It really wants me to host a webinar. I get a pop-up every day telling me about how great this function supposedly is. You’d think there was a VC generative AI project attached to it with how hard it’s being pushed.

They are mostly a toy store now. Last time I visited a GameStop I was told they don’t even stock new games at release, except for pre-orders. There doesn’t seem to be a point in going there anymore.

I’m 188cm (6’2") and grew up in a fairly insular community of Dutch people and their descendants. I thought I was average height until I left that bubble went to university.

The hardest part of the Water Temple is that one of the keys is hidden way better than the others, and if you start opening doors in the wrong direction you will run out of keys without it. Combine that with the clunkiness of swapping to/from the Iron Boots and raising/lowering the water level, and the place quickly grew tedious and frustrating.

The 3DS remake added an extra camera sweep and some decor highlighting the hidden passage where that key is found.

Octopath Traveller is a game I should have theoretically liked because I have so much nostalgia for SNES RPGs. Unfortunately, it felt more like a proof-of-concept demo stretched to a full-length game than a complete experience in its own right.

I’ve heard that the sequel is better, but I haven’t tried it.

I only ever got one ad in RIF, repeated in every spot. I think it was an app for organizing decks in TGCs, but as I don’t play any TGCs, I never bothered to investigate. As with every other ad on the internet, I only interacted with it by accident.

Briefly: I didn’t.

More substantively: I never owned a cell phone growing up, even though I was at the right age when they became a common thing for teenagers to have. It wasn’t a money thing, nor household rule, as my sisters got phones when they were in high school. The biggest reason was probably just how I communicate. I wasn’t big into IM services either, and I preferred email or face-to-face, or a (landline) phone call if it was an urgent matter.

Then there was also my adolescent brain thinking I was making a bold counter-culture statement by steadfastly resisting the march of technology. In reality, I was probably just being a pain in the neck for my friends and family, and I probably unnecessarily endangered myself at least once.

I did finally, begrudgingly, get an old hand-me-down flip-phone in my final year of university, but that was out of necessity, and I used it to make maybe only a dozen calls the 2.5 years I had it before getting a smart device.

To bring it full circle: I did try sending a text message with that flip-phone exactly once, at the insistence of my family. That message was predictably a garbled mess, and to this day my sisters still wonder how I managed to get a number to appear in the middle of the “word”.

I have a number of other somewhat amusing stories about people’s reactions to my lack of a cellphone, but this post is long enough already.

Am I the only person in my generation who never learned to type on a number pad? It wasn’t the only thing I didn’t recognize from the “test”, but it stuck out to me.

One huge advantage Larian had was years of experience making games in this genre, and I doubt many other studios have that sort of corporate knowledge. Obsidian may be the only sizable one that comes close. Maybe Beamdog too, as they are responsible for the Enhanced Editions of all the old Infinity Engine games, including some original content.

At least last time I donated blood in my country (Canada), you could discretely indicate “do not use” by applying a different sticker to the bag. This was done in case someone got peer pressured into donating but didn’t want to reveal something private that would have disqualified them otherwise.

It was one of four games I backed on Kickstarter years ago, and now it is the last one to come out. I haven’t played Suikoden, so I only know vaguely what to expect. I do hope I like it more than the other games I supported, though.

My version of this story happened in the gymnasium. My class, along with the students from three other classes, were all formed up as a choir and had just wrapped up practicing a song for the school’s Christmas play. One kid let loose, and the whole assembly made a very hasty (and disorderly) retreat, leaving the poor guy standing in a puddle of his own vomit.

When I was learning French I was told penser and croire were interchangeable in this context.

… there is only passion.

When I was growing up, my two sisters and I decided what to watch on TV pretty much by pure, brutal democracy. They formed a bloc against me and I always got outvoted, so it was Little House on the Prairie (and The Waltons) every day after school.

I feel this in my soul. My university house had mould on the bathroom ceiling, and one of my roommates was allergic - they went into violent sneezing fits every time they showered.

Our landlords tried everything to avoid addressing it, up to claiming that, “people couldn’t be allergic to mould like that.”

They only “fixed” it after one of my other roommates threatened to talk to his father who was a lawyer. Their “fix” was to paste over the ceiling with vinyl plates.

Don’t forget every magical staff , necklace, and ring that casts a spell.

Will I ever use Create Water from the Rain Dancer? Probably not, especially with Shadowheart lugging around more than a dozen bottles of water. But what if I really need it?

Bit of an obscure one, but Fire Emblem Gaiden.

There is a miniscule (0.014%) chance for the very first enemies in the game to drop an extremely powerful item that normally isn’t available until much later. Getting it early is absolutely wild because one of its effects is doubling stat gains when leveling up, which can quickly snowball your characters into godhood.

My personal pet peeve is when they play an ad before giving you the menu options.

First, wait thirty seconds for them to tell me how great their mobile app is. Then listen to the options, pick one, find out I picked the wrong one, and have to go back up one level. Now I have to listen to the ad again before I can hear the options.

I don’t care how proud you are of your app, I wouldn’t be calling you if I could solve my problem with it.

teenage_wasteland_the_who.mp3

Different problem, same vibe.