I write too much about weird old video games, CRT TVs, horror movies, trashy novels, and cool art. Talking games on
@pocketoid
for 13 years. Runs
@CRTpixels
.
This games released only 4 years apart from each other.
I don’t even know if it’s even possible to convey to younger generations just how fast technology and game design was evolving at the time.
I need to do a CRT comparison of this guy so bad, because he legitimately scared the hell out of me as a kid.
The uncanniness is a result of seeing him at a resolution that was never accounted for.
“I want a return to mid budget AA games like the PS2 days” crowd when I ask if they bought Evil West, Ace Attorney, Warioware, Cruisin Blast, Atelier Ryza, 13 Sentinels, Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, No More Heroes 3, Gungrave GORE, Yakuza: Ishin, Dragon Quest Monsters 3, Rune Fac
I dunno man, I just think it’s kinda sad we declare a game’s value as inconsequential as soon as it receives a remake or remaster that brings it more in line with modern preferences.
We don’t do this with movies, books, music, or animation.
Hell yeah more horror movies. Hell yeah new horror directors. Hell yeah more horror indie devs getting the bag. If it winds up being a good movie on top of all that, it’s just icing on the cake.
Remember when you hear all these stories of crunch, layoffs, rushed games, stagnant franchises, and predatory gambling mechanics that your $70 doesn't pay the people who make your games, it goes into the pockets of useless executives who couldn't care less.
Activision-Blizzard shareholders have just barely approved the company's controversial executive compensation plan, which will pay CEO Bobby Kotick’s $154.6 million.
This is what I mean when I talk about our obsession with “modernization”. We don’t want to experience anything. We just want to pass it through our heads as effortlessly as possible to get to the next thing. We don’t digest anything. It doesn’t affect us.
It’s art bulimia.
All 12 episodes of my favorite Gundam series, The 08th MS Team, are now officially available free on YouTube!
It’s the perfect place to start for anyone curious about the franchise!
“Yeah, this is Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry’s Wonderland 3D. It’s a Japan-exclusive remake of the first game, but it’s been fan translated and it’s really easy to grab off the hShop. I think I still prefer the original, but the new 3D visuals do have a charm of their own.”
Your favorite Japanese studios are not exempt from the horrific work and firing practices that plague game development, and they shouldn't get a pass either. This entire industry is built on exploitation and it's not going to change until you make it.
One thing I really appreciate about this is the attention paid to the GBC and GBA’s color palettes.
Many emulators and every IPS screen still default to the harsh base colors and don’t account for the original screens’ softer palettes. Even the Analogue Pocket gets this wrong.
Game Boy games arrive to
#NintendoSwitchOnline
, and for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members, Game Boy Advance games as well! Enjoy:
#Tetris
Super Mario Land 2 - 6 Golden Coins
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
And more
Available today!
Last night I watched Gunhed (1989) and I can't stop thinking about how influential its imagery has become.
Final Fantasy VII owes this movie everything.
@PurpleGeth
@crystalsanagi
I went to an exhibition of Studio Laika’s works last year and it was fn insane. Millions of potential expressions for each character when you count all and mouth and eye sculpts they do. They print all theirs though.
I don’t think there will ever be anything like this era again. Such a magical time, even if we could only see it in hindsight. Crazy that this ever felt normal.
Y’all gladly pump 60-300 hours into whatever slop some vile corporation dishes out, but a few 3-10 hour games release and suddenly nobody has the time.
What’s extra sad is that revoking an elderly person’s license in an average US city is comparable to locking them in their home.
No public transportation, no regular taxis, and absolutely not walkable. Cars should not be required to live.
It was mostly technology driven!
The new ability to render out longer 3D draw distances, more complex physics, and layered, animated, warping, higher res textures? Forests wind up with 2D grass and leaves, rocks and dirt are stretched, flat textures, but water? That we can do!
Melee is probably the craziest example of the difference between the 5th and 6th generations. I had just bought Smash 64 when I saw those first Melee screenshots. Mario went from a series of blocks to so detailed you see the stitches in his overalls.
In 2 years. Insanity.
Nothing will ever touch Early Years PS2. Just stacks on stacks of games that would have never been even remotely possible just a year or two prior, full of new, weird, experimental mechanics and concepts. What an era.
Incredible CRT find today!
This 1991 Sony PVM-1341 is in the most immaculate condition I've ever seen. Not a spec of dust and might as well be brand new. Only used 2 or 3 times then stored in an office for 40 years. $100 including the box and manuals and I couldn't be happier.
Made the kiddo his own $40 little handheld filled with his favorite games.
Foolproof with no menu access and no massive games list. So simple even a 3 year old can use it.
This will be hard to see at 30fps, but Nintendo included an option to enable the Game Boy screen's lower refresh rate. Devs used this to turn flickering sprites, like Chain Chomp's chain here, into transparent sprites! Love to see it!
tory, Lost in Random, Mad Max, Shadowrun, The Vagrant, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, Earth Defense Force 5, Samurai Shodown, King of Fighters XV, River City Saga: Three Kingdoms, Hotshot Racing, FUGA, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Bravely Default 2, Sakuna: Of Ric
Xanadu Next is currently $4.49 on Steam if you want some of the coziest, breeziest lowpoly dungeon crawler vibes in history. I can’t recommend it enough.
e and Ruin, Ys VIII, Luminous Avenger X, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Shadow Warrior, Psychonauts 2, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Digimon Survive, Harvestella, Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line, Kirby Fighters 2, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, Prey, Midnight Suns, SpongeBob: The Cosmic Sha
The store was open, it was an accident, not an attempted theft, the driver was the grandparent of the person who dodged out of the way, no one was hurt, most (not all) of the merch was empty cases. Yes, this has happened before to the same store, but at their old location.
A friend of mine texted me “A buddy of mine is getting rid of some stuff. This is yours if you want it.” and that’s how I scored a Samsung GXE1395 for FREE!!
Only question now is whether I keep the Lisa Frank stickers or not…
Watching Ultraman Arc with my kid again tonight and it kinda bums me out when people say suitmation is dead just because Godzilla doesn’t use it anymore.
Ultraman is free right there on YouTube and still pushing the boundaries of it every week.
We lost the artists of Shining Force/Golden Sun and Suikoden V/Castlevania: CotM within just a few days of each other 😞
RIP Hiroshi Kajiyama and Kaori Fujita
As I’ve said (and gotten ripped apart for), I genuinely find a lot this new “We want smaller b-tier games back!!” discourse so pathetic when smaller (and especially experimental) games continue to release, then review and sell as poorly as ever.
Same as it ever was.
“Ahead of its time” is so overused that I think we forget how rare and extraordinary a true lateral work of art is.
@anamanaguchi
’s Endless Fantasy feels as radical and visionary today as it did 10 years ago.
Happy anniversary to this culture-shaking achievement of an album.
For Halloween this year I created my own pirate TV station that broadcast two 6 hour Halloween mixtapes of old spooky trailers and commercials to 11 CRT TVs in and outside our house!
Took a lot of work, but it was a massive hit
A massive congratulations to one of my favorite tiny YouTube channels, RndStranger, on completing his Famidaily video series!
He has now catalogued and reviewed all 1041 officially released Famicom games and captured each of them using native hardware and real cartridges.
We literally “binge” our art now and think it’s normal to play Pokémon at 4x speed on an emulation device filled with 10,000 games in one hand and scroll in the other while half-watching a streamer react to a movie we haven’t seen, wondering why nothing hits anymore.
Got my hands on one of my holy Grails today, a 1983 Commodore Video Monitor 1701! A nice man who just wanted it to go to a good home only charged me $30! Can't wait to get some photos for the blog and eventually get it recapped.
@powervidsful
I had a response for this, but now I see you’re an AI art guy with no imagination so it’s actually impossible for me to embarrass you any further.
Every week our corporate overseers light another Library of Alexandria on fire and while we watch our collective human culture burn to ash we lie to ourselves that certainly it’s all backed up somewhere.
I was heartbroken today after seeing RARBG closed. This is a very personal loss to me and many people around the world. From remux versions to x265 1080p versions, every format used to be available with subtitles. Such quality I've never seen on any other site.
Last image:
There's aren't many points in my life when I can remember something being so immediately, viscerally cool to me that it burned itself directly into my brain, but this initial 16 second Gundam Wing promo is one of them
I'm excited to share this WIP of my new CRT setup and custom solid wood shelving! It even matches our other furniture! Not everything is hooked up yet, but it's coming along.
This is also the first time I'm sharing my newly RGB-modded and recapped Sony KV-27S42!
I’ve been formulating my thoughts on this and something I haven’t heard anyone mention: Only 14% of players finish games.
If you’re splitting a story up into multiple parts (that each span the 40 hour length of the original story), many people are going to fall off part way.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is “underperforming sales wise”, an analyst has claimed. The game has reportedly sold about half of what Final Fantasy 7 Remake did in the same timeframe.
@a2_4am
@NonTrotski
I watch a LOT of YouTube, mostly retro game stuff and video essays on movies and I can confirm that this happens to me all the time. I watch one critical Star Wars review and suddenly YouTube is recommending to most horrific trash I've ever seen.
@rasalistair
@celesitial
As a parent, this is honestly one of the best reasons for someone to not have a kid imo. It’s insanely stressful keeping another person alive. Don’t it unless you’re up for the challenge of teaching another human being all their bodily functions from scratch.
Why does this have 10k likes??? Anyway, go save a CRT and maybe buy some indie games. Here’s some recs:
Crow Country
Mystic Valley
Lunacid
The Tower on the Borderland
@TheBrando2
Honestly the loss of computer literacy thanks to overly user friendly devices makes me so sad. I'm buying my kid a computer as soon as he's out of the whom.
This video is blowing up on YouTube and the replies are hilarious. Zoomers calling the Wii/DS era the best Nintendo has ever been, saying everything went downhill after Iwata passed, calling modern Nintendo draconian lmao.
The cycle endlessly continues.
The time has finally come. I officially have too many 13"-14" CRTs I'm not using.
So, here's the whole family together for a photo before a few of them get rehomed.
Ever since I was a kid I've been obsessed with all the unique "Game Boy Color Only" screens that GBC games displayed when played on a regular Game Boy.
We're there any that had any unique minigames or anything?