEvil... holy crap that game looked amazing for 1998.

This was one of the Top 10 on MTV in Latin America 20 years ago.

Going through those old SNK and Atari collections, as well as the later discussion of the Dreamcast's anniversary, made me reflect on just how much of a gap there was between the arcades and the home market until the sixth generation, though it was especially insane in the first three.  For example, in 1984 in arcades you'd be playing something like this:
 
 
while at home it'd look like this:
 
 
Or for something a bit more obscure, try Peter Packrat:
 
 
and the Commodore 64 port:
 
 
The arcade games are about a generation and a half ahead, and that's without getting into control gimmicks or things like Dragon's Lair use of laserdisc video.
 
While there has always been arcade emulation, the emulation scene has very much focused on consoles, and since the Dreamcast home ports have generally been identical to or good enough for all practical purposes.  This makes it hard to remember just how impressive arcades were through the mid 90's.  I suppose even after that point you still had games like DDR, light gun shooters, etc. which still offered a different experience than what you could get at home, but gone were the days of going to the arcade and saying "wow! I didn't think it was even possible for video games to look this nice!'

Also

 
She reached the US markets 25 years ago today.
 
How time flies.

EDIT: Thread theme:
 
 

Lest I forget.

Vibe drawing I did last night:
 

Water heater broke again, and once again it happened at a time where everything was closed for several days.
 
On the plus side, warranty was for six years so it still counts.
 
On the minus side, this sucks for the reasons stated six years ago.
 
EDIT: I guess for better or worse I've become an expert at this.
 
Pro tips: Use a big bucket for the water used to wash most of your body.  Dip washcloth and soap in as necessary.
 
Use a one gallon pitcher to pour water over your hair to wet and to rinse out shampoo/conditioner.  Follow up with wash cloth and then wet comb to get the remainder out.
 
VERY IMPORTANT TIP: Only fill containers about 3/4 full using tap water directly.  Fill remaining 1/4 with boiling water (you can use an electric kettle or a pot on the stove.)  Preferably do this overnight so that when you wash in the morning the water is about room temperature instead of just above freezing.
 
Even if the water isn't super cold you'll still lose a lot of heat to the air due to the increased length of time it takes to wash.  So put a space heater in the next room and budget 5 minutes or so of time to lie next to it with a blanket.
 
If you get so tired of this shit that you just want a hot shower even if you have to pay for it, truck stops have hot showers you can pay for, and many gyms allow you to buy one day memberships.  I guess shady love hotels that you pay for by the hour are also an option in some areas, and if you have a friend in the same situation you can have wacky romantic comedy misunderstandings when you offer to the split the bill.

A "brazillian electric shower" sounds like some real fucked up torture straight out of a crime novel

Water heater broke again, and once again it happened at a time where everything was closed for several days.
 
On the plus side, warranty was for six years so it still counts.
 
On the minus side, this sucks for the reasons stated six years ago.
 
EDIT: I guess for better or worse I've become an expert at this.
 
Pro tips: Use a big bucket for the water used to wash most of your body.  Dip washcloth and soap in as necessary.
 
Use a one gallon pitcher to pour water over your hair to wet and to rinse out shampoo/conditioner.  Follow up with wash cloth and then wet comb to get the remainder out.
 
VERY IMPORTANT TIP: Only fill containers about 3/4 full using tap water directly.  Fill remaining 1/4 with boiling water (you can use an electric kettle or a pot on the stove.)  Preferably do this overnight so that when you wash in the morning the water is about room temperature instead of just above freezing.
 
Even if the water isn't super cold you'll still lose a lot of heat to the air due to the increased length of time it takes to wash.  So put a space heater in the next room and budget 5 minutes or so of time to lie next to it with a blanket.
 
If you get so tired of this shit that you just want a hot shower even if you have to pay for it, truck stops have hot showers you can pay for, and many gyms allow you to buy one day memberships.  I guess shady love hotels that you pay for by the hour are also an option in some areas, and if you have a friend in the same situation you can have wacky romantic comedy misunderstandings when you offer to the split the bill.

Speaking of Civilization, I got a lot more into that Call to Power game I picked up at goodwill a while back.  Now that I've played it long enough to understand what the hell is going on, I can say that it has a lot of neat ideas (even if it is really obviously still based on Civilization II, and doesn't come close to the king of Civ 2 games that is Alpha Centauri.)
 
The game came about due to weird rights issues where Sid Meier and Firaxis had the rights to the concept of civilization but not the name Civilization.  Of course that situation only lasted about a year, hence why the sequel is just "Call to Power 2" and you can't find the original for sale online despite the sequel being on GOG.  This resulted in a lot of "can I copy your work? Sure but just change it around so the teacher doesn't notice" situations.  This is most notable in terms of the wonders.  For example, you can't build the Pyramids, but how about the Sphinx?  No Copernicus's Observatory, but how about Gallileo's Telescope?  With units this gets particularly bizarre with the main ship line starting with the familiar Trieme but then going to the Viking Longboats. And that's for all civilizations; not just the Vikings/Norse/Norwegians/whatever.  Everyone uses longboats until they are replaced by Ships of the Line, meaning that medieval seamanship is basically glossed over entirely.  Can't risk having Sid Meier saying that you are stealing his game, even though you are (though to be fair, Sid, stole it from an Avalon Hill board game.)  The camp level is high, with the archer unit being the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood for example, so it's easy to not get to riled up about the historical implausibility of it all.
 
However, the need to distinguish itself also led to them creating many new game concepts which seem like evolutions of Civ 2, but were never seen in later official civilization games.  The most famous of these is probably the public works system.  You can devote city production to creating PW points, and then these are used to make tile improvements without the need for settlers to do it (like in Alpha Centuari and beyond, settlers just settle cities.)  This is really weird at first, but a lot more convenient when you are running large empires, and makes the construction of things like fishing structures in ancient ages natural.
 
My favorite mechanic is probably how it handles multi-unit battles.  Units have a "ranged" stat in addition to (close quarters) attack and defense.  You can have up to 15 units in one slot, and when they get into battle the computer will arrange them into up to three lines which can have up to 5 units each.  There's the front line, the archer line, and the back lines.  You can't have a unit in a line further from the combat unless there is some unit in front of it.  The computer tries to arrange the best melee units up front, the best archers second, and non-combatant or weak units in the back lines.  The archers fire at the units in the opposing front lines, then the front line units duke it out to the death.  Lines reform and this repeats until one side is eventually wiped out.  This is an intuitive system that allows a lot of tactics in terms of unit composition, protecting non-combat units. etc.
 
Speaking of non-combat units, there's a huge number of them.  Civilization 2 had 6 in three types (a basic version and an upgrade.)  Call to Power has 16.  Many involve new concepts like slavery and abolitionism, legal disputes, eco-terrorism and religious proselytism.  Some of these feel more gimmicky than anything, but it's definitely nice to see the attempt to add some depth to units.  There is also the fact that it has 5 epochs, but 2 of those are future epochs, so you get crazy stuff like units like undersea colonies or strikes from orbiting space units.
 
There's a variety of other changes.  For example, happiness is greatly affected by your wage, ration and workday levels, with different "defaults" for each type of government (of which there are a lot).  It initially looks complicated, but really it's just giving you the option to sacrifice either money (wages), food (rations), or production (workday length) to increase happiness across your empire.  There are also some missteps.  For example, in order to see where your workers are working in each city you have to right click the city on the map.  This is unintuitive (though it is clearly mentioned in the manual and tutorial) but the more annoying thing is that it's extra work to see information that you are going to be using a lot.  The other information is easier to find, but you have to click through different submenus to find information on crime, happiness, production, etc. even though it would have been easy to fit this all in one screen like they already did in Civ 2.  The game also heavily encourages using the mouse to direct units, unlike the numpad controls that many Civ games favored, but if you misclick it's overly tricky to go back to the unit and give it the proper destination.
 
Since it's a fork from Civ 2, you're also not going to see certain other features that came about from Civ 3 and beyond.  In particular, different civilizations are still functionally identical except for aesthetics and the AI personality of the leader.  No special units, tech bonuses, or anything like that.
 
I actually own CTP2 but never got into it much because I kept encountering a mouse acceleration issue I couldn't fix.  Maybe I'll go back to it once I've done a few games of CTP1.  I think that they basically just took the stuff that worked and streamlined it, so hopefully it feels more like a thought out game and not just an experiment on tweaking Civ 2.  Apparently it's in a HOMM3 situation where there are fan mods that are updated up to this day, so it very well could be a place to go if you don't like what the mainline games are doing.

Civilization VII looks to be a disappointment. Swapping Civs is a weird idea they stole from Humankind, because even if it worked there (I never played it so I can't say) it can't really work in Civ.
 
"Can your civilization stand the test of time?" Answer: No, it cannot.
 
The other stupid thing is that your leader is completely divorced from your civilization. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this basically means your civilization is just another stat to minmax instead of a quasi-roleplaying experience. I know Civ 4 had that option, but that was just that: an option. I feel like basing the whole game around that is a bad idea, especially when Civ 6 had the (unironically) great idea to introduce optional game modes like monopolies or whatever the fuck those heroes and legends packs were. Why couldn't they just have done that?
 
A lot of the rest of the game seems "streamlined" by removing builders and roads and I've seen people (who are defending the changes) say that this is a good thing that will bring in console players... which doesn't give me hope.
 
On the bright side it graphically looks great, except for the UI. It just kinda looks like... a phone game or something. That might be early alpha stuff but who knows. I miss the art deco of 5. I also think the diplomatic screen being two freaks gesticulating at each other in a language neither can understand is stupid. If I wanted to see that I'd just go to the local 7/11.
 

I think this is prime time to remind you of something
 
 

OH MY GOD THEY LEARNED WHAT NUMBER 3 IS

 

I know it's kind of cliche to complain about youtube, but the difference between 2006 and 2024 is pretty striking.  Both are almost exactly as you imagine them, with 2006 being mostly just guys doing things or filming things with some other native web content (Mortal Peep Fight and Save the Internets).
 
 
Of course we all know what Youtube in 2024 will look like, but it's good to see what it would look like in this instance.
 

 
News content from the major broadcasters, no less than 4 (maybe 5) videos explicitly aimed at kids (and I mean TINY kids, not teens). Most of the rest of the videos are by huge creators or just ads and compilation videos.
 
The differences really highlight the shift in userbase as the internet in general went from somewhat out-of-the-way in the 2000s to the thing it is now. At least I found this cool vid. I imagine if it were posted today it would be 5 minutes long, titled something sensational, and have dramatic music playing along with a camera crew recording dozens of angles of him as he slid down while wearing like a Red Bull jacket or something.
 
Other than Youtube, can we appreciate how 2000s 2Advanced Studios looks?
 
And we have to bring up this SPUF mention from 2004:
 
We don't see the term "flame" anymore, do we? I guess we don't see forums anymore, either.

Talking about old layouts:
 
"Hm, the Old Twitter extension isn't working 100%. It says its a few versions behind and its not updating. Maybe I should just remove it and reinstall."
(The Old Twitter extension was removed from the Firefox extension store and now can only be used if you download the unstable dev/nightly versions and if you delete it you can no longer have it back)
 

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

The one that made me really depressed was Winamp.  I've consistently used Winamp as my music player of choice for about two decades now, and it's been nice to know that despite everything, you could still get a very functional sound player that whips the llama's ass.  If you go back to the site in 2010, you'll see that it is still very much user-focused with lots of skins and plugins to grab.
 
I guess I haven't actually used their website in a decade (I just transfer the files that work and pick up skins from archive.org) because it started to get worse in 2014 (according the wayback machine.)  A new version of the site that gets rid of most of the content, but hey, it still gives you winamp and it still keeps up the Wesley Willis derived llama gag.  Around 2019 the page is even more minimalistic, just talking about how version 5.8 got leaked but they plan to do something completely different. Still llamas.
 
Then around 2023 it becomes a generic online streaming site, complete with NFTs for sale.  There is a very brief time where they still offer a link to download the winamp player, but that vanishes very quickly.  No llamas, and instead of the iconic lightning bolt on diamond icon (both simple, cool and easy to recognize) the logo is two red lines that is indistinguishable from a million other modern minimalistic logos.
 
But here's the bright side: the old player still works and those fuckers can't do anything to stop me from using it, and it was popular enough that you can still find the player, skins and plugins pretty easily online.

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.
 
 

The one that made me really depressed was Winamp.  I've consistently used Winamp as my music player of choice for about two decades now, and it's been nice to know that despite everything, you could still get a very functional sound player that whips the llama's ass.  If you go back to the site in 2010, you'll see that it is still very much user-focused with lots of skins and plugins to grab.
 
I guess I haven't actually used their website in a decade (I just transfer the files that work and pick up skins from archive.org) because it started to get worse in 2014 (according the wayback machine.)  A new version of the site that gets rid of most of the content, but hey, it still gives you winamp and it still keeps up the Wesley Willis derived llama gag.  Around 2019 the page is even more minimalistic, just talking about how version 5.8 got leaked but they plan to do something completely different. Still llamas.
 
Then around 2023 it becomes a generic online streaming site, complete with NFTs for sale.  There is a very brief time where they still offer a link to download the winamp player, but that vanishes very quickly.  No llamas, and instead of the iconic lightning bolt on diamond icon (both simple, cool and easy to recognize) the logo is two red lines that is indistinguishable from a million other modern minimalistic logos.
 
But here's the bright side: the old player still works and those fuckers can't do anything to stop me from using it, and it was popular enough that you can still find the player, skins and plugins pretty easily online.

"Zat's German engineering."

Man, looking through that Yahoo! history is sobering. You can clearly see the point where the Web Directory, you know, the main way to search for useful information in a search engine is just pushed to its own little box at the bottom to make way for more advertisements and social media features. That year was 2004. It's completely gone by '09. Then they go completely hog wild and butcher the format for mobile phone users by 2017.
 
I swear, smartphones, social media and the web going mainstream in general were mistakes. I hate the Internet now.

Fuck me, that first gen of mobile design is something I almost completely forgot about. It has a bit of the Vista/7 glass look with slight bezels on stuff like buttons which was all the rage at the time. When I saved up and got the first gen itouch it really blew my mind with all the functionality it had. I remember testing all sorts of different sites to see which ones still worked with its mobile Safari version and I watched a ton of anime on it (very preferable to watching anime on the shared computer out in the living room)
 
This is probably an example of "It was in vogue when I first started getting into computers and phones so I like it the most" but man I still vastly prefer the glass aesthetic over most others. Makes me annoyed that pretty much everyone gave up on that for flat aesthetics which aren't pretty at all in comparison. Luckily I'm not the only one so there are dedicated people out there customizing anything they can to reinstate it. I've been trying to find a nice glassy look and feel for KDE Plasma but maybe I'm bad at searching but a lot of the ones I've seen seem to be "completely copy windows 7" which I feel like is just kind of unnecessarily locking into microsoft design language when it's just the aesthetic I want, but whatever. I might be getting too picky and just need to learn how to tweak stuff on my own