Gyokuyoutama

Tomoko would later join WWE.

Jobel stream meme 2
 
 
I am sure that turning the cute cat robot into a 2 meter grey alien won't cause any future shenanigans.

As promised a review of Beyond the Edge of Owlsgard.  It's an indie German game (and of course it's German; those guys seem to hold LucasArts adventure games in the same regard that Slavs have for Heroes of Might and Magic.)  It's a retro throwback game, and practically uses the SCUMM system, but it doesn't really ape any one game in particular.  I was strongly reminded of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, The Legend of Kyrandia, King's Quest VI, Beneath a Steel Sky and Inherit the Earth (though not as much as you'd think for the last one, considering that this is a game with anthropomorphic characters.)  So I guess we're targeting the mid-90's.  You can imagine the game as something for late Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 where CD audio was still a big new thing and get pretty much the right vibe.
 
The plot is about a deer named Finn who comes back home after being gone for some reason or other, only to find that his home has been ransacked and his parents are missing.  Everyone blames the wolves, but the game doesn't really hide the fact that it's really some sort of robots that did it.  Of course figuring out why robots are even around, and why they are doing this, takes most of the game (since the setting is generic medieval fantasy land.)
 
The game is somewhat low-res, like games from that era would be.  But this is a clear design choice, and the backgrounds look great.
 


 
Really captures the feel of artists using the Super VGA card to try to paint on a virtual canvas.  The character sprites don't look quite as good, but they are serviceable, and have top class animations.  The main character has at least dozens of special animations for various actions.  I also quite like how he sorts of skips around for his default walk animation; it stresses the fact that he's a deer and gives you the feeling that he's more care free than he should be.  There's a lot of subtleties.  For example, Finn's idle animation is usually one where he blinks and occasionally glances around.  But in the more dangerous or spooky areas of the game he will pull back and tremble while doing this.
 
Something I like is that in cutscenes, it's still the same resolution as in gameplay.  They certainly could have animated the cutscenes at a higher resolution, since they aren't held back by the game engine or anything, but I think that doing so would just pull you out of the experience, especially when you get thrown back to the lower res gameplay.
 


 
The maker of the game said that he wanted to "put the adventure back in adventure" in that there should be a sense of exploration rather than just a narrative or a bunch of BS puzzles.  I think that it succeeds in that regard.  As you would expect there are never too many locations to go to at any one time, but they are usually varied and you will often find out that a location you had visited repeatedly is hiding some secret or other.  I won't get into spoilers, but there are some pretty big shifts in where you are through the course of the game.  It kind of reminds me of the King's Quest series at its best in that regard.
 
I was going to say that this is a short game, since I beat it in about 8 hours with only checking a walkthrough  three times.  But that's actually about standard for adventure games I think.  I can get these comparisons for other adventure games I've played recently: The Curse of Monkey Island: 7.5 hours, Toonstruck: 6.5 hours, Zniw Adventure: 5.5 hours, Pegasus Prime: 4 hours, Stasis: Bone Totem: 11 hours.  So it's within the parameters of the genre.  I played on "classic mode" which says that it makes items harder to find and timed puzzles trickier.  The times I did look at a walkthrough did all involve not realizing that I could interact with some object or other, or assuming that it wasn't worth it (there's dozens of rocks that you can examine, but only one which helps you solve a puzzle.)  There's a "modern mode" which is supposed to help with it, but I didn't really think that the game was unfair in classic mode.  Then again, I have played something like 30 or 50 adventure games before so your mileage may vary depending on your experience with the genre.  In any case, it definitely doesn't follow the modern trend that some adventure games have done by having "puzzles" consist of being told you need an item and then having your main character tell you where you need to use the item.  There are hints that you can get by examining objects and talking to people, but you will have to think things through.  This is an adventure game so some of the solutions were off the wall, but nothing stuck me as completely illogical or something that should have been easily avoidable given your resources.  If you've played adventure games from the time period that this is targeting, you will be satisfied with the gameplay.
 
You can die in the game, but the game will throw up a save icon when you enter a region where you can get killed.  If you choose not to save, that's on you.  I find this a nice compromise between the brutality of classic games and the "can't fail no matter what" attitude of modern adventure games.  The deaths are both brutal and comedic at the same time, which does fit with the likes of King's Quest.  I don't think that it's possible to get yourself into a situation where you can't win because you fucked yourself over somehow; at least I didn't run into any and I noticed that the way that you interacted with certain items definitely was there to prevent you from losing an item you would need later.  Similarly, if you need an item late in the game, you will always need it to solve a puzzle before you reach a point of no return.
 
There is a lot of detail put into the game.  It's not to the insane degree that the first Edna and Harvey game was, but still way more than they had to.  For example, most characters will have unique reactions to being shown your inventory items.  They will have a "I don't know what that is/I have no opinion about it" generic reaction, but I found that they only gave it to maybe a quarter of the items I showed them.  Some of these reactions contain hints, but mainly it's just world building and telling you more about the characters.  There's also some minor stuff like when you pick up a fish to solve a puzzle and you can choose to take it back to its lake (though there is no in-game reward for doing so) or leave it in your pockets to die (if you are a horrible person.)
 
I don't like the English voices very much, and Finn in particular sounds like an annoying wimp.  I didn't have any problems with the German voices.  Finn still is overly cheerful, conflict averse and kind of a coward, but he comes across much more as someone who prefers to find a clever way to solve a problem than someone who is just woefully unprepared for an adventure like this.  I'm not fluent in German, but there are subtitles and you can swap the language for those independently of the audio.  When I understood the audio it mainly lined up with subtitles, though there were a few places where the German audio was a short matter of fact statement like "I'm scared/ich habe Angst" but the English subtitle was much longer with a pun or other joke.  But overall it seemed accurate.  Music was fine, though the only piece I can remember after the game is the main theme.  They sell a soundtrack now; I don't see any need to get it.
 
The story of the game isn't exactly groundbreaking since I've seen every idea it used done somewhere else, but at the same time it does have plenty of twists and turns.  It did feel like it ramped up at an appropriate pace, both in terms of the threats that you face and the way that it explains the mysteries of the game.  You will run into plenty of points where you aren't sure what to do, but I got through most of them without hints and can't recall any points where I got through things just by clicking on stuff until something happened; it was always a matter of guessing a solution and then implementing it.
 
Basically if you like adventure games, you'll probably enjoy this.  If you specifically like early point and click CD adventure games from the 90's, you'll definitely like it.  I look forward to more from WatchDaToast, just like I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel to Zniw Adventure.  Speaking of WatchDaToast, he also did some Doom WADs, though the first one is really more of a Wolfenstein 3D homage.

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.