Month: July 2025

Gaming Storybundle In Progress

This is kind of self-promotion, but it’s not just self-promotion as you can get tons of books by other people this way, including 10 volumes of Game Dev Stories from David Craddock, twelve books from Hardcore Gaming 101, four from Andrea Contato, and a couple from Dean Takahashi, as well as several other people, including, well, moi. It’s $35 for 66 books! I even threw in the two volumes of Someone Set Up Us The Rom as an extra, even though I don’t get anything out of it. I care that much about this bundle’s success.

No one gets rich from these bundles. The days when you could offer a ton of content at a steep discount and get thousands of purchases are long gone. But cash-strapped readers looking for a lot of info, if they can scrape up just $35, can get an amazing deal that will keep them occupied for a long time. I really think you’ll want to jump on this one, if you’re able.

I’ve been involved with these bundles for around a decade now. Some of the books I’ve contributed I’ve put up for sale on itch.io, but some I haven’t. The original version of We Love Mystery Dungeon is in it, which I’ve just taken down from itch.io due to its forthcoming expanded print edition through Limited Run, which is one of those sad but necessary things that has to be done when you sign a publishing contract, so this will probably be the last place you can buy the original version. By the way, I hope you’ll consider the new edition: it’s got added material on last year’s Shiren 6, a.k.a. The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island, and a whole lot on the whole Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series.

I know I’ve made a few of these self-promotional posts lately, mostly over the Loadstar collection and related topics. I’ve always been anxious about spreading the word about my projects, paid or otherwise. I’ve seen so many people who seem shameless about tooting their respective horns, but it’s kind of necessary, I guess, to be seen through the crowd.

Well there it is. There’s 15 days left in the bundle, so you have a bit of time left to make your decision. Please have a look.

The Greatest Hits Game Bundle 2 (storybundle.com)

Official Mario Paint Videotape

Nintendo’s announced that Mario Paint has been released on Switch Online, a movie that I modestly point out that I called some time ago, although I hoped they’d offer an export option that would let you make easy use of your creations, although one can use the Screenshot button to save your creation probably. It’s not the subject of today’s post, but their announcement’s pretty entertaining, so here it is (4 minutes):

The announcement mentions that one can use the restore states built into the emulator to save your work, which is at least better than the single save file available in the cartridge, or “saving” your work to VHS tape as the manual suggested. Another thing mentioned in the announcement is that, not only can people use the Switch 2’s Joycons as mice to replicate the function of the SNES Mouse that came with Mario Paint and required it, but in an uncharacteristic bit of generosity, it also supports USB mice when used on the original Switch models.

Mario Party is an interesting piece of gaming history. Without it, Homestar Runner probably would never have happened. Five years ago H*R posted bits of Mario Paint work to social media on Thursdays, which they compiled in this video (4 minutes, sadly not able to be embedded).

That’s two videos already and neither are the focus of this post, so what is? This digitization of an official Japanese Mario Paint tape was uploaded by Jeremy Parish, it’s 31 minutes, and shows off some frankly amazing creations that were made in the days where you had to actually use the mouse to make Mario Paint creations, without resorting to outside tools or memory manipulation. Surprisingly, it also bears the logo of APE Inc. Shigesato’s company that made Earthbound! Here here, it is this this:

One more note about the announcement video! It mentions that Mario Paint songs have been added to the Nintendo Music cellphone app. It also shows off “Title Theme 2,” which actually isn’t in the app, but is revealed to be Totaka’s Song! Maybe it’ll be added at a later date?

A Miscellany

I’ve had a number of ideas for big posts lately, but those all take substantial time to make and finish. But I want to post something, so here are the directions my explorations have taken me lately.

  • Loadstar has a number of interesting things in it, including a trove of Print Shop clip art and (surprisingly) over 200 recipes. It’s full of those kinds of thing.
  • Action Retro just posted a new video on using the Apple Lisa (15 minutes), including browsing the internet on one, although on a text-based browser. A text-based web browser, on the first commercially-sold GUI OS, how about that!
  • Been back playing the Pac-Man Championship Edition Famicom demake on Namco Museum Archives Volume 1 on the Switch 2. It’s not really what I’d call a demake though, because it’s really good, in fact it might secretly be the best Pac-Man CE game, which isn’t meant to slight the others. It occurs me that I’ve learned a huge amount about all the games in the series, and I should try to get that information out onto the internet. I’ve got a WIP document about that, and I’m sure I’ve got some previous attempts at writing one in the archives somewhere.
  • Continuing on that thread, I’ve also learned that “Shadow Labyrinth,” that Metroidvania Bandai-Namco’s made with a truckload of classic Namco references including a spherical robot character called Puck, has a mini-game in it that is heavily inspired by the Pac-Man CE games, down to using some of its music. It isn’t scored the same though, and doesn’t seem properly set up for score attack play. It seems to follow along with some of the ideas they used in Pac-Man CE 2+’s two player mode, which I thought didn’t work very well.
  • Been wanting to investigate some C64 BBSes, but to do it proper you need a terminal that supports PETSCII. I have one, but I really want to get it working through C64 emulation.
  • There’s also the matter of getting the custom version of Kirby Air Ride set up with their bespoke version of Dolphin for netplay. I’ve already posted multiple times about KAR lately so I’m reluctant to make a full post about it again until I’ve had a chance to try it for myself.
  • Jeff Gerstmann got sent a message that suggests something you’ve probably never considered, that Mr Do! is real:

People say that you should turn off notifications and live your life and all that, but if I did that I wouldn't occasionally get a buzz on my wrist and see that some maniac has sent the phrase MR. DO! IS REAL to me.

— Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann.com) 2025-07-28T22:37:23.199Z

Turn Based Festival Showcase Part 1

This is part 1 of my (Josh Bycer’s) coverage of Turn-Based Thursday Fest from June 2025. This part features the games I received press keys to cover, the following parts will be demos.

00:00 Intro
00:21 None Shall Intrude
2:43 Lost for Swords
4:58 Pyrene
7:30 Arc Seed
9:25 Zet Zillions
11:50 Rogue Voltage

Sundry Sunday: Master Chief Sings

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

I’m really dipping into the archives today, from long-time internet funnypeople Waverly Films comes a 15-year-old video hyping from Master Chief’s mercifully short singing career. It’s just a minute and a half long.

Waverly Films has been at the Youtube funny video business for a long time, and although it’s been five years since their last output, every once in a while their members put out something new, so we haven’t yet lost hope that we’ll see something new from them, someday.

Displaced Gamers on Metroid Slowdown

Displaced Gamers takes a lot of time to make their videos, but I always know their videos will be worth watching, and usually also worth posting about. Their newest video (36 minutes) is a typically deep dive into Metroid’s game engine, and why the game inexplicably drops frames. It’s only a first part so far, but they do an excellent job of breaking down Metroid’s game loop. As far as it goes to this point, a big part of the issue has to do with the main game loop being called to prepare game screens being scrolled into, which are kept in a big memory buffer (so big the game requires extra RAM on the cartridge to store it) and copied into the PPU’s VRAM when needed.

Here’s the video. If you enjoy this sort of thing, we’d probably get along very well in person!

Cerebral Puzzle Showcast Part 1

This is a showcase looking at my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Cerebral Puzzle Showcase June 2025 Edition.

00:00 Intro
00:20 Öoo
1:50 Node: The Last Favor of the Antarii
3:56 Puzzle Depot
5:37 The Button Effect
07:17 Trackastrophe
8:40 Glowkeeper
10:15 Looking for Fael
12:05 Miss Paint
13:37 Chipwits

I’d like to point out that Chipwits is a game we’ve covered here before!

In other news… itch.io has come under a firestorm over the past couple of days over their delisting a whole bunch of games that covered adult subjects because of pressure from their payment processors. As it turns out, those processors themselves have been targeted by a campaign from right-wing “Christian” organization Collective Shout. I have tried to prioritize links to itch.io, and even distribute software and books through that site, but now I’m going to have to think hard about alternatives. PCGamer has a good overview of the situation.

Romhack Thursday: You Are Just A Blue Switch

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

This is a mostly silly hack by Daizo Dee Von, a winner in SMW Central’s Questionable Level Design Contest for 2025, that replaces Mario in Super Mario World with a mobile version of one of the Switch Palace switches, but it does have some interesting gameplay.

The player can switch their switch themselves by pressing L and R, but only by pressing in, not out. Doing so both changes the state of all the switch blocks, and makes the switch itself much shorter. In play terms, this is equivalent of Super Mario shinking and becoming Regular Mario, and in fact getting hit by an enemy has the same effect, resulting in being switched prematurely, and all the blocks changing state too. To switch back, you collect a P Switch item, which is essentially a Super Mushroom, restoring both the player’s state and reswitching all the blocks.

It’s a short hack, but it has secret areas and endings! They’re all shown off in Flook611’s playthrough and exploration of You Are Just A Blue Switch, here (18 minutes):

Or, you could just watch Daizo Dee Von’s own trailer for the hack (30 seconds):

Balatro But Multiplayer

Balatro is still a thing, and a major update with lots of new jokers is due soon, but until then you might tide yourself over with an online multiplayer mod, available here for PC players.

Each player plays their own independent game of Balatro with the same seed, but when you reach a boss blind after the first one, you don’t play against one of Balatro’s many built-in bosses, but instead you try to beat the other player’s score at that same round. You’re told what their score is in the boss battle (if they’re playing it or have already finished it), but aren’t given other information like which jokers they have or their deck composition. Instead of the usual instant-lose scenario you get a limited number of lives. If you lose but still have a life left, you get some consolation money and get to keep playing. The last player remaining wins.

Beans Hambone made a video explaining how it’s played and offering some tips (10 minutes):

There are a few other changes, such as a handful of removed jokers, but also some new ones that take special advantage of the format. One unique aspect to multiplayer is, if you’re both in the Boss Blind and your opponent finishes their round and you already have a higher score, you immediately win the round at that point and don’t play your remaining hands. This can be bad (you might not get to use some money-earning jokers, scaling jokers don’t trigger and seals don’t get the chance to work) or good (you get all the money from the hands that round, and you might save glass cards from being broken).

If you’d like to see it in action, here’s popular Balatro Youtuber Roffle Lite playing some multiplayer matches (47 minutes):

Balatro Multiplayer Mod (balatromp.com)

PannenKoek on Reducing Whomp’s Fortress’ Tower to 0 A Presses

PannenKoek, Youtube’s foremost expert on Super Mario 64 esoterica, has made another video (35 minutes). This one’s about how they managed to get all the way up the tower in Whomp’s Fortress without pressing the A button at all.

To remind: not pressing the A is troublesome to build a challenge around (that being what makes it interesting) because it’s Mario’s most fundamental verb: the jump button. On the Gamecube, it was physically the biggest button! I loved that about its controller: these days I always get the buttons mixed up, as a result of some games making the left button the main one, and some making the bottom one. On the Gamecube, there was no question. But the A Button Challenge asks that you use it as little as possible.

The issue with Whomp’s Tower is that it’s a tower, a vertical structure itself atop a mountain. To find out how they did it, I refer you back to the video.

Zexion Review

My (Josh Bycer’s) latest review is up for Zexion and how it is one of the best metroidvanias of 2025, provided you are in the mood for a challenging game.

Sundry Sunday: Metal Gear Nonsense

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

othatsraspberry is a hilarious maker of comics and has a Bluesky account. One of the things they’ve made comics about is the Metal Gear games, a surpassingly fertile ground for visual weirdness, because the games themselves are often very weird. (FISSION MAILED)

That’s right, no video today! We can do other things on Sundays than linking to video! And not Nintendo either! Let us rejoice in a world without Mario, for 24 hours at least!

Here is one comic, to give you a taste. For more, hie the away to that Bluesky feed or comic page!

Source: othatsraspberry’s comic archive page

An extra for you. We’ve had two items on Kirby Air Ride lately so I figured I wouldn’t devote a whole post to this, but if you still have room for more (Kirby always has room for more), the first game in this tournament match between Awsm_599 and heynoww has to be seen to be believed. The full video is 23 minutes, the relevant section is the first 7½ minutes, but if you stick around it also ends in an unexpected way. It’s a demonstration of why it’s important not to be too careless when playing City Trial. (I notice that I had linked to the end of that first round in the last KAR post, but the whole game is a nailbiter.)

Possibly

As it turns out, I linked a video today after all. It’s a hard habit to break.