Displaying post 1 to 50 of 192
from
mefi
From Awesome Games Done Quick 2025, four speedrunners play Super Mario Brothers at the same time, superimposed.
WHY DON'T WE JUST KILL THE KID IN THE OMELAS HOLE, by Isabel J. Kim. An excellent Omelas riff that's just what it sounds like.
You know the scene in Ghostbusters where the power's been shut down, the ghosts have broken containment, and they start to run amok in New York? The distinctive, eerie song- "Magic" by Mick Smiley- that accompanies it exists only in the film and on the soundtrack; it was never released as a single and Smiley never released it himself. But who even is Mick Smiley? In 2016, Josie Riesman tracked him down and got his story.
Do like punk and metal and want to know more about the individual genres? Do you also like learning how these genres are made? Do you enjoy hearing about very serious art from people who love it and don't take it seriously at all? Can you watch Youtube videos? Then Norway's Pagefire is for you! Led by the prolific Andri from Pagefire, their Youtube guides to music genres (and accompanying music videos) are equally funny and informative.
I HEAR THE BLUES A-KILLIN' (or: Frasier Meets Columbo), a 16-page comic by Joe Chouinard.
Get a jump on the Spooky Season with My House Walkthrough (CW: brief implied human remains), a very creepy short video walkthrough of a house that doesn't quite fit together right and doesn't seem to be inhabited. More info inside!
It's May 3rd, the date of Johnathan Harker's first diary entry, which means Dracula Daily starts today! Sign up and every day somebody writes a letter or a diary entry, through the ending on November 7, you'll get that day's segment of the classic epistolary novel in your email.
Odekake Kozame, "Outing child shark", is a series of wonderful, gentle comics posted to Twitter by the psuedonymous Penguinbox, about a happy little shark who goes on various outings and activities in a Japanese town, whether that's going to an age-appropriate movie, running a race, enjoying illumination lights, winning an extra chilled pineapple, or making friends with the whack-a-mole-like snakes instead of hitting them.
In a guest post on Elizabeth Sandifer's Eruditorum Press, the Institute Of Gremlins 2 Studies discusses Gremlins 2, Laibach, satiric over-identification, and the ridiculous, Stephen Colbert-esque satire that must be Jordan Peterson.
Wrestling fans on Reddit are taking a break from talking wrestling to criticize things other than wrestling in the same way they criticize wrestling. Spoiler warnings after the break.
So it's 1994 and you're punk as fuck and nobody's gonna do it for you, so you wanna put together a show and need to know what bands and venues are around. Or you're a band and you want to set up a tour, or find a label, or maybe you just want zines and tapes from places outside your town. The internet's barely there, so it's a good thing you've got your grimy hands on the 1994 edition of Book Your Own Fuckin' Life, a full copy of which is being kindly hosted by the Internet Archive.
Defunctland is a notional amusement park comprised of defunct rides and attractions from actual parks, but more interestingly it's a series of entertaining short videos about the stories of vanished rides- why they were built, what they were like, and why- be it changing tastes, entertainment conglomerate politics, poor quality, or terrible engineering- they became defunct. Episode list inside.
With no new print issues since 2015, most readers and contributors have concluded that classic horror movie magazine Fangoria will be an internet-only phenomenon going forward. EW delves into how Fangoria got to where it was, and what went wrong.
Polygon has a long post with some lovely photographs that goes into the details, costs, and struggles of running an independent game store in 2017.
The just-released (and unfortunately Windows-only) Mega Maker allows players to use a simple interface to build and share Mega Man levels using selected assets from the original games. There's a trailer here and you might want to read this interview with the creator about his process, comparisons to Mario Maker, and why he's not concerned about the possibility of a DMCA takedown.
Retired Microsoftie and video game nerd Ed Fries [previously] tells the tale of how he and former Atari engineers Ron Milner and Michael Albaugh chased down a forgotten Easter Egg in Atari arcade game Starship 1, programmed by Ron and released in 1977, making it a contender for the title of the oldest known video game Easter Egg.
The New York Times has published excerpts from Richard Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman's notes proving that during the 1968 Presidential election, Nixon did in fact, as he always denied doing, sabotage peace talks that could've ended the Vietnam war years early, saving thousands of unnecessary deaths and potentially giving Hubert Humphrey an edge in the election.
In 1998, cult horror author Thomas Ligotti and coworker Brandon Trenz wrote a script for an episode of The X-Files which draws more on Ligotti's style and sentiment than on Kolchalk and flying saucers. The episode, "Crampton", was never produced, but the text is online.
Even Doing Academic Research On Video Games Puts Me At Risk: On managing personal information in a risky field.
It's 1996 and you've been hired as a game tester by Sega's Test Department. How will you get acquainted with the corporate culture? Lucky for you, Sega has commissioned a "trainumentary": This is SEGA TEST
One of the most infamously bad NES licensed games ever released, Friday the 13th is known for its obtuseness and difficulty. Still, there's many who see an interesting design buried beneath Pack-In Software's incompetence, even inspiring an action figure based on its odd Jason Voorhees sprite, and it's for those people that YouTube filmmakers TripleZeroFilms created a 50-page, full-color, illustrated strategy guide (with its own trailer video!) for this unpolished gem in the extremely rough.
It's a known fact that people in comic stores say things. It's undeniable that many of these things are inane, oblivious, foolish, and occasionally perspicacious. Comic book owner and artist Tim Chamberlain, aka MrTim, chronicles his customers' conversations in his webcomic, Our Valued Customers.
Google Books has ten years of Maximum PC online for your enjoyment and occasional chuckles.
RetroAchievements provides customized emulators and an account structure to add Achievements to hundreds of old-school video games on the NES, SNES, MegaDrive/Sega Genesis, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. Browse the most commonly won achievements, the games with the hardest achievements, and the most popular games. Or if you're more into coding than gaming, you could always just check out the GPL-licensed source code for the emulators.
Locomalito (previously, 2, 3, 4) has released his latest free retro game for Windows, the Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden/Rygar influenced Curse of Issyos. View the trailer here.
Twelve years after its last update (3.4.3), Nethack 3.6.0 has been released. [previously] [previously]
Cinemassacre brings us the trailer to the long-awaited film adaptation of the infamously terrible and bizarre Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde for NES.
The Hard Times brings you all the (somehow occasionally mistaken for real) punk rock news.
The infrequently updated blog Heavy Latin chronicles and translates the uses, and misuses, of Latin by metal bands.
Paradox Interactive, makers of complicated strategy games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings 2, have purchased White Wolf Publishing and all its IP from EVE Online makers Crowd Control Publishing, announcing plans to move forward with the IP
Commentary and analysis are available from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Venture Beat, and PC Gamer, and Obsidian have tweeted in response to the calls for them to be hired to make Bloodlines 2.
DaveYard Shift plays mariachi covers of video game songs. Released thus far: "Bloody Tears" from Castlevania 2, "Gerudo Valley" from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, "Dark World" from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, "Dr. Wily Stage" from Mega Man 2, "The Moon" from Ducktales, and a medley of tunes from Kirby Super Star, Tetris, and Super Mario World.
YouTube metal guitarist Rob Scallon covers Slayer's "Raining Blood", "War Ensemble", and "Angel of Death", and Metallica's "Battery", on banjo.
Reactor Incremental is a clicker game, but there's little spamming of clicks. Instead, you purchase and place fuel cells and heat mitigation hardware carefully to generate and sell power, building from a single uranium core to a mighty nuclear engine- or else accidentally burn the whole thing down and start again!
Mozilla Firefox cofounder Blake Ross couldn't wait for the season 3 premiere of HBO's Silicon Valley, so he did the next best thing and wrote his own script which is pretty much indistinguishable from an actual episode.
The Night Terrors present Megafauna, a composition for organ, theremin, drum set, and synthesized bass.
Bell of Lost Souls user YorkNecromancer talks about different approaches to playing games (specifically about 40K and Vampire: the Eternal Struggle, but the points made apply to all games) and how particular playstyles can cause confusion and pain when unexpected.
tw: child abuse mentioned, panic attacks depicted
Sergey Galyonkin, creator of Steam data tool Steam Spy, offers some analysis of use to game developers and of interest to gamers: Some things you should know about Steam.
The day before House Democrats defeated President Barack Obama's request for fast-track authority on trade agreements, The New Yorker's William Finnegan examines the strange bedfellows the Trans-Pacific Partnership has led to and asks Why Does Obama Want This Trade Deal So Badly?
John Stossel on 20/20 in 1988: Nuts For Nintendo
Youtuber Lazy Game Reviews runs AOL 4 on Windows 8.1 in May of 2015 to see what still works, what's broken, and who's still hanging around the AOL 4 chat rooms.
Red Fang enlist Fred Armisen to face off against a horde of beer-drinking zombies in their video for "Blood Like Cream".
Flash Friday! In Murder, don't get caught killing the King, then catch others trying to usurp your reign- or get usurped and get revenge! Red Light Green Light was never played with higher stakes!