Parenting and Video Games Part I: My History

 

This article is not and will not be an attempt at how to tell parents how they should regulate video games with their respective kids.  Nor will it be a guide on telling parents how to decide which games are right for their children or appropriate for their respective age range.  This two part series (today, and the following Monday, August 25th) will comprise of a retrospective on my own upbringing around video games and Part 2 will cover how both Conklederp and I are approaching the same topic with The Squire, who is a bright and young 5 years-old who will be entering public elementary school in a few weeks where he'll be interacting with kids upwards of seven years older than he is on a semi-regular basis and thereby might be drawn into conversations about Roblocks, V-bucks, and why any game your parents decide you're allowed to play is totally cringe.  We'll all be entering a strange new world here, folks!

Let's start back at the beginning.

The first time I recall playing any kind of video game with either of my parents was sometime prior to 1987 before The Kid was born.  I think we were at Dr. Potts' house, and they might have recently gotten their Atari 2600 because I don't know why else the adults would've been playing it in the evening.  All I really remember was asking to play whatever game was being played and my Dad saying something like, "Not now," or "In a bit," or "You have to wait," or something to that effect.  Whatever it was, it made me upset enough that I remember crying in my bed later that night.  Typical 4-6 year-old stuff.  What's funny about this amusing little anecdote now is that my Dad is the most un-video-game person I know.  My Dad's always been of the mind that video games are something that other people do because they're apparently beyond his comprehension.  I recall trying with different games that I liked, like Tecmo Bowl, John Elway's Quarterback, Major League Baseball, and Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing, but why play a video game when you can watch the real thing?  He never said that specifically, but that was the feeling I got.  

All of that being said, he was responsible for our family getting the Nintendo Entertainment System Power Set for Christmas in 1988 because it was the biggest set that either Toys R Us or Price Club had and my Dad is definitely one of those, "Well, I'll just buy the biggest one because that must be the best one" kind of person.  I also remember that he had something to do with us renewing our Nintendo Power subscription in time so that we could get the copy of Dragon Warrior along with the November 1990 issue.  There's also a memory of him calling into Nintendo Power to renegotiate whatever our subscription was after we renewed, but didn't receive issue #26, the one with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on the cover.  He wasn't an active participant, joining us whenever us kids would play video games, but he also didn't tell us that "video games will rot your brains," or that we were only playing "those dumb video games."  For what it's worth, my Dad's also not a big reader, so we never heard anything like, "Why don't you read a book instead of playing those stupid video games?"

My Mom, on the other hand, actively played some of the games we got over the years.  I've mentioned several times the summer my Mom, Shramp (older sister), and I played Gauntlet, keeping track of our progress through several sheets of passwords, only to get stuck somewhere around the 70s (it might've only been the 50s for all I know, but it definitely felt like the 70s).  She also played a bit of The Legend of Zelda, along with Super Mario Bros.  After we got Tetris, that was where she found her niche.  Us kids would regularly ask her to beat Type B Level 9 Height 5 because we all knew we couldn't do it, and Mom could, sometimes taking a couple of tries if she got a poor selection of blocks at the start.  After Tetris, it was Dr. Mario that I think Shramp got for Christmas, but my Mom was able to beat all of us in vs. mode.  One year, we got her a used copy of Tetris Attack because it had "Tetris" in the title, and that was another game that she would handily destroy us at.  The same thing happened with Tetris vs. Dr. Mario on the SNES.  In the N64 era, she stuck with the SNES and the NES since they were both hooked up to the TV and would remain so until I moved out in 2000, and I took the SNES with me; eventually, the NES went out to the proverbial pasture in the garage.

I have Dr. Potts' Dad to passively thank for some of my early RPG purchases on the NES.  I bought Ultima: Exodus because of how much fun I had creating characters at Dr. Potts' house.  I remember being told by Dr. Potts when we were kids that I could play their copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but I wasn't allowed to save because it could ruin his Dad's save file.  I also remember Dr. Potts telling me that his Dad really liked a game called Final Fantasy, but that the instruction booklet gave away too much information, although I might already have gotten the Final Fantasy Player's Guide from Nintendo Power at that point.  I recall seeing the game somewhere, but nothing specific about it like Ultima: Exodus.  I do have a memory of wanting to buy and play Final Fantasy just to see if the instruction book gave away too much.  I don't have an answer to that 35-year-old thought.

Something important to point out is that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) didn't exist for the majority of my childhood.  Formed in 1994 in building and direct response to specifically "violent" video games (the original arcade version of Mortal Kombat and the SEGA CD home console title Night Trap*), during the tail end of the SNES run.  So any NES or SNES games we bought with my parents' money, they had to rely on the word of kids, possibly Dr. Potts' parents, and their own research rather than a simple rating.  But that didn't stop my parents from being informed on at least some level.  When I bought the SNES for my birthday in 1993 (after the price had dropped to $99 and I had that amount saved up), my parents specifically told me that I could not borrow Street Fighter II from my neighbor Chuck with my Dad later saying that him and my Mom talked it over and they decided they didn't like the game because you could play as a man and hit women.  Yeah, I was pretty upset about that, although I did still play the game.  Sometime in 1996, I was able to convince them that I could buy Killer Instinct on the Game Boy because the graphics were severely reduced compared to both the arcade game and the SNES port.

By the time the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and I got the system sometime in 1997, every Nintendo game that came out had a rating emblazoned on the box.  I think if Goldeneye 007 had been rated M, they would have said something, but because it was rated T and I was playing the game out in the living room for everyone to see, I never heard anything from them about the amount of violence in the game.  The first M-rated game I played, I think, was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter at Dr. Potts' house, but that's because Delaños' Splatterhouse had already been out before the ESRB existed.  The first M-rated game I bought was Perfect Dark, which was released in 2000. Not that it mattered, but I was moving out a few months later to live with Dr. Potts and some high school friends who were also attending the same college.  In 2001, I would also buy Conker's Bad Fur Day, partly because it was an M-rated game, but also because of the history of the game and how it ended up as an M-rated game made it all the more desirable.

Looking back, what involvement there was from my parents, specifically my Mom, was primarily around the beginning when we got the NES.  I'm sure that they would sometimes ask what game I was playing and likely ask me to turn down the TV so that the noise wouldn't bother them.  With the exception of Street Fighter II and Killer Instinct, I don't recall us butting heads, and that could also have been likely from Nintendo's continued position as an entertainment system that put out family-friendly games.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

a;skldfj

The following are tidbits both related to the article above, but also anecdotes that either didn't fit my attempted narrative above, or were simply edited out.

*I had played a little bit of Mortal Kombat in our local arcade, probably sometime around 1993, but usually only when other people weren't lining up to play because I didn't know any of the moves, so I would've regularly gotten my ass handed to me.  The same goes for other fighting games like Primal Rage and Killer Instinct.  I also watched a bit of Night Trap during a sleepover at a friend's house with a couple of other friends, where I also watched people play Sewer Shark.  The only game I played that entire night was one that I can't remember the title of, but was, I think, an FMV car chase game where I kept crashing into a large construction vehicle and eventually gave the controller back.

The first time I ever saw DOOM (1992) was either in 1994 or 1995, after tennis practice.  One of the players on the team took a bunch of us into a side office at the country club where we had our practices, and played the first couple of levels.

Demo Time: Static Dread: The Lighthouse Demo (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Static Dread: The Lighthouse Demo through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Static Dread: The Lighthouse Demo

Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux

Release Date: August 6, 2025

Publisher: Polden Publishing

Developer: solarsuit games

Time Spent: 1 Hour 26 Minutes

Playthrough on YouTube

I've tried a couple of times to write this article for Static Dread: The Lighthouse and it feels very similar to when I wrote about Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace on the Switch several years back.  I get this feeling too whenever I write about anything that pays homage or is derivative of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  I feel like I need to provide context because I have a hard time seperating what I know of Lovecraft's story and how it is intergrated into the game I've been playing.  And this is where we are with Static Dread.  There are obvious Lovecraftian references, but none that I could see that were so obvious as The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At the Mountains of Madness, or even The Music of Eric Zahn (this concludes the portion where I list off short stories so I sound like I know what I'm talking about).

What Static Dread: The Lighthouse does is combine localized sea-based Lovecraftian horror with game mechanics similar to Papers, Please, the game where you play as a border and immigration inspector with ever increasing responsibilities and regulations to follow with each subsequent day that further complicate your job.  In Static Dread, your job is to opperate a lighthouse during the night and direct boats to their destination through a very rocky bay.  You communicate with boats through a radio that can also pick up local radio stations, local police chatter, and other strange signals akin to Numbers stations.  When you start, you only have to direct boats to their desired destinations, but as the nights progress, you're ordered by your supervisor to direct ships to different locations based on specific circumstatnces such as the type of vessel, if anything "strange" can be verified, or if their desired destination is inaccessible.  Any deviation from your orders results in a fine that's immediately faxed to you so the threat of having docked pay because of a mistake is constantly present.  In this way, it felt very similar to the dread of making mistakes in Papers, Please.

One way that Static Dread is different from Papers, Please is that you're working an overnight shift and like anyone who's ever worked an overnight shift, there are times when sleep wants to creep in and take over.  To counteract drooping eyelids, you can consume food and drink, some of which will also "heal" any mental strain brought on by your job as well.  Food, drink, and other supplies are purchased from a visiting merchant with the money from your salary.  It's a fun and tricky balance to stay awake, or have your pay docked, and to work quickly to let boats into their desired harbor without making any mistakes.  I wonder how much the sanity mechanic plays with your characters perceptions and if the night when the doors were opening and closing by themselves was a result of lowered sanity or if they were simply scripted events.

Another major difference from Papers, Please is that you will often have several visitors to your lighthouse over the course of a night.  Some are functional like the travelling merchant, others add both worldbuilding and flavor to the setting.  Some of your visitors are directly tied to your job as a wicky while others might be related to storylines related to you letting ships into the harbor and directing them to their desitination.  During the demo, I did make the effort to answer the door anytime I heard someone knock, so I do wonder how that affects the overall game and the story.

The last big difference I'll discuss from Papers, Please is the general upkeep of the lighthouse.  There were times when the light went out and the power needed to be flicked on and off to kickstart the power to the lighthouse.  One time, I had to climb up to the light to restart the light at the souce, although that might've been my own fault, flipping switches without knowing what would happen before "clocking in" and starting my nightly shift.  Another time the power generator needed repairing.

The demo for Static Dread: The Lighthouse only lasted three nights and honestly, those were a very stressful three nights.  The game never felt like I was expected to physically fight off anything despite the game being in first-person and I was only somewhat sure that there wasn't going to be a Five Nights at Freddies event where something was going to jump through my window out to the bay and immediately end my play session.  The threat of making a mistake and having it taken out of my pay and not being able to afford supplies or ultimately be fired was the biggest driver of dread.  And I loved it.

The demo was very fun to play, despite and because of the anxiety and dread that the game created.  The save file looks like I might be able to continue if/when I buy the full game, but I think I'd probably like to start over just because.  And I do love a good lighthouse story.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

We'll Do It In The Rain

P.S.  On a side note, when I requested this game through Keymailer, I legitimately thought I was requesting for the full game, not the demo since the demo was readily available through Steam, although it has since been pulled; maybe stay tuned for the next Next Fest?

MIDI Week Singles: "BGM #02" - Ace Combat Advance (GBA)

 

"BGM #02" from Ace Combat Advance on the Game Boy Advance (2005)
Composer: András Kövér
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Namco Hometek Inc.
Developer: Human Soft Inc.

I'd like to say that I love the Ace Combat franchise, except I think I like fewer games in the series than I've actually played.  Ace Combat Advance is one of the early games that I have not played, and by the look of it, I think I like it more in concept than in actual execution.  A top-down aircraft shooter like 1943 but in free-roam does sound pretty cool, but apparently wasn't executed all that well.

What I like about this particular song is that it gives me stealth mission vibes and I can't quite place why.  When I listen to it, there's something about it that makes me think of Pefect Dark running around either the Carington Villa or the snowy mountain airport.  It's just a groovy little tune that I enjoy listening to and for me at least, makes those six minutes fly by even though the melody repeats nearly a dozen times.

That's really it.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And There Are Many Paths to Tread

A House in the Blind Spot of a Smart Home

[First off, I don't know who this article is for.  Is it a self-own?  Is it an attempt at some kind of humble-bragging by way of self-deprication?  What is someone else going to get out of me describing the house that I live in, and my feelings about smart home appliances reinforced because our house was built in 1917?  Why did I even think that this was a good idea?  But here we are, over 1,200 words later, and I've saddled myself with an article about how I have a form of technology that I know I could live without and have no deep love for, but use on a near-daily basis in a way that has helped Amazon lose upwards of $25,000,000,000 as of 2021; so probably an additional $10-15 billion since then because I typically only ask Alexa what the weather will be over the weekend and what time the sun will set on Sunday August 10th in Lake Arrowhead, CA.]

I don't mind smart home devices.  We have two Amazon Echo Dots, one in the living room and one in our sous-sol, which is where our TV and video game consoles are hooked up, along with three of our bookcases.  We also have three smart plugs connected to lights in the living room, the sous-sol, and the bedroom.  We also have a portable A/C unit and a wall-mounted heater in The Squire's bedroom, both are connected to our Alexa app.  Our house is also 108 years old with no central A/C or heat: central, gas, hydro, or otherwise.  Two of our rooms have electric floor heaters, while three others have those internally mounted electric fan heaters, you know the ones.  This is to say that very little in our house is centrally connected, although I can turn on and off lights and the A/C and heater from the comfort of our bed if I really wanted to.

For our two Echo Dots, we predominantly use the one in the living room, asking the temperature for various locations, what time sunset will be on a particular day, to play a particular song, or to tell The Squire what day of the week it is when he's convinced that it should be the weekend at 6:45 AM on a Wednesday morning; me too little Dude, me too.  The first thing I did after my older sister gave us our first Echo Dot, after the obvious steps to set up the device, was to disable voice purchasing from Amazon.  What I was most afraid of with this smart device was accidentally ordering something while drunk, not that I got drunk often at that point, but I have been known to make impulse purchases online after a couple of beers or an exquisitely tasty edible.  So I really didn't need a 55-gallon drum of lube showing up at our house and a $1,969.69 (heh, nice) payment on my credit card statement.

Maybe it's because I'm a geriatric millennial, or a Xelenial, or a Gen-Xer, but I like some semblance of tactile response when buying something, which is probably not the right word.  I don't necessarily need to feel a pair of earbuds or a cookbook before buying it, but I do like to look at something before I buy it.  I also like to look at the price history to know if I'm getting a good price for something, and not that something last week saw a 25% price increase and yesterday saw a 10% price drop.  Do the black earbuds cost the same as the orange earbuds?  I've never actually used our Echo Dot to make phone calls, partly because I carry my phone with me, but mostly because I use aliases for all of the contacts in my phone, and while not Echo Dot specific, I've never had a great experience using the voice-activated calling in my car.  And how would you pronounce "Mümer and Püper" in a way that Alexa would understand?

That's another issue I have specifically with the voice recognition of Alexa.  Some of the bands I like to listen to don't have English names, or if they do, they're not always understood.  How would you pronounce "Feuerschwanz" in a way that Alexa would understand?  Because saying the band's name the way you would pronounce it with an American accent doesn't work, because Alexa is expecting to hear an English word, and instead, you're speaking German slang.  If you throw in Roman numerals, all bets are off.  If I want to hear the soundtrack to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, specifically the score from the video game and not someone's interpretation of "From Past to Present," I have to say "The Elder Scrolls Vee, Skyrim by Jeremy Soul-lay," even though that's not how you pronounce his last name.  I've never had any luck getting Alexa to play the soundtrack to LIVE A LIVE HD-2D Remaster even before the album was delisted from Amazon, despite having purchased it through Amazon; it's the same issue with Equilibrium's album "Erdentempel."

So last year, when Amazon announced that they were looking into charging for an upgraded Alexa experience with Alexa+, I scoffed at the idea of paying for an upgraded service when their existing service was, more or less, doing alright.  Sure, Alexa doesn't always play the correct song/band/album when I say, "Play the song Leshiy by Arkona," but I would need to actually test the product myself before even considering paying an additional $10/month to communicate with an upgraded learning-language model.  On top of that, though, I also have no interest in any of the upgraded services that come with Alexa+, such as account linking with Uber, Ticketmaster, or OpenTable.  I genuinely have no desire to request an Uber by voice command or order tickets to a show without specifically seeing where all possible seat locations are and the breakdown of all of the fees, hidden and otherwise.

I get that people, myself included, are not using their smart home devices in ways that are designed to make someone else money by way of additional convenience fees, and in doing so, were and are part of Amazon's problem.  I have no problem being inconvenient for Amazon's higher-ups.  If Amazon were to require any kind of fee for use of their voice assistant, I would only be minorly inconvenienced at now having to unplug the string of lights in our living room and not being able to play (occasionally) play music upon command, but then I would also be saving the price of Amazon's music service too.

But this is all based on my own personal biases.  Just because we have a handful of limited smart devices that we limitively use doesn't mean that other people aren't excited by making purchases from Amazon or scheduling an Uber pickup using only voice commands.  I recognize that.  But I thought that it was something worth talking about as we enter the era of paid AI LLMs as in-home assistants, and remember all of the people who are not participating in this branch of the economy for whatever reason.  It's all computer after all.

If you like, you can go back up to the top and reread that opening paragraph, because it also works as a great closing statement.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

There's a Man with Tattered Clothes who's Cursing at the Air

MIDI Week Singles: Mutated Derek Simmons III" - Resident Evil 6 (VSD)

"Mutated Derek Simmons III" from Resident Evil 6 / Biohazard 6 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, & Nintendo Switch (2012 - 2019)

Composer: Akihiko Narita, Akiyuki Morimoto, Kota Suzuki, Azusa Kato, & Laurent Ziliani

Album: Biohazard 6 Original Soundtrack

Label: SULEPUTER

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

I wasn't initially sure if I was going to post this song for today since I was unable to find it on the official soundtrack, but it does appear in two places during Leon's campaign in Resident Evil 6 (Biohazard 6).  The track (sound file?) is titled "Mutated Derek Simmons III" because it is the third of 900 times that this absolute bastard comes back from being run over by a train, blown up, blown up again, set on fire, probably blown up a few more times, dropped from a flaming building while he himself is on fire, and probably blown up again just for good measure.  This version of the Simmons fight theme crops up while Leon and Helena are scaling a building towards the end of Leon's campaign, while trying to flee from the aforementioned Simmons, who, as the title suggests, is on his third horrific transformation.  Something else that's interesting about this scene in particular is that you're not actually fighting Simmons, but instead climbing a building while Ada fights/runs away from the monster.  

What drew me to this song was that it was also used during the end credits as a closing song after the actual staff roll song, "Back for More," and followed by another song I can't quite place.  I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there are a lot of sections in this song that remind me a lot of "ROAR! Cloverfield Overture" by Michael Giacchino from the 2008 monster movie, Cloverfield.  There's the five-note theme played by the bass instruments that really sound like what the composers for this song were aiming for, and for me, it's hard not to draw a comparison.  All it needed was a choir to chime in throughout, but that might've been too on the nose.  I do like how the main theme of the game (or is it just Leon's campaign?) is sprinkled throughout in a dark heroic manner.  It helps add a sense of familiarity that carries through the entire campaign and this fight in particular, as you fight your way through the city in ever more ridiculous situations.

Considering this was the first campaign of four that I've played from Resident Evil 6, this song was very fitting for what felt like a two-hour-long sequence involving an ever-larger mutating monster that keeps hunting you down despite losing every previous encounter.  Great monster track.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Don't Think There is Much Hope For Me

Adult Games, Pornography, Bank Regulations, and Performative Morality

I'm not really a purveyor of adult games, ie, games that are either rated "A" by the ESRB or games that have "Adult," "NSFW," "Nudity," or "Sexual Content" as descriptive tags.  I've played the demos for Butt Knight, Lust from Beyond: Demo, and Robin Morningwood Adventure - A gay RPG, and last year I played through Lust for Darkness.  I did play the free-to-play Radiator 2 nine years ago and had a blast.  I also recently purchased Tender Loving Care because it was less than a dollar, it has an interesting concept, and I like John Hurt's voice; I have yet to play it, though.  But don't tell Lieberman or Howard Lincoln that I also purchased Night Trap on the Switch a few years back.  It's not a genre that I actively seek out, so it was only once articles started cropping up a few weeks ago that I found out that many adult games on Steam and Itch.io were being delisted due to pressure from Visa/Mastercard.

When I first started hearing about payment processors essentially not wanting to be the middleman for NSFW games and Steam/Itch.io, it immediatly reminded me of the scene from Boogie Nights (because I wasn't born until the 1980s) when Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) and Jessie St. Vincent (Melora Walters) try to get a business loan from banks but are refused solely on the basis that they're both in the adult film industry.  It was possibly/probably also rooted in the fact that Buck Swope was Black and that he and Jessie were a mixed-race couple, but that not doing business with someone who was previously in pornographic films was the one thing they could legally hang their hat on without repercussions.  And it's not like the practice of turning down people who work in the adult entertainment industry has gone away since the '70s & '80s either, as there are articles to this point from every decade since.*  This time around, however, it's primarily from the actions of Collective Shout, a conservative Australian advocacy and anti-porn lobbying group.

These actions over the recent weeks are also reminiscent of banks and credit card processors threatening to stop all payment processing for OnlyFans if they continue to host sexually explicit content.  No, not all content on OnlyFans is NSFW, as there was an account for "Saucy Victorian Ankle Pics" (SFW YouTube Link), but people are also using is similar to Patreon as an alternative method of income.  I guess those are the businesses that Collective Shout and the payment processors' respective boards of directors what to help facilitate?  I mean, who hasn't thought of starting an OnlyFans account and posting only pictures of ceiling or floor fans?**  Or maybe furniture?

This feels like a pretty similar scene, except instead of adult games being delisted on the grounds of payment processors not wanting to have their services go to pay for games that involve things such as incest or rape, there are also reports of games that have LGBTQIA+ storylines and characters that have also been delisted under the pretense of the same umbrella.  That's not to say that I think that a game that features rape, incest, sex trafficking, underage depictions of sexual exploitation, etc (it actually kind of feels wrong to "et cetera" that list) should be considered entertainment, but a blanket ban because a topic is part of a checklist isn't the way to go either.  Just because a story might have a character who was raped, had incest forced upon them, was sex trafficked, was sexually exploited as a minor, etc (see above) doesn't immediately mean that the game should be delisted because of the content within the game.  Some of these could be avenues for people processing trauma.  Remember That Dragon, Cancer?  But to also target games that feature, include, or mention LGBTQIA+ storylines because of a supposed moral superiority is the same kind of culture war bull shit that we're seeing all over the United States by way of Project 2025.

Over the last week (as of Tuesday, July 29th, 2025), I've performed several searches on both Steam and Itch.io (I have accounts on both, so it's not a default setting-type search that's purposefully excluding adult-related content), and only on Itch.io have I experienced any kind of censorship in search results and seen a page for a delisted game.  I also haven't seen any of the aforementioned titles from Steam being delisted, and after doing an "NSFW" search on both sites, there are still a lot of "adult" games on Steam versus Itch.io.  Maybe the games that were pulled from Steam are just more hardcore than 3001: A MILF Odyssey - NSFW Sci-Fi Porn?  From what I've read from several articles, the delisting on Steam has affected only "several hundred" titles, while Itch.io has pulled nearly all tagged NSFW titles as Itch.io undergoes a review process of the content in the affected games.

I could literally talk myself in circles without getting anywhere or making more of a coherent argument, so I'm going to cut myself off here.  Maybe that's a copout instead of doing a longer and better researched thinkpiece on the topic (and better written for that matter), but even just bringing up the topic is something.  Maybe?  

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

*I was unable to find historical data about banks not allowing people involved in any facet of the sex work industry, only that it's been happening for decades through a combination of self-imposed moral high ground and because banks view any type of "sex work" as a "high-risk for fraud "industry, often citing sex trafficking as a catalyst.

**In the early days of Damon Lindelof's Instagram account (circa 2012), he was only posting pictures of sinks, so it's kind of similar.

PS.  Related, a Kotaku article about a statement from Mastercard claiming that they didn't pressure Steam to pull/delist games.

Monthly Update: August, 2025

 

I don't even know where to start with today's Monthly Update.  I'm coming off the heels of writing my article for Monday, August 4th, and getting into a jovial video game headspace is a little awkward, which might make more sense once y'all read that article.  There's so much shit going on, not just in the US, with the checklist execution of Trump's transition plan, aka Project 2025, along with the lesser-known Project Esther and the hijacking of real-world anti-semitism by conservative right-wing white Christian nationalist organizations (aka, the current Presidential Administration and the architects, The Heritage Foundation), and their desire to database healthcare records of US Citizens in the name of obesity and diabetes is utterly rediculous, that this would just be a run on sentence of humanitarian atrocities and ongoing war crimes.

And no one wants to read that here at 6:30 on a Friday morning.  That's what NPR, Reuters, and the Associated Press are for. 

As I write this, I'm currently sitting at a table in Victoria, BC. Like any good geriatric millennial, I brought along the Switch OLED and the Steam Deck, and obviously my computer, as there's no way I'm typing this out using the virtual keyboard on the Steam Deck. However, I do have a Bluetooth keyboard for the Steam Deck, but that's at home.  I bring this up because I sucessfully signed up for the current Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program, and while I was able to download it onto the Switch OLED, I wasn't able to access it due to the whole Switch virtual game card semi-minor-debacle.  The playtest runs from July 28th through August 10th, so I'll at least be able to play (and not report because of NDA requirements), but I'll probably have some general things to say in September's Monthly Update, just nothing that could get me perma-banned from using Nintendo's online services.

So instead of participating in the playtest, I've jumped back into Triangle Strategy, and I've likely chosen (again) the more difficult path because I didn't feel the persecution, imprisonment, and enslavement of a group of people just because they have rose colored hair by an authoritarian religious government overseen by an invisible oligarch was not the route I wanted to take.  I'd rather be the last ruler of a region in the long term than actively participate in a form of ethnic cleansing in the short term.  I don't know, call me naive, I guess.

There have actually been several announcements in the last couple of days, including those from the Nintendo Partners' Direct yesterday (July 31st).  There was the Final Fantasy Tactics announcement and subsequent semi-fallout a few weeks ago.  In short, content from the PSP The War of the Lions version is not all there.  There was the announcement of SOMA coming out on the Switch (also compatible with Switch 2).  There was the announcement of Octopath Traveler 0 and then the subsequent fallout about its Switch 2 release on a game card only, and the Switch 1 edition not having additional content that is on the Switch 2.  I finally watched something regarding Bloober Team's new game, Chronos: The New Dawn, during the direct, which surprised me that it's also being released at the same time on the Switch 2.  It looks like some kind of combination between >observer_ and what I imagine their work on the Silent Hill 2 remake was like; still need to play that game too.  I'm also super-hyped for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment because of how much fun I had with Age of Calamity and how much world-building that game did for me with the Breath of the Wild setting/timeline.  Interestingly, it's advertised as being "canonical events," a feature that was denied to Age of Calamity.  As with Chronos, I'll probably wait to see some kind of comparison between how Star Wars Outlaws runs on the Switch 2 compared to the three-year-old Steam Deck.  Lastly is the game that's quite a mouthful, The Adventures of Eliot: The Mellinium Tales.  And no, I'm not at all sick of Square Enix's HD-2D.

On the Steam Deck, I've been playing the usual, The Elder Scrolls Online.  But I've also been playing more frequently, Resident Evil 6.  I'm not sure if I'll write a First Impressions article, as the game consists of four separate stories, and I may end up writing separate Game EXP articles, followed by an all-encompassing one once I've finished everything.  I also finished Final Fantasy - Pixel Remaster, but just the first/original Final Fantasy.  I'd intended to use it as a cool-down game after Resident Evil 6, but I just got hooked and sank 23.5 hours into the game that introduced me to the JRPGs and Nobuo Uematsu.  So I started up Final Fantasy II - Pixel Remaster with the same intent.  It's been about 21 years since I last played Final Fantasy II on the Game Boy Advance, so I'm eager to replay this title (and really looking forward to Final Fantasy III, since I've only played the 3D DS remake from 2006).

I think that's it for now.  So I'll see you out there, or likely not.  Unless you're between my commutes to/from home and work.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

In the Joyous Days of Childhood

MIDI Week Singles: "Main Theme" - Dishaster (A26)

 

"Main Theme" from Dishaster on the Atari 2600 (1983)

Composer: Unknown

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Zimag

Developer: Zimag

This week, we return to the dish-spinning action of Dishaster, the original game that my sources tell me was released in 1983 and that Dancing Plate was a port of.  Like the "Main Theme" from Dancing Plate, I wasn't able to find or determine if this is an original song or a variation on a traditional or folk song.  But something else that surprised me even more is that the song is different between the two games.  Again, music in video games on the Atari 2600 was exceedingly rare, so having essentially the same game from two different publishers with two different songs is equally surprising.

The song itself is pleasant enough, and after a couple of loops can become the type of earworm that sticks around and crops back up at 2:30 in the morning.  I'm not saying it's a bad song at all, it's just one of those simplistic melodies that is likely to stick around long past its expiration date.

You're welcome, and I'm sorry.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Woke Up Sad from this Dream I'd Been Having

Game EXP: Mountains of Madness (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Skelethrone: The Prey through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Mountains of Madness

Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux

Release Date: July 14, 2024

Publisher: Deep Dive Project

Developer: Deep Dive Project

Time Spent: 2 Hours 42 Minutes

Walkthrough Playlist on YouTube

Before I get to the actual game, let me share with y'all a little story.  While playing on the Steam Deck, I recorded my entire playthrough over the course of a couple of days and nights, and you can watch it over on YouTube (link above).  During my last playthrough, I played for about an hour and didn't remember to break up the recording into 15-20 minute sections. Instead, I divided it into two roughly 30-minute files, which I combined into a single video about an hour long.  Because of this, the video files became corrupted and the video stalls frequently throughout, while the audio can be heard uninterrupted.  If I were a professional video game journalist and video producer with extra time on my hands, I would simply replay the entire game, as it's only about two hours long, and begin recording where the last video started and upload that.  But I'm not, and honestly, the thought of replaying that last level again with all of its literal twists and turns, and locating three star-shaped keys does not at all sound appetizing.

So, what does it mean when not wanting to play a 40-minute section of a two-hour game is what holds me back from having a complete walkthrough?  It means, I think, that Mountains of Madness was a visually appealing game and a bold attempt at somewhat faithfully adapting one of H.P. Lovecraft's quintessential stories of cosmic horror, but that the maze-like structures in the second half of the game were not particularly fun to play through which sadly taints the entire game.  But only somewhat.

Adapting any of H.P. Lovecraft's stories is going to be a chore in terms of gameplay and achieving the right tone while convincing the player that what they're witnessing is so utterly maddening that simply surviving an encounter might be the best outcome, although you might likely go insane in the process.  And as is often the case with a lot of Lovecraftian cosmic horrors, how do you create an accurate representation of a creature that in nearly any other game you could kill with a gunblade or a fire spell after appropriate leveling?  The general outline for At the Mountains of Madness, the short story that this game is based on, is that Dr. Dyer recounts the events of an expedition to Antarctica where he saw evidence of a ransacked camp along with corpses of otherworldly creatures.  Along with a graduate student, Danforth, they fly a plane and discover massive stone structures/ruins among the mountains.  During an exploration of the ruins, the history of the buildings and the Elder Things who lived there is revealed.  The men come upon a "pen" of albino penguins presumed to have been raised as food for the shoggoths that the Elder Things raised.  Dyer and Danforth are chased out of the ruins by a shoggoth, and upon reaching the plane and flying away, Danforth sees something that drives him mad.

For the most part, Mountains of Madness does a pretty good job of recreating the story without tacking on a lot of extras that feel out of place in the poor brief I just related.  There are no enemies to fight.  There are "keys" of a sort to get to certain areas, but they're presented as ropes to rappel down cliffs, a ladder to cross gaps too wide to jump, and ice axes to break through ice walls.  There is one instance where you are required to locate three star-shaped objects that unlock a door to the final section of the game, but at least it visually fits in with the rest of the game.  The fluff in this game is the cave systems and confusing labyrinthine mazes at each stage of the game.  Before you are able to get to your colleague Lake's camp, you have to navigate through several large cave systems where you have to locate rope and an ice axe.  After discovering the camp, you're flown out to the ruins where you once again enter a maze of hallways, ladders, and ropes, trying to get to somewhere that's never made 100% clear.  After unlocking the three-star door and locating the bodies of the remaining members of your original expedition,  you enter another series of long hallways created to make the player feel turned around and lost.

My last two criticisms are somewhat minor.  First, scattered throughout the ruined city are carved murals depicting the history of the Elder Things and the shoggoths.  In-game, these are represented by large reliefs carved into walls with odd-looking gold markings that could best be described as scratches and dripping paint.  There's no actual image here that goes along with anything that the narration talks about.  I get it, though, since creating this kind of original asset would likely be time-consuming, but at least it's somewhat obvious while exploring the hallways that a wall is supposed to have a relief or a mural on it.  The last criticism is that the "pen" with the albino penguins is represented by a single penguin.  Granted, the design and look of the penguin is pretty creepy with its blind and pink eyes, and strange puss-like lesions over its body, but there's only one.

Okay, I lied, one last criticism.  Before I put together my "Found Footage" video, I had liked the brief look of the shoggoth from my first playthrough attempt.  Granted, I never got a good look at the creature, but I recall there being a black mass with a dozen eyes and writhing tentacles.  In my first playthrough, the shoggoth had almost caught me as I was running down the hallway towards the stairs as the tentacles were wrapping around the screen, and I was convinced that I was going to die.  However, upon closer look at the creature as it scuttled down the hallway after Danforth sprints past you, I thought that the creature looked more like a giant arachnid.  I get it though.  You're not supposed to hang around and watch as the massive creature descends upon you, you're supposed to run away which means you won't be looking directly at the design of the creature long enough to get a good look at the thing.  The moral of the story: don't look too hard and overanalyse shoggoths when you're supposed to be running away from them.

What I find odd about having written what I've written, is that I did enjoy Mountains of Madness.  I liked the feeling of isolation.  I liked the feeling of not understanding the logic behind the structure of the ruins and why the layout and hallways were constructed as they were.  I liked the uneasiness of the narration and that it was a real person and not a text-to-speech program.  I liked how the various items were used and solving these types of environemtnal puzzles that wouldn't've made sense considering that someone else (Gedney and Danforth) had already been through the area.  I liked all of the moments of narration over still images rather than trying to make animated sequences that might not have panned out.  I'm very glad that I played it because I love when a developer takes the risk and actually tries to make a faithful adaptation of a Lovecraftian short story.  And maybe it's just a play once and done kind of experience?  I'm glad I played it, but I don't know if I want to get turned around in those winding hallways again.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Hope You Find Some Time to Drop a Note

P.S.  I should also mention that while I liked the idea of having a compass to help you navigate during any time in the game, I really found it useless.  But it would really make sense for Dr. Dyer to have a compass at the ready when exploring the Antartic, so I can't really be mad at its inclusion.

MIDI Week Singles: "Main Theme" - Dancing Plate (A26)

 

"Main Theme" from Dancing Plate on the Atari 2600 (1982/83*)
Composer: Unknown
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Zimag / Bit Corporation
Developer: Zimag

Not to be harsh, but this main (and only) theme from Dancing Plate really isn't a banger, and while fun, it doesn't really slap either, as the youth of yesteryear would say.  What it is, is another rare example of early video game music on a home console that wasn't known for having music at all.  The Atari 2600 only had two sound channels, meaning it could only produce two sounds at the same time, so having a monotone track dedicated to music and limiting yourself to only one sound-effect without distorting or even stopping the music was a choice that most developers made in favor of creating a musicless game; unless there was a short title screen ditty.

I've wracked my brain and various alleyways of the Internet to find out if this is an original song or not, as it seems to have hints of a folksong, but I couldn't find anything to that effect.  So the song might be an original specifically to the Dancing Plate version of the game (see next week?) or it could be a distorted version of a song in the 1982/83 public domain.  Either way, it's just another great example of early video game music, and I always think it's great to know where the media originated and how far we've come.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Years Go On

*I've seen that Dancing Plate has both a 1982 and a 1983 release year from different sources online, so I'm not 100% sure which is the exact year, so we'll just use both for now.

Atari and Intellivision

 

I was listening to the most recent episode of Chris Plante's newish podcast "Post Games" where he interviewed the current CEO of Atari, Wade Rosen, about the current direction and the future of the Atari name, the Atari brand, and the very concept of Atari by the greater non-video game playing public.  During the interview, Chris Plante mentioned the shirt that Wade was wearing and that it was available on Atari's website.  This led me to discover that Atari bought the Intellivision brand on May 23, 2024, just over a year ago.

The last I had heard about Intellivision was that the long (long being relative to retro game enthusiasts) awaited release of the Intellivision Amico, a modern designed retro console to play Intellivision games was more-or-less dead.  Originally announced in 2017, I was pretty excited about this console since the AtGames Flashback Intellivision console had ballooned from $90 to a price higher than I wanted to pay for a nostalgic novelty console; it's currently available for $249, so no.  But then the price of the console was announced, coincidentally also at a $249 price point.  There were several development delays due to product quality and then the supply chain issues brought about by the pandemic happened for the next couple of years.  All of this is to put into context my feelings when I went perusing on Atari's website to guess as which shirt Wade was wearing, only to be surprised to find a shirt with "Intellivision" emblazoned across the front.

Atari owns Intellivision now.

That got my mental gears going again because on their website, Atari offers a few relatively inexpensive ways to play Atari 50, their 2022 collection of 100+ atari games from Atari's 50 years in existence.  I then looked at Atari's public listing of what IP they currently own and obviously first looked to see if Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and Golf were listed, which they were.  Sadly though, Astrosmash wasn't listed, but at least Star Strike, which I recall never really being able to figure out, was also there.

So what if Atari were to do the same thing with Intellivision?  But therein lies the problem.

The highlight of the Intellivision system were the TV remote style controllers that had swappable plastic sheets that fit over the number pad, customized to the game you were playing.  You didn't technically need them and they would wear out after a few years of use, but they helped to extend the concept of the game past the screen.  Having this type of functionality would require something like an elongated smart phone, but even then, the screen would be almost too small to read say, a golf ball two by two pixels in size.

The other option would be to essentially do what Amico tried to do, but to actually release a functioning product.  Atari does have several retro consoles for sale, but they appear to be functioning consoles with backward compatibility between the "plus" iterations of the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+.  Both consoles include game(s), but any additional games would require a physical cartridge.  I really think that Amico had the right idea behind a digital controller that would change the screen based on the game, but the long delays in production completion and the internal problems with the company still give the $249 cost a significantly sour taste to the whole thing if it is ever released, even after the sale of the Intellivision IP to Atari.

What I really hope doesn't happen is for Atari to just sit on the Intellivision IP and not do anything with it without any future plans.  We're already a year in, specifically 421 days since the acquisition and all that I can find on Atari's webpage are two shirts announced at the time Atari purchased Intellivision, and a page about the Intellivision brand.  Now I'm not expecting anyting large and grand, but maybe something akin to the AtGames Flashback Intellivision console with 50 or so of the games that Atari has the IP for (specifically Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and Golf) for the low-low price of $99.99 plus whatever Trump tariff increase seams reasonable to Atari's Board of Directors.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Wark!

MIDI Week Singles: "Castle Cornelia" - Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster (VSD)

 

"Castle Cornelia" from Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster on Windows, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S/X (2021)
Composer: Nobuo Uematsu
Arranged By: Ayumu Murai
Album: FF PIXEL REMASTER: FINAL FANTASY Original Soundtrack
Label: Square Enix Music
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Tose, Square Enix

Since I'm finally getting around to playing the pixel remaster series of Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster and obviously starting with the first game, I decided to use one of the arranged songs instead of the original 8-bit music written by Nobuo Uematsu.  While looking through the soundtrack, I discovered that multiple people worked on the arrangements, with Ayumu Murai contributing the arrangement for "Castle Cornelia."

What I enjoy about this arrangement is the approach that it could be performed by a quartet or larger, as you wander through this and other castles in the game.  Four or more musicians tucked away in a corner of the castle.  Even when this arrangement diverges from the original song and starts to go off on its own, the feeling of the original song is still there, and then when the main melody comes back in (1:20), there is a heart-wrenching/warming swell of emotion.  The only negative thing I have to say about this arrangement is that the song ends and doesn't blend in with the beginning, which makes the start of the song feel like the start of the song again and not like it's continuing the same song that started playing when you entered the castle grounds.

Maybe it's just me being overly picky, but that's partly why we're here, and because I've been enjoying the music of Final Fantasy for the last 34ish years, so I can be a self-entitled curmudgeonny old man about this one thing, or at least until next week.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental