Too Many Links - Blog Posts

My subreddit Floating Is Fun

Hi, all! I’ve been away adapting to my new life as a dad. Reddit and its great RSS feeds have been helping me keep up with eclectic music fans, retro gamers, the FGC, CAP makers, dreamers, explainers, and otaku. Still, those don’t scratch my itch for a feeling of floating, so I made my own subreddit for that!

At Floating Is Fun, we play around with things that float in the air, real or fantasy, and it doesn’t take much work for me. If prolonged loss of contact with the floor sounds like a good time, come on in and give us a push!

Source: r/FloatingIsFun on Old Reddit; screenshot contains content by Thomas Pesquet, chanomach, momokan315, Chris Fay, OK Go, Foo Midori, and Maki’s Atelier

Krzysztof Słowikowski – Mega Man 3 Guitar Playthrough (revised)

Oh boy, it’s a Mega Man! The Mega Man games always have rockin’ soundtracks. Krzysztof “MET” Słowikowski made metal covers of every game in the entire classic series, some of the X games, and some other random stuff.

Source: Krzysztof Słowikowski via searching for the Mega Man II Game Boy soundtrack

Grant Kirkhope – Donkey Kong 64 Soundtrack

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Bonus Stage) Day 31: All 30 prompts with one game From Donkey Kong 64 (N64, 1999)

Jiko points out that DK64 has a song for everything on this list. That’s a lot of music! DK64 is fun to play and fun to break.

1: Title screen music: Main Menu 2: Opening level music: DK's Treehouse 3: 8-Bit music: Donkey Kong 4: Music from a console exclusive series: Hideout Helm 5: Hub world or overworld music: DK Isle 6: Music that makes you feel relaxed: Crystal Caves 7: Music from an indie game?: Mine Cart Carnage 8: Music from a shooter (first or third person): Angry Aztec Underground 9: Music from a licensed game: uh...the N64 Logo? 10: RPG battle music: Dogadon 11: Puzzle game music: Frantic Factory R&D 12: Music that makes you sad: Wrinkly Kong 13: Music you like from a game you don't like: Bonus Barrel 14: Music featuring vocals: DK Rap 15: Boss battle music: King Kut-Out 16: 16-Bit music: Jungle Japes 17: Music you never get tired of: Enguarde 18: Music in a game released the year you were born: off by 1 but Jetpac 19: Cover of music by a different artist: Jungle Japes Underground 20: Music from a racing game: Frantic Factory Car Race 21: Music you associate with frustration: Angry Aztec Race 22: Town/village music: Fungi Forest Day 23: Underrated music: Mad Maze Maul 24: Music you constantly have stuck in your head: Snide's HQ 25: Music that gets you pumped: Rocket Barrel Blast 26: Music you like from a game you haven't played: Monkey Smash 27: Music from a handheld game: uh...Mini Monkey? 28: Music that makes you nostalgic: Pause Menu 29: Final boss music: K. Rool Duel 30: Credits music: Staff Credits

Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

Savaged Regime – Boss 2

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 16: 16-Bit music From Xeno Crisis (Genesis/Mega Drive, 2019)

Holy crap! Is this Prodigy-sounding jam coming from 16-bit hardware?? This narrowly beat Vapor Trail for my Genesis/Mega Drive pick.

Source: YouTube via Retro Core, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

Columbus Police Tear Gas and Pepper Spray

UPDATE: I wanted to say something positive here, but it wasn't true. Columbus Police continue to pepper spray peaceful protestors who block the streets, and the mayor allows it. They even stole a double amputee's prosthetic legs and forced him to crawl on his hands to seek medical attention. The city demands answers.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, downtown Columbus, Ohio saw several days of peaceful protests and unfortunately, some looting of small businesses. Mayor Ginther found it necessary to have a curfew for seven nights. Columbus police with nameless uniforms repeatedly used tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets indiscriminately against peaceful protestors, street medics, bystanders, news reporters, a veteran, government officials, and hippie circus performers.

But this is a blog about good things! I'm happy to report that the police were ordered to stop using tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful crowds. Now that we can walk the downtown streets in peace, we can discuss how to heal the racial divide. Columbus State has decided to take down their statue of Christopher Columbus. If the city of Columbus can do it, hopefully the rest can follow. Please continue to fight for racial justice. Black Lives Matter!

Source: T. Greg Doucette, WBNS 10TV, the Columbus Dispatch, WOSU, and the rest of the Internet, pretty much

chanomach – ナナメから世界を見たって、何もいいことはない ／ Enjoy correctly.

Hi, Internet! I apologize; I’ve been pretty glitchy lately and things have been crazy, what with the weddings and holidays and conventions and all. My cross-posting pipeline is broken so I have to write the same posts four times. That’s too much work!

My stream is erratic, too, but I’ve been experimenting with restream.io to stream to Mixer, Twitch, Smashcast, and Facebook all at once, usually on Friday nights. Once the cartridge is reseated and things work again, I’ll try to relaunch the blog and the stream. These experiments have been fun, though.

Source: Chanoma.ch

ナナメから世界を見たって、何もいいことはない ／ Enjoy correctly.

普通でいいんだよ。

RetroAchievements for Romhacks

RetroAchievements adds Xbox 360-style achievement hunting and leaderboards to thousands of classic games and romhacks. Uncommon games often have romhacks that work with RetroAchievements. Check Romhacking.net for patches you can apply with utilities like Floating IPS. I’ve already recommended Rockman 4 Minus Infinity but it also has RetroAchievements.

Dynamite Headdy delocalization by M.I.J.E.T. (RetroAchievements) The localization we got here removed most of the dialogue, added American pop culture references, and made the annoying tower boss fight four times as long. This fan translation doesn’t do any of that. Go collect those secret bonus points.

Pulseman translation by M.I.J.E.T. (RetroAchievements) My favorite game on Sega Channel had you build up static electricity and then discharge it to attack and move around. Most of the team that made it went on to make Pokémon Red and Blue.

Super Mario Land DX by toruzz (RetroAchievements) Also Super Mario Land 2 DX by toruzz (RetroAchievements) Super Mario Land is the first game I ever beat and a fine place to get started with romhacks. This turns Super Mario Land and its sequel into Game Boy Color games with some graphics redrawn for better visibility. The RetroAchievements add some nice challenges to keep things fresh.

Extra Mario Bros. by ATA (RetroAchievements) This romhack gives Mario a dose of Metroid-like exploration with collecting keys and permanent upgrades to reach new places. It’s still Super Mario Bros., so the screen only scrolls to the right.

Umihara Kawase translation by satsu (RetroAchievements) A new Umihara Kawase game just came out and I’m afraid to start it because I get hooked on these games for a long time. We’ve got a wedding to plan! The original game’s RetroAchievements keep track of every door and backpack you’ve reached, so try to get them all.

Source: RetroAchievements, Romhacking.net, and My Life in Gaming

Dr. Fatbody - Sonic the Hedgehog 1 at AGDQ2019

Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 brought us a Sonic 1 run by Dr. Fatbody, a highly entertaining player with the speed and precision of a yung Wumbo. He tries risky tricks that backfire sometimes and will goof off a little for style. When everything works, he’s really fast! He reminds me of my own playaround style, and now I know why. He’s also from the fighting game community and plays Zangief in Street Fighter V! It all makes perfect sense now.

Source: Games Done Quick via GeekNights

Rockson Film Production

We don't often see movies from Ghana, but Rockson Emmanuel blesses us with these outrageous trailers that regularly feature at Anime Hell. He's still working on it. Good for him! Get out there and create weird, cool stuff.

I'm questioning if the move to Tumblr last year was a good idea. My feeds are panicking about stuff getting flagged! Tumblr might suffer the same fate as other services Yahoo bought. It's too much work to write the same post on WordPress and Tumblr, and all the linked text is lost on Facebook and Twitter cross-posts anyway.

Source: Rockson Film Production via Anime Hell at Ohayocon 2019

Mystery Skulls Animated – Ghost

Mystery Ben makes animated music videos for Mystery Skulls songs. Ghost could have been a simple Scooby Doo parody, but every second seems to have important details for TV Tropes to analyze. This attracted a far bigger fandom than the official live action music video, prompting Mystery Ben to continue the series…

Source: Mystery Ben via Anime Hell at Ohayocon 2015

sh/f Super Fireball Battle

Now that I’ve got all my WordPress posts on Tumblr, what should I do with it? How about I introduce a tool-assisted video Sonic Hurricane debuted at Evo2k10? Evenly matched projectiles and beams clash like it’s Dragon Ball Z. This video got me into Shinichi Osawa’s album The One and the soundtrack to DoDonPachi Resurrection Black Label.

Source: Sonic Hurricane via RSS feed nearly eight years ago

Shattered Skies – The End and the Rebirth

Hello from Tumblr! I’ve been thinking, and I realize that my WordPress blog posts are basically Tumblr posts anyway. I might as well make it a Tumblr blog because I lose almost nothing. I plan to re-make all of my WordPress posts as proper Tumblr posts, properly reblogging the Tumblr stuff this time to comply with the posters’ wishes. For instance, my post for PiNe’s illustrations will become reblogs of every image when possible. Once I learn to Tumblr properly and get my theme and cross-posts working correctly, this is going to be good.

Source: Shattered Skies via Google Play Music radio

Really Bad Chess

Really Bad Chess is a randomized chess game for iOS and Android. Both sides often start with several bishops and knights up front and multiple queens in the back. Never mind protecting all your pieces; both players’ material is going to get bodied for free.

When not occupied with yet another mobile game, I’ve been distracted by the hallway thing in the background, bootleg Famiclones, current events, and feeds getting added, dropped, and shut down. If you want to see more of the kinds of stuff I post, I suggest following TwistedSifter and Something Random.

Source: Really Bad Chess via Jiko via Google Play recommendations

Two-Factor Authentication

Equifax just leaked our personal information to hackers! That’s really bad! It’s enough information that an identity thief could steal your cell phone service and start receiving text messages intended for you. It’s time to beef up security with an authenticator app. Most important Internet services allow you to generate codes with your phone that you enter when you log in. I use Authy for this because it backs up and restores all your two-factor tokens when switching phones or doing factory resets.

Since my phone was in the shot, I had to take this photo with my 3DS. That's why you can't read any of the text. (And yes, you can use Authy with Tumblr.)

Source: Authy via Twitch, photo with my New 3DS

My Pandora Radio Stations

Pandora is still the best at finding music that is musically similar to other tracks you like. With a little patience and a little luck, it’s possible to train Pandora to hit all the right notes. I listen to a lot of different music so I have a list of stations for whatever I feel like at the moment.

Metal Mash-Up – updated off and on since 2005 with all the kinds of metal I like Expert Mode – prog rock and guitar solos that would be difficult in Guitar Hero Fun – a catch-all for punk rock, nerd rock, electropop, and much more Electronic Skill – hard EDM and industrial you’d hear in frag videos Chippy Jams – chiptunes, game soundtracks, and other tracker-sounding music Sequencer Beats – DJ grooves and hip hop instrumentals for chillin’ and Marvel Lyrical Hip Hop – only real MCs and classics, no repetitive radio-friendly rap here Wheel of Pandora – randomly plays any genre on Pandora; use in shuffles! Hitstun’s QuickMix (autoplay) – all of the stations above shuffled together

I'm aware I've got a couple stations reversed in the bottom row. You know, I almost didn't put an image in this post, but it would have looked way out of place for a post to not have a featured image. My one extension that grabs YouTube video thumbnails probably would have put that Quake 3 video's preview image in there, but this post isn’t about Quake 3.

Source: Pandora Radio

Neon FM

Tokyo Attack came to Matsuricon again and introduced me to  Neon FM, a button-drumming music game with some neat features. If you fail a song, the game drops the difficulty level a little and lets you keep playing. The arcade, iOS, and Android versions all work about the same and even support online multiplayer matches between them. I want to try that sometime but the closest arcade with Neon FM is in the developer’s home town of Baltimore.

I thought Orange Lounge Radio had an interview with the developer, but the wiki had no mention of it. Maybe I've got it mixed up with the Kyle Ward interview in episode 596 where he talks about ReRave's arcade and mobile versions. I'm confused.

Source: Neon FM via Orange Lounge Radio episode 524 (1h59m in) which I had to look up again on the OLR Wiki

Shuey's Perfect Clear Study (Phase 2 - Sparta!)

A clean matrix is a happy matrix. In multiplayer Tetris, if you can perfectly clear all the blocks from your screen, it sends your opponent half a screen of garbage. Tetris art guru Shuey shows us that it’s possible to perfect clear with your first ten tetriminos every time. With clever usage of twists, the hold piece, and strategy, you can do it too!

Source: Shuey via Hard Drop via King of Stackers’s Discord chat

Tissot T-Touch Expert Solar with World Order

Anime Hell once again delivered the Japanese weirdness at Ohayocon. I expected that 2016’s Japanese commercials would be just as good as 2015’s. The one that surprised me was a Tissot watch ad as a music video for the band World Order’s song World Order. I wish all my clocks could sync up like this band. This reminds me of OK Go.

Source: Tissot YouTube via Anime Hell

Core-A Gaming

Core-A Gaming posts fun videos that make fighting game concepts easier to understand. The one I’ve posted here explains what makes a move too powerful by breaking down properties of hitboxes, frame data, and even hitstun.

Source: Core-A Gaming via YouTube subscription

Prof.Sakamoto

Prof.Sakamoto makes soundtracks to imaginary NES games. He’s nailed the sound of a classic RPG, a space shooter, and couple days ago, a ninja action game. I hope someday he’ll follow in Jake Kaufman’s footsteps and work on an actual game.

Source: Bandcamp via the same epic Spotify Discover Weekly playlist last November that introduced me to Thank You Scientist two tracks earlier

Destiny Potato

Look at the bands I listen to. I’m not picky. If they’ve got heavy riffs, serious skills, catchy melodies, and good variety, I’m in. Posting your entire album online helps too. Serbian rock band Destiny Potato hits on all sixes. Potatoes gonna potate.

Source: Destiny Potato via Spotify Discover Weekly again

Hey guys! 

Check this out! LIve studio session of our song “indifferent”

SHARE cause it will help us alot <3

Much love DP <3

GeekNights – Pokemon Go: Initial Thoughts

Pokémon GO is getting my whole groups of my friends outside with Pokévision on their phones. That’s great, but as GeekNights podcast explains, there isn’t any skill or strategy in the game right now. Everything is a grind that takes exponentially longer as you go on. Battles are won by whoever has spent the most time playing the game, and that’s not going to change when more features are added. At least Ingress has teamwork going for it. Watch out for Team Rocket?

I almost made a post without an image or a video in it. This post would have looked weird without one. Always be aware of your surroundings, folks.

(Skip to 29:58, a little over halfway through, for the Pokémon GO part of the podcast. I had a button for this in the Wordpress post but it won't work with Tumblr's weird audio player.)

Source: GeekNights via some gaming podcast ranking site about eight years ago

Lagwagon – May 16

Most of what I know about punk rock came from the Tony Hawk games. I’ve been listening to punk on SiriusXM and Spotify and I keep recognizing songs from Tony Hawk games. This one’s from THPS2. That one’s from Underground 2. That one’s from Downhill Jam. I didn’t realize that these songs were icons in the wider punk rock community, to the point that May 16 is now “Lagwagon Day“. Is it like 20, November for Bemani fans?

Source: Moshcam via YouTube search

The Game Boy, a hardware autopsy - Part 1: the CPU

The humble Nintendo Game Boy had a low price and long battery life thanks to its cheap low-powered parts. JackTech is breaking down the Game Boy into pieces to show us exactly what each component can do. The Z80’s bare-bones instruction set made it a pain to code even basic tasks in assembly. That’s why I did all my old TI-83 games in BASIC.

Source: JackTech via YouTube related videos for Bafael’s Zangief BnB guide somehow

Girls and Space!! – pixiv Spotlight

These girls should be very dead. If I could survive without heat, air, atmospheric pressure, and radiation protection, then I’d wish I could float around in space too. Maybe they can do it because it’s cool, or maybe they’re robots? pixiv Spotlight posts twice a day in English, and this one’s about girls in space.

In a far off place not yet known to us… the cosmos!! Humans have long before wanted to travel through the universe… a very romantic idea! Ever looked up at the sky and just wondered about the Milky Way? Today’s Spotlight is about the fantastically magical cosmos… with girls! Mysterious and awesome, all at the same time. Check them out.

I wondered how I should reblog a pixiv Spotlight. For now, I'll copy the behavior of pixiv Spotlight's RSS feed, with one image that you can click to get to their full post. I hope this is OK. I mean, technically I should be spelling pixiv with a lowercase p and Nanahime as NaNa_HI_ME.

NaNa_HI_ME – Yume no Hoshi

Source: Girls and Space!! and ななひめ – ゆめのほし via pixiv Spotlight‘s English RSS feed

Spruce Creek Fly-In Community

It’s 2015; where are our flying cars? In his search for flying cars, James May visited Spruce Creek, Florida. This village treats airplanes like cars, parked in garages and taxied right down the street to the local runway. If every town was this well adapted to small planes, we’d all be flying from place to place, right?

By the way, my Friday night stream has moved to Hitbox! I’m attacking games like Super Back to the Future II, Panorama Cotton, and Sayonara Umihara Kawase, so stop by and chat!

Source: James May’s Big Ideas episode 1

Adam Savage – Duck Army

The Duck Army battlecry is slowly spreading all over the Internet. On Twitter, Adam Savage from Mythbusters discovered the screaming Duck Army and quickly weaponized it. I just now found it too, so let’s embed some tweets and see what happens. (Tumblr doesn't support Twitter's embedded tweets at all... That's sad... Click here for the duck bomb video.

Source: Adam Savage via several Tumblr users via Trynant, based on Kevin Synnes – Duck Army

Marty Friedman and AKB48 – Death Panda Death

Japan will make anything cute. To make metal cute, ex-Megadeth lead guitarist Marty Friedman brought in pop idol group AKB48 to create Death Panda. Friedman loves J-pop’s complicated song structures and how bands like Babymetal apply them to metal.

Source: YouTube via the Lost Gamers Japanese metal panel at Matsuricon

Kodi

Kodi, or XBMC, is flexible open-source software for streaming media players. It has dozens of add-ons for playing video from lots of places on the Internet, right on your TV. At the fair today, I saw a couple shady vendors selling little Android boxes with Kodi for hundreds of dollars. If you really want to save money, just buy a cheap Amazon Fire TV stick and do it yourself. It’s not that hard.

Finally, XKCD makes an indirect apperance on the House of Hitstun. Randall Munroe also answers lots of hypothetical "What If?" questions online and offline. I've linked to this video in the "Source" section below.

Source: Found on an original Xbox and an Amazon Fire TV, also screenshot of my Amazon Fire TV playing Randall Munroe’s TED Talk

Retromania!!

Two weeks ago, Columbus Retro League put on an excellent pro wrestling-themed event. More than just a tournament, this show had all the promos, interviews, and hype you’d expect from a Pay Per View. About two hours in, I defended my CRL Season 2 #1 ranking in Fire Pro Wrestling D and WWF Royal Rumble, both on Dreamcast. Check it out while you’re binge-watching speedruns from Summer Games Done Quick.

Source: YouTube via Chris Bidwell