I am SO ENVIOUS. Kit & Krysta, formerly of the official Switch video podcast Nintendo Minute, currently of their own projects and Youtube channel, got cell phone video of an amazing place, a location in Tokyo somewhere that gamedevs sometimes meet at, and is crammed tightly with game memorabilia. It’s almost a museum all to itself, and unlike the Nintendo Museum, seems like they don’t mind video footage escaping their confines, although on the other hand this doesn’t seem to be open to the public. It doesn’t look like a lot of people could fit in there at once, anyway!
I usually steer well clear of the hard sell, or “prompt for engagement,” when it comes to asking you to follow links and view videos from here. I figure if you’re interested you’ll click through, and if you’re not, then maybe tomorrow. But I’m breaking through that reserve just this once, as this place is amazing. You really have to see this if you have any interest in Nintendo, APE, Pokemon, Dragon Quest or their histories (12 minutes):
Liam at Gaming On Linux has some further news about Funko taking down itch.io with a spurious request. Here’s a summary.
Some user created a fanpage for the upcoming Funko Fusion massive crossover game.
Whatever was on it, it triggered some “brand protection” function on a service Funko uses.
It send out complaints to both Itch’s host and DNS registrar.
Itch founder Leaf disabled the account and removed the page and notified both entities. The host nodded and closed the matter; the DNS company, however, never replied.
After a time, the registrar automatically disabled Itch’s domain name, making it impossible to load the site unless you knew its IP address, and who uses those anymore amirite?
Itch, unable to get their registrar to respond to them, posted about the matter on social media, which turned up the heat enough that the problem got fixed pretty quickly after that.
Two weird things. First, Leaf’s mother got social media messages about the problem, for unknown reasons. And Funko posted an artfully-worded statement that claimed it was a mistake without actually apologizing.
The message that Leaf’s Mom sent to Leaf about the issue. She seems like a pretty cool lady. (Image from Gaming on Linux)
EDIT: It appears that itch.io is back up now! It should never have been taken down, but that was still fairly quick response, I suppose.
Disappointing internet news. According to their Bluesky feed, itch.io, beloved indie gaming sales and distribution site, host to countless games both free and paid, and constantly linked to from this site and many others, is down, and the reason is Funko Pops.
These! These horrible dead-eyed non-biodegradable landfill-destined things, littering stores across the US! They’re why we can’t have itch.io! (Image from Amazon)
The text of the thing I refuse to call a “skeet”:
@itch.io has been taken down by Funko of “Funko Pop” because they use some trash “AI Powered” Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain
So not only do we have Funko to blame for their DNS record not resolving, but also the relentless scourge of AI! Sure, the world sucks right now. But how does it feel, knowing that if you bought one of these creepy pseudo-cute bits of pop cultural detritus, that you indirectly supported this action?
This is late-breaking news as of this writing, so the situation might change rapidly. Or, it may not. It’s a good reason not to buy Funko items in any case!
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
WiggleWood is a Youtube channel that produces humorous short videos with an old-school computer vibe. They could be cutscenes from an old Sierra adventure. None are very long (the longest us under two minutes), but are entertaining enough to have a look at. Here are all five to date:
The Wizard’s Gummy (43s), what is the nature of his system of divination?
Magician’s Brick (31s), who is “Wormdal?” Later videos imply that he’s a wizard too.
The Dark Summoning (45s), here’s Wormdal. He doesn’t seem to be exceptionally evil though, just lonely.
The Magic Lamp (1m43s): The barbarian and the wizard again. It’s best to watch your tongue in matters concerning genies.
And the last one currently, The Cursed Throne (1m47s). Wormdal and the demon lady seem to have reached an accord of sorts. It’s nice to see old enchanters making new friends.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
I found it through Metafilter (here), but it’s simple and fun enough that I felt I could extend its reach by a few more players. Alphabet Soup For Picky Eaters is a logic game, by Daniel Linssen, where you have to find some bit of text that satisfies six different hungry blobs.
In this example, four of the blobs accept the answer. The green one looks upset, but they’re just as satisfied as their friends, they just have Resting Angry Face. The who who aren’t satisfied with this example, are the Blue and Orange blobs.
It’s a very simple game. There’s no randomness; each blob is looking for a specific criteria, and most of the game is figuring out what those are. There is no penalty for wrong guesses, and you’ll have to make some to figure out what the rules are. While there are multiple possible solutions, there is one that is very apt. It’ll probably take you just a few minutes to deduce the requirements then fulfill them.
GB Studio, by Chris Maltby, is fairly well-known now, isn’t it? It’s a free and open source solution to fairly easily making Gameboy roms on your own, that are properly termed not romhacks but homebrew. It has its own website and it’s available on itch.io. It was what Grimace’s Birthday, which we linked to last year, was made with.
GB Studio, from its platformer template
Now there’s a heavily-modified version of GB Studio, called BB Studio, that produces NES roms in a similar manner! It’s made by Michel Iwaniec, and can be gotten from Github here. It’s recommended that you be familiar with GB Studio first, and to read the list of caveats on the page. Particularly, the NES supports fewer sprites per scanline than the Gameboy hardware does, and runs at a slower clock speed. BB Studio is also “early alpha software,” meaning, it might or might not work well for you at the moment.
While we’re on the topic I should also mention NES Maker, which isn’t free, but it also isn’t “early alpha software,” and at $36 isn’t expensive either, and is custom-built for generating runnable NES games.
Many of them seem to exist only for the questionable thrill of playing character from Property X in Video Game Y, fun for a few minutes maybe, then time to move on. They’re so disposable, and there are so many of them, that I’ve resisted linking to any of them here.
And I’m not going to claim that playing through as Max, from underground comic, cult adventure games and short-lived cartoon show Sam & Max, is much different. But if there’s any irreverent comic character that feels like they were made for this kind of beat-em-up nonsense, it’s the hyperkinetic rabbity thing themself, so please take this hack as representative of the whole. Video, two minutes long:
Max in Streets of Rage 2: Hack (by Metal64, Ultimecia and Dazz) Video (by RetroGaming)
The weekly indie showcases highlight the games we check out on stream, please reach out if you would like me (Josh Bycer) to cover your game. All games shown are press key submissions.
So it seems that Nintendo has made another pronouncement about that least necessary piece of gaming lore, the timeline of the Legend of Zelda series.
If you don’t know anything about this, you are truly blessed by Din, Nayru and Farore. In summary, Eiji Aonuma, Nintendo’s overseer of the Legend of Zelda game series, has declared that almost all of the game in the long series fit into a massive set of timelines. Not a single timeline, because Ocarina of Time had a time travel plot, and that gave them the opportunity to split the series continuity, from that point, into three branches.
One Zelda timeline on Nintendo’s sites
Most of this was described in Hyrule Historia book, one of three books that Dark Horse Comics put out, official tomes explaining much abo/ut the series and its canonical sequence of events. They also put up a website with the gist of things. Chronologically, the first four games in the series, unbelievably, are Skyward Sword, The Minish Cap(!), the Four Swords game that came with the GBA remake of Link to the Past (!!), then Ocarina of Time.
After that, there are three timelines: one in which Link didn’t defeat Ganon at the end of Ocarina of time, and the split timelines of Adult and Child link in that game. Why Ocarina gets special treatment for Link losing and none of the other games I can’t definitively say, except that it probably gives them more room into which to slot the series’ continued proliferation.
If Ganon in OoT wins, we get the timeline of A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, A Link Between Worlds (which is essentially a direct sequel to aLttP), Tri-Force Heroes (remember that), and then, at the end of this line, the originals themselves: The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Then we have two lines for Adult Link’s time and Child Link’s time. For Link the Elder, there’s Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, which is interesting since Adult Link creates a legacy where his descendants are all heroes as children, and indeed Hyrule is destroyed at the end of Wind Waker (I hope I’m not spoiling anything), Ganondorf is definitely killed, and the following two games take place in a new land. I’d love to see that era explored further, but we haven’t heard anything from it since the DS. “Meanwhile” Link the Younger has Majora’s Mask, Twilight Princess and Four Swords Adventures.
You might notice some interesting absences. What about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? People who have played all the way through those will notice a history that doesn’t jibe with the others, and the Triforce is hardly seen in either of them! In it the Sheikah is technically advanced, Hyrule has a history of technology, and Ganondorf arose all over again, not even to mention those Zonai people! What giveth?
Aonuma has said that those games don’t place on any of the current timelines! And Hyrule Warriors is its own alternate dimension, and the BotW-themed Hyrule Warriors sequel is probably also an alternate universe.
Another Zelda timeline on Nintendo’s sites
Until Echoes of Wisdom, the most recent game, those were the forefront of the Zelda metachronology, and seems to indicate that Nintendo was forging the series afresh. But on a different chronology page than the one I linked above, Echoes of Wisdom has been placed on the timeline, as part of the Hero is Defeated branch coming off of Ocarina of Time, after Tri-Force Heroes, but before The Legend of Zelda.
All of this is largely meaningless, of course. Some games refer to past games, but just as many forge ahead with only incidental callbacks. Aonuma has said that they don’t really pay much attention to where a game will fit into the timeline when making it, which explains why BotW and TotK throw away all that continuity, other than some familiar place names. But now we know that, somewhere in Nintendo, there is a poor shlub whose job it is to try to make it all fit together, and that they threw up their hands with the two open world games.
A thankless task. And who knows how long it can even be kept up? Eventually they’ll end up pulling a Castlevania, reboot the whole damn thing, and where from there? Crisis on Infinite Hyrules? Secret Imprisoning Wars? Nintendo52? I don’t even like to speculate upon it.
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
In Breath of the Wild, Link can buy and furnish a house on the edge of Hateno Village. In Tears of the Kingdom, it’s revealed that in the interim between games Zelda’s moved into that house in the absence of Hyrule Castle. But it doesn’t seem that Link lives there anymore (he can construct a new house outside of Tarry Town). How did that happen? What went down between the two games?
ColaBear, who makes fun Zelda videos generally, speculates on this event in a 2 1/2 minute video:
