Obeast

To the mods: You guys can move this to the Tetris board if you feel it's more suited there.

Last night, 7 time world Tetris champion Jonas Neubauer passed away suddenly.

https://twitter.com/neubsauce/status/1347769622947274754

It’s with a heavy heart that we deliver the terrible news that Jonas has passed away from a sudden medical emergency. He was the absolute best. We are devastated, overwhelmed with grief, and we already miss him dearly. Information to follow when it becomes available.

It's not clear on how he passed away, but I watched a few minutes of him on his Twitch channel a couple days ago. So, I'm assuming it wasn't COVID related (I saw some speculation it might've been a brain aneurism).

I never really got into watching competitive Tetris (I kinda discovered it by accident during one of the times he was competing). But, he seemed like he wasn't only one of the best Tetris players, but also one of the most genuine and nicest people to compete at the level he was at.

Does ringing in the new year with my villagers (shout out to my boy Spork, the most OP of villagers) in Animal Crossing NH count as being the first game I played this year?

I've always heard that Mankind Divided wasn't "bad", but it felt more like an expansion pack for Human Revolution that came out many years later when a lot of games and/or gaming mechanics evolved and moved on.

The Mystery Dungeon games should be a great place to start if you want a more graphically rich rogue like that plays more like games like Rogue and NetHack where it's all turn-based movement (outside of towns and hubs). These don't seem as punishing as the older ones since (at least in the Wii Shiren the Wanderer) you keep knowledge of magic items like potions, staffs, and scrolls between runs as long as you don't delete your save after every death or play on some super hard difficulty. But, all the dungeons are randomized and give the same feeling of not knowing if you're gonna walk into a room on some fucked up situation.

I've been doing okay. I wish I could spend more time with my family outside of monthly Zoom calls and our way-less-than-monthly group texts about Animal Crossing New Horizons with my sisters-in-law or sister-in-laws (whichever one is the correct plural of brothers' wives, I think it's the former), but I feel like it could be worse. I do miss actually working this year (I got laid off at the beginning of the pandemic like a lot of us have, but I got on unemployment and that's been helping me a lot with rent, food, other money-centric stuff thankfully) since I've noticed I've gained a bit of weight and have been having back issues due to sitting/lying down a lot, but one of my New Years resolutions is to get back into shape.

For those who aren't doing well, I hope you guys found some good in this holiday season even though things are way, WAY beyond fucked up this year. Hopefully, next year will be a lot better and more normal. <3

I've been playing Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (the infamous FF game that was made exclusively for the US audience because early 90s Square thought that US players felt RPGs were too hard to understand) on the SNES for the first time. It's actually not that bad of a game if you have a RPG itch to scratch, but don't want something that feels like a huge time sink or has points where you feel like you have to grind for hours just to beat a boss. I'm about 10 hours in, and nearing the end if the walkthroughs I've checked are any indication, so it's a nice little romp compared to most other RPGs that are 5 or 6 times longer than that.

Plus, the soundtrack overall is pretty good. The boss music especially slaps in an early 90s video game way that I like.

Insert Coin, the documentary about Midway that features interviews with one Jeff Gerstmann

9/10

It's a really awesome inside look at Midway during their heyday in the late 80s to mid 90s with games like Mortal Kombat, NARC, and NBA Jam with interviews from huge names in the company like John Tobias and Eugene Jarvis (sadly, no Ed Boon for some reason). I only recommend this if you know enough about a lot of the big events in early-ish video game history since they touch on, but don't go super deep, into stuff like the video game crash in the 80s and the creation of the ESRB, which I like since there are a ton of documentaries and YouTube videos about this stuff to begin with.

You can buy or rent it from Alamo Drafthouse's on demand service. Their pricing is a bit steep IMO, but for something that was done without help from Netflix or some other big time streaming service that would probably want some creative control over it and probably fuck it up (FYI, I actually liked that High Score series Netflix did even though they did get some details wrong from what I remember), I think it's worth it.

I voted "I'm going to wait" since I currently don't have a Series X, PS5, nor a computer that can handle it, and the (hopefully to be patched) issues about the bugs and performance on anything below a super beefy PC or current gen consoles is putting me off until I can get it on a really good sale in a year or two assuming it's been patched and/or fan modded to fix it's problems by then.

I saw the trailer for it a week or two ago and was immediately interested between it being about Midway as well as our boy Jeffrey being in it. I ended up buying and watching it last night from Alamo Drafthouse's streaming service. It's $16 to buy and $10 to rent, which feels kinda steep IMO. But, I understand they're not YouTube, Netflix, or some other huge streaming service.

I agree it was really good and worth watching if you want some behind the scenes stories from the people who worked on Midway's games ranging from NARC up to stuff like War Gods and a little bit of the PS2 era Mortal Kombat games, as well as the overall company culture that most people outside of their office(s) never saw. It was also nice that they didn't go too much into the controversy about the home ports of Mortal Kombat since I feel like that's been covered to death in any and every video/documentary/written story that talks about the origin of the ESRB, Mortal Kombat, and/or Night Trap.

I also recommend it, but if you're someone who's trying to save money (which a lot of us are doing), I'd wait to see if it shows up on Netflix or some other service that might have it cheaper to rent or buy.

I hate to be that guy, I checked the bottom of the main page and didn't see any upcoming stuff for this week. I know it's a short week for crew (and a lot of other people who are still working) due to the Thanksgiving weekend, but I don't remember them saying if they were taking the whole week off, or recording everything ahead of time and not streaming it like the Bombcast crew did on Election Day.

I was in a hurry typing this out! I swear!

Also, a rogue like-lite Sonic game does sound interesting in concept (but, I think if it were designed like Sonic CD where it's more exploration based, it could be at least decent)...

@bigsocrates said:

@obeast said:

I love a good rouge-like/lite.