Quick post today, just a pointer to a video John Romero posted on his Youtube channel a couple of months ago (17 minutes), where he gathered (well, edited together Zoom video of) the other founders of id Software (back before it was just another cubicle within Bethesda’s, and then Microsoft’s box), explain the creation of their first 3D game, Catacomb 3D.
Interesting thing to notice? The word “Softdisk,” publisher of Gamer’s Edge and former workplace of the id Software founders, doesn’t appear anywhere in this video. There’s at least one screenshot that has part of its name, but it’s covered up with a different graphic.
(I’ve been trying to track down as many old issues of Softdisk’s publications as I can; it seems the only public place where they survive at all is in collections of Loadstar, including my own. Even the Internet Archive only has a smattering. They deserve to be preserved, dammit, both these guys’ previous work and that of everyone else who made software for that company.)
EDIT: As multiple people have reminded me of by now, there are other ways to get images off the system, though they’re annoying. Going through a smartphone app is annoying too. Everything involves getting out some bit of kit and plugging it in. It feels like a maze, so I think my issue that Nintendo is preposterously obstructionist over getting pictures off of their device stands.
Tomodachi Life is a big release from Nintendo, its first real use of their once-starring Mii characters since the quirky and underappreciated Miitopia, which basically puts your little pseudo-people through a D&D campaign, an idea so cool that I had it myself over a decade ago, though of course no one listened to me way back then, or really ever.
Let’s remember what Miis are. The name itself is a reference to the characters’ origin system, the Wii. You see, you just flip the W. The Wii was extremely popular, and opened up video gaming to hitherto unserved demographics, but because most “gamers” are entitled jerks they spread bad vibes about the system despite its popularity (remember “waggle?”), taking its sequel system entirely. Nowadays, Nintendo Switch Sports and Miis are probably its sole remaining legacy, regardless of how many other cool ideas it had. (A version of Opera made for it! News and Weather Channels! In Japan you could order pizza using it! I haven’t even gotten to Check Mii Out and Everybody Votes yet.)
This is the third game in the Tomodachi Life series. The first one was 14 years ago, the original Tomodachi Life for 3DS, got a cult following. It’s kind of Nintendo’s version of The Sims, if the Sims had (very) slightly more self-motivation, no mandatory biological need to fulfil, and an emphasis on weirdness. The second game, the sorely-missed Miitomo, was a free-to-play mobile game that also served as an instant messenger, but it hit sadly at a time when the old style of instant messenger apps were dying out, and lasted just over two years. It was dead in the water long before it closed.
What all the Tomodachi Life games really are is an elaboration of the old game of Mad Libs. “Hey _name_, I’m going to _place_! Should I pick up a _noun_ while I’m there?” Except it’s not just with words, but people too, your Mii characters fill in the role of actors in the many silly little vignettes built into the software. The game includes no characters on its own: you create everyone in the whole damn town, name them, pick how they look, and rate their personalities in five categories, then plop them onto the island and watch them bounce off each other.
Sometimes when they meet you’ll be asked to give the system a word or phrase for them to talk about, and that’s where the more explicit Mad Lib connection kicks in. Just like official Mad Libs*, Maybe nine times out of ten the jokes will fall flat, but that tenth time is comedy gold. Of course what everyone did, and still does, is make Miis of every celebrity and comic character they can fit into Nintendo’s limited yet oddly useful tools. In my game, I have a Mr. T character, downloaded from the Mii Channel on the Wii so very long ago, laboriously schlepped over to Wii-U (via system import) to Switch (via Amiibos) to Switch 2 (via another system import). Mr. T had a dream his first night in my game, on the isle of Yendor, in which he met three other Miis all with Mr. T’s face.
I’d love to show you the video of his dream, but I forgot to record it. Also, though, Tomodachi Life: Live the Dream has a fatal flaw. It’s a meme gold mine, sure, but Nintendo has disabled all media sharing from it. You can make all the great Miis you want, but no one else will ever see them! Its drawing tools are pretty darn impressive, but nothing you make with them can be shared on the internet! You can’t upload them to the Nintendo Switch smartphone app, or even transfer them to your cell phone using Nintendo’s stupid Wi-Fi system! I don’t know if you can get them right off an SD card, but ha ha, on the Switch 2 it doesn’t matter because it uses incompatible SD Express cards!
NINTENDO, ARE YOU LISTENING? WHY CAN YOU EVEN TAKE SCREENSHOTS OR VIDEO AT ALL IN TOMODACHI LIFE IF YOU CAN’T SHARE THEM? Nintendo is a company used to doing things its own way, which sometimes results in moments of brilliance, but at least as often means they do amazingly stupid things like this.
Because of this, you will have to live with potato-quality screen photos, taken with my very own smartpotato. I plant them below. Imagine how much better these would be if Nintendo actually officially supported the use their software was obviously made for. (Note: I’ve been told since writing this that you can still get images off using an SD card… although if you have a Switch 2 like I do you’re probably just as out of luck as it uses SD Express cards. I’ve yet to confirm cross compatibility with those, I don’t think I have the right kind of adapter.)
Hint: try alcohol next time. BTW, that’s the official Shigeru Miyamoto Mii on the right, as distributed through the 3DS’ online functionality. I also have a Masahiro Sakurai.Lego Larry is one of the more beloved Miis in my collection.This is exactly how this meeting would go down in real life.Another great thing about Miis is how far you can break them. “Edwin Tea” there is one of the several I scavanged from the Mii Channel and Check Mii Out, way back on the Wii.
Below is my absolute favorite of all the Mii interactions I’ve seen so far. Poor Patricia’s got it bad, and truthfully, I felt much the same way back in 2008. I kind of feel that way now, but sadly both his terms are up.
* BTW, did you know Mad Libs was co-created by Leonard Stern, who wrote many scripts for The Honeymooners, and wrote for and executive produced Get Smart?
For this episode of the perceptive podcast, I spoke with Jake Houston who is a solo developer working on his rhythmic RPG Game Over. We spoke about working on the game, RPG design and more.
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
Nintendo’s latest attempt to do something with their Mii characters just hit the Switch (and along with it, the Switch 2). The game is Tomodachi Life, and while, like its real-time counterpart game Animal Crossing, it’ll take time before we really know everything it has in store, whether it’ll blow all of its content on the first couple of days of play or if it has new scenes, conversations and items that it’ll unlock over time.
Miis originated on the Nintendo Wii game system, an extraordinarily popular game that, now, seems almost forgotten. Besides the odd Wii Sports sequel and Miis, it seems like there’s not a lot of the Wii’s innovations that have persisted into later systems. Maybe games with motion controls? We know the Switch and Switch 2 are capable of them, but not a lot of games are as enthusiastic about them as the Wii.
We can set aside the question of whether that’s a good thing or not, but to interject my own opinion, Miis, one of the defining features of the Wii, really should be utilized more. Remember when the whole internet was abuzz about them? Social media would be full of everyone’s takes on recreating celebrities or comic characters with Nintendo’s limited yet oddly expressive tools. The Wii showed them off in a number of ways. The Mii Channel downloaded random Miis from other users Wii systems, and the Check Mii Out Channel provided a way to show your creations off to other users. Both of these sharing methods are defunct now, even if you have an operational Wii. They could well stand to make a come back, but who knows if Nintendo will ever think to do so.
Beyond that, there was a secret code that let you upload Miis into a Wii Remote. And now, on the Wii-U and Switch systems, you can upload single Mii into an Amiibo figure at a time, a trick I used to rescue our entire Mii collection from my Wii-U… but more on that story later.
Louie Zong, Youtube musician and comedy creator, posted a tribute to the Mii Channel a couple of weeks ago. (3 minutes) If you had a Wii, it’s certain to bring back memories. Maybe even fond ones.
We’ve linked videos in this series many times before, but it’s wuite a doozy this time. Final Fantasy is known to have a number of combat bugs. Critical Hit chances are determined by the index of the weapon in the weapon table, not the stat in that table; weapon special properties just don’t work, regardless of what the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide says; and more.
This isn’t just an explication of those bugs though, it goes through all of how basic (non-magic) combat works in the game, explaining the value of all the stats. That’s one of the things about RPGs: you’re told items are “+4 better,” but often those values don’t match up to what they’d mean in D&D, where a plus is usually either a one-point increase in damage, a 5% improvement on odds for something, or both. Final Fantasy’s attack roll turns out to be a 1-in-200 die, so, a mere +1 is negligible to attack odds.
They probably didn’t elaborate on what these numbers mean in the manual because, at the time, Square and Nintendo were keen to get players hooked on Final Fantasy and other JRPGs, and nothing would dissuade them from picking up the game than to be confronted with battle formulae in the manual. Looks too much like school work! But they could have at least mentioned something about relative chances?
If you really want to know what the numbers mean, the video is there waiting for you. You can just let your eyes glaze over during the math if you want. I won’t tell the teacher!
In a place like Metafilter, it’s not always obvious what will work and what won’t. Presentation matters for a whole lot, and there is also a random aspect to it. While no one said anything negative about it, I remember it being one of the least favorited-posts I’d ever made on the site. (Favorites are one measure I use to see if people liked a post or not. Sometimes comments just don’t tell the whole story.)
A point of similarity between Sgt. B.J. Blazkowicz and Donkey Kong: a fondness for bananas.
It’s a shame because the game is a perfect mixture. Not as punishing as either original game, its levels are procedural generated so a lot of rolling on your feet is required. You get a time bonus for defeating a guard. While you don’t have a weapon, you do just enough damage at full tilt to take one out in a single hit, and it feels great to do it.
Why is B.J. so much smaller than the guards now? I realize it’s a concession to melding the styles, but he’s so tiny!
There’s only eight levels (at least in the first “episode”) so it doesn’t take long to get through either. In the first version they kept Wolfenstein 3D’s graphics unchanged, meaning unfortunate reminders of Bad Person and his Stupid Symbol. Those have been removed since, which makes it less accurate to Wolf3D but also less saddening to play.
I was reminded of EFCMB by Vinesauce having recently streamed it. (13½ minutes) I don’t often return to a Gamefinds game, but given that I had made an attempt at telling people about it before I feel a slight bit of ownership here, and my previous attempts at spreading the word slightly predated Set Side B, so please go enjoy if you think you’d like it. It really is brilliant, and it runs in a web browser, even on my Raspberry Pi 5.
Get Info made a substantial post on a couple of significant pieces of Japanese gaming ephemera, a four hour long program that aired overnight on March 14, 1987 that was basically 100 segments on a variety of games (and other things really), and a book that was released later that was an encyclopedia of gaming from around that time. A lot of it is as inexplicabe as Japanese media can be to non-Japanese speakers, but it’s very interesting as a gaming time capsule from the era. Clips are presented not just from Japanese properties but also games from around the world.
Nearly the whole program (with minor edits for copyright) is on Youtube (4 hours), with a table of contents with links in its description. Although, unless you have an insatiable hunger for random gaming clips, you’ll probably want to go through the TOC.
The book that followed contains Denshi Yuugi Taizen : TV Games,” presents 40 interviews with a who’s-who of game creation at the time, including Nolan Bushnell, Ed Logg, Steve Cartwright, Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji, Trip Hawkins, Freefall Associates, Timothy Leary, Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Horii, Toru Iwatani, Sir-Tech, Shigesato Itoi and many more. A full scan of the book is on the Internet Archive.
Recently Commodore History investigated just how Commodore 1541 disk drives format disks, and why it took them over a minute. It was also an explanation of just what it means to format a floppy disk. We linked that last week.
Well, yesterday they posted a second video on matters involving formatting disks. (16½ minutes) This time they went over a routine written, for the same drives, that can format a disk in 15 seconds.
So, how can this new formatting method be more than four times faster? In a few ways. The drive’s normal format routine writes 1 bits throughout each entire track; the 15 second formatter doesn’t do anything like that. The stock routine attempts to size the between-sector zones differently depending on how far from the center the track is, and to make that work better it performs a measurement of how fast the drive motor runs. The quick format just uses a same-sized gap throughout the disk. It still reads okay because the drive uses the sync marks to find sectors, it doesn’t try to time the length of gaps when reading, it just looks for a sequence of 10 1 bits in a row. And Commodore’s format routine verifies each track as it’s recorded to the drive; the 15 second format simply moves on, assuming everything worked out.
The result is, the quick formatter does a worse job of setting up the disk, skipping some of the niceties of Commodore’s routine. I wonder if there are some cases where the quick format produces a non-working disk? The video notes that, because there could have been data on the disk before, it could result in cases where the drive gets confused when that leftover data resembles a sync mark or other essential drive structure. Commodore History mentioned at the end of the video that they tried to create such a disk, to see if it caused issues, but was unable to make it happen.
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.
Another one, so soon! I feel like I should post these as I find out about them, or else they’ll fade in memory, and in importance. I want to get them out to you immediately, while the bytes are hot.
Yet also, with this one, I sort of want you to discover what it’s about, the promise of that title, Trees Hate You, for yourself. That’s not how these descriptions work though. If I just say “play it, trust me,” some of you will, but most won’t, which will be something of a shame for this very silly game.
Basically, you’re trying to find your way home after a picnic, but for some reason (littering maybe?), the trees on the way back have decided to stop you. The ways in which they display their vegetative ire are the humor of the game. The ways you must discover to evade it are the game of the humor.
This is just a free demo, a preview of what developer tykenn hopes will be a longer game. I’m not sure how long they can sustain the joke honestly, but at least the demo is entertaining, if you can handle a bit of frustration. I look forward to seeing if they can sustain the premise.
No spoilers, but… be prepared to be stuck at this checkpoint for a long time.
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.
One of the best puzzle games out there is Noumenon Games’ colorful, fun, and challenging Snakebird, its easier sequel Snakebird Primer, and their combined version on Switch Snakebird Complete.
But even Snakebird Complete costs $15. What if you just want to dip your toe in and find out why the snakebirds are the snakeword(s)?
Created by a Pico-8 dev called Werxzy, they’ve made a “demake” of Snakebird that is essentially just the original but with different levels and pixel graphics, which can even be tried out on the web. And if you’re already a certified serpent-falconeer, it even has some new tricks for you to learn.
The first level. Even this one is challenging!
You control up to four colorful adorable snakebirds, who you can switch between freely. Their mission is to consume all of the fruit on each level, and then escape to the next island. They all move, one turn at a time, like the snake in Snake, but in a side-view, gravity-burdened world with unexpected implications.
It’s a good idea to spend some time at the start getting used to how the SBs operate. Despite being nominal birds they cannot fly. It’s easy to get a longer one trapped against a wall, but you’re allowed infinite undo levels, and you’ll need all of them.
An early level with multiple birds. Your first instinct may be to share the fruit, but sometimes the greed of one bird is necessary if they all are to escape.
A snakebird that eats a piece of fruit grows one space longer. In multibird levels it doesn’t matter to completion which feathery slitherer eachs which fruit, but sometimes the design of a level means a specific bird will ultimately need to be a certain length.
Some levels have no fruit, and reaching the exit is all you have to do. “All” you have to do.
To complete a level, not only must all the fruit be eaten, but all birds must make it to the goal portal. This will often be the hardest part of the puzzle. The ease with which one birdbrain can get stranded unless their snavian colleagues help them to the exit will confound you, but they should be applauded for not leaving anyone behind. (They can’t applaud themselves—no hands.)
Hey kids, it’s your favorite, Big [Snake] Bird, just arrived from Snesame Sneet!
There’s even a level editor for making puzzles to challenge your friends, or maybe even yourself if you’re really forgetful. Progress is saved between sessions on the same browser. And it’s a good thing, for the game lives up to the original’s reputation for difficulty.
So please, give these fluffy beakworms a place in your heart. I’m told that as parasites they’re completely benign!
Snekburd (from Werxzy on itch.io, $0, based on Noumenon Games’ Snakebird series)
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
The Katamari Damacy games have such a wonderful soundtrack, every tune in each of them is (adjusts glasses, looks at Urban Dictionary page) “a banger.”
One of these numerous and multifarious bangers, from the first game but sadly absent from its Reroll remake, is WANDA WANDA, the music from its tutorial.
Giving it some overdue recognition is nathorz, in this 2½ minute animation that interprets its title as referring to a grandmother drafted into saving a bunch of aliens. Here ’tis:
The KIM-1, 50 years old as of 2026, was the first 6502-based home computer, designed by the legendary Chuck Peddle and sold by MOS Technologies themselves. (Well, we’re not sure if the Apple I or the KIM-1 was first. Or maybe it was the JOLT? As I’ve said before, there’s always something you’ve never heard of before out there, waiting to make you look like a fool.)
Someone on Mastodon (I can’t find the post now) mentioned that the KIM-1 had excellent programming guides, as it rightfully must have had, considering a freshly-assembled KIM had to have been programmed in raw machine code, and coming from an era before the World Wide Web. I had a look and, lo, it did!
Have a look for yourself, from a copy hosted by Rich’s Classic Computer Pages (PDF). Explained in an early chapter is how to properly add together numbers of arbitrary sizes, something that I had to find out from random sources. I wish I had this book when I was programming on the Commodore 64; I did have the famous Programmer’s Reference Guide, but that’s just it. It’s a reference work, and very difficult to learn the principles of assembly coding through it directly. (That said, there are pages in the C64 PRG that will look very familiar to someone flipping through the KIM-1 Programmer’s Guide.)
The cover of the Book itself
If you sat down and read this all the way through, and it’s quite readable for a programming manual, you’d be well placed to write code for, not just the KIM-1, but any 6502 computer. While for other machines you would need more information, like memory maps and hardware documentation, and you might like to have an assembler too, you’d still have a great foundation for whatever crazy programming adventure you were about to embark upon. I love it.
