I'm surprised I didn't already mention Tunic here.

That game is a must have. If you like Hyper Light Drifter or A Link to the Past. I'm always extremely interested in games of that sort, but at the same time I'm very cautious of them because they tend to be shallow or not be that good. I'd say it's definitely not the case with Tunic.

This one struck me as a shallow Zelda clone at first, and there is a degree of inspiration there, but there's definitely nothing out there that's quite like Tunic, and its existence and its success makes me very happy. So if you don't already know about it then consider yourself apprised.

Snare, question about the cheetos: Did the AI tell you to buy the sunflower oil directly or do you blend the seeds yourself or, just, like, how do you even feel about that?

I tried a bing search of "bathtub cheetos" but it... it didn't help.

The perception of X8 (and of demakes in general) might affect how people look at this, but imagine if X8 HAD looked like this... imagine if they all did. I'm not sure I'd complain.

But if this is a 1:1 remake of the level design (I say IF because I couldn't say I played X8 enough to know them in the way that I know X or X2) then perhaps its value is the light that it sheds on that level design when you take away the things that were masking it.

I don't know if I'm just particular or if I tend to be more appreciative of little details in music more than other people are, but for the projects like this that I've come across, demaking the music tends to be the worst aspect for me. People tend to just take the tracks and remake them with older soundfonts, emulating the notes but none of the emotion or passion that went into the original work. To me it would be like tracing someone else's drawing onto a cardboard box using a paintbrush dipped in piss. You couldn't say that it didn't involve some amount of effort, but would you say it was worth it?

I haven't really touched it.

I'm not against AI but I'm hoping more that we move past this awkward phase where it's automating things that humans would find fun and fulfilling and would prefer to do themselves, but even supposing we don't, I hope at least that we carve a path forward where everyone benefits.

Generic AI, meet generic comment.

Though I wouldn't have considered having it play video games for me, I suppose that's not entirely a bad thing if the grind really is just boring and you would otherwise be spending time doing useful or fulfilling things.

Thanks! It's like a weird pastel underworld. I'm always thinking of weird landscapes and alternate worlds but I'm also trying to maintain my mantra of being as lazy as possible when making this. Why yes, I am afraid of effort and applying myself earnestly!!

You joke.

And yet it seems to me you've tapped into an effective creative motivator.

I was about to ramble on about that when I realized I was awkwardly paraphrasing Yoda's "Do or do not. There is no try."

ctrl + click here for ambient music for this area

In all seriousness though, THIS VERSION OF HELL IS SO IMAGINATIVE AND COOL.

Maybe not. I just like it and miss it enough and I like to take a crack at solving silly problems sometimes. It's a hobby.

I thought of just matching the text to whatever background the post has, but that causes issues when a post is deleted.

Then I thought of using the quote post feature and changing the text to purple, but I realized the purple quote text box doesn't show anymore. (I'm not crazy, right? The quote box used to be purple, right?

The alternative is typing out all the bbcode manually for alternating colours but that's a pain and takes forever.

This is the only other option I could think of that doesn't require the reader to paste it into some dumb al bhed or binary translator website. The conversion is something you do offsite and online but at least it doesn't have to be pasted offsite to read.

Maybe there's a better solution I haven't thought of.

Well, I mean, that's just what the [ code ] bbcode is for.

I'm not particularly worried someone can get a hold of my account and change the post to contain something malicious, as even I can't seem to get into my own account except on my phone and this PC. It just loops through each character within the text box and surrounds each character with BBCode to change the colour and effectively hide half of the text. I'm not even sure what could be hidden into a code this simple that most modern computers wouldn't just detect automatically, but perhaps I'm just naive.

If it makes you more comfortable, I can add comment lines explaining each part of the process to make it more clear what each part is doing, but of course it's your call if you want to remove it. I just thought it was a cool idea.

Here's my attempt at a fix for the spoiler button. Not really the best thing ever but it's just javascript that converts your text into BBCode that will remain unreadable on any post unless it's highlighted. Thought it would work as a temporary solution that would still function with the existing layout of the forum.

Here's the code that can be saved into a .html file and opened, it creates a userform that converts your text into the above BBCode monstrosity.

edit: Just in case this probably wasn't clear, this code can be copied into notepad, saved as .html, opened, and then used to generate the bbcode on each of your PCs.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function spoilerText(str)
{
    document.write( '[quote author=SPOILER (highlight to read)][/quote]');
for (var i = 0; i < str.length+1; i+=2)
  {
     document.write( '[color=#0000FF]' + str.substr(i,1) + '[/color]');
     document.write( '[color=#0080FF]' + str.substr(i+1,1) + '[/color]');
  }
    document.write( '<br><br>[quote author=END OF SPOILER][/quote]' );
}

// -->
</script>
<form method="get">
<textarea rows="20" cols="50" id="usrform" style="font-family:Century Gothic;">
Inserttexthere
</textarea>
<br>
<input type="button" value="Submit" onClick="pr()">
</form>
<span id="result" style="font-family:Century Gothic;"></span>

<script language="JavaScript">
function pr() {
           document.getElementById("result").innerHTML = document.getElementById('usrform').value;
           spoilerText(document.getElementById("result").innerHTML,0);
           }
</script>


I'll pardon your pun Xero. I did the exact same thing and I don't apologize.

Mike... I mean, I can't say Wonder was difficult. I completed it faster than I've completed the other NSMB games and that's partly because I enjoyed it way more so I was motivated to keep playing. But I like the various options you have for challenging yourself in a more intrinsic than extrinsic sort of way.

I can totally understand having that reaction to NSMB. I guess for me at the time it felt like that's just what 3D Mario would look like and I never questioned that. Yet having seen and played Super Mario Wonder, it blows my mind that it ever looked any different. The last few times Nintendo has tried stylistic art style choices for their platformers it was mostly just turning things into these artsy-looking animate craft projects which I never hated but was I'm not specifically a fan of either. I'm not even bothered deciphering how Wonder's art style was conceptualized and rendered because at the end of it all it just looks excellent.

I suspect Wonder's music partly never grabbed me because I was never stuck on any particular level that long as compared to games I played when I was 5 or 6. With the exception of the snow theme which is odd because I always hate the snow themes, typically because of the excessive reliance on sleigh bells or tambourine or whatever it is. I tend to dislike the sand/beach themes for a similar reason; it feels like they keep relying on the same instruments to convey the setting and it's gotten extremely old. The snow theme isn't even that much different this time around but it did somehow feel different and it was one of the themes that made me just sit there listening to it, genuinely happy.

Super Mario Wonder is wonderful.

I WON'T spoil anything at all, as the surprises in this game are best experienced directly, and that includes skipping all of the trailers and gameplay footage, ESPECIALLY if you're going to play it anyway.

But I'll say this: Some added features really take it to a new level for me and adds a layer of challenge and replayability in a way that I really appreciate and doesn't feel shallow, as someone who has basically played through every single main Mario entry except Sunshine and tend to breeze through almost anything that isn't in the special world. And don't worry; that's not me saying it's super difficult or anything. It feels like lately every time I notice the Mario series is stuck on handling something a particular way, they come out and handle that thing differently, and it always just works.

This game also surprises me in ways that New Super Mario Bros generally didn't after the first one on the DS, even though I did enjoy those games.

I don't think Nintendo expected everyone to max out the battery any more than they expected everyone to get all korok seeds.

I maxed my battery out without duping anything and I played the entire game for... I dunno. Something above 200 hours would be my guess. A massive chunk of that wasn't spent acquiring or using zonaite at all. Duping honestly sounds way less fun to me than what I actually did.

Oh of course!

Can't edit my profile either.

Quick reply appears on my phone but the script that pushes the quotes to quick reply don't work. On my older PC, quick reply doesn't show up at all, just the error message "Cannot access offset of type string on string"

And the spoiler tags don't work.

The important one for me though is that I outright just can't log in to my account on any other device that I haven't already logged in from. It just refreshes the login screen when I try without giving me a reason why.

I have a feeling none of these are easy fixes at this point. Still glad the forum is still here and works!

I never fully watched TNG but S3 of Picard made me question whether I really understand what the Borg actually are. I always had the impression that it was only the wrongness of their twisted morality that made them villains, and not any genuine malevolence. So now I feel confused.

I would say that the most manipulative part about the season is how it feels like it ends on all of its strongest notes. A lot of stories do, sure but what I mean is that the majority of the moments in the show that I actually liked, happened at the very end of it.

The first new episode of Futurama felt like I could have streamed them all in order without me even noticing it was a genuinely new episode, if not for the obvious cultural cues.

Xero, Gravity Circuit looks awesome. Maybe I'll get it some day.

BTW Majikn, I agree. Until this point I've been just vibing with standard resource amounts but upgrading the armor was the biggest hurdle. Enemies doing like 8-10 hearts of damage is insane, and a maxed out armor set getting that down to like 1-2 hearts makes it feel more like a Zelda game instead of dark souls.

I dunno. There are many reasons why the damage output from the enemies doesn't concern me that much, but I get why it can FEEL hardcore. Dark Souls is one of my all-time favourites and I feel like I failed to be able to articulate why on this site back when it came out, and I suppose playing those games more than prepared me for a difficulty spike in this type of game, but BOTW also just isn't difficult for me because you can exploit pause and eat a fully cooked meal at any time which is where those resources come in handy. Dark Souls felt almost like the older Zeldas in that way, if you ignore that you have to use the limited bottles as the action is happening. That's not the only reason though—the way TOTK tweaked things often makes you able to use accessible things far more to your advantage earlier on than you could in BOTW. Handheld weapons break too but now more than ever, swords and spears and bows are far from the only thing in your arsenal.

I say all of this in the hope that it might make your experience of the game more enjoyable and less like a grind, but it's subjective I suppose. I can't necessarily tell you how to enjoy the game but I can tell you I enjoyed it more by focusing on the moment-to-moment, using tactics against enemies rather than relying on defense levels and health pools, and otherwise just doing whatever I fancied because the gameplay is so variable depending on what you feel like doing.

I like TOTK but have barely played. Like Rez I got that fix from all these games that tried to clone the formula after BOTW like Genshin Impact so now with that feel and having a lil baby running around it's hard to find time to wander around in the game. But it's fun, it's cool, I'm eager to play more story (just easily distracted by side-things in the game).

I like your use of the word tried, there.
I never gave Genshin Impact or anything like it a chance, to be fair.

Absolutely no part of TOTK has felt like a grind to me. If you need the duplication glitch then I feel like I'm not approaching this game with the same mindset at the very least, but TOTK is at least way better than BOTW in terms of resource abundance. You can conserve powerful materials / weapons without even flocking off to dupe stuff or farm literally anything ever. Perhaps that's partly because I find the base experience enjoyable enough that resources just flow in as I'm enjoying it. I have more materials than I'm ever bothered using. But enemies also drop powerful weapons that easily fuse with their own horns which are in even greater abundance, and that alone is a vast improvement on the durability issue for me and adds a layer of experimentation as well.

Just as happy to see the game modded if it means more people can enjoy it though.

So Opal... do your coffee breaks always transcend the primitive human concept of time?

Metroid Dread should be renamed Metroid Mild Tension.

I am very much enjoying the game, but I'll call it what it is. The Dread in the title is the same ploy I see Marvel use when their name their films things like "Civil War" "Age of Ultron" and stuff. They're invoking something the old fans remember without concerning themselves if the content is appropriate to the title. They even added autosave points, which goes against the tone they say they're trying to set.

I enjoy the style of level design and how it compares to older entries, if only at least because it feels unique. It feels very interesting to play. I guess it's just too bad that when I think of "bounty hunter trapped in a hostile environment with very powerful enemies and is constantly cut off from backtracking to safer areas" I don't think of Metroid, because when I play as Samus, and especially when I play as Samus in such an environment, all that really happens is that the way forward is much more easily delineated and I go deeper into the labyrinth with the confidence to know I can handle what's coming. There's nothing to dread, at all. But there's plenty to enjoy. The controls and movement in particular—it feels like they were perfected. I hope the smoothness of it doesn't spoil my enjoyment of older games in the series. The environments and ambient wildlife are really interesting to look at as well.

I also can't complain too much as there's a limit to what I can expect from "Nintendo Dark".

This is such a weeeeeird time to be alive.

It really fascinates me how there's so much passion and interest surrounding the MMX property that isn't enough to make an actual new game out of. I'm probably just living in a bubble but it's so weird to me that it's been decades and I still see people quoting "WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOR?!" and making stuff like this and MMX Corrupted. I've also met fans that weren't even alive in 1993.

Stranger Things 4:
The main villain being one of the dumbest villains I've ever seen aside, Strange Things 4 was leagues better than 3 and there are moments that really elevated it beyond its own absurdity. I hated 3, but 4 actually changed my mind on whether the series could actually continue.

Mr. Mercedes:
I found it quite endearing for an attempt at a hardboiled detective story. For most, I would say it's at least watchable and therefore entertaining. If you already like Stephen King then it's an easier sell because for me, even never having read any of the books in that series, it feels like the most Stephen King-esque story that I've ever seen adapted to television.

The Haunting of Hill House:
I watched the first two episodes of this in 2018.
At first I felt that it was shallow and stopped watching. One of the biggest indictments on it is that I feel like it tries too hard in the beginning where nothing makes sense, which at first makes it feel less like good horror and more like just "here's a show where we just terrorize a bunch of characters for your entertainment." There are too many of the latter and making a show seem like the latter at first can be a risky move. I almost missed out.
Later on I tried the Haunting of Bly Manor and really liked it. I went back to watch The Haunting of Hill House in an empty dark room during my nights when I was on vacation last year. This show is fantastic and shocking and horrifying at the same time. When I got to the end of one of the mysteries of the show, it was worse than the worst thing I would have imagined. I felt like I was descending into hell. It was fantastic!
Maybe don't watch it wearing headphones at 4am.
Or... do?
I don't want to give away too much but the show has an emotional weight to it that I rarely see in horror, which sucks because it's difficult to actually be horrified when there's no connection with the characters on screen.

Tales From The Loop:
I love this and it's hard to recommend at the same time. This is the kind of sci-fi that I want to see more of—where there's a narrative purpose beyond things just looking shiny and weird. Each story has some weird sci-fi aspect to it, but all of it relates back to life. I thought it was beautiful. Try to just have an open mind while watching it I suppose.

The Last of Us:
Grabbed me more than I thought it would. I'm also not very attached to the actual game series so I have no opinions on however it may differ.
Ellie and Joel are a very entertaining duo.

I definitely remember you MOX, mainly for your art and sprite work, which I always thought was really cool.

Sorry that corporate graphic design burned you out. You can always post your cool art here!

I cringe at a few of my old posts but I really don't feel that same way about things other people posted most of the time, and I don't remember you posting anything that I thought would be embarrassing, for what that's worth.

Just have her say she hid herself while she repaired herself. Like Zero. Except she just took way longer.

Iris Virus.

I've been avoiding this for a long time now with the hope that I'll avoid spoilers for when it releases but this popped into my feed today and I checked out the first 9 minutes or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pk-DsDpiBo

I'm very impressed by that intro stage.

And yes... they're STILL working on this.

Because I don't cringe at it at all.

Perhaps I should, but I've seen you as a cool person since at least like 2009 or so, and cool people get away with posting cringey things sometimes, I think.

A lot of things people from here have said over the years have made me laugh or smile.

I have become an alcoholic basically. I drink 4 out of seven nights.

I'm a senior in college. I have a 3.89 GPA. All my teachers love me. I've been with my girlfriend for 3 years, I want to marry her some day soon. I'm the president of my University's outdoors club and am a model student. Figured I'd drop you guys an update.

I also watch a lot of porn.

...

Sorry.
That post by John from like 11 years ago is among many many things you guys have said over the years that will forever live in my head.

Reading through some of the threads on here is often like opening up any of my old favourite books.

But me?
I've made some improvements.
I spent a good long chunk of my life afraid and depressed, but somewhere in the past ten years I've found a niche for myself in the working world and have had many passion projects that have turned into useful tools for my team. I'm not really a programmer and I might never write a story or make a video game or do something creative like I really deeply wanted to earlier on, but I haven't let go of that either and as I'm living I try to just enjoy life and experience cool #####. As I work at my job I've been developing my skills in leadership and in figuring out smart solutions to really stupid problems. I'm a work in progress and I've pretty much accepted that I'll always feel like a work on progress. People tell me I'm hard on myself and in some ways I probably am but in other ways I feel like a #####heel who doesn't contribute enough.

I'm going on 34 in December and I have a wife. Common law because our plans for even a small wedding folded when several employment mishaps screwed her out of a vacation. We don't have and don't plan on having kids.

I also enjoy making people laugh or at least trying to. Will never apologize for trying even if my jokes are dry or silly or dumb, but I feel like either I've gotten better at it over the years or people have decided to humour me. I've been told by multiple different people that I'm their favourite manager, which I'm sure is a total coincidence.

This is such a weird time to be alive.

I wasn't really talking about print but I suppose I could have been if I were talking about an artist's rendition of their colours merging or what that would look like rather than what pure red and pure blue light look like when placed together. I tend to think of colour in terms of light than in dyes or inks I suppose.

Admittedly I wasn't exactly sampling X and Zero's colour palettes for their exact shades and hues, either.

I'm under the impression that there are multiple different but valid theories/ideas about colour that we could apply here, but oh well!

I just wanted a magenta Xero.

If X is blue and Zero is red, then Xero should be magenta.

It's a hard truth, but it needs to be said.

John, that post alone got me to buy and play through Stray.

I enjoyed the game, but definitely not as cat as I would have expected.

I was expecting 3D cat simulator adventure in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and mostly visual, dialogue-free storytelling.

It certainly delivers on most of those things, and I think it could do with a sequel that focuses on closing in on what it would be like to be a cat. More immersion, I guess, is what I'd like to see. In terms of what that story would look like, they've left a few story threads to paw at and see what unravels.

Anyway, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is fantastic and it's a worthy case study in how I think a Mega Man 12 could be successful in 3D. The only thing I would add to it is make Meta Knight/other enemies unlockable for player two AND/OR give Bandana Waddle Dee different weapons or fighting styles that coincide with Kirby's powerups to make him more interesting. It was my wife's first Kirby game so I wanted her to be Kirby. I couldn't complain though; it was still a blast.

"Welcome weary traveler to the wonderful Emporium of Wonders! I am currently offering no wares!"

I love this line so much. It gets me every time.

Also WHOA.

Battle Network is hard to recommend because it plays and is written like some silly kids tv show.

It worked for me when I was a kid.

Put that aside and you get a pretty unique game with an interesting challenge.

I hope no one gets mad at John for converting the cabin into a wagon to progress the plot of finding Abe.

Was going to ask how you got such a result out of only having started poking into code last year but then OH OF COURSE.

Still, I'm impressed. Most I've been able to do with code is blow the minds of my coworkers, none of whom understand programming, and I've barely evolved from using nested functions in excel to like actual VBA, Google Apps Script, and C#.

Just got WiFi at my new place.

It's a top floor apartment in a rural part of a town in southern Ontario.

I have a view of a sunrise, the town's water tower, and a garbage-laden landscape of yellow grass where the most interesting thing you'll see is a seagull being flung across the sky by the wind.

Got a promotion so I can afford it.
Kind of.
My combined income with my wife really does not take us as far as I thought it would. We thought we would be paying off a mortgage at this point, but ##### happens.

But it's really nice, and it's really quiet. And I might just be able to actually focus on things, walk more, and probably start eating healthier because we don't have to share a kitchen. I guess we'll see!

I really should also talk to a doctor about zoloft or something similar.

I forgot about Optic Sunflower.

I don't even remember if his explosion was beautiful.

And pretty much everyone told me that the Speed Racer movie was "ridiculous" and "bad."

How dare they!

In my head I'm Hornet Man, but in reality I'm probably Sheep Man.

And in a way digital scarcity is more real when you take certain things for granted. Some hosting sites go down over time, and sometimes gems like this webcomic go missing and never appear on the internet again.

If we're going to use pretend money it needs to be an incentive for good, not destructive, behaviour. I kind of hope it all goes bust for the greedy corporations that are doing it for that reason.
That's like half the point of money. You provide something of value and get something of value in return.

Or at least that's how I would wish things would be.

I don't understand the value we assign to crypto when the meaningful impact is what it is. It's really just sad to me.

End rant.

Last game I was playing was Rain World earlier in the year. I never finished it because it's a pretty difficult game to get the hang of. I don't think there's anything quite like it and I love it.

I can understand that, yeah.

I do feel like the tracks would be better if they stuck to 16 bit soundfonts.

I'm not confident to say I'd always be to tell by ear which soundfonts are 16 bit or not, to be fair, but there are a few soundfonts in there that don't feel like they fit.

But I like the songs regardless.

https://mynewsoundtrack.bandcamp.com/album/limitless-x

I normally hate "extended versions" of old classics by people who aren't the original creators, but the Spark Mandrill theme in particular is pretty close to what I would like in a video game song remix. I like the blend of old and new, and traditional songs have an ending whereas most SNES songs just go on as long as you're willing to listen, which isn't always ideal depending on what you want in a playlist.

Mibbles.

Though the mauling tent being alluded to but never seen might be perfectly on brand.

Oh. Well nevermind!

I thought it was also a play on my name.

I knew it was a reference to Frosty but yeah.

I JUST noticed the pun in the "magic in that old silk hat" bit.

Just now.

Sorry, Xero.

Your cat's life was made better by living with you.

I hope this doesn't stop you from getting another cat. There are too many sad and lonely cats out there.

I'll, uh, take your cane right about uh, now, Rez.

Love it.

Did you base Teelio off of the Virgin vs. Chad meme?

I was having trouble selling a skeleton from my closet on Etsy but then Mega Man showed up with a coffin filled with epoxy resin and pointed his buster at me.
I basically ##### myself before I had this sudden flashback of him beating up a Canon EOS 6D Mark II Full Frame DSLR camera the week prior.
He wasn't shooting me at all, you see.
He was shooting me.
So anyway I lowered the skeleton into the resin and we posted the video on Facebook and my net sales skyrocketed from zero to one.

Everyone here has been touched by Mega Man.
In their lives.

My character shall be a blue Pikmin with a leaf on his head and a black hoodie.
The stem of the leaf is short enough such that when the hood is up, the leaf juts out the top like the brim of a baseball cap.
Oh and he has probably somewhere between half and three quarters of the dimensions of John's sprite.

I gasped at the sight of Advance Wars before realizing it was just a remake.

Still, it could be neat to play those online.

Metroid Dread surprised me and I stuck around for some of the gameplay of that. It looks as good as I expected Samus Returns to be, for sure.

I also watched the Elden Ring trailer and Zelda, of course.

None of what I saw impressed me, but I think that's just me being old.

Alternate first comic:

I didn't know that existed and if it's different enough from the original I might be interested.

I really liked the first Mass Effect, some problems aside. I'm glad I stuck with that game to the end because it blew me away.

The Forest is a lot of fun with the right group of people. I don't think I'd bother with single player even though there's some different features to it, but with pals it's a good time.

If it's local multiplayer I'm interested. Fiancée and I struggle with finding games we both like and can play together without some bizarre solution like online in different rooms or something.