I can’t blame them for not understanding the significance of human communications infrastructure, but I wish they wouldn’t set up camp in poorly tended mailboxes. Granted, ants are worse about this by some distance. (I’ve also had to deal with small birds while delivering)
All things considered, though, they’re cool if you give them an appropriate berth
Seibu Kaihatsu’s Dynamite Duke (1989), a pretty novel hybrid Cabal-like/Beat-'em-up with a lot of love put into it. The arcade version’s got a pretty slick art direction, the environmental destruction vfx rock, and the animation’s pretty slick. The whole thing’s got that passion project charm to it. Unfortunately, Cabal clones were only really in vogue in that late '80s/early '90s space, and the beat 'em up gameplay isn’t fleshed out or consistently applied enough to be satisfying in a post-Final Fight, post-Streets of Rage world. I’d like to see something like it, but there’s no way to bring Duke into the world of modern game design practices without drastic reformulation at a minimum.
Notably, Seibu had really high hopes for Duke, being a passion project and a intended magnum opus. Unfortunately, lukewarm reception brought in poor returns, the company slipped into dire straits, and they were forced to make something simpler and lower stakes as a hail mary. That title - a simple, Toaplan-esque shooter nobody had any real faith in - turned out to be Raiden, which would become a darling in arcades, pushing 17,000 units solds worldwide.
It’s like they’re trying to destroy everyone’s trust in them. Can’t even toe the whole “Villain with good publicity” line effectively.
Watching that in my high school electronics class was a early radicalizing moment
Imagine where we’d be if this stuff was allowed to mature in the 2000s alone
In a weird way, the development of advanced communications and coordination technology has only made it harder for anything to change in a significant way .
The gutting of the humanities and other things generally written off as “frivolous” kind of terrified me. There’s something that feels distinctly wrong about these attempts at destroying and anyone that even might turn an introspective gaze on society itself. Like they don’t want anything that might foster self-awareness accessible to the layman.
Am I gonna have to pay for a vpn that actually lets me fake being outside the ‘states? I usually self host on a VM host to avoid incurring expenses, but it seems like that’s not really an option here. Seems like I might have to go for a AWS instance running PiVPN or something.
In terms of geography, My secret weakness is how often I confuse Slovenia and Slovakia, solely because they share most of the letters in their name.
(I also have a similar problem with Armenia and Albania. Within the US, Mississippi and Missouri used to give me a lot of trouble when I was younger, too.)
Actually I kind of think the whole “get all precious about free speech” thing is kind of played out and mostly right wing bullshit anyhow
Okay I don’t really like this bootleg Cold War thing we’ve got going on but any outcome where Tucker Carlson gets harmed is one I can accept
I’ve never liked taking the whole “The west” thing seriously. Predominantly associate referring to “The west” and “western culture” as something wignats and conservatives do, and that kinda tints every other contexts where the phrase/concept comes up.
Brought to you by the guys behind the recent remasters of Klonoa and Katamari Damacy
It’s all fun and games until you wake up from the healing coma to find out SHODAN’s fucking around with mutagens and trying to unload a mining laser on Earth
God I can’t wait for our stupid asses to get Kesslered into being unable to leave the planet permanently. May the rest of the universe remain unblighted by human hands
Arcade games 2: but now every game is Double Dragon III
The Simpsons: Hit and Run had a similar gag in one of the maps.
Not really having the option to not cope. Or not knowing how to actively choose to not cope. One of the two. For what it’s worth, Tolkein genuinely was on to something with this one.
I miss the mountains of the Northwest. There’s something that remains really weird to me about how flat my stretch of the Great Lakes are, even 20 years on.