The plastic artillery at the French football match makes me wonder if
we've collectively exceeded our capability, as a species, of being able to
gather in large groups and have communal experiences.

Play:
--=--

Dexter's Laboratory Robot Rampage (GBC) - It is exactly Elevator Action
Returns, with the difficulty dialed down in a way I can't quite put my
finger on. This is a game I always saw left over in the display case
whenever I went shopping for old games, and I wish I'd taken a chance on
it sooner. I think that Elevator Action might be the earliest example of
procedural generation, with its thousands of combinations of doors living
in what's otherwise a fixed map.

Darius Cozmic Revelation (Switch) - G-Darius is really good, and I forgot
that its graphics are polygonal rather than sprite-based. It's pretty
movement-heavy though, in a way that thoroughly reminds me how crap I am
at horizontal shooters. Why do I keep buying these games if I'm so bad at
them?

Want:
--=--

Many Evercade carts (Evercade) - Not the new ones, I'll probably have
bought those later. But I did order the existing ones I hadn't yet bought
from the UK, because it was cheaper than buying them domestically here in
the States. I suspect I'm going to see that a lot in the future for many
products, and not just video games.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $3,532

Indie Heroes Collection Vol 1 (Evercade) - $20
Oliver Twins Collection Vol 1 (Evercade) - $20
Xeno Crisis and Tanglewood (Evercade) - $20
Mega Cat Studios Vol 1 (Evercade) - $20
Interplay Vol 2 (Evercade) - $20

Total year-to-date - $3,632

-KKC, who is very tired.
--
-- "People with happy families don't become spies. A bad | kendrick
childhood is the perfect background for covert ops. You | @
don't trust anyone. You're used to getting smacked around, | io-nyc
and you never get homesick." - Michael Westen, /Burn Notice/ | .com

On 23 Aug 2021 at 10:33:21 BST, "Kendrick Kerwin Chua"
<kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> The plastic artillery at the French football match makes me wonder if
> we've collectively exceeded our capability, as a species, of being able to
> gather in large groups and have communal experiences.

Gathering together in large groups for a communal experience of
attempting to kill each other is a fine tradition that even chimpanzees
indulge in.

> Play:
> --=--

Breath of the Wild (WiiU->CEMU/PC) - Cleared the camel, spent a while
doing Gerudo sidequests but have run out. There are more, as little miss
Gerudo Chief won't give me a shiny helmet until I make more people
happy. Decided to go build me a village instead, but pt 2 of that is
'find a Goron to help' so I'm heading to fire mountain.

Alto's Odyssey (Apple things) - cross device savegames ftw. Working
through the Lost City missions.

Erm. That's it, I think.

> Want:
> --=--

An Amiga 4000, but I can't afford that stuff. I can get an Amiga 4000
mobo recreated to ATX shape for about £100, then add ~£400 of components
to it and make my own though. So I probably will.

> Bin:
> -==-
>
> Nothing game-related.

I shall skip my usual complaints about the stupid meat shell.

Which watching Ghost In The Shell (2017) reminded me of.

> -KKC, who is very tired.

It's a way of life.

Cheers - Jaimie

--
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted"
-- Bertrand Russell

On 23 Aug 2021 at 14:08:52 BST, "Jaimie Vandenbergh"
<jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
>
>> Want:
>> --=--

Oho! Just cleaning out my emails, and discovered that I should be
getting a Steam key for Psychonauts 2 tomorrow! Win!

Cheers - Jaimie

--
"Who died and made _you_ Zod?"
-- Sea Wasp, rasfw

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> Play:

Nethack (nethack.alt.org) - version 3.6.6. After a couple of deaths I
ascended a chaotic Monk. I'd say 3.6.6 is slightly less of a slog than
3.6.0 was in 2016, one or two changes having (IMHO) unbroken it
slightly, but that last go did drag on quite a bit. Maybe I shouldn't
have just let it pick character class etc. for me, as chaotic Monks in
particular are a real pain with the magic cancellation changes. AFAICT
it is now literally impossible for them to get the usual combination
of reflection, magic resistance, and a full three points of MC without
wearing body armour - and doing that as a Monk heavily nerfs your
attack by making it much harder to hit (at least in the early game). I
was at over 30k turns before doing the quest, which is hardly speedrun
pace even for me, and for much of that time it was feeling more like
an endless series of barely-managed close escapes which couldn't last,
than a go that was heading anywhere. But it did in the end.

Lego Star Wars 2 (PSP) - started on the RotJ levels, which I vaguely
remember not being the best.

> Why do I keep buying these games if I'm so bad at them?

Along similar lines, aging has made me glad I already like some
turn-based and puzzley things, because the other stuff is starting to
get noticeably trickier. :-)

> Want:

Nothing.

> Bin:

Some random oddities in NAO's current setup, and dodgy-sounding
changes due in Nethack 3.7.

-Rus.