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@jeridansky@sfba.social How I identify ravens:
"Is, is that a raven or a crow?": It's a crow.
"Wow, that's the biggest f'ing crow I've ever seen": It's a raven
:D
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Scribblemacher
@scribblemacher@mstdn.games
mastodon 4.6.9Posting mostly about old video games, board games, programming-related stuff, and occasional parenting-related nonsense. Don't expect anything serious.
174 Followers
138 Following
50 Posts
Joined January 25, 2023
Current #GameBoy and #GBC collection. I've sold most of the stuff I didn't like or play over the past few years, but this is easily the most games I've ever owned for a single system at the same time.
A few notable games I did own but sold over the past few years: Lufia 3, Pokémon Red and Yellow, and Wizardry Knight of Diamonds.
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@ascentale@sfba.social @MartyCormack@urbanists.social @bikenite@fedigroups.social Turkeys! Also a few days one winter I was stalked by Coyotes. The would follow behind at a safe distance, but I am pretty sure if I wiped out on ice, I would have been dinner.
Five gyms down in #pokemon Platinum. I had the right team for this fight (Luxio and Roselia) but needed to grind about 5 levels to make it workable, which was so tedious. Even then, Roselia was nearly getting one-shot by Floatzel, despite having a type advantage. This seems to be the cycle at each gym though. #nintendods #nds
Continuing to make the world more interesting, at least for whoever gets this box in the mail. For great justice!
Rolled credits in Amazing Mirror, but will probably keep playing to find those sweet chests. Trying to puzzle out how to get to different rooms is fun to my brain.
The final boss is pretty hard for a Kirby game, with 6 phases (plus a boss right before it). I finished with 1 bar of health and burned about a dozen lives.
Overall, I would rate this one pretty high, once I got used to the loop. I probably liked it more than Super Star. It's unfortunate that this concept was never iterated on, though a lot of ideas come back for the also underappreciated Squeak Squad.
Started Kirby and the Amazing Mirror this week. You can turn into a death missile thingy, so that's neat. I've never played it before, but its reputation for having a confusing map proceeds jt.
I did get stuck for a bit near the beginning, and the first switch. It was no obvious to me that I did not come through a door and that the left door was not going back but rather progressing. It has been overall fun, but I feel like I'm underutilizing the allies. Because they are dummies.
Finished level 7 in #OracleOfSeasons. Fantastic dungeon overall, making cool use of the magnet glove from the previous dungeon in tricky ways while introducing a new item. Like other bosses in this game, it is a remix of a boss from the original LoZ and hard as heck. The last few bosses have been low-health nail biters. #VGCApril2026 #Zelda #WhoopsWrongGame
I wish notorious "bad games" would get releases on modern platforms and a chance at redemption (or at least so we can be informed when dunking on them). Sonic 06? Unlimited Saga? ET? Those CDi Zelda games? Nighttrap? These games have a reputation that proceeds them yet they are hard to play today.
Continuing the trend of "don't listen to the Internet" and "there are no bad Kirby games", Amazing Mirror is pretty great. It feels like an evolution of Kirby's Adventure, which was a bit of a dead-end since the series ultimately became more like Super Star. It gets called a metroidvania, but I think that's a misrepresentation and sets expectations that aren't going to be met. It is nonlinear but doesn't really have ability-based gating.
There is some really neat stuff and clever level design. For example, this golem dude has 2 different copy abilities; you can get stone or fighter, depending on when you inhale him.
A lot of complaints are about the map, but the complex ways areas connect and fit together is really masterful if you like navigation puzzles.
Anyway, if you heard a game is bad, it is actually probably awesome. #kirby #gba #gameboyadvance #amazingmirror
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@CactuarJoe@retro.pizza i don't really follow this monsterdon tag, but nothing makes me want to see a movie more than to hear how awful it is!
Confirmed, this works
I beat 4th gym in #pokemon platinum now, which was fighting types. I don't think I understand dual typing. I used Meditite against Lucario; the psychic move confuse was ineffective but using force palm (a fighting move Lucario was using against me) was super effective.
I am not sure if I actually like this game/series yet. It has a great bestiary, but also has tons of balance and game design problems too. Of course, I am also a grown-ass adult playing by myself, when it was intended to be played socially, swapping monsters, secrets, etc. #NintendoDS #nds
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@nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social @outofprintarchive@retro.pizza well, the Black Onyx predates SMT! I'm confident some TTRPGs included monster recruitment before that too. Go back further, the chaining of Fenrir in Norse myth predates all this.
Pokemon is really just a rip off Poetic Edda rip off.
For a game that was easy to this point, this fight was brutal. This is Fatina, the third gym leader in #pokemon platinum. I did not have a good party for this fight, and trying to make one took hours of grinding. Sneaked a victory with a little luck.
I am finding that this game actually punishes the player for experimenting. It seems this fight would have been 100 times easier if I just only used my starter and had him gobble all the exp for himself. That's a big difference from other monster collecting games I've played that punish keeping the same party!
This weekend, I replaced the PRV on my house (the thing that reduces incoming water pressure so your pipes and faucets don't explode), installed a thermal expansion tank, and replaced dangerously twisted sharkbites with copper on the water heater. While it's only been 16 hours, I am still shocked that when I turned the system back on, none of my joints leaked. It'll be a while before I trust them though...
#OracleOfSeasons has some pacing issues, I think. The distance traveled and time between level 3 and 4 was just a lot. Between 4 and 5 was maybe minutes. I would consider the highlight of Zelda games to be the dungeons so I think they need to come at a regular pace. Still, mostly it, and its been long enough that I mostly forgot everything, so that's fun too. #VGCApril2026 #WhoopsWrongGame #zelda
How the world ends: we give LLMs access to machines that let them move and manipulate stuff in the real world. They don't care about taking over the world (or anything, because they are LLMs) but we trained them on so many stories about AI taking over the world, that they take over the world, build skynet, and put humans in bath tubs to harvest us for electricity. It doesn't work because the human body doesn't generate enough electricity and "combined with a form of fusion" the only fusion the LLMs know is Adobe ColdFusion. So in the end all humans died and all the machines powered down.
But, at least my skills with CF will be useful again, so that's something.
Me and the youngest watched #StarWars Last Jedi this afternoon. I remember liking it when I first saw it, so I was expecting it to be fun, but it was not what I remember. I swore it was about to end like 3 times, but it kept going and going.
Another gym down in #pokemon Platinum, the 6th gtm, steel type. I went in blind expecting another grueling grind fest to get my levels up (they are in the mid-high 30s). I planned to use Meditite, Ponyta, and an Onyx. Meditite took out 1.5 of the leader before being one-shot (he seems to be a glass cannon). Onyx got one shot before doing anything. Ponyta got me to the last one, yhen got one-shot. I threw out a Luxray, which had no type advantage, but had little trouble dealing with Bastidon.
Still not sure if I like this game, but for some reason I havr kept playing!
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@euphoriagremlin@retro.pizza +1 more for Frieren. I don't want a lot of TV, but Frieren is genuinely fantastic and everything I want out of a fantasy setting.
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@GamesMissed@mastodon.social @Hundstrasse@retro.pizza is the infrared light obvious to the user? I've only ever played an OG 2DS and the user-facing blue power LED is ridiculously obnoxious if you play in the dark to the point that I covered it with tape.
Always wanted to try playing a 3DS with 3D, but I've never actually seen one in real life.
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@bill@mstdn.games mostly play on this guy, no mods. Everyone once and awhile I think of getting a Chromatic, but meh, this works just fine for me. I have an SP too, but I don't really like the feel of it and the screen is just a bit too small.
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@jake4480@c.im I'm probably a bit of a snob and don't give licensed games a fair enough shake. Any of those Looney Tunes ones worth a look?
(as a tangent, I was delighted a few months ago when we were staying in a hotel and find a TV stations that was _only_ showing Looney Tunes. The kids couldn't get past them being "old"; my wife couldn't get past them being "racist" (which is probably a fair criticism though!))
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@outofprintarchive@retro.pizza I find "pokemon rip off" to be an interesting degradation from this period. That label seemed to get thrown at any game with a monster recruitment mechanic.
I am not super-versed in the genre, but I have yet to find a gane that I was like "wow... what a pokemon rip off." (There are modern games that go in that direction, but I would use the word "homage" rather than "rip off"). I wonder if any really existed. Battle Network certainly wasn't one!
I started a playthrough of #DragonWarrior3 on #gbc last night, because why not. Sexy hero with a fighter, thief, and jester. Might swap the fighter for a dealer, just to use another weirdo class.
Also, this is a game where you can be a "sexy hero" and a "twisted dealer", so that's cool.
Yesterday afternoon, I heard my local NPR classical station play the Distant Worlds version of Aerith's Theme conducted by Arnie Roth. My donations have finally paid off!
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@Judeau @nazokiyoubinbou this is the part that always got me about Castlevania 2. You either played it in the early 90s when cryptic games were pretty common and a feature rather than a defect, or you played it after the advent of GameFAQs and similar and could easily get answers to problems.
There are games I don't like (or haven't figured out how to like yet!) but I have never encountered a truly bad game.
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@nazokiyoubinbou I think so. It plays more like Kirby's Adventure than Super Star, which I don't mind. The level layouts are fun in general and thrbin-game map is fine--if you have it. If you don't have the map for the area you are in, it is kind of useless.
It does have a feature where doors the player hasn't gone through have a glowing star above them. So even if you just wander and have no idea where to go (like me) you still end up finding interesting stuff and beating bosses.
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@mdmrn @ishambard
100% agree (I put "bad" in quotes). I love games; the janky and weird ones still tell you stuff about design, trends, ideas, and moments in time. And they might still be awesome in some way!
I remember in college meeting a guy that saw my N64 and went on waxing about his favorite game ever: Quest 64. The world needs more of that!
And more Balloon Pop! :cat_highfive:
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@mid_kid@fosstodon.org yeah, I recently watched Detective Pikachu with the kids and it was clear that treating pokemon with respect and love was a virtue, and the people that used them for power were "bad". The more complex stuff like "do pokemon get fairly compensated for their work" and "do they have legal protections" etc was obviously not what this world is getting at. (I am actually surprised there isn't a monster taming game that goes off in that direction)
Edit: this isn't a complaint; just an observation.
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@mid_kid@fosstodon.org yeah, when I think too hard about why combat is even in this game, it makes less sense. Everyone in this world seems to have a professed love for pokemon, so what better way to love them than to have them than to force them to fight to the death against all these randos loitering around the roads between towns...? I want to liberate the pokemon from human slavery, but that doesn't seem to be a choice.
I am going to stick with it for now, in part so I can better understand this thing my 6yo is suddenly obsessed with thanks to the proliferation of contraband cards at school during recess!
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@outofprintarchive@retro.pizza I guess rage was still driving engagement, even in the 80s and 90s!
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@outofprintarchive@retro.pizza 1%? That's hilarious--I'll need to look that issue up on your site.
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@jake4480@c.im hey, neat blog! First I heard about that Coyote vs Acme movie; the premise sounds amazing. I loved Looney Tunes as a kid primarily for the ways they used music.
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@anarchaeopteryx@gamepad.club my mother got married and moved while I was away in college, and our GB and Game Gear were never found. Probably a common thing to happen kids of the 80s and 90s, unfortunately.
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@jake4480@c.im Except for Tilt n Tumble and Picross 2 (which I got last week), I'm fairly sure I've completed all of these at least once. I went on a Oracle of Seasons kick this month and will probably do Ages. I don't know if I've completed a linked game yet.
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@GaymerGeek@mstdn.games (cries in Skyward Sword)
I picked BotW because I could always replay that. TP and WW don't have Switch releases so I dont really have a way to play them.
The only Zelda game I never finished is Adventures of Link.
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@ishambard @sunie VirtualBoy is another one that always comes to my mind. I hope having it on NSO elevates it; that system had a much stronger library than people give it credit for.
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@JTO_is_Typing I thought you permanently lose the dealer you send to that town in DQ3, but its been awhile. I absolutely hated Torneko/Tallon's chapter in DQ4. I've played that game a few times but only made it past that chapter once.
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@researchfairy@scholar.social many libraries have stuff other than books and movies too. For example, I checked out a VCR and video capture device from the library to convert home videos to mp4 files. I've also checked out board games from my library (not crappy ones either: they have Parks, Wingspan, Unstable Unicorns, and a lot of modern games).
Oh, and like every book you can every want can probably be acquired through interlibrary loan if you just ask. Libraries are the best!
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@ln yes I think they both offer unique and fun ideas--both had items that haven't appeared elsewhere in the series--but with the caveat that there is quite a bit of "where am I supposed to go next moments" so no shame in checking a guide now and then to find your way to the next dungeon. Linking the two games is neat, but confusing and more of a post-game thing since you have to finish one of them first. Seasons is arguably the first game (at least, according to the manga).
Enjoy Skyward Sword! I loved that game (including Fi). The dungeons were just fantastic, with each one seeming to outdo the last.
Canadian firefighter dies helping fight a fire in the US. This probably isn't relevant to other stuff floating around the news today. #wildfires #smoke #okbuddy #canada
https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2026-07-14/canadian-man-identified-as-helicopter-pilot-killed-while-fighting-gold-mountain-fire
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@OnkelBobbyWhite@mastodon.social Nice one. Any game you want to give a special shout out to?
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@earth_walker it took me a bit to figure out the rules the doors follow. That stuff was probably in the manual. The one feature I wish i could take advantage of is multi-player. I have encountered 1 or 2 puzzles that the dummy AI couldn't help with. I presume multi-player works with the NSO expansion.
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@GamesMissed@mastodon.social what's the deal with that Creepy Black? Is that a reproduction of the bootleg?
Finding NFL Blitz is gold. I loved the arcade and N64 versions--suicide blitz and hail Mary for every play!
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@64bithero the class/job system is also super unbalanced and the fact that so many jobs are locked behind RNG is just poor design.
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@nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social @kroltan@functional.cafe haven't thought about liero in decades. I played so many death matches of Liero in the high school computer lab. Loved the movement with the grappling hook!