Gyokuyoutama

People also just need to curate where they visit better. I typically stay in higher quality discords and follow not a lot of people on twitter and I can avoid 90% of the boolshit.
 
But I still see that kind of stuff elsewhere or it can slip through the cracks on some discords I'm obligated to stay in, but I just don't bother most the time with that kinda stuff.

just gonna keep posting these here because yall are the only ones I know who might appreciate these gems

Well Windows 98 STILL doesn't recognize the disc as a data disc, but since it can handle filenames longer than 8 characters it recognizes the custom iso I made with all the files.  So it's now installed!
 
Even starting up the game is kind of sketchy as it says "PLEASE INSERT ED HUNTER DISC 2" even though the install disc is labeled CD 2 (from the 3 CD set) and you actually need to put int the third disc.
 
Click okay and get this beautiful logo plus a voiceover saying "Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number."  Not a bad start.
 

 
The game constantly plays various Iron Maiden tracks. The Number of the Beast plays over the menu.  Apparently you can choose from any of the 20 tracks on the album for any of the stages, though it defaults to Phantom of the Opera for the first stage.  The musical quality is surprisingly good; I was expecting it to be bit crushed to hell (especially since I have run multimedia programs on Windows 3.1 that did that) but it sounds fine. Not quite CD quality, but fine.  Sometimes there was skipping during transitions, but this is probably due to me dropping my virtual CPU speed to the minimum requirements for the game to make sure that Windows 98 ran correctly.
 
The game itself is a rail shooter.  We're theoretically playing as Eddie, or "Ed Hunter: Private Eye"
 

 
We've been given a note to help someone out, and then its off to the streets to kill waves of punks:
 

 
(Incidentally I thought that "5th nut" was some sort of bizarre game mechanic, but just means that the 5th score on the high score list is to someone who put in the initials NUT.)
 
And that's pretty much it. Mow down waves of enemies like any other rail shooter, then the scene transitions, and repeat.
 
The connection to Iron Maiden, beyond playing as Eddie, comes from the music blaring in the background, Iron Maiden posters being present in many locations and some of the locations/enemies being inspired by album art.  For example I'm sure that we go to an asylum and meet this guy because of the Piece of Mind cover:
 

 
Was kind of hoping that there'd be some adventure game elements or a variety of game styles, not just rail shooter gameplay, but it does seem to just be a rail shooter.  That being said, it's pretty competent for what it is.  It's hard to explain without a video, but the view often quickly pans from place to place and moves the enemies appropriately, even though they are all just sprites and none of this is actually 3D.  They did also include some variety with multiple route choices and so on.
 
Final thoughts:
 
I wasn't expecting much, but I probably will go back to play this from time to time. If I had purchased this in 1999 when it came out, I would be pretty psyched.  (Well, assuming that I could get it to install at all, which is doubtful considering I had to use a workaround that wouldn't have been possible in Windows 95/98.)  From what I understand this collection was largely marketed and priced as a music compilation first and foremost.  You do get 20 solid Iron Maiden tracks even without the game. So the game is more of a bonus than anything.  There was lots of that kind of stuff in the 90's and a lot of it was of questionable quality (for example, see LGR's videos on the "Hot Wheels Computer Cars" programs that came with certain hot wheels toys.)  So the fact that this is a competent game AT ALL is pretty cool. Speaking of LGR, I feel like I have a good understanding of the pain the likes of him, Ross and Mandalore go through.  I'm pretty sure I've went through the exact sort of troubleshooting hell that Ross has bitched about in specific videos.  I would say that I am on the edge of becoming one of those channels, but realistically half of what makes that stuff hard is the video editing and I have NO desire to go through video editing hell on top of game compatibility hell.

But, erm... Look guys, look! One of my greatest achievements! Pizza Tower on the Steam Store! Hahahaha!
 

I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH VISIONS! MY MIND KEEPS SHITTING WEIRD FORMS AND DESIGNS! A HUNDRED OCS SHALL BE DRAWN! (Buncho sketches from near sleep brain blast)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Had a dream while napping with this OC, but the art style was different. Decided to give it a go and I quite liked it.
 

Over the last couple of days I've been having some mysterious pains in my upper back. (Yeah I know, old man Gyoku.  But this kind of stuff starts happening in your mid to late twenties so most of you are going to have to start dealing with this soon if it hasn't happened already.)
 
Anyway, I started up Youtube for an unrelated reason and one of the top recommendations was for stretches to help with this exact sort of back issue, and they seem to work.  The natural question was, why was that the top recommendation.
 
The default assumption these days is that it was due to data mining.  But in this case I can't see how it would be possible.  This is the first time I've mentioned my back pain online, and I haven't done any searches on the matter since I've been using stretches I already knew before the video was recommended.  The youtube recommendation happened on a clean browser on a computer I don't usually use, and one that I can be sure was never in the same room with me when I talked about back pain, so no microphone harvesting.  I have talked about this on the phone, but only on a flip phone that has no internet capabilities ('cause I intentionally broke them).  So the only conceivable way that this could have been harvested is if Google already had linked that cell phone to my data profile, and also linked me to the other computer, and monitored all my cell phone conversations and processed that I should get a recommendation on the other computer only.  Is that possible?  I guess, but it seems pretty damned unlikely.
 
The more likely scenario is that lots of people have back problems and so this sort of video gets recommended frequently, so in particular it will get "blind" recommendations (as opposed to the weird weeb and boomer game crap I usually watch) and I just happened to have it show up when I started youtube on a fresh browser this time.  But even so my first thought was "oh shit they spied on my conversations" rather than "what a coincidence!" It made me reflect on how even ten years ago everyone probably would have wrote this off as a coincidence, even if they just had been searching for back stuff on the same browser, whereas now we just accept that we are being spied on so hard that it's impossible to avoid detection.

Over the last couple of days I've been having some mysterious pains in my upper back. (Yeah I know, old man Gyoku.  But this kind of stuff starts happening in your mid to late twenties so most of you are going to have to start dealing with this soon if it hasn't happened already.)
 
Anyway, I started up Youtube for an unrelated reason and one of the top recommendations was for stretches to help with this exact sort of back issue, and they seem to work.  The natural question was, why was that the top recommendation.
 
The default assumption these days is that it was due to data mining.  But in this case I can't see how it would be possible.  This is the first time I've mentioned my back pain online, and I haven't done any searches on the matter since I've been using stretches I already knew before the video was recommended.  The youtube recommendation happened on a clean browser on a computer I don't usually use, and one that I can be sure was never in the same room with me when I talked about back pain, so no microphone harvesting.  I have talked about this on the phone, but only on a flip phone that has no internet capabilities ('cause I intentionally broke them).  So the only conceivable way that this could have been harvested is if Google already had linked that cell phone to my data profile, and also linked me to the other computer, and monitored all my cell phone conversations and processed that I should get a recommendation on the other computer only.  Is that possible?  I guess, but it seems pretty damned unlikely.
 
The more likely scenario is that lots of people have back problems and so this sort of video gets recommended frequently, so in particular it will get "blind" recommendations (as opposed to the weird weeb and boomer game crap I usually watch) and I just happened to have it show up when I started youtube on a fresh browser this time.  But even so my first thought was "oh shit they spied on my conversations" rather than "what a coincidence!" It made me reflect on how even ten years ago everyone probably would have wrote this off as a coincidence, even if they just had been searching for back stuff on the same browser, whereas now we just accept that we are being spied on so hard that it's impossible to avoid detection.

I literally had to sew my laptop. You see, some genius thought that having the whole keyboard be permaglued to several small plastic dots from UNDER the frame to be a good idea.
They never had the thought of "what if the keyboard needs to be replaced?"
There is NO way to remove the keyboard without breaking these. The replacement keyboard gets sunk a bit under the frame.
Gluing it is dangerous since the glue can seep around fuck stuff or even ruin the keys.
So I had to get a sewing kit and sew the keyboard into the frame to keep it at the same level it was before.
 
Fucken hell.

Heavy's face is appropriate: slight look of anticipation, but with a larger part of concern for oncoming disappointment.

I wonder how much of touch screen design is due to the fact that on a touch screen they can remove features and you won't realize that you don't have them, whereas if there are non-functional buttons you'll notice right away.  So they can have "premium software packages" and/or subscription services that unlock features already on your car.  I mean, I know that Tesla does that, but I wonder if putting a focus on touch screens was done to accommodate that or if it's just a happy accident.

new Demetori
 

Creature study sketches


 
And because I always overthink things that I make up, you get full descriptions for each which I'll just put in a spoiler I guess
 

For those of you who said that going back and emulating Windows 3.1 was too retro to be worthwhile, I have a new project:
 

 
This following image is literally true. Well, I have occassionally used Windows 95 on random public computers but I largely skipped from Win 3.1 to Win 98 on real computers.
 

 
The reason I'm going to Windows 95 is two fold: first, I found better support articles for setup (particular this one), second because some of the local thrift stores recently had someone dump a bunch of Win95 games and I think it'd be neat to get them running on the appropriate OS.
 

 
And we're in! The fact that this comes with a trial for AOL, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe and Prodigy is more indicative of the time period than anything.  I've only had limited experience with Compuserve (on a relative's computer) and I think I saw Prodigy running once but otherwise my experience is basically nil.  For most people the fact that these services used to be the gateway to the internet is basically unknown (beyond AOL.)  Probably more people know about Gopher than Prodigy.
 
EDIT: After half an hour of ripping a disc image and fucking around with the drivers, I got this Mastermind game running, ultimately from the original disc:
 

 
I was worried when I saw it was a .cue file, meaning that it used redbook technology to play songs from the disc itself rather than as audio files, but the sounds are working fine too.
 
And of course the last step is always to put a modern background image.  This was a bit more annoying.  Unlike DOS-Box, PCEm doesn't use one of your folders as the "virtual hardrive" but rather a big img file.  So you can't just copy the images you want to use into the computer directly.  I ended up making a fake iso image full of images and then had that loaded into the virtual CD rom drive.  Only .bmp is allowed for a wallpaper.  I have things in "true color" (24 bit) but you can still see some color loss from how things are saved now days.  Still a hell of a lot better than it would be if I had not installed the S3 drivers and left everything in 16 color mode.
 

 
EDIT: Wait, I'm dumb. The reason for the low color depth on that background is because it's an image I previously reduced to 256 colors for compatibility with windows 3.1.  Here's what it looks in the proper 24-bit color depth:

Man, Vampire Survivors looked different back then

For those of you who said that going back and emulating Windows 3.1 was too retro to be worthwhile, I have a new project:
 

 
This following image is literally true. Well, I have occassionally used Windows 95 on random public computers but I largely skipped from Win 3.1 to Win 98 on real computers.
 

 
The reason I'm going to Windows 95 is two fold: first, I found better support articles for setup (particular this one), second because some of the local thrift stores recently had someone dump a bunch of Win95 games and I think it'd be neat to get them running on the appropriate OS.
 

 
And we're in! The fact that this comes with a trial for AOL, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe and Prodigy is more indicative of the time period than anything.  I've only had limited experience with Compuserve (on a relative's computer) and I think I saw Prodigy running once but otherwise my experience is basically nil.  For most people the fact that these services used to be the gateway to the internet is basically unknown (beyond AOL.)  Probably more people know about Gopher than Prodigy.
 
EDIT: After half an hour of ripping a disc image and fucking around with the drivers, I got this Mastermind game running, ultimately from the original disc:
 

 
I was worried when I saw it was a .cue file, meaning that it used redbook technology to play songs from the disc itself rather than as audio files, but the sounds are working fine too.
 
And of course the last step is always to put a modern background image.  This was a bit more annoying.  Unlike DOS-Box, PCEm doesn't use one of your folders as the "virtual hardrive" but rather a big img file.  So you can't just copy the images you want to use into the computer directly.  I ended up making a fake iso image full of images and then had that loaded into the virtual CD rom drive.  Only .bmp is allowed for a wallpaper.  I have things in "true color" (24 bit) but you can still see some color loss from how things are saved now days.  Still a hell of a lot better than it would be if I had not installed the S3 drivers and left everything in 16 color mode.
 

 
EDIT: Wait, I'm dumb. The reason for the low color depth on that background is because it's an image I previously reduced to 256 colors for compatibility with windows 3.1.  Here's what it looks in the proper 24-bit color depth:

For those of you who said that going back and emulating Windows 3.1 was too retro to be worthwhile, I have a new project:
 

 
This following image is literally true. Well, I have occassionally used Windows 95 on random public computers but I largely skipped from Win 3.1 to Win 98 on real computers.
 

 
The reason I'm going to Windows 95 is two fold: first, I found better support articles for setup (particular this one), second because some of the local thrift stores recently had someone dump a bunch of Win95 games and I think it'd be neat to get them running on the appropriate OS.
 

 
And we're in! The fact that this comes with a trial for AOL, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe and Prodigy is more indicative of the time period than anything.  I've only had limited experience with Compuserve (on a relative's computer) and I think I saw Prodigy running once but otherwise my experience is basically nil.  For most people the fact that these services used to be the gateway to the internet is basically unknown (beyond AOL.)  Probably more people know about Gopher than Prodigy.
 
EDIT: After half an hour of ripping a disc image and fucking around with the drivers, I got this Mastermind game running, ultimately from the original disc:
 

 
I was worried when I saw it was a .cue file, meaning that it used redbook technology to play songs from the disc itself rather than as audio files, but the sounds are working fine too.
 
And of course the last step is always to put a modern background image.  This was a bit more annoying.  Unlike DOS-Box, PCEm doesn't use one of your folders as the "virtual hardrive" but rather a big img file.  So you can't just copy the images you want to use into the computer directly.  I ended up making a fake iso image full of images and then had that loaded into the virtual CD rom drive.  Only .bmp is allowed for a wallpaper.  I have things in "true color" (24 bit) but you can still see some color loss from how things are saved now days.  Still a hell of a lot better than it would be if I had not installed the S3 drivers and left everything in 16 color mode.
 

 
EDIT: Wait, I'm dumb. The reason for the low color depth on that background is because it's an image I previously reduced to 256 colors for compatibility with windows 3.1.  Here's what it looks in the proper 24-bit color depth:

The best I can do is Bubblegum Crisis

now this is the critical anime analysis that this forum was built upon

Miner dude

I have Lucky Star on deck for when I get done with Dirty Pair.
 
So.
 
I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before I too succumb.

Hey look there I am!

Old Character Guide Jay sent me

When I was a wee lad I thought that there really wasn't any difference between "normies" (not that I called them that then) and people like me.  Nothing beyond a difference in hobbies.  I.e. I liked weird sci-fi stuff, RPGs, superheroes, etc. and normal people did not and it was only this difference in hobbies that made us seem different.
 
Now that every historically "nerd" hobby has been mainstreamed, I can be certain that no, the normies are intrinsically different.  What's more, it's also clear in retrospect that there were normies in nerd hobbies even back then, but not in large enough numbers to ruin them.
 
This kind of ties into the missing SPUF thing too, since SPUF's obsolesce made it anti-normie, which can never be achieved with Discussions.

I realized that these could conceivably be lost to the sands of time, since I only barely found them again.
 
So here they are: all the create.swf SPUF walfas comics I made years ago.