Too Many Links - Blog Posts

Spirited Play

The local arcades here recently got some exposure in the Columbus Dispatch. 16-Bit started a movement, and now a bunch of new arcades are popping up around town. Once I get to play at all of them, I’ll rank them in a fighting game tier list right here.

When Benjamin Morgan pitched his idea for an arcade to investors, the particulars of his upscale game plan didn’t quite click. “Their response was: ‘So, you’re opening a Chuck E. Cheese?’?” said Morgan, 29. Not exactly. His Old North Arcade is an adults-only hangout north of Ohio State University stocked with 30 vintage titles and 20 craft-beer taps. The venue targets nerd-chic enthusiasts of both Missile Command and microbrews. Call it Arcade 2.0.

In other local news, Columbus Retro League’s Chris Bidwell is playing in the Nintendo World Championships 2015 in Los Angeles. Watch him beat down a bunch of YouTubers this Sunday.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch via Arcade Super Awesome, and Nintendo of America’s Twitter via Chris Bidwell

The Twitch Streaming Experience

For April Fools’ Day, I brought my weekly stream back to Twitch and did annoying things popular Twitch streamers do a lot. I played a mainstream game online, I had a webcam which covered up my money and ammo counts, I had a lot of useless crap taking up space on the screen, and I constantly begged for followers and donations. Even Moobot was spamming up my chat, which had the default cuss filter on despite the NSFW language onscreen. This all went horribly right, even with Twitch constantly buffering and crashing and Xbox Live dropping my connection several times.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1bYBc9bROg via Twitch, ideas from Bad Stream Layouts via Ragnorok64

Retro Gaming in Columbus

Columbus Underground interviewed Chris Bidwell about what’s cool about retro gaming, his invite-only tournament, the Hexadecathlon, and its expansion into a public tournament series, the Columbus Retro League. Retro games bring out a completely different crowd from the modern fighting game events, and it’s been great to get to know them. They know how to get hype, too! Come on out to Video Hockey Day in Columbus on Sunday!

This room is full of beastly players. In this picture, I'm playing Marble Madness on the NES and having the run of my life, 95610 points. It only got me third place in that game. The only high score contest I actually won was Star Fox Super Weekend. It's Star Fox with a Star Soldier-style five minute score attack mode with huge bonuses for shooting down all the enemies in a stage.

Source: http://www.columbusunderground.com/retro-gamers-celebrate-bygone-era-of-video-game-classics via JD Lowe and Columbus Underground’s RSS feed, photos via Chris Bidwell and my phone camera

Shirakaba – Chiptune Hell

Chiptune Hell is what I wish my room looked like. The desktop is filled with retro gaming gear I’d have to get at Warp Zone or Ohayocon’s dealer’s room. Is that a CRT TV with a built-in Super Famicom?

I’m trying a few new things with this post. Jetpack is now cross-posting to my rarely-used Twitter and Google+ as well as Facebook and the usual RSS feed. Even if none of those things reach you, you can now subscribe by email in the sidebar. (Can I even do that on Tumblr? That was a nice feature in Jetpack...)

I’ve also introduced tags and tagged up all my previous posts Tumblr-style. If you want to see all the music posts, other posts that have too many links, my original content, or an RSS feed of just the pixiv posts, you can get that now.

The artist's web site links right to the full-size image, I guess it's probably OK if I do the same here. Wow, this post is so meta it hurts.

Source: http://bonenod.com via pixiv probably via from one of its tags

Fuzichoco

When I’m browsing around pixiv and something that jumps out at me with its colors and style, it usually belongs to Fuzichoco. She comes up time and time again on pixiv’s staff picks blog pixiv Spotlight with her modern take on traditional Japanese themes. She even made the box art for her favorite drawing program, openCanvas 6, and she has an online store.

Fuzichoco requests not to republish her work, so this pixiv link is all you're getting from me. She has plenty of really great work, so please click all the links and look around. It was tough narrowing it down to just one.

Source: 千本桜-夜ニ紛レ / 藤原 http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=36042993 (also available here) and http://www.fuzichoco.com/language.php?lang=en via Pixiv Almanac and many, many pixiv recommendations pages

John Hathway – Magic Rocket Station (another)

Time for another dual-monitor desktop wallpaper with a lot going on. pixiv artist John Hathway puts on some Susumu Hirasawa music and draws Mahocho, a vertical city of magic users that use flying brooms, rockets, and jetpacks to get around. The scale is so big you need a fisheye lens to see it all.

Oh, speaking of witches and brooms, this Wednesday on my weekly Instagib stream I’ll be playing the super rare Magical Chase, emulated of course.

This was actually my wallpaper back in August but I saved this post until Halloween time. Is that bad?

Source: 「MagicRocketStation(another)」/「JH科学 コミケ3日目マ24a」のイラスト [pixiv] via Udon’s Pixiv Almanac; also Bullet Heaven

Jamaican bobsled team raises $30,000 in dogecoin

You know Bitcoin? The crypto-currency that’s about as fake as real money? It’s apparently big enough that there was a need for an alternative. Liam Butler likes that doge meme so he created dogecoin. He also liked Cool Runnings so he started a fund, Dogesled, to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. They raised 27 million dogecoins, or $30,000.

I…I couldn’t make this stuff up.

So meme. But money? Much real. Such surprise. Wow.

Source: Jamaican Bobsled Team – Dogecoin Fund via RT

Wallpaper Watchface

For Android Pebble users, Canvas for Pebble makes plenty of information available to your watchfaces. It’s hard to display much information on such a small screen and still look nice. For Wallpaper Watchface, the time is still large and in charge, and the other two lines are stuffed with so much small text and icons that the screen takes about 20 seconds to load. Missed calls and unread messages make new notifications appear on top of the large wallpaper image. Replace that Pebble Beach wallpaper with any graphic you want from your phone.

Wallpaper Watchface was built on Canvas for Pebble v2.0.6 beta which requires Pebble firmware 2.0 beta 5. If you have that stuff installed, click the links below on your phone to install the appropriate screen on your Pebble.

Wallpaper Watchface Imperial Wallpaper Watchface Metric

It's tricky to photograph e-ink displays indoors, let alone time the shot to the second... Ick, this preview looks ugly. This is why I took a photo of the watch itself.

Source: My wrist again, Canvas for Pebble v2.0.6 beta, and Greg V Music – Lone Cypress Tree, Pebble Beach CA

Bakamo Studios site updated!

So I finally updated the site that’s more important than this one. I wrote the site’s first new post since April 2012 about our switch to Unity 2D, our new Games page that includes Thong Girl and my three Ludum Dare games, and the shiny new Bakamo Studios Facebook page. I even posted to our Twitter!

It’s no big secret that I use this blog as a testing ground for things I want to implement on the Bakamo Studios site. The new post cross-posted to Facebook correctly the first time and all seems to have gone well. If you’re interested in games I develop, please subscribe to Bakamo Studios’s RSS feed or like us on Facebook.

This is closer to what a blog should look like. I need to work on it more.

Source: Bakamo Studios » Developers of Thong Girl

Did You Know Gaming? — A Link Between Worlds

UPDATE: Did you know? I actually appear in Did You Know Gaming’s Mario Glitches video at 2:17 with footage from Fun with the Orb Glitch. I’m glad they cite their sources too, but I liked them more when they posted images like this.

Every fandom needs its useless trivia. For video games, you can find tons of useless trivia at DidYouKnowGaming? Their RSS feed is perfect for this sort of thing, and it all shows up on their Facebook page too. You too can find out how in the new Zelda game on 3DS, every character and object is doing a constant Michael Jackson lean because it looks better than looking at the tops of their heads all the time. Smart stuff!

You know, I put too much effort into these posts and I'm not posting often enough. I ought to start posting images and videos without any titles or context. It works for Tumblr! (If only I knew I’d remake this WordPress post on Tumblr 4½ years later...)

Source: Did You Know Gaming? — The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. ..., which sources Iwata Asks.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/a-link-between-worlds/0/3

Jake Kaufman – Journey into the Rift

Let’s try an audio post again. WayForward’s music composer Jake “virt” Kaufman has a series of great chiptune albums. FX4 plays like an adventure movie soundtrack with orchestral stylings and guitar riffs, but in authentic NES sound. If you can’t see the Bandcamp player, there’s a YouTube player below it that should work for everyone, even Facebook.

And now, the blog’s first block quote! From the source:

INTO THE RIFT Despite the hazards of deep-sea exploration and growing diplomatic unease, the salvage operation begins. The surface team is protected by a small fleet of hired mercenaries. Hours into the dive, they are suddenly attacked by an unknown military force, far better equipped than any provincial warlord. The attackers suddenly retreat, however, as soon as the news breaks that the wreckage has been secured.

Source: Journey into the Rift | Jake Kaufman