Month: March 2024

Sundry Sunday: Medieval Cover of Super Mario Bros.

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

It’s a cover of the theme to Super Mario Bros. played in a medieval style (1 1/2 minutes). That’s all for today. This video has lurked in my files for months, I figured I’d go ahead and get it posted. Remixes of the SMB music are one of the oldest genres of internet meme music there is, so here it is in a really old mode. The channel it’s from does medieval covers of a variety of music, so if that sounds entertaining, please ambulate towards that vestibule.

Picotron

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately, but one thing I can post about today is Lexaloffle’s Picotron, kind of a successor to their Pico8, except instead of a fantasy console, it’s a fantasy workstation, with tools for making games that run under it. It’s currently about $12. Here’s Lazy Devs’ introductory video (one hour long):

That should be good enough for now. Maybe by tomorrow my brain will have unpacked enough to say more of interest!

Indie Game Adventure Reviews

This is a double indie game review of the Bookwalker and Bone Stasis Totem, both played with press keys provided by the developers.

0:00 Intro
00:14 The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales
4:51 Stasis Bone Totem

4D Golf Releases on Steam

4D Golf, from CodeParade, responsible for the similarly mind-bending Hyperbolica, is amazing because it doesn’t cheat. It provides a genuine 4D-world in which to play the game of golf in. Not in the sense that time is a fourth dimension; time passes in this four-dimensional world too. It basically asks, what if our normal world were four-dimensional. And had a mini-putt course in it. So, here is the release trailer on Youtube:

The trailer has an especially intriguing aspect to it because it promises a big feature that hasn’t been revealed publicly yet outside the release of the game. To find out what it is one will just have to buy and play the game to find out… or read the comments, where a couple of people have spoiled it. It’s possibly best that they did though, because it suggests that 4D Golf is even more amazing than it seems at first.

4D Golf (Steam, $20)

The Digital Antiquarian on the Rise of Age of Empires

In the early days of Microsoft they really looked down on gaming, fueled by an antipathy towards entertainment by many higher-ups in the company. The Digital Antiquarian recounts the story of the game that got Microsoft started on computer gaming, ultimately leading to the rise of Xbox, and from there, Halo. It’s a longer piece, and mostly text, but the DA knows their stuff. Myself, I’ve never played Age of Empires! Maybe I should try it….

Cover art from the article.

Age of Empires (or, How Microsoft Got in on Games)

The CRPG Addict Reaches Nethack 3.1

He’s been at this since the days of GameSetWatch’s run of @Play, but the CRPG Addict has finally reached Nethack 3.1, the game where Nethack reaches most of its final form. It’s true that it has gained features since then (especially weapon skills and splitting apart race and role from each other), but it was the version that introduced the current-day structure of the dungeon, added the many role-specific Quests, made the Wizard’s Tower a three level stronghold instead of just a little place in the mazes of Gehennom, put in the Bell, Book and Candle subquest, handed the Amulet of Yendor to the High Priest of Moloch, and put in the Elemental Planes and the current form of the Astral Plane.

Here are all his Nethack 3.1 posts to date:

Game 504: Nethack [3.1 series] (1993) – Beginning adventures

Nethack [3.1]: Blessed and Cursed – Discovering exercise, death by battery drain

Nethack [3.1]: Rust and Ruin – Beginning of very good game

Nethack [3.1]: Quest for Glory – Middle dungeon levels, Rogue level, Quest branch

Nethack [3.1]: Wish List – Exploring the lower regions of the main dungeon

Nethack [3.1]: Beyond This Place Of Wrath And Tears: from the Castle to Fort Ludios to entering Gehennom to killing Baalzebub

Nethack [3.1]: Nothing Lasts Forever – from killing the Wizard for the first time to getting the Amulet up to escaping the main dungeon for the Elemental Planes

Indie Showcase For 3/25/24

The indie showcase highlights the many indie games we play weekly on this channel. Get in touch if you would like to submit a game. All games shown are either press key or demo submissions.

0:00 Intro
00:14 The God Unit
2:06 Redshot
4:07 Hex of the Lich
6:26 So to Speak
8:11 It’s a Wrap
10:08 We Took That Trip

Sundry Sunday: Baldur’s Gate 3 Goes Too Far

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

From the excellent D&D-focused animation channel Dungeon Soup. I won’t say anything more except it has to do with Baldur’s Gate 3 (as it says in the title), and that it’s NSFW in theme if not technically in visuals.

Indie Game Showcase For 3/23/24

The weekly indie showcase highlights the many games we play here on the channel, and I’m taking submissions for future ones. All games shown are either press key or demo submissions.

0:00 Intro
00:14 Endling Extinction is Forever
2:32 Myth of Mirka
3:32 Fabled Lands
5:35 Kokoro Clover Season 1
7:32 Affogato
9:27 Rogue Genesia

From Supper Mario Broth: Luigi Concept Art & Mario Strikers Banners

From the “Small Findings” sub-blog of Mario obscurities site Supper Mario Broth comes this collection of concept art for Luigi, from last year’s Super Mario Bros. Movie. Here is the original post.

Here’s another image, from the main Supper Mario Broth site. Several spinoff Mario titles have promotional images for fake Mario universe companies used as background art elements. Most of the time these are used in the Mario Kart games. There were a few made for the original Mario Strikers, that went unused in the final game. This one appears to be for some kind of Bowser Support Hotline. Original post.

Old Vintage Computing Research: The Web-@nywhere Watch

Back in January, the wonderful blog Old Vintage Computing Research, which covers all kinds of old machines and devices, presented this bizarre “smart” watch from the early days of the World Wide Web. It didn’t connect to the internet itself; it sat in a cradle and had up to 93K (who could need more?) of precious plain-text data sent to it from a Windows 9X or 2000 machine, that you could then read “on the go,” “on the road,” “in transit,” “while sitting on a subway car sadly isolated from a web browser,” etc. This essential device would have cost you $85 at the time.

Image from the linked blog post.

Imagine trying to read approximately 20 print pages’ worth of internet text on that tiny display! For more, please click through for the device’s history and loving paens to its gross unusability.

I couldn’t let this promotional image from the device’s long-dead website go without comment though, offering “Free download from WEB”:

Image from the blog, originally from the device’s website. This bikini-wearing computer graphics lady likes her Web-@nywhere so much she got a dorky tattoo of its logo. It’ll either take an expensive operation or a simple retexturing to remove that! No one tell her she’s wearing the watch upside-down.

Old Vintage Computing Research: The Web-@nywhere Watch

Completing Arcade Dragon’s Lair

Dragon’s Lair was the original laserdisc arcade game, and a big hit at the time. It immediately caused a large part of the ailing arcade sector to swing around to doing laserdisc games, a trend that will seem very familiar to people who have been following NFTs, overwhelming the market and ultimately further contributing to the downfall of the golden era of U.S. arcades instead of saving it. Dragon’s Lair, and its sequel Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp and spinoff Space Ace, were by many accounts among the best of the era, with excellent cel-drawn animation provided by the studio of former Disney animator Don Bluth.

Now that I have properly introduced the concept to those who might not have known, I can now introduce this video (14 minutes), put together by the Youtube channel Broken Arcade, which demonstrates how to complete Dragon’s Lair. It’s not a perfect playthrough, but it is done on one credit, and while it plays the player explains what movements he’s doing on the joystick and button, along with notes on timing and tips for getting each scene right. The directions and button presses needed to finish each scene (which are presented randomly in the game) are also listed in the description to the video.

Even if you’ve never heard of Dragon’s Lair before, it’s worth it to watch the lush animation! Here it is embedded: