MIDI Week Singles: "Snow Man" Mother / EarthBound: Beginnings (FAM/NES)

 

"Snow Man" from Mother / EarthBound: Beginnings on the Famicom (1989), Wii U Virtual Console (2015), & Nintendo Switch Online NES app (2023)
Composer(s): Hirokazu Tanaka, & Keiichi Suzuki
Album: No Official Release (read below)
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Ape, Inc., & Nintendo Tokyo R&D Products

I was surprised to find out that Mother/EarthBound: Beginnings had multiple soundtracks released between 1989 all the way through 2019, but they all appear to be arrangement soundtracks without the original Famicom/NES sound chip versions.  The song on the 1989 soundtrack has the track listed as "Snow Man," but I have seen it listed as "Snowman," so I went with what was on the official soundtrack.

Now that that housekeeping is out of the way, let's get to discussing a song from a game or series I've never played before, especially one with such a large cult following as the Mother/EarthBound series.

This Famicom/NES version does have some semblance of a snowy atmosphere that exists in other MIDI Week Singles we've released this month.  What works for me is the bass line being more prominent, yet still somewhat drone-like, which creates and maintains the desolation of a snowy open field reaching off into the distance, speckled with snow-covered pine trees.  The descending notes at 0:08 are reminiscent of 8-bit chimes, helping to evoke the sound of musical icicles, or maybe I'm just making something up where it doesn't actually exist.  The point is, I can listen to "Snow Man" and hear it as overworld music for a snow-covered landscape, and I think it works.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

We Found the Secret Path that Led Us Here to You

Game Collections and High Scores

During Steam's 2025 Winter Sale, I purchased the Jurassic Park Classic Collection because, despite not having finished Jurassic Park on the SNES after probably dozens of attempts, I still have fond memories of that game.  I then realized that this was another collection of games, bundled into a retrospective collection, and that I would need to update The Ultimate Spreadsheet to help keep track of which games in the collection I had beaten.  But then, I realized I hadn't done the same thing for most of the other collections I've bought over the years.  I listed all of the Final Fantasy games from the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster and BioShock: The Collection titles, mainly because those collections had individual games with their own individual icons as part of the bundle/game card, but the games in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection have remained under a singular title on the spreadsheet because their title selection is within the game itself.

Herein lies a twofold problem, with only half of it solved.

I've already mentioned that there are a lot of games that I have across various platforms and clients, like the aforementioned SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, but also collections like the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection (from Konami), and NAMCO Museum, all of which have multiple titles that have gone unlisted beyond their collection title.  So listing Jurassic Park Collection: Jurassic Park NES, or Castlevania Anniversary Collection: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, while exceedingly wordy, is an easy way to categorize all of the games in each collection.  It's also the best way to keep track of which games I've beaten.

And therein lies the second and more difficult problem.  Games like Pac-Man, SkyKid, or Dig Dug are more about achieving a high score than actually reaching the end.  Sure, games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Dig Dug are infamous for their end-of-game kill screens.  I personally don't have the time or the patience to spend hours/days/months getting good enough at Donkey Kong to get to the kill screen.  So do I include them on The Ultimate Spreadsheet?  Or do I aim to get a specific high score and count it as beaten?  Maybe getting the high score in any given game?  But then, with several collections of games now having online connectivity and online leaderboards in place of a standard High Score screen.  And there is zero chance in Hell that I'm getting more than 2,519,300 points in Pac-Man or 995,377,527,480 points on the Centigrade 37 Gottlieb table in The Pinball Arcade.

What I think it will boil down to for games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, and tables in The Pinball Arcade, I will need to select an arbitrary high score or end goal and consider the game "beaten" once that point is reached.  And all of this to say that I'm going to need some time to update The Ultimate Spreadsheet now that I've come to these semi-conclusions.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "6PM (Snow)" - Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS)

 

"6PM (Snow)" from from Animal Crossing™: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch (2020)
Composers: Yasuaki Iwata, Yumi Takahashi, Shinobu Nagata, Sayako Doi, Masato Ohashi
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD

The "6 PM (Snow)" music has a couple of different layers to it.  First, it is a variation on the theme for Animal Crossing New Horizons, and it is very similar to the "6 PM (Sunny)" theme, which I take to be the default 6 PM music.  The Snow variant, though, feels a lot more mellow and slower, closer in tempo the the "6 PM (Rain)" variation.  What really makes the "6 PM (Snow)" version work for me is the jingle bells that punctuate every five seconds.  But then, at around 30 seconds, a glass chime (we'll just call it that for now) plays along with the accordion here and there (very musical term that), which helps solidify the feeling of cold.  Chill vibes, along with jingle bells and glass chimes, are really what nail the feeling of wanting to sit next to a large pane window, looking out at snow-covered pine trees.  That's my happy place, and this music helps to establish those comfy and cozy feelings.*

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Liksom en öppen grav

First Impressions: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (NS2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain 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.] 

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Systems: Windows, macOS, Steam OS, Linux, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: August 30, 2016 - September 13, 2018

Publisher: Tin Man Games

Developer: Tin Man Games

Time Spent: 

Videos on YouTube

I'm going to preface this article with a bit of a confession.  While watching a retrospective of the original Final Fantasy over on Final Fantasy Union's YouTube channel, I first heard how Square had originally wanted to title their new RPG game Fighting Fantasy, but decided against the name because there was already a series of books with that title.  Wanting to keep the alliterative double "F's," (previous titles being Cruise Chaser, King's Knight, Deep Dungeon, and Rad Racer), Square changed the name to Final Fantasy instead.  What I didn't know was that Fighting Fantasy was also an IP co-developed by Steve Jackson (different than the Steve Jackson of Munchkin and GURPS) and is/was a series of single-player fantasy (and other genres too) RPG books that functioned a lot like the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which was later turned into video games and board games alike.  What I also didn't realize was how closely the Fighting Fantasy formula and aesthetic influenced the design, look, and feel of HeroQuest.  Seeing as how I'm finding myself resubmerged in the HeroQuest ecosphere, I jumped at the chance to play this nine-year-old adaptation, playable on both the original Switch and Switch 2.

Now that we're here, I hadn't originally planned on writing an article about The Warlock of Firetop Mountain until after the first of the year, but I've had quite an early experience that I wanted/needed to write about it in First Impression form.  So here we are, only an hour in.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a video game adaptation of a board game adaptation of a Choose Your Own Adventure-style single-player RPG book.  What drew me to this game was how well it captured the look of a miniature plodding along on a board, albeit a highly detailed board that builds itself as the player explores the dungeon.  The player's miniature doesn't just slide or glide along the dungeon floor, but bounces appropriately, as if controlled by an invisible hand that's counting the number of places the pieces move.  Upon entering a room/chamber, a text block pops up that gives a description of what the character sees beyond what is visible on the digital board, be it sounds or smells that can only be conveyed through text.  Sometimes, there's an additional visual component, like a drawing that looks like it's straight out of a quest book that the gamemaster might show the players or be printed in a book from the late 80s or early 90s.

The battles in the game are a little more complicated and have been my source of frustration.  The battles are played out on a grid like a modern tactics game, albeit in a very confined area and, at least for the moment, confined to a level battlefield.  The player decides if they're going to move or attack, and once you decide what you're going to do, the computer-controlled characters act at the same time.  Your purpose is to avoid enemy attacks while anticipating what they're going to do.  When it's one enemy, it's mostly manageable, but when you're a single hero going up against two or three enemies, and trying to not be on a square that could be attacked while also trying to attack to reduce the number of enemies, following the tells of the enemies can get confusing and frustrating really fast.

While dying is something that has happened to me several times during my first couple of hours playing, thankfully, the game has implemented a save feature.  When you come upon a wooden bench in the dungeon, you're given the option to rest, which also saves your game, rest, and consume rations, of which you start out with four, or just skip entirely.  The secondary benefit to resting is that you also regain 5 points of stamina, which doubles as your HP.  Because this is a video game, you'd think that you could spam the save points by inching along the dungeon, killing a few orcs, then doubling back to save and rest, but the developers already thought of that.  As you progress through the dungeon, I have only come across a few instances where I were able to double back, and never was it back to a save point.

What I've found frustrating about dying is really two-fold.  First, since you recover 5 stamina, having that health boost will provide you with ample time to further explore the dungeon, which also means that you're more likely to be further away from the save spot when you die.  And that means that any progress you made is erased because when you respawn, just like in the old days, it's at the save point; the only thing that I believe carries over are the number of Souls you collect, which, I believe, can be used to purchase additional character/miniature sets who all have different equipment, stats, and gear.  The other semi-frustrating thing is that the dungeon is set, which means it never changes, which means if you start over with a new character, you're always going to be seeing that sleeping Orc guard just inside the door if you go west, or the Orc patrol if you go east.

You know, while writing this First Impressions article, I think I've come to accept the game design choices as those of a video game, and less like a board game.  Because the game does such a great job in recreating that living board game visual, it's at times hard to separate my feelings about playing a board game and playing a video game.  If I think of the game as a video game, dying and having to restart from a previous point is a familiar mechanic.  If I'm playing a board game and my character dies (murdered by Orcs, snakes, Goblins, or by traps, as was the most recent case), that's usually the end of the game, and the desire to stop is near absolute.  As of this writing, I've made three runs, and I think tonight will be my fourth, and we'll see in my upcoming Game EXP article if my feelings about the game have changed at all since today, because I love the look of the game and the care that went into making it feel like a video game version of a board game.  Now I just need to remind myself that I'm playing a video game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Unlock Forgotten Skills

P.S.  I would be very surprised not only if Dellaños didn't know about the Fighting Fantasy books, but if he or his brothers didn't have one or two of the books growing up.

MIDI Week Singles: "Red Snow" - Viscera Cleanup: Santa's Rampage (PC)

 

"Red Snow" from Viscera Cleanup: Santa's Rampage on Windows (2015)
Composer: Santa's Ruin
Album: Viscera Cleanup Detail - Soundtrack
Label: Steam
Publisher: The Runestorm
Developer: The Runestorm

"Red Snow" is a bit of a meandering song that has all the blood-dappled hallmarks of a snowy Christmas song, but without a lot of the flair and Elf teeth that would really catapult it into that warm and cozy firey furnace.  There is the kiddy piano, the bouncing bass line, the jingle bells, and whatever the hell that warbly sound is at 0:40.  Maybe it's an Elvish call for help?

"Red Snow," along with almost all of the other songs on this soundtrack, crop up randomly during Viscera Cleanup: Santa's Revenge, as you clean up the aftermath of Santa's rampage through the Elves' workshop and reindeer stables.  The jovialness of the song is in stark contrast to your task in trying to find a place to put another bucket filled with the cheery bits and bobs of mopped-up offal.

'Tis the season.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Why Do We Scream At Each Other?

Game EXP: The Grandfather (PC)

The Grandfather

Systems: Windows, macOS

Release Date: May 13, 2026

Publisher: David Szymanski, Mikeypoo's Games

Developer: David Szymanski, Mikeypoo's Games

Time Spent: 30m 11s

Playthrough Video on YouTube

Wow.  Who would've guessed that 10 years later, I would have finally gotten around to playing The Grandfather, the game I mentioned in my article for David Szymanski's game, Fingerbones, that I played and talked about in 2015.  The Grandfather was a game that looked promising, and I pledged money during the Indiegogo campaign.  The campaign, however, did not reach its goal, but I still received the three games that were part of the tier I pledged.

The Grandfather is a dark, very dark, story about an abused old man who lives alone with his wife.  The reliability of the grandfather as a narrator is up for debate, likely due to his mental state.  So, how abused the grandfather was from his wife may not be entirely true, but that's the way that I'm interpreting the story.  The story is told, I think, over the course of a single night as the titular grandfather literally and figuratively pulls himself together through various rooms in his house in order to escape the situation he's found himself in for decades.

Each room consists of a few puzzles that are all centered around turning out the lights.  Be the lights lightbulbs, candles, or the fire from a furnace, you have to interact with what few objects are in the room to trigger objects or events that will cause the lights to extinguish.  For the first puzzle, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing, as I was only a floating head that could pick up three objects, so I consulted a walkthrough and kept it open just in case I ran into any other confusing puzzles.  I ended up referencing it one other time because it turned out I wasn't quite clicking on the right area of a room.

The Grandfather is a pretty disturbing short story, but in a good way if you're already a fan of comic art-style dark horror stories.  This just might be for you.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Stage Select Start Lists: The Games of The Game Awards 2025

The Game Awards were last night, and since we tend to cover video games here, I'm going to go full-on list mode and just LIST all of the games that piqued (or de-piqued?) my interest, while keeping in mind that I only caught the tail end of the show and pulled the names from IGN's own website.  Also, keep in mind that most of these games, especially ones that aren't directly tied to an existing IP, are on the list because I liked the title or liked the font.  Being me, the order is simply going to be alphabetized because we're not playing favorites here.

So let's get to listing!

• 007 First Light
• This trailer did absolutely nothing for me.  Even the gameplay trailer from three months ago did nothing for me.  Maybe I'm not the target audience.
• Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve
• I have yet to play Ace Combat 7, and I really hope that Project Aces has dropped the whole dog-fight mechanic that permeated Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.  Is it bad that I still just want an Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception 2?
• Coven of the Chicken Foot
• The title alone sold me (although I probably won't be buying it on day 1), and even more so the trailer.  The only two things that have me concerned are when camera angles are facing the player and the player is running towards the camera, and if this is going to be a mandatory co-op game or if you just have a computer-controlled partner.
• Decrepit
• A first-person souls-like could be interesting.
• Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred
• On one hand, you could tell that the actions of the Paladin came straight from the game (I haven't played one in Diablo IV, but it really looked like the moveset from Diablo: Immortal), but on the other hand, it looked kind of cheesy because the moveset looked like it came straight from the game.  I do like Diablo visuals, though.
• Divinity
• Bloody fucking christ, that was an intense, Wickerman-inspired trailer.  I've yet to play the first Divinity: Original Sin, though.
• Lords of the Fallen 2
• I started the first game shortly after getting the Steam Deck, and even though the game is rated "Unsupported," it seemed to play fine.  I haven't played the 2023 reboot.
• Mega Man: Dual Override
• It's been a loooooooong time since I played a Mega Man game that wasn't recently released on the SNES.  It's hard to tell from the trailer what the "dual override" aspect of the game will be, though.  Maybe something about how Mega Man flashes the city at the end of the trailer?
• Ontos
• Honestly, anything from Frictional Games is going to get mentioned.
• Order of the Sinking Star 
• While I started Braid (never finished), I'm not actually sure about this title after watching the trailer.  I can't tell if all of the chatter is supposed to be from in-game characters or from playing online co-op.
• Phasmophobia
• Leave it to companies to release a five-year-old game on a Nintendo console like it's the newest thing.  That being said, the trailer rekindled my interest in this title.
• Resident Evil: Requiem
• Finding out that Leon is a playable character doesn't sell me on the game; the title already did that, but I'm honestly a little disappointed that he's back.  Not that I don't like him, just that I'm less interested in playing what kinda looked like Resident Evil 4-2.
• Saros
• I was already kind of sold with Rahul Kohli being involved, but I really like the look of the world, based on the trailer and I love the implications of "How long since the last time the sun died, mate?"
• Soulframe
• The usage of both "soul" and "frame" makes me think of Dark Souls and Warframe, and the fact that it's a free-to-play open world that's animal-heavy seems moderately interesting.
• Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic
• I swear they took one of the shots of the ship entering the planet from Prometheus.
• Star Wars: Galactic Racer
• Oddly, or perhaps not, kind of excited for this.  I also like that even though the voice-over talks about "massive engines," there only looked to be one pod racer with Sebulba-sized engines.
• The Free Shepherd
• The goodest of trailers.  I really hope that in this world, humans have gone extinct for some time, but this Australian shepherd-type dog is still shepherding a herd of sheep because that's what its ancestors were trained to do.  And it's just an environmental puzzle game about getting your sheep from point A to point B.
• Tomb Raider: Catalyst
• I've played the Tomb Raider reboot and liked the evolution of Lara Croft in that game, so I'm not sure how the other games in that series portrayed her compared to this iteration of Lara Croft.
• Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis
• Is this a remake. . .  It appears so.  A remake of the original Tomb Raider, especially with the now somewhat famous font used in the title.  Lara Croft's design also looks closer to her design from the pre-Square Enix days, and seems to be pandering to the people who are going to pause and slow-mo all of the camera focus shots on her ass and chest.
• Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons
• I've never played a Warlock in all my years playing D&D, so I don't know what Eldritch Blast looks like, and I'd be both surprised if that wasn't the spell that was cast at 0:53 and not surprised at the same time if it wasn't.  Just from the trailer, which looks to only be cinematics, I was getting Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance vibes (another game I admittedly haven't played), so a switch from the CRPG of the original Baldur's Gate series to a more Diablo-like action RPG title.  I'm really just D&D deprived right now (apart from reading the 20+ year-old novels) so anything is going to immediately interest me.

So there we are.  A whole host of games that will be released in the next 1-13+ months.  I'll probably come back to this article as I sometimes do with my E3 article after I buy games when they're 86% off, five years after they're released, and remember that I listed them here.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Coming from the Sky Above

MIDI Week Singles: "Oversnow" - The Elder Scrolls: Arena (MSD)

 

"Oversnow" from The Elder Scrolls: Arena on MS-DOS (1994)
Composer: Eric Heberling
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Softworks

If you're thinking that we've accidentally reused a song for MIDI Week Singles, you'd be excused in your assumption.  Except that was "Snow" from The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, we used, and that was six years ago.  Most of what I had to say about "Snow" also applies to "Oversnow," which plays not just when it's snowing, but when it's overcast as well, hence the title.  What I like about "Oversnow" is the suddenness of the choir that comes in at 0:14, and you could say it's a bit overdramatic.  I don't know if I'd categorize overcast skies as warranting a choir compared to snow on a clear day, but then I've never been hiking in the snow in Skyrim or High Rock, so what do I know?

The song does cut off abruptly, but that's just a result of the game looping the song on its own once it's over, and I probably could've done the same, considering that there's no official soundtrack.  That's really all I've got to say about "Oversnow."  Just a really good track that evokes that (overdramatic) feeling of tromping through snow while it's snowing.  Overcast or not.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Take a Long Drive with Me

Demo Time: [HERROR] Gas Station Case (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for [HERROR] Gas Station Case 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.]

[HERROR] Gas Station Case

System: Windows, SteamOS, Linux,

Release Date:  Q2 2026

Publisher: [HERROR]

Developer: [HERROR]

Time Spent: 79 Minutes

Playthough Video on YouTube

Is it a cop out to say that I have mixed feelings about [HERROR] Gas Station Case right off the bat, mainly connected to historical, geographical, and economic anachronisms.  I know that's kind of a strange thing to fixate on, but that's where my brain went nearly half a dozen times each time I played the demo.

Before we start nitpicking, let's actually get to the game, assuming you haven't yet watched my playthrough video, linked above.

[HERROR] Gas Station Case is sort of a minimal story-driven gas station simulator.  You're filling in for a coworker, and you perform a few standard tasks such as filling gas, sweeping/mopping up dirt on the floor of the store, restocking shelves, and bagging up items people buy.  There's a bit of a side story going on around your playable character, Dan, that he seems to only have a passive role in.  During the two partial nights Dan works at the gas station, there are a couple of weird events that happen, including one jump scare that legitimately got me the first time I played, and a couple of unsettling, "what's that?" moments.

When I played the game on the Steam Deck, I was able to invert the y-axis manually in the controller settings, but on my (new) laptop, I was able to manage with an apparent industry standard uninverted y-axis.  This actually didn't bother me as much as I had feared, as there is no need to make quick turns, and the only targeting you're doing is when you literally throw bagged-up goods at customers.  Although yes, it did take me several tries to throw those bags of garbage into the dumpster behind the store.  There's no excuse for that.

As for the anachronisms, there were quite a few.

The first one I noticed was the price of gas.  The game takes place in Ohio in 1998.  Now, I grew up in Central California and had just graduated high school during the summer of 1998, which had me filling up my parents' car to drive to the next town over to work a summer job, so I was buying gas every couple of weeks.  I remember being really excited when the cheap gas was $0.89/gallon because this was one of the last times I can recall ever buying more gas than what I was spending.  Even the gas at the marina in Lake Arrowhead, CA, was upwards of $2.50/gallon, which seemed ridiculously expensive, so seeing a sign with gas at over $4.00/gallon in Ohio in 1998 seemed very out of place.  Late in the game, you go inside the phone booth outside the store, and you can see a notice asking you to "use fewer coins to pay the initial minimum of 60p."  I remember that Pacific Bell phone booths in Northern California would cost $0.30 to make a call, because I was annoyed at having to carry more than just a quarter when I needed to get picked up after a tennis game, and I'm pretty certain that people in Ohio wouldn't refer to "sixty cents" as "sixty p;"  a little too British.

Price-related anachronisms were how much people pay you after you bag up their goods at the cash register and hand it (chuck it) to them.  The First customer you help pays you $7 to "fill up" their car, which is either historically accurate if they needed about 2/3rds a tank, or maybe they really only needed 1.74 gallons of gas.  Inside the store, a customer pays you $27.00 for two apples, a can of soda (maybe it's beer), and a can of beans.  Later, two women pay you $28.00 for a can of soda, a snack pack of Nutter Butters (as in the pack only has four cookies), and some kind of vanilla-flavored something-or-other.  The only potentially correctly priced object is a $12.00 flashlight that, after ordering it using the computer at the register, is delivered immediately right outside the door to the store; although the fact that the money you use is the money that you've been paid by customers comes across as a little suspect.

The demo ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, which is either the end of the whole Gas Station episode in this proposed Horror Anthology, or hopefully, the first third of this particular story.  There was a VHS grain filter that added to the feeling that this was a low-budget horror movie that you could have picked up on Friday night at a Blockbuster before the DVD boom of 2000 (all thanks to The Matrix).  It actually fits with the whole pre-2000s campy horror aesthetic, and it was pretty easy to find myself enjoying the actual gameplay once I stopped thinking about how the prices of everything were all over the place.  I think I also really enjoyed that this was a lite gas station sim implanted in a horror movie because I would be more likely to play this than Gas Station Simulator 2026.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
This Grevious Revelation is a New Beginning

P.S.  Spoilers below, so beware.

At the end of the game, your friend Michael makes a reappearance, and I can't quite tell whether his face is supposed to be mutilated to make him look like he has a mouth full of fangs, or something else.  Because the character model looks like they just have a bunch of face paint depicting a horrific mouth.  The look of the blood is fine, though.  I'm otherwise fine with the graphics, but this seemed a little off, and not in an unsettling way or uncanny valley way.

MIDI Week Singles: "Snowflake Mountain" - Diddy Kong Racing (N64)

 

"Snowflake Mountain" from Diddy Kong Racing on the Nintendo 64 (1997)
Composer: David Wise
Album: Diddy Kong Racing Soundtrack CD
Label: Nintendo of America
Publisher: Rare
Developer: Rare

Let's start things off strong this December with a track from one of my favorite kart racing games that I was never able to beat because WizPig is a cheap asshat.

But what's interesting about "Snowflake Mountain" is that this song only plays when you are flying from the main world hub up to the door that leads to Snowflake Mountain.  While you're mid-flight, the music that plays in the hub world, "Main Lobby Area," will transition to "Snowflake Mountain," which is still a new theme, but the likelihood that you're going to fly around in circles just to hear this song is not very likely.  So in-game, you'll probably only hear the first couple of seconds, maybe five, before barreling into the door that actually takes you to Snowflake Mountain.

All of that context aside, "Snowflake Mountain" has a lot of the stereotypical characteristics that make a song appropriately wintry.  There are the glass-like chimes, there are the sleigh bells, and there is the happy and constantly moving bass.  It's just a good, solid snow-themed song to bring us into December.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

We Were Ready for Adventures, and We Wanted Them All

Monthly Update: December, 2025

 

Two things.  First, how the hell is it already December!?  Second, how the hell is it already the end of 2025!?!?  Granted, the last 11 months have felt like a couple of years at this point, and while I would like a break from nearly daily embarrassments in the form of the entire Trump administration, I guess the one upside is: one down, three to go?  I dunno.  If I recapped every shit thing that the administration has done these last 11 months, we would have 11 long paragraphs before even getting to our usual discussion about video games.  Let's just say there'd be a lot to cover, and that's just one aspect of the current presidency.

In other news, I replaced my laptop as the one I had was just over five years old and started showing significant signs of wear.  Such as the charger not reliably connecting to the laptop, as in I could plug it in, but it required a bit of finagling to get it to actually begin to charge.  I also ran into an issue where the hard drive was experiencing errors, not related to its paltry size of 256 GB being at 95% capacity.  Then, in a moment of coincidental frustration, while in the process of transferring data (blog files, video clips from the last 5 years on the Switch, and the Steam Deck, 20+ years of music, PDFs of D&D modules and sourcebooks, and countless other documents/files I've had backed up) my external hard drive (which was also five years old) decided to wig out in ways that have caused me grief.  

I first noticed the external hard drive issue when iTunes was having problems pulling music from my two primary music folders, both located on the external hard drive (see above, the 256 GB storage on my previous laptop).  Essentially, something bad is happening with the external hard drive: both the prior and current laptops are having difficulty or are unable to read it.  Recently, my new computer semi-froze while trying to read the old external drive, and when it does connect (shows up in my File Explorer window, I will either not be able to see any of the folders, or I can see the folders, but I get an error when I try to open any folders or click on the parent folders.  Or what's been happening the last two days, is that the computer just doesn't recognize that there's another external drive connected, even though the light on it's flashing and receiving power.

I think the biggest gut punch is losing access to music that I've downloaded over the last five years, as I was able to pull music off my first external hard drive that I'd kept from when I first bought it 12 years ago.  That one's still working fine for the time being.  Thankfully, I still have access to (most) of the albums I've bought on Bandcamp over the years (the ones that didn't magically disappear when an artist released a new version of the album and the original album up and disappeared) and (most) of the albums I've bought through Amazon.  But a lot of it is a matter of remembering what I no longer have access to that's still on the prior external hard drive; I think a lot of the potentially lost music are video game soundtracks, but at least I still have all of the Draconian demo albums and the "Kefka's Domain" album.  Phew!

Oh, and to a significantly lesser degree, I also replaced my old Pixel 7A phone because, despite it having a USB-C charging port, I'm only able to use certain USB-C plugs because the port is beyond finicky.  I didn't have any of the same issues with file transfer when I booted up and connected the new phone (the economic Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge if you're wondering).

So that's kind of where my head is at the beginning of this new month, at the end of the year.

But hey!  I did finish a couple of video games last month, Final Fantasy II, and Mouthole so I don't feel too bad.  I've also made some progress in Fire Emblem: Awakening and in Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song Re-Mastered on the Switch, for which I'll have an article out, likely a First Impressions late in the month, or possibly in early January.

We'll return in January with my now annual List of Games from the previous year, because we all love lists, right?

Right?

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I'll Keep Them Still

P.S.  My Downloads folder currently looks atrocious, clogged with zipped folders, but it's what I do to keep my brain just a little bit more sane.  And the music helps to keep the tinnitus at bay just a little bit.

P.P.S.  Oh, and I purchased a Mechanism gaming pillow because I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let a debilitating long-term wrist problem affect my ability to work or play video games.  Except I am getting medical treatment, so no worries on that front.  Bouldering is still a bit painful, though, which we recently got back into, so it's Bs, 0s, 1s, and 2s for me for now.  Slopers suck extra hard now.

P.P.P.S.  I guess I should be thankful that I still have a good chunk of my music already backed up and that I, surprisingly enough, didn't buy any physical music from going to shows when I got my prior external hard drive in September 2020, because not a lot of people weren't going to shows in late 2020.

P.P.P.P.S.  I guess this article was also to let y'all know that if any of our high-class graphics and images change in the coming weeks, it's because I wasn't able to fully recover My Documents folder off of the external hard drive.