Reminded that every mid-00s Jerry “Tycho” Holkins newspost was indistinguishable from average Homestuck narration
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I had no idea at all there was a grandia 3
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i think it might have been renamed grandia xtreme for the english version? nothing more xtreme than an rpg
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Nah Grandia Xtreme is a rogue-like dungeon crawler with a Grandia battle system. It is apparently very bad!
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can’t believe you aren’t telling people that the Xtreme English dub has Dean Cain and Lisa Loeb
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first ever justified undub patch
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hey, thanks so much for playing!
this was my first bit of game development experience at all - i was 13/14 when i made it and i think at the time i just wanted to make something that looked respectable to the community for the most part so people would take me seriously or whatever and not just think i was a kid. i think i was only comfortable getting “sort of” weird at that point. tbh i still struggle with the whole people seeing you as “weird” = not taking you seriously thing so it’s a lifelong battle.
that’s a funny interpretation - i like that
tbh i think that is just because of the limited map space - if you want to get more complex, getting more mazy with smaller room size is the main way to do that. i’m happy how some of the stuff turned out considering (and think it being only “psuedo-mazy” improved from Spears more straight mazy approach), but it def can make some of later those levels a bit unwieldy to play.
i assume you mean the trap at the beginning of level 12? but yeah that kind of comes from out of nowhere lol.
there’s actually a major bug with the rocket launcher on the original release - in the code it uses. so the game will crash on the highest difficulty in certain later levels if you use it. this has to do with the sort of programming hack i borrowed from someone else to use the rocket launcher that borrows objects in memory from the monsters and if you use too many monsters (which i did on a few later levels) it’ll just run out of memory and crash. the SDL version fixes this though.
also… speaking of the mines, the SDL version had another major problem around the mines. someone else did it and presumably they forgot about the mines so the first version the mines just didn’t work. when i told them about it, for some reason the floor debris behavior where you can drink blood at low health was read in the code by me as the mine object - which they didn’t understand, resulting in explosive floor debris that made one level early on basically impossible to complete? anyway it took forever to get them to understand the problem and fix it but they finally did about a year or two ago.
yeah they’re all just from either other mission packs (the black SS guards are from an old wolf3d set called Conflict in the Fatherland i think? the steel textures might be as well) and there’s stuff from Spear and the Mission packs in there.
should mention that part of the inspiration for doing an Episode 4 themed mapset was that there were a lot of Episode 2 themed ones at the time (and some episode 3/hitler killing ones too) and i thought it was sort of overkill - so i wanted to try a different approach, and Episode 4 always had the most intriguing design to me of any of the wolf 3d episodes.
SORRY. i was going to do some sort of contest that i never bothered to follow up on. i guess that puts me in line with the original developers of Wolf3D and their Aardwolf thing.
also fun bit of trivia is i attempted to play through this set and commentate it back in 2012, but i never finished that. and then i did the same in 2022 with the SDL version on a few streams and never finished that either. maybe one day i’ll bother to finish one of those.
also coincidentally yesterday i was playing back a handful of some incomplete maps i did back around college that i tried to revise and go back to a couple of times over the years - maybe around like 2012 and 2020. they’re only like 10 maps and maybe a bit more weird than Chemical Warfare but most of them aren’t full on weird. tbh not sure if i really want to go back and finish them instead of doing something else, but maybe one day.
i did release a few maps after that in various community sets, including a difficult challenge one called “Fun With Adolf” from some map jam contest from one of the Wolf3D forums back in 2007 when i was in college (note: still before i transitioned so the name is different).
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the only thing I know about grandia 3 is that @BustedAstromech thinks Miranda is so cool and pretty
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In order to escape the possiblity of more Grandia 3 I put the ps2 away and took the Dreamcast out for 9.9.2025. I noticed the Dreamcast and the PS2 and the PS3 all ran hot and I’ve used the same power cable for all. In the interest of science I’ve decided to get rid of my no-name chinese cable and dig through boxes for a replacement.
Asute lurkers might remember I had this exact same issue with my wii u that the US plugs are ever so slightly different and don’t fit in Japanese outlets. I must have 6 of that exact cable in this apartment (I surely have an official sony one SOMEWHERE) so will dig around so I can play SLAVE ZERO. I think I’ve made one or two purchases in the last 5 years or so for the dreamcast. If nothing else loading up my PSO save and getting footage would be fun.
I should just boot up every Dreamcast game I have just for a little bit. Make a thread for it, NEXT WEEK.
Neo Rude cheered me on for the first Sonic Adventure level. My chao collection was either deleted or not on this VMU but one of the other 7. They also helped me with some puzzles in Chu Chu Rocket and… that was sort of the end of games appropriate for a preschooler.
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I am very tempted to start B3313, but it seems there are two branches versions! The 1.0 and the “Unabandoned” version. Which one should I get?
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I recommend 1.0 for a couple of reasons – mainly that a small handful of my favourite aesthetic areas are missing from Unabandoned, and also UA places the red stars in more creepypasta-themed areas, whereas almost all red stars in 1.0 are in Bowser-themed or boss-themed areas, which are a bit easier to hunt for without a guide.
There was also a fairly significant bug in versions earlier than 1.0 that made trying to collect multiple stars from a level much more annoying, but I believe the UA latest fixes that.
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started up the full version of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance last night. in spite of my initial misgivings, the game continues to surpass and disprove my initial concerns - it’s a real gem! made it through the first 3.5 stages so far and now that i’m done with work for the day, i plan to keep going
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Played NIDANA. It’s a walking sim set in a very abstract, implied to be virtual world. The game has such a huge focus on pleasing, geometric forms that I initially suspected that this was all the developer was interested in exploring and it was a purely aesthetic exercise. It develops into something more interesting by the end but is mostly that. One thing that stands out against the endless fractals and primitives is a femme who can often be seen in the distance and you are implied to be pursuing. ‘Who’s the pretty face?’, you pine. This also initially seems like a bit of a shallow set up, the developer creating a basic human interest against the background of math clatter.
The game never really drifts from its gb_monochrome colour scheme. The only variety is provided by formal visual differences or a mild gameplay hook. Each level has a different navigational gimmick that makes it hard to traverse or see the mostly linear path. Some of them are very successful, most are quite dull to actually traverse; the best are:
- Occasionally you get to fly which is a bit more interesting than walking down corridors and began a headcanon that you’re really just a ship flying through a virtual space since you never see your character (until the end).
- There’s a section where you have to rotate a black cube with WSAD and a white cube with the mouse which felt like the game taking its walking sim tools and asking us to think slightly differently about what these inputs are really doing which it plays with later. I’d call it a puzzle but there’s no indication of what the correct rotation is. Just pure trial and error.
- There’s a fun segment where your character gets ‘quarantined’ in a box. It’s the only time text shows up in the environment all over the texture of the box. The box also plays this unpleasant, persistent, pitter-patter rhythm that reminded me of Ryoji Ikeda’s music. Dev definitely seems like a fan of minimalism and phase but it’s a fun application of this kind of sound to a roach motel for the player. You can’t get out of the box unless you pause the game and navigate something else.
Holding W often just makes the environment itself ripple, doppler, or vibrate and it turns the language of the walking sim into a more interesting exploration of architectural rhythm. I think what they’re going for is that movement through the levels isn’t really movement. Fictionally, it’s strongly implied that you are hacking a system and the later levels make this more explicit by the fact that your movement, actions, and presence are inherently destructive, not just a means of changing coordinates. Many shapes and level segments recur but with no explicit significance than what you ascribe to it. They almost become a language or a cast but without ever really developing a more significant gameplay role. Level segments like the intermediary save room, the grid, the triangle hallway, or the great forms in the void, would all be recognisable I think to someone else who had played this, yet still are somehow meaningless.
It’s hard for me not to see it as a system being taken apart, broken down, and destroyed. The femme you follow has the upper hand initially but becomes another form you wipe clean and ultimately turn into a cube. One section strongly felt like I was deactivating a global weapons system but this may just be an interpretative hallucination. The game begins with you looking out toward a bridge with a collapsed section, and the very end of the game returns you to the same point that the bridge section restored so that you can access and presumably delete the femme. It turns out you are also a, differently-coloured, femme.
I found I got a lot out of it as an experiment but I think it only really rewards the most patient players despite only being 2 hours long for 100% completion.
Publishing staff are listed first thing in the credits and the dev[s] are nowhere in the credits. Maybe I missed it. I think they might be anonymous? Their twitter profile has a lot of 1-bit art used in one section but no personal details I can discern.
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me and who
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Still working at Control. I’m gonna give up on the Tomassi fight for now until I either cough up the points to respec (I probably should), or maybe after I beat the game.
Trying to do the mold stuff…god I hate those enemies. Blend in with the environment, completely silent, hit like a truck.
I also keep going back to Viewfinder and… I dunno. I think I’m good. I really don’t give a shit about the narrative and find a lot of the writing kinda obnoxious. Puzzle I’m at now requires you to perfectly align some segmented doodads and it’s just…kinda irritating. I think I’m good, I think I got some of the experience I was looking for here.
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im replaying the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series for the first time in forever and getting irrationally pissed because im rusty & suck at games i was decent at like 20 years ago (aaaaa)
i was fucking with the N64 ports at first because those were the ones i was familiar with but then i realized that’s stupid and in tyool 2025 i can have the full version of “Superman” play in glorious CD audio instead of a stupidly compressed 45-second loop. it also just seems to control & feel a little better. or at least i had less trouble getting all the tapes in Warehouse on the PS1 version. i really do kinda suck at THPS1 though i need those fucking manuals to do my thing. 2 and the first Underground were the ones i actually owned and played into the ground
it kinda blows that you can’t make your own lady skater until THUG1 i guess if you believe these games Elissa Steamer was literally the only pro skater grrrl in the 90s and 00s
ive also messed around with Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder (which i also also had for PS2 in high school, and also also also feel like i used to be decent at once upon a trick). As i recently noted in the videogame things i think about a lot thread it 1. has a dogshit soundtrack, nary a Goldfinger in sight 2. is basically like the Downhill Jam but a whole game (with opportunities to chairlift, four-wheel, etc. back up the course that you kind of have to memorize; consequently, runs are longer and more variable than the THPS1-3 2 minutes, which i still think is one of the best calibrated goal/score timers in games). Weird, but it basically works and feels like a good fit for the goal structure, if you can deal with the runs being longer or are like me and retry a shitload anyway
also you earn “sponsors” per goal instead of recording skate tapes or getting cash, which feels less cool while also being more bizarre. i get sponsored for doing shit like destroying property or menacing yuppies by jumping over them. i think its funny to imagine they’re paying for my court fees & hospital/necromancy bills from repeatedly losing my balance on a chairlift wire, falling 50 feet, and smashing headfirst into a tree
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oh yeah lol. there’s really some bullshit in that game
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oh i was curious about this coz i enjoy the artist’s work, cheers for the write-up
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Either way it is so completely daunting that I think it doesn’t matter for a casual player.
I played Unabandoned on the Mister.
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I randomly finally got around to playing through Dust: An Elysian Tail after it haunting my backlog for a decade or so. I no longer remembered how it got there or what I thought the game was, I expected a Metrovania but while there are some slight bits of that it is mainly a mostly linear beat 'em up/basic character action game. Difficulty is a mess, I played on tough (difficulty level 3 of 4) and beyond the initial getting used to things/completely unleveled early bit it was absurdly easy even with the enemies hitting for an absurd amount of damage as the AI is such that if you basically just attack the vast majority of enemies won’t be able to hit you. I remember wondering if I sorta found an exploit with the second boss as it basically looped the same basic attack pattern repeatedly but no that seems to be the way the game works.
This all shifts wildly in the final run as you end up as part of battles between the evil general’s soldiers and the fighters of the species they are trying to ethnically cleanse and not only do the soldiers parry your attacks while attacking in much more irregular ways but things become so difficult to read with a dozen characters on screen all of the same size and proportions attacking each other but only half are enemies, just a dramatic difficulty spike after a game long flat run. Ended up doing mostly cheese tactics against them (repeated jumping attacks or projectiles, letting the soldiers on my side do much of the hard work), felt like I almost no hit the final boss on my first attempt, credits roll.
It’s also one of those games that had the budget for voice acting and hence everyone talks way too much.
Some solid pixel work, was pleasant for stretches in a sorta mindless kinda way, not really sure how it got the following it did but hey, good for them I guess.
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