i still think Balan Wonderworld was awesome. the single button controls were refreshing after three decades of controller bloat, the suits felt like a fun evolution of the character switching from LEGO Star Wars, the game is full of weird nooks and crannies that constantly had me thinking “i can’t believe they thought of that,” and the music and art kick ass. there are definitely areas that could be improved and i think we were all hoping for something more kinetic from Sonic Team alum but it’s still ultimately one of the better AAA games in the last few years. i still don’t understand the backlash, especially after the crickets Naka’s previous and signifigantly worse game Rodea the Sky Soldier got

+1 for Bandcamp. they often run a “bandcamp friday” event where they waive their cut of all music sold that day, so almost everything (payment processors still take a cut) goes to the artist. there are also self-hosted alternatives to bandcamp like faircamp

i can hear it in Dorn’s voice so clearly: “Bubbles is not a traditional name for a targ.”

something that i think gets lost in the sauce in thrse discussions is whether fun is derived from playing or winning. people are comparing Silksong- and to get ahead of it right now i haven’t played and am not criticizing either of the Hollow Knights- to old arcade and early console games and their legendary difficulty, but a lot of those games were meant to be complete and fun experiences even if you game over very early on. they also didn’t have levels full of bespoke Stuff in them, it was the same few tiles and entities in different configurations., so being stuck on level 1 didn’t mean you were missing out on a narrative and worldbuilding. with how the lines have blurred between games and narrative art forms in the last few decades, there are different incentives at play and someone stuck on world 1 of SMB isn’t missing out nearly as much as someone stuck on whatever the first stage of Silksong is. it’s all ultimately apples and oranges

thank you!

can anyone recommend a good read into the actual developments happening with ATproto as of late? i’ve seen a lot of insisting lately that things are changing/have changed but no one’s saying what exactly is or has changed

i think it’s becoming an inevitabiliy. when you have the EU passing laws preventing data collection and US states like mississippi requiring it, eventually the laws become incompatible and your only options become serving a different site to every jurisdiction or just blocking large swathes of the planet. i think unfortunately we’re in the last years of there being a singular “the internet” as things shift from nations reactively geoblocking sites to sites proactively geoblocking themselves

what confuses me the most about these videos is the call to action. go back? that’s not how time works!

i mean you’re totally right, the entire premise is a huge stretch. that’s part of what makes it so fic-y, which is certainly not for everyone’s pallette

there’s a series of in-universe biographies that ranges from good to great. The Autobiography of Mr. Spock and The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko are my favorites, they’re very good looks into those character’s minds and also give you a lot of cool background info on the federation inside and outside of starfleet. i definitely recommend those two and the rest of you’re hungry for more after

if you’re salty about how Enterprise ended, espwcially for one character in particular, The Good That Men Do is worth checking out. it reads like a fixfic because it essentially is but hey. it leads into a few other books but i haven’t had a chance to read them yet

“captain, why does our annual antiharassment training have a chapter on the transwarp barrier this year?”

“they had to rewrite the whole class after the Voyager logs were declassified. this was the biggest overhaul since first contact with the Xyrillians”

for me, the foam rocks and rubber foreheads were part of the fun, like watching a magic show where you know where to look. i would be thrilled if all of SNW looked like the TOS parody from this episode, especially if it brought back 24-episode seasons. probably not a common sentiment though lol

anyone interested in this should also check out Star Garden, which combines elements from the original Air Ride and the a-life features in the Sonic Adventures, a very dangerous combination for gamecube kids

Or the moment where he’s, like, “I choose neither” of the bad decisions, that’s not taking responsibility.

this is really interesting considering in the Kelvin movies, that’s considered a strength and one of Kirk’s defining features. one of my favorite tjings about this current wave of trek is how it takes apart the idea of the idea of the perfect, mythic captain. They feel more human this go around, which makes the times they do shine and embody the classic captain archetype that much more powerful

the history of the xbox layout is fascinating and frustrating. i got a little carried away, so wall of text incoming, sorry! TL;DR the XBox layout is the SEGA six button layout with two buttons chopped off

once upon a time, SEGA released the SG-1000, which had two buttons on it’s joystick. it didn’t have a D-Pad because it came out the very same day as the NES, but future revisions- the SG-1000 II and the Master System- would come with a joypad very similar to Nintendo’s. The numbers were not labelled on the SGs, but on the Master System and SK-3000 computer they were assigned 1 and 2, with 1 corresponding to B (and also labelled start) and 2 corresponding to A.

the Mega Drive/Genesis was backwards compatible with the MS in a few ways, one of which was controllers. the Mega Drive controller is mechanically a Master System controller with two extra buttons, one being Start and the other being… A. despite 1 and 2 mapping to B and A in Nintendoland, SEGA relabelled those buttons B and C on their new controller- plug your MD controller into a Master System and A does nothing! notably the MD also reverses the letter order from right to left to left to right, so it goes A B and C.

i’m not sure what was in the water that generation, because SEGA was not alone in their malarky. the SNES had A and B buttons right where you’d expect them but for NES ports and sequels often used X as B and B as A. despite the fact that perfectly good A and B buttons in the same orientation as the NES II and Gameboy were right there. sorry muscle memory! the Virtual Boy retained the regular A B layout, so one wonders if button position was a contested point for Miyamoto and Yokoi.

but i digress- the MD later tacked a second row of buttons, X Y and Z, to a second row above A B C and this carried over to the Saturn’s default and analog controller. the analog controller was based on the Micomsoft (not Microsoft) XE-1AP, a third party analog controller for the MD and JP microcomputers that retained the Nintendo A and B position and bizarrely has E1 and E2 buttons on the left hand side in a mirrored configuration. the Saturn analog controller however used the familiar MD/Saturn right hand six button array.

so here we are, and SEGA is collaborating with Microsoft (not Micomsoft) on their next generation console. everyone at SEGA had their own pet theory for why the Saturn didn’t take over the world and one that kept coming up is that the controller was too convoluted. the undisputed winner of last generation used the same four-button array used by the SNES, which overtook the MD at the tail end of the generation before. the obvious move would be to mimic that, so despite the C button being the first and main button on the SG-1000, the “real A button,” it and the Z button above them got the boot, creating the Dreamcast controller. when the Dreamcast failed, Microsoft decided they weren’t out of the fight just yet and early plans for their DirectX Box included backwards compatability with the Dreamcast, leading it to have the same button layout but with a size more akin to the Saturn analog and XE-1AP controllers. Nintendo would return to the SNES layout the next generation for the DS and Wii Classic Controller, and things have been steady for the in the two decades since

and that’s why we’re stuck arguing which layout is “right” until the end of time!

would you have to turn off the safeties in order for your hair to actually be cut?

most people join the fedi to get away from shit like bluesky, so until they become actually decentralized i think most fedi instances should block/ban bridges if anything. the current status quo of bridges being around for those who want/need them but are easily ignorable for the rest of us is probably the best case scenario right now

tim is short for robertim

the bakula is bakula

what’s the difference between an Action RPG and an ARPG to you?