Gameboy Tetris Music Change & Things Heard at SGDQ 2026

The Cutting Room Floor’s article on Gameboy Tetris has an interesting fact. The first 25,000 copies sold in Japan, distributed as part of a bundle, had different music! Instead of the now-iconic Russian tune Korobeiniki, a different, somewhat calmer song was used. You can either follow that link and find it on the page, or go here.


Here’s an extra, one last piece of SDGQ 2026 content….

Every year (well, twice a year) the Mastodon account of Alex Zandra posts a thread of fun out-of-context things heard during Games Done Quick. Here is the thread for the recently-concluded program. A few call-outs, but mind I’ve left out a lot of good ones on purpose:

I was told to keep this short because I’m a yapper

who here had a childhood?

the hexahedron, more commonly known as the cube

sometimes you wanna change your hair color to match the elf that lives inside your head

Good to know

I think a helicopter could be an egg

before fighting shaft and dracula I’m gonna equip buffalo stars in both hands

who’s ready for the overstimulation chamber?

it’s like a cat face, but very determined

shoutout to easy bosses named François

what will happen when armadillos inevitably spread to the NBA

you can drive either a kangaroo or a dinosaur

we love glitched meat here

wark or kweh?

there could not be a more deserving stack of fifteen animals

thanks to your donations, we will be eating the drywall

please don’t hit me jerk bird o/~
please don’t hit me jerk bird o/~
please don’t hit me jerk bird o/~
please don’t hiiiit me o/~

SGDQ Begins Tomorrow!

“What should tomorrow’s post be? On the ancient C64 GEOS operating system? On weird finds in Mario Kart World? More on Kirby Air Ride? Wait, what was it that starts on the 6th again?”

“That’s right, it’s SGDQ!”

Here’s the schedule. This year they’re benefiting Doctors Without Borders, which is especially relevant right now. I’ve already suggested some interesting runs. Please enjoy, and give if you can afford it!

Roguelike Celebration 2022

Roguelike Celebration 2022, the yearly conference about this peculiar genre, begins tomorrow! This year it is again being held virtually. Its schedule is here, and you can get your ticket here. As I write this tickets cost $30, but if you can’t afford that there is an option for free admission at that link. If you can pay though then please consider it? I presented there last year, although in my 30 minute timeslot I didn’t even get to cover like even 10% of what I had planned.

It generally has much of interest both to players and developers, and covers more than strictly-defined roguelikes but also a variety of games and topics related to procedural content generation.Here’s a selection of talks that I personally think may be interesting, although there are many more than this planned:

  • Persistence and Resistence: How narrative in roguelikes is currently underutilized, by Sherveen Uduwana
  • Remembering Moria – a roguelike before the roguelikes, by Santiago Zapata
  • How hard can it be to create a non-violent rogue-lite dungeon crawler?, by Tabea Iseli
  • Smoothing the Sharp Edges of RNG, by Evan Debenham
  • A Million Little Players: Monte Carlo Simulations for Game Design, by Phenry Ewing
  • Tips and Tricks in Procedural Generation, by Pierre Vigier

I hope to see you (virtually) there!