I still hadn’t regained full trust in Final Fantasy after VIII so immensely disappointed me, but IX and X were rebuilding that trust. Then the series went all MMO— literally with XI and then a big MMO influence in the combat for XII. I turned in my FF fan card after that.

Fair Or Not, If You Are One Of Those People Who Capitalizes The First Letter Of Every Word, I Am Unabashedly Judging You Because There’s Only One Subset Of People Who Does This Online.

I've never looked at any lists/packs that BlueSky users create. I don't know if I'm on any, and I frankly don't care to know. I'm just over here mostly posting into the void about video games, regardless of how many people look at what I post or if they even care.

Quick trend of December average selling prices of new video game hardware, physical software and accessories over the past 10 years in the US. The average price paid per unit of hardware increased by 87% over that period, accessories jumped 121%, and software only 4% (which surprised me tbh).

"Machine guns. Explosions. Fancy cars and trucks. It sounds like a James Bond film. Twisted Metal 2 from Sony banks on the very essence of James Bond." -- George Wood, Flights of Fantasy aka Gaming in the Clinton Years Not sure what George is talking about here, but did we ever understand him?

If I had to pick just one game, Burnout 3: Takedown would be my nominee for the best arcade racing video game of all time. If I'm ranking them-- and I've played a *ton* of these kinds of games in my lifetime-- it's Burnout 3. The Takedown feature is the difference-maker.

There was a moment in time where we had Burnout, Blur, and Split/Second. We feasted before the famine

There were games in today’s mail call, too— including another long box PlayStation game for my set. (Not necessarily a *good* game, but still…)

New shirts came as part of today’s mail call.

First time I saw this was in a mall arcade in Holyoke, MA. It was across the aisle from GORF, which was my favorite arcade game at the time. I was always curious about Popeye, but watched the attract screen a lot more than actually playing the game.

A young woman posted a photo of her driver's license on Threads, address/DOB and all some months back. It's WILD over there. Lots of dating-related "shot your shot"s along with metric tons of random engagement bait ("Unpopular opinion" shit, copycat posts, et al.) Lots of AI bots, too.

How will society respond? I would assume LOTS of retail theft/robberies/home break-ins. Modern society relies so much on tech that taking it away from them or making it unattainable through normal/affordable monetary means will push some to acquire it through less-legal ways.

Deadguard

I mean... yeah. Demand bottlenecks like this could easily take a decade to resolve, killing markets like home computing, mobile phones, and video games. It's impossible for these markets to grow if hardware cannot be sourced. Sales tank. Companies close. People lose jobs. Economies down the drain.

We're not even six full weeks into 2026, so that makes this 3 billion times more insane. Months of backed up hard drive demand doesn't simply ease. It leads to inventories for 2027 getting spoken for before they're even set-- same goes for 2028, and so on. It's all fuxx0r3d.

TurboGrafx/PCE games on Nintendo Switch Online. That should be a thing. Or a TurboGrafx STG compilation works, if the rights are available to some-- like Blazing Lazers, Soldier Blade, and Super Air Zonk.

It's cool, I guess, that games run limited time events... but nah. I don't have that kind of free time & I have way too many games to play to worry about dropping everything because LIMITED TIME DO IT NOW. It makes me appreciate games that didn't demand so much damned time. Just... let me be done.

Ain't no ball like a basketball 'Cuz the basketballs got that bounce!

Fun box art. Horrible game.

Equinox seasons (Spring, Autumn) RULE. Solstice seasons (Summer, Winter) DROOL. I can't adequately put into words how much I hate solstice seasons. Too hot. Too cold. Feet of snow and inches of ice. No sun on the way to work. Still light when I need to go to bed. High heating/cooling bills. NO.

It's hilarious that the same AI the video game industry is championing is also the AI that is going to utterly destroy it because it consumed all of the components needed to make the hardware for playing said video games. It's far too late to course-correct now. You just watch the conflagration.

Looking at the video game hardware forecast in one window while reading the latest headlines regarding component parts in another window.

Threads is 1,000,000,000% weird. It's almost completely algorithm-driven, so you've got the vast majority of users chasing down and kowtowing to it in order to hopefully get noticed by somebody. There's a tiny group of users who post genuinely about video games, but it's mostly engagement bait.

Make Audiences Groan Again

When I see Evolution, this is all I can think about. Whoops.

Elgato Wave:3 - Premium Studio Quality USB Condenser Microphone is $99.99 on Amazon amzn.to/3ViSFvw Best Buy buff.ly/EJjFQzf #ad

School vacation this week means a much quieter work environment. Gotta remember to bring my 3DS though, as our network admin is doing some upgrading & our internet will be down at times.

Post a favorite game that got a 75 or less on Metacritic? Britney’s Dance Beat (PS2): Yeah, yeah. There’s not a lot of songs and it’s light on content. I get it. It’s the gameplay for me, matching button/direction prompts on a wheel— which can change without much notice if your rival does well.

It sure would be swell if governments had stepped in and harshly regulated AI before it destroyed everything, but elected officials are on the take and, as long as they’re getting theirs, whatever happens happens. Nobody in government has a spine. Or courage.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 remains one of my all-time favorite games. I still put some time in every now and again to see if I can S-rank as many courses as I can— like I just did with the Mountain course. I’m nowhere near being an upper-tier player, but I have fun trying.

C’mon, HAMSTER Corp. You know what needs to be done.

I can confirm that I’m still having a… ummm… blast playing Operation Wolf. Operation Thunderbolt, meanwhile, is still a tough nut to crack.

This isn’t as strong a package as other past Genesis compilations, but this one will play in your newfangled modern console thingamabobbers.

Seeing this comic in my feed was a real bone-us. It was humerus to see two skeletons being romantic. You can patella that they really like each other.

Damn you, BlueSky, showing me a Gex book I didn’t have (but soon will, thanks to eBay).

Video games, pretty soon (apparently), won’t have an affordability crisis. Instead, there will be a “Who the fuck even wants this?” crisis, where (former) players spend their limited cash on literally ANYTHING ELSE than the AI slop publishers & corporations think will sell because “gamers”.

Gex in Hot Shots Golf 2 is GOATed. Should’ve been an assist trophy in Smash, too, but I digress.

4. Genesis Model 3 3. SNES Jr. 2. NES Top Loader 1. PSone The PSOne wins for me because of its small form factor, portability, and connectable LCD screen. NES Top Loader eliminates a lot of cart-seating issues, but the “prison bar” effect on screen (without modification) makes it imperfect.

I see at least one state is doing away with minimum grades. “Yeah!” the masses shout. “Let kids fail. It’s the only way they’ll learn!” Get ready for a rise in retention, then, because lack of minimum grades means that if a kid has one disastrous quarter (for whatever reason) it’s F for the year.

If this was a *real* simulation, it should cost about $1,000. </sarcasm>

Brand new footage of the Virtual Boy debut in 1995. It would have been cool to include these non-interactive demos in the Switch release! People love squinting at the Super Mario one!

Ethan Hunt diving out of the way from an out-of-control F1 car driven by Mario is quite the sight.

The “everything is free” internet that people got used to is now a zombie. People want compensation for their work, and it costs money to keep the lights (and tech) on at organizations. If people are not going to pay because “it should be free”, then things will continue to disappear.