Leaderboard

This is a story about sacrifice. It is also a story about nostalgia, but more than anything, it is a story about the sacrifices gamers make. We travel back to a time of low pixel count and greenish screens – specifically the summer of 1992. The radio that summer would blast SNAP! Rythm Is a Dancer and my cousin and I, shortly before our 13th birthdays, were in summer camp on the German island of Norderney. In the evening, after lights out, with eight kids per tent, obviously nobody slept. In our tent we did two things. Firstly, one of the boys had brought terrible horror novellas, and we read those. Over thirty years later I still have nightmares. Mostly because the story did not make sense – you can’t hide a whole labyrinth inside the walls of a bell tower! The second thing was eating chocolate and other sweets. And this is where this becomes a story of sacrifice. You see, the eating was predominantly done by the other six. The two of us would initiate it, but then we’d spend the night selling our stash to the others in the tent. In retrospect, we should have found a way to expand business to the other tents, but we were not even thirteen. There was a reason to this, which had little to do with entrepreneurial spirit. The camp organizers had permitted each kid a 50DM allowance per week for the two weeks of camp. Incidentally, as my cousin pointed out, 50DM was roughly the price of a new Game Boy game. Not eating chocolate but watching others enjoy my stash was not a choice. It was a sacrifice that only gamers will understand: others would eat so I could game. Everything went well. Until the very last day. It was hot. We were on our last excursion in town, killing time until we had to get the ferry. In the (heat of the) moment we decided to grab an ice cream. The worst 3,50 I ever spent. Also, one of the worst ice creams I ever had and most likely the reason why I still do not eat lemon ice cream. It almost put me off lemonade as well. An hour before we left, I dropped to 46,50. One, horrible tasting lemon ice cream was the reason I couldn’t pay for Gargoyle’s Quest solely through the chocolate black market. Mind, the entire process did turn Gargoyle’s Quest into one of my favourite games, even though it wasn’t really my thing – too dark in tone, too much jumping around spikes. In the end, the cool green daemon on the box cover turned out to be red! That was an unexpected plot twist. It highlighted something though about descriptions and plot relevance: how often do authors abuse the fact that in written format you do not have information until they give it to you? In comics, movies, and games, you see things from the start. Unless it is a greenish Game Boy screen and after hours and hours some NPC tells you: your skin is red. Two things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it and how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red. Also, the many spikes. Three things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest: how I made the money to buy it, how surprised I was finding out the protagonist was red, the many spikes, and the gnarly trees, the inextinguishable flames, the different breath weapons… Among the many things I remember about Gargoyle’s Quest is that it is a game literally worth it’s weight in chocolate.

My problem is twofold: 1) if for whatever reason my internet is dead, I can't game. 2) if for whatever reason they kill the server (EA with Darkspore), I can't game.

My regret: I couldn't find a nice old set of scales to put the gargoyle's quest cartridge on one side and chocolate on the other.

Yeah, I boycott every company that doesn't force me to be online for my single player experience.

It's so lovely to have always online for single player games, isn't it?

Almost done with Lamplighters. The story has really grown on me. I'm not sure why I need a roster of 10, since I use the same 4 people for every mission. But hey, they have good backstories.

So whatcha all posting this Hamas propaganda garbage for? Clearly all the death and destruction would stop if Hamas just surrendered unconditionally, and they'd all be treated super well by the IDF. Unlike the hostages.

Well, also, today, NATO membership is not all that it is cracked up to be. Personally, I would not place my country's survival entirely within the basket of NATO coming to its rescue. I actually can envision Article 5 being invoked and NATO nevetheless doing nothing/very little to help a member state that's the victim of naked aggression. Ukraine is better off settling for a Germany/Korea-style border separating itself from Russia-occupied Ukraine (and yes, the whole world must continue to see it as occupation and never conceed to Russia any legitimacy for Russia's actions since 2014), and then enter into binding bilateral defence treaties with multiple strong Western allies who keep Ukraine well-supplied with advanced Western weapons and training.

I ended up using the same status effect with a stack limit of 4. I feel like an idiot taking so long to figure out a solution for such a simple problem.

Dragging america into an all-out war with the cartels, then letting democrats deal with it in the next term, then blaming them for everything and getting reelected in the term after that. Sounds like a good plan.

Great story Melkie, I really enjoyed it The eternal and industrious entrepreneurial gamer spirit never dies !!!!

Man, you’re so negative it ended up double negative

@melkathi.... (left comment on the blog post)

I knew my expectations were justified! Awesome read @melkathi Yeah, some things haven't changed the last 40 years when it comes to how games are marketed. The games don't always match the box art (said the guy who stared at curvy women box art painted by Boris Vallejo on the old SSI and 3Do games in the 80's) Hope those cat forks pays your next games!

The latest Community blog by @melkathi has been published: Ghosts & Goblins & Chocolate! While you check it out, please consider what musing might be percolating for you! Looking for new submissions for December 7th and into 2025. Please DM if you would like to explore this further

There was never a possibility of UA joining NATO in the first place. This is just a RU propaganda scapegoat to excuse their landgrab. The common populace was so much against it (in 2013 it was less than 20%), that the UA parliament would probably never approve it, even if they talked about this option. People wanted to be neutral. Even after Crimea was annexed the support for NATO did not jump above 50%. Only after the full scale war, the NATO "popularity" has risen to 80% and risen since then to 90.

Exactly

Henry's coming home baby. And it's Europe's that's keeping bigger budget RPGs interesting. On that note, I've restarted The WItcher 3... and this is the first time it clicked. I had a beef with so much of the quests being railroady, the simple systems/combat, and all that. Additionally, Ciri isn't really properly introduced (never read the books), but still made the hook of the story, the damsel to hunt after. Never really worked much for me. This time I focused on the side content, adjusted the difficulty and skilled differently (which made combat more tactical) -- and even found a few alternative solutions to a quest here and there that wasn't spoilt by markers. (F'r instance, you can find the bandit hideout in Novigrad simply by listening to dialogues and following the clues, as opposed to doing what the quest log encourages you to do, step by step... so much more immersive!) I'm in now truly though. Novigrad looks like I'd always pictured Riva in my head way back on my Pentium 75.

Yeah I might go ahead and try that. Because apparently this is not a very common problem, I couldn't find much information online. Anyways, thank you for your help.

Ouch. And I hoped the game became less buggy since I played it :-). The drop in polish after Early Access area is unfortunate. Yeah, there was a vocal audience asking for Minthara (and especially Halsin) to become companions and be romancable, so I suppose Larian listened to the fans. Personally, I found Halsin's shift from camp follower to horny companion rather jarring. I didn't appreciate him harassing my halfing and not taking no for an answer. I feel like BG3 camp could use HR.

I gave up expecting much re: the "general population" intelligence ratio a long time ago. Especially in terms of actual lasting effects. Individuals can/do some remarkable things, but en masse we tend to be irrational idiots. LC, spreading her positivity everywhere!

Looks like Elerond’s gloom and doom has not fully fulfilled. Pro-European Maia Sandu has won presidentship again. Looking at it after yesterday, we live in a very strange world when ex-soviet satellites with strong pro Russian sentiment among population, are better at fight against the Russian influence operations than the USA and Germany

More Baldur's Gate 3. Getting to the end of Act 2. Combat generally isn't a problem anymore, and with the higher levels, better gear, and after turning karmic dice off I can get through a couple of encounters at least without everyone being near death and/or "long rest"-spamming. Thankfully, as there is a lot of combat given how persuasive my Wizard is... Some thoughts: Build suggestions for the builds the companions start out with would have been nice for those of us that want to stick with these thematic builds. Someone at Larian has a hard-on for chaining increasingly difficult dialogue checks, either just harder and harder ones (usually Persuasion) or ones relying on totally different attributes. Bonus points for the only significant outcome being achieved by passing all of them, and failing any of them leading to combat. Dialogue/storytelling in Act 2 is kinda...disappointing in a few places. Major Act 2 spoilers: The two last "Origin story" companions you can pick up feel severely undercooked as companions, at least so far in Act 2. They often don't have dialogue for significant events other companions do comment on, and seem to not react in any way to many actions you can take during the Act (meaning no comments, nor approval/disapproval). Why does the druid just chill in camp for half the act before becoming an actual companion? The above two companions also make going back to Act 1 areas annoying as hell as they will just drop most of their inventory in a bag on your player character, even when they're not in your active party at the time, as if they are permanently leaving the party. Thankfully when going back to Act 2 areas they're still just in camp, but you get to re-equip all of their stuff. Annoying. That "other skill tree". Bringing the Paladin into the party... Really liked the interaction between Withers and that one NPC. Do wish we'd have more conversation options with the guy chilling in our camp though.

Toybox it

I finished The Lamplighter League. I enjoyed the game, but the ending was a big letdown. The final mission was good and my main team was effective, but it was a real blah finish. I think they were setting it up for DLC or something, but it didn't do well enough. I don't typically care that much if a game doesn't end well, but I expected at least some better lines from all these mercs I recruited.

This could be the last Clint Eastwood directed movie. Mostly because, I mean, well, he's 94 after all. It looks like it could be interesting, has great cast etc, but not sure how interested in this type of story I personally am. Still, I don't think there's an Eastwood directed film that I actively disliked, so I'm sure I'll see it before too many months/years pass.

uk still didn't fix the damage of thacher usa will not recover from this disaster in 50 year if modern human last that long

Not playing DA Inquisition. After spending several minutes staring at this, I Alt+F4ed out of it.