Three visual throwback-style games

Discovered two new games with intriguing styles that harken back to N64 / PS1 days:

  • “Say NO! More”

  • Felvidek

and was reminded of the existence of another old-school art style game that caught my attention some months back:

  • Void Stranger

Say No! More gave me strong Katamari quirkiness vibes. Especially when you meet your guide that teaches you methods of saying “no”. It’s a cute, and arguably effective way of conveying the self help advice of learning to protect your time and mental health by saying “no” more.

Void Stranger, as I understand it, is one of those games that is far more than meets the eye. That is, you’ll start playing expecting one thing, and as you progress find yourself experiencing something entirely different.

I chose to make Say No! More something I experienced as a total observer experience by watching a portion of the full gameplay someone made available on YouTube. I didn’t finish it. Leaving room for me to maybe pick up the game in the future.

I’m 50/50 on Felvidek as a purchase. Need to do a little more research on it, and perhaps a little gameplay watching to see if it’s something I could get into. Void Stranger has been on my mind long enough that if the right sale came along, I could see myself biting.

Vids

Say NO! More

Felvidek

Void Stranger

second impact [2023-12-17]

As I make a donation to the impactful QSAC, I had come across this short, beautifully shot, and important story told by an individual with autism. This is the kind of story telling I think more folks need to see.

I’m pretty it was in 2023 that I really found myself wanting to fall down the Radiolab archive rabbit hole. Having consumed all those episodes available on the podcast RSS feed provided to supporting members, I started to question whether those were really all the episodes.

Sure enough, I’d learned that there was far more to listen to in the oddly silo’d off Radiolab Classic feed. But even that wasn’t the full history of all things Radiolab. The RC feed I believe only went back as far as 2007, and Radiolab had it’s first “season” back in 2005. And there were episodes that predate Radiolab proper — back when the show was very experimental sounding, and was composed of seemingly regular WNYC/NPR episodes.

Thankfully, some fine independent archivists have done their best to collect all the possible episodes and some additional materials.

And so, I’m at ground zero, and working my through. I’m hyped.

The result of having listened to one of these archived episodes is I’m picking up listening to some Blues. Starting with…

second impact [2023-10-22]

After tearing through all available chapters of Kaiju No. 8, I picked up reading Akane-banashi a coming of age, shōnen manga that’s got me hooked after only the opening chapter. There are some manga that as you read beautifully convey a sense of physical motion, and emotion that you immediately have visions of how if (and hopefully when) they become an anime, they will hit even harder. One Punch Man, and certainly Ping Pong were two stories from years ago that did that for me. Kaiju No.8 and now Akane-banashi are some of the most recent. And sure enough a trailer for Kaiju No. 8 came out, and now I’m eagerly awaiting its release. And if Akane keeps up, I can’t wait to be able to re-experience the story in an animation.

Akane-banashi Volume 1 cover

This week I decided to make a rare mobile game purchase with Subpar Pool. I've not made it too deep yet, but if it recreates the challenge, and sense of accomplishment that What the Golf? did, I'll be satisfied.

Like most Nintendo fans this week, I’ve fired up Mario Wonder. Off rip, it’s got the same magic I felt when I popped in Super Mario World into the SNES and flipped that power slider up. What a great release to finish off the original Switch era.

Finally, I’ve strayed pretty far from continuing to read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World on the new Barnes & Noble NOOK Glowlight 4 Plus.

I’m half way through, and perhaps the reason I’m not finishing it is because quite a bit of it resonates with my unintentional approach to the world as I’ve gone through life. (But an approach I’m grateful for, as this book lists many example about how it’s the broadly skilled and knowledgeable that can make differences in business and elsewhere.)

Updated "Listening to"

Perhaps fitting to wait until the end of the first month of the year so there’s an actual build up of tracks, but I threw my You Have My Attention 2023 on the Listening To section of the site.

Also got my Essential playlist on there now; Which is the playlist for all the tracks that I’ve had on heavy rotation over the years.

The Home Team, Broadside, and Honey Revenge

Gonna see some truly great bands with infectiously catchy tunes this year!

Admittedly Honey Revenge is the main reason I bit the bullet on tickets. I found them on TikTok and was enamored with Distracted for so long. And then they dropped Ride and Rerun and I could only think about how much I wanted to support them! I copped a tee in lieu of a concert ticket. But weeks of on and off again thinking about experiencing them live… I got in just as the venue it low tix levels.

I’m psyched. And now finding myself falling further down a hole of listening to more of The Home Team and Broadside’s discography.

Learning sign language

For the past several years I’ve had an interest in learning sign language but inevitably found myself getting lost in recommendations for apps or services to use. Some resources looked far to basic. And while I am a complete beginner, I wanted something of a challenge in terms of steepness of learning material increasing at a rapid pace. Basically I didn’t want to go through a course having only learned the alphabet.

I’m excitedly sharing the below resources I found now at the beginning of 2023, as I’m more committed to trying to learn than ever:

Beginning with the article that pointed me in the direction of the resource I’m really eager to get embedded in, Wired magazines article 6 Free Ways to Practice Sign Language Online ( https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-learn-sign-language-free/ )

Apparently Bill Vicars course ( https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/lessons/lessons.htm ) is well known, and having only just begun the first course, I feel like it’s going to be a joy to watch, take screenshots, and learn. I will say however that in some moments things can feel very fast. Vicars has a student in the video who seems to be learning along with you and they will sometimes express having forgotten a sign they just learned, so it’s comforting to know they will stumble just as much as I (you) likely will.

As ever, I wanted to make it habit to come back to this post and fill it out with more content and commentary unless something is super deserving of an individual post.