My latest Metroidvania obsession
I really need to start paying attention to the devs behind the games I play.
I started Sea of Stars, from Sabotage Studio, a while back and it’s one of the best classic style RPGs I’ve ever played.
Then I got kinda sidetracked and found a new obsession with Metroidvanias like Blasphemous and Aggelos for a while.
I kept thinking man, Sea of Stars has such great artwork and mechanics, I wish these guys would make a Metroidvania. I bet it would be fucking gnarly.
Well, turns out they did! Way before Sea of Stars, back in 2018 they made a game called The Messenger and holy shit is it good!
When I beat Aggelos, it kinda left a void in my soul for the more simplistic, 16 bit side scrollers with snappy controls and sick pixel art. Blasphemous was close, but it was a little more technical and modern in a lot of ways. Still a dope game but I need a break before I get more into Blasphemous 2, so The Messenger is my latest obsession.
So many good Metroidvanias out there if you know where to look! Still haven’t finished Sea of Stars yet with all this side scrolling action though.
From r/MarchAgainstNazis
Will someone please think of the oligarchs and government subsidized mega corporations‽ 🤪
Target foot traffic falls for seventh consecutive week
For the latest week, Costco’s foot traffic gain was the near-inverse of Target’s loss: It was up 7%.
I was never big on Target and I absolutely despise Walmart but the other half and I JUST got Costco memberships for the first time last month.
It’s the only grocery store I’ve been to lately where I’ve yet to run into someone wearing a MAGA hat. I actually like shopping there even.
Honestly I’m holding back a lot on this post, I’m a total Costco nerd now and I’m absolutely obnoxious about it. Just ask my girlfriend.
Nintendo unveils Virtual Game Cards for the Switch for family sharing
…when you buy a digital system of a game, it is loaded as a Virtual Game Card on a dedicated management screen. You can virtually load and eject your Virtual Game Cards. This will work for both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 systems.
I was just thinking the other day, I have SO MANY games I’ve bought and didn’t end up liking. You can only lend out one of these for two weeks though. Would be cool if you could dump off unwanted stuff to whoever wants it but I get why that wouldn’t be a great business model.
NASA Drops Promise to Land “First Woman, Person of Color” on the Moon
“A giant step back for womankind?”
Picked up a R36S handheld emu
Picked up a R36S emulator console at a local video game place while my Switch was getting serviced last week.
I’ll see a completely unhinged headline and almost start freaking out and then I’m like oh; that was all the way from yesterday, we’re already onto the next absolutely insane thing the oligarchy is cooking up
Making lemonade
I’ve REALLY been tuning everything out and succumbing to my addictive personality since I bought an OLED Switch last month.
I’ve been obsessed with metroidvanias since I played through Aggelos. My next obsession was Blasphemous. I bought 1 & 2 and I’m about 80% through the first one so far. I needed more though, so I picked up 9 Years of Shadows and Metroid Dread.
Then I woke up this morning and my Switch got stuck charging at 17% so I figured a restart might fix it. Well it definitely shut off, but now it just hangs at the Nintendo logo and shuts back off. Like it’s not even a boot loop, it just starts to boot and then dies.
SoOoOo I had to file a warranty claim and mail the fucker back to Nintendo to get repaired.
It’ll take a couple weeks to get it back and that’s what made me realize how utterly obsessed I’ve been! I think it’ll be good to have a video game detox for a couple weeks lol I’ve been immersed in the fucking thing for the last month.
The Return of Digg, a Star of Web 2.0
It was 2009. Ish. I had a modded original Xbox plugged into a 29" CRT TV sitting on top of a dresser in my bedroom. I used a content aggregator called Navi-X to stream everything from TV shows like Lost to random internet radio stations.
I never missed a new episode of Diggnation.
Reddit was this weird 90’s looking website that I didn’t really understand. It was too big and bland.
Digg.com was where I spent my time online, doomscrolling via click wheel mouse on an old HP Pavilion running an ancient version of Ubuntu.
Eventually Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht announced that Diggnation was coming to an end. They’d both been moving on to bigger and better things over the years, and Kevin eventually decided it was time to sell Digg and move on.
For a few weeks nothing really changed, then it kinda shifted from a community where people share links that get up/down voted like Reddit into a privately aggregated link blog that shared the most popular stories from around.. probably Reddit and Twitter or something.
I was stoked a few months ago when Kevin and Alex reunited to do a few new episodes of Diggnation! Kevin half jokingly said he’d be open to buying back Digg.com if the owner was interested in selling.
Apparently they were! It’s going to be interesting to watch it unfold. Definitely getting hit with some nostalgia right now.
You can sign up for the waitlist at reboot.digg.com
Well I guess the silver lining with Trump and Putin’s new romance is that it’s only a matter of time before he does something to piss Putin off and gets thrown out of a window 🤞
🔗 Kagi, search tips
Just 16 companies are responsible for the majority of the SEO enshittified websites that fill your search results with crap. You can use the Ublacklist extension to block them from appearing in Google or, better yet, use Kagi which can natively exclude them. https://codeberg.org/bbbhltz/16CompaniesFilters
Better Internet Searches | Linkage
I’ve been using Kagi on and off for a while now. I’ve been pretty hardcore about it lately though; it’s so much better than Google and they give you complete control over the results you see when you search for something.
Anyway, really good post by Lou Plummer. He also posted his blocklist for Kagi too if you partake.
Ohio Senate passes bill to change marijuana law
The weed here is already overpriced garbage compared to Michigan. I guess they just wanna see all of the business go back there again O.o
I’ve been disconnecting and playing a lot of retro indie games lately.
Faves so far have been:
Annnd looking at Deltarune: Chapters 1 & 2 after I finish Sea of Stars. I think there’s a new chapter coming out sometime this year?
Definitely lots of good 90s style games coming out in the last few years!
Sea of Stars is like a mix between Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG but it’s definitely not a ripoff of anything. Super cool story line and beautiful pixel art.
Aggelos is a Metroidvania that reminds me of Zelda 2: Link’s Adventure and shares sidescroller RPG elements from two underrated classics - Dragon View and Actraiser. My absolute favorite thing about it is that your character actually changes appearance when you unlock each new sword and armor. The super technical maneuvers and combos you need to use are fucking infuriating at times but it’s becoming one of my all time favorites.
Dusk is reminiscent of all the classic shooters like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem/Shadow Warrior, Rise of the Triad, etc. Definitely brings a lot of its own mechanics and style to the table but it feels super nostalgic if you used to play old school shooters.
I’m always looking for modern retro stuff that looks good on the OLED Switch! Let me know if you have any suggestions 😋
Found on Reddit
Is Intel in trouble? How struggling chipmaker’s financial issues may impact Ohio factories
Everyone hyped this up so much and now Intel is falling way behind schedule and generally doing terrible as a company lol things come to Ohio to die 💁