Games

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How to know it’s time to take a break:

  1. You’ve cleared out a post apocalyptic city full of daemons.
  2. You’ve defeated the villain’s pet three headed, fire breathing dog.
  3. You’ve defeated the villain’s Astral ally, with some help from your own.
  4. The game crashes before the post battle auto checkpoint save.
Yep.
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Not sure if it’s better or worse, that my temptation to put batteries in this is tempered by wondering where the heck my other cartridges went.

It’s been in an old green pencil case for plenty of years, which was also home for my PlayStation and PS2 memory cards, but I only found two cartridges :/.

Mechanical and Apple pencil shown for scale. It’s about the thickness of three pencils :P.

A good Game Boy video

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Retro Tech: Game Boy

This kind of makes me feel old, and tempted to root around in my closet.

A long, long time ago in a childhood increasingly far away, I remember what mobile gaming was like. More than a bit of my childhood involved being stuck in the back of a car, bored for the duration, or stuck waiting places. Needless to say it was more remember to bring your shit with you than remember your phone charger. ‘Cuz if T-800 and Cpl Hicks lost their guns, you weren’t going back, lol.

Mobile gaming when I was little was something more like Tiger’s hand held games. I’m pretty sure that Double Dragon passed more than a few hours of my early childhood. And then there was Game Boy and Game Gear. Those were cool. More often than not, mobile gaming was borrowing my grandmother’s deck of cards, which didn’t require more power than daylight.

My first “Real” video gaming system of my own, was the Super NES. Between the original NES my brother and I played, and the THHGs I was used to, I came very close to choosing the original Game Boy for my first system, but in the end the green screen balanced me in favor of a more traditional console. The Super Nintendo had plenty of pretty colours, and Super Game Boy was eventually a thing anyway.  Some time later my brother would also end up with a Sega Game Gear, but that was short lived.

Most of my time with the Game Boy turned out to be the later Color model. My mother bought me a purple Game Boy Color out of the local pawn shop around the time Pokemon Red & Blue were still young in America, and I still have that GBC in my closet. Along with my Pokemon Blue cartridge, and other games. Before the rise of the affordable smart phone, more than a bit of time spent waiting someplace, I passed either reading books or playing on my Game Boy Color.

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FML: noun; words uttered when sorting your Steam wishlist by price during a sale.

Not going to share the words for when 30 – 80 % makes half one’s list under $10, lol.

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Zombie Night Terror is probably what happens when a bunch of hungry developers get ravenous together, and decide to feast upon the living.

Also way to freaking fun to be on 90% off sale for under $2.

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Playing through République episode two, I find the ending a touch amusing as a sell.

During the end roll of the credits, we hear The Overseer crafting a cock and bull version of a political murder, covering it up as a simple heart attack. One that could have been prevented if their over the top surveillance infrastructure, and ever watching big brother had been able to see the VIP collapse, his death could have been prevented. This is even more an amusing sell for his surveillance state, given that you can find an intel item along the way that shows The Overseer gifting the victim with one of his camera equipped owl statues.

Another nice tidbit is sparing The Librarian the irony of burning Fahrenheit 451, as they can simply censor it to greater effect on student’s e-readers and rely on the lack of cross checking the physical book. That’s an especially dangerous concept that fits both narratives IMHO.

Actually, I kinda hope someone makes a good book that utilizes that concept.

In related tidbits, whenever I get around to episode three: I might just breakout my USB-C hub, and connect my iPad to my monitor and Xbox controller. So far both times I’ve sat down to play République, I’ve basically put my iPad in a stand on my desk and fingered my way through the game. Wait, that didn’t come out right 🤣.

Future research may also include some iOS games worth trying with a controller. But +/- that Apple Arcade is kinda an interesting idea, I don’t really expect games on iPad to suck any less than Android tablets, since often the same crappy games are on both platforms. With really great ones like République being a rarer find, IMHO.

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Passing worries:

  1. Wait, how many games of Solitaire did I just play?
  2. Hmm, how many games have I played in my life between PC and a deck of cards.
  3. Hell, how many bits would it take, ahh nevermind.
  4. Fuck it, another round!
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You Can Officially Transform Your Smartphone Into a Pokedex

I’m pretty sure that when Pokémon Red and Blue were still current releases themselves, you probably could have gotten me to accept a phone just for the sake of this case—I wasn’t really a fan of smart phones until many years later.

Aptly, then as now, I’d rather have a Game Boy that looks like a Pokédex than a phone case, lol.