roundthewheel

[roundthewheel]

EARTHBOUND has a lot to say about the interconnectedness of humanity and the triumph of love over hate—but that's a lot harder to sell than farting, burping, and vomiting. Here are my thoughts after finally playing it for the first time in my late 30s. Save it for an extended trip to the facilities; it's nearly 5000 words long.

[roundthewheel]

recent BLOCKER TRAP writings:

BLASTER MASTER ZERO — a perfect example of what a remake should actually be used for

LEMMINGS (NES) (improvement hack) — long considered one of the hottest-garbage ports of the classic save-em-all puzzler, a new improvement hack has now made it surprisingly playable

KRUSTY'S SUPER FUN HOUSE — like most 90s simpsons games, this one is not very good, but it's more all right than most, and this time, the flaws aren't acclaim's fault

[roundthewheel]

a wild Blocker Trap appeared! this one wasn't planned. I spent a lazy Sunday revisiting this Battleship clone from my childhood and the words just kind of poured out. you should try this out if you get a chance—it's on the Internet Archive's massive DOS-game collection

[roundthewheel]

Characters who arent harry dubois but have the disco elysium skill system in their brains

[roundthewheel]

my recent experience with ADVENTURES OF LOLO 2, a Sokoban-ish game from the NES's middle years

[roundthewheel]

I played (most of) GET IN THE CAR, LOSER!, the "lesbian road trip RPG" by Christine Love, and wrote about it

[roundthewheel]

I don't know who hears it when I yell into the abyss on here, but I started a site about a month ago called Blocker Trap that is sort of half journaling half reviewing the games I play. Despite being named after a thing in Lemmings and featuring three consecutive entries about Lemmings, it is not about Lemmings specifically, but rather video games in general. I swear. Anyway, I'd love it if you read it and visited regularly to check for updates

[roundthewheel]

album title I'm giving out for free to anyone who wants it: BASSED AND SHREDPILLED

[roundthewheel]

pretty gutsy for a legacy newspaper comic to try to approximate mtg. did they embarrass themselves or did they do all right? let's see.

"silver sea god" is a convincing enough creature name. spiky hair is probably playing blue. (cf. ancient silver dragon)

"bringing my silver sea god into play" technically he is casting it. unless he is playing it some alternative way that cheats it in without paying its cost, which is very possible in a color combo like simic or izzet (e.g. sneak attack). I guess I'm committed to assuming that blue is at least one of the colors spiky hair is running. anyway the gil thorp team probably has a few reasonable outs on this one

orange jacket would probably not telegraph his board wipe out loud like that. the only situation where I can see someone just outright spoiling a play like that is if lunch is about to be over and clawing one's way back from a board wipe in what little time they have left to play would be unfeasible. however, "wipe the board" is definitely completely acceptable verbiage. this one's a wash.

it's tempting to knock some points off the gil thorp team by pointing out orange jacket is completely tapped and isn't wiping anyone with a completely tapped board, but he might have a sorcery like blasphemous act that he's going to play on his turn.

the mtg dorks are 100 percent correct in considering themselves cooler than the vape guy. besides, they play magic, they don't have enough money to buy vapes.

final grade: b plus. not bad, gil thorp team. could have gone a lot worse.

[roundthewheel]

from back when the chili peppers made fun music

fun fact: the guy who says "look at that turtle go, bro" was george clinton's drug dealer who was coming to collect on oustanding debts, and clinton couldn't pay him so instead he offered him a part on the album

also it's extremely weird that the full lyrics suggest they did not finish reading the book

[roundthewheel]

#233, ANCIENT BLOOD: Would you believe that Worf can't be around for an important event in Alexander's life? It's okay though, Picard will do it for him! The first book in the Day of Honor series, written by someone who thinks Klingon honor is stupid, so let's make it about human honor instead! Full review at Deep Space Spines.

[roundthewheel]

#232: LEGENDS OF THE FERENGI: The sequel to 1995's THE FERENGI RULES OF ACQUISITION, and like that previous book, another frivolous bit of bathroom library fodder—but instead of merely listing the Rules, this one sheds light on their origins. But is bigger better in this case? Full review at https://deepspacespines.com

[roundthewheel]

a lot of the standard-bearers in the jam band scene started slowing down when they reached middle age and settled into comfortable upper middle class existences made possible by decades of relentless touring. they stopped writing songs about being on the road and doing drugs and abstract lyrics that made no sense but were still somehow kind of cool, and they started writing songs about settling down or their families or whatever. so it's comforting that there are still some bands out there that will do things like "let's make an instrumental concept album where all the song titles are just our favorite types of mushrooms"

[roundthewheel]

it's awfully bold of the "come and take it" people to assume they have anything I want

[roundthewheel]

thinking about how klingon courting works by the female roaring and throwing heavy objects and the male reading love poetry

[roundthewheel]

I've noticed a major disconnect in mtg communities lately between what rule zero actually is and what players think it is

rule zero is a pregame conversation designed to get you thinking critically about your deck's power and capabilities, comparing and contrasting that with the information you receive from the other players about their decks, and using that information to mitigate potential feel-bads.

what a lot of players seem to think it is is something along the lines of like "hey my friends said I could run ancestral recall and time walk as partner commanders, help me build it plz, no negative comments thx"

[roundthewheel]

the platonic ideal of the mcdonalds burger is not the big mac or the quarter pounder, but the triple cheeseburger. I will not be taking any questions