#Pixel Wrappers

[jtgunner]

No new let's play videos from me today! But if you haven't seen it yet, check out my LP on Classic Sport Driving for PC! It's a pretty cool arcade indie racing game that I was given the chance to check out! Thanks again to the devs for the opportunity!

WATCH IT HERE: https://youtu.be/scuYYzWzmXY

[nmarfo]

Rambling about Classic Sport Racing

So, uh… I don’t know how this happened. Like with the last game we looked at, Virtua Unlimited Project, I tried this out at a Steam Next Fest all the way back in October 2022. Again I just keep these games on my wishlist usually, but then, I got another random DM after liking one of their posts, and I got offered a key to try the game out! Me, who isn’t really lucky when it comes to these things.…

[akishourikawa]

Tonight's warm-up sketchi time is a 32x32 pixel cheeseburger

[the-starfall]

Day 3 of pixiltember, “sweet”. So I made three different ones of 8x8, 16x16 and 32x32 sizes. Trying to learn how important singular pixels are during pixel artwork.

[morbiderotica]

Hii! Can i pls request a Light x reader nsfw? You know the scenes where L planted a camera in his room right? Well maybe to make L less suspicious of him Light fucks the reader in his room? I thought that it was a hot idea♡ you dont have to do it if you dont want to😊

★ DECEPTION ─ fem!reader

#NOTES ─ i love you for requesting this i cannot tell you how many times i've day dreamed about this (sorry it took so long)

#WARNINGS ─ smut, cnc peeping toms (L), p in v,

#SUMMARY ─ "there was an elaborate plan set in place. but as soon as light's hands snaked around your waist you seemed to forget everything you were supposed to do and say." innocent until proven guilty

there was an elaborate plan set in place. but as soon as light's hands snaked around your waist you seemed to forget everything you were supposed to do and say. his moderately chapped lips kissing your cheek lovingly. much unlike how light usually behaved around you.

"light." his name left your lips, trying to warn him he'd made your mind go blank. but he knew.

"i know." he whispered back, displeasure laced in his voice. luckily, light was more than capable of carrying out the plan for the both of you.

"just let me do all the work." he muttered, his voice not loud enough to be picked up on by the mics on the camera but still he was careful with what he said.

he hoped you would be too. you nodded. looking up at light with a lustful look in your eye that he couldn't deny was making him a little aroused. light kissed your jaw, roughly. as if light was capable of doing anything without roughness.

"last chance to back out." it's not a soft tone, but it does let you know that he won't be mad at you if you do decide you don't want some random creep watching you have sex with your friend.

you shake your head, you weren't going to let him down now. and to be totally honest, the thought of someone watching you in such a vulnerable position was intriguing to say the least. light began to undress you once you'd given him your final consent.

meanwhile, L watched his screen with wider eyes than normal. his eyes grazing every pixel of the screen as he watched light take off your shirt. neglecting the other screens that were broadcasting equally, if not more, important information. L racked his brain trying to figure out if this was just a trick of if he was really witnessing this dirty scene play out.

all your clothes were off in what seemed like a blink of an eye. pressed into the mattress with light's knee inches away from your heated core. you dumbly pull at his tie, fucked out expression but light hadn't even gotten started with you yet.

"you got any thoughts in there at all?" he smirks. silently gloating now that he knew he had every single person he knew wrapped around his godly finger. there was not a thought behind your blown out pupils. it prided light to know he had such an effect on you.

"i haven't even done anything yet." he furthers. and L was hearing all of it.

you paw at the waist band of his bland khaki pants. light chuckled feeling your shaky hands trying to get more of him. his rubs his hand over your chest, caressing your nipple with his pointer and thumb.

"patient girls get rewarded." he tsks. he's met with a whine to which he chuckles again. he knows L will over analyze and find something wrong with the scenario if he doesn't hurry up.

"you wanna get rewarded?" he unbuttons his pants with one hand. you're eager, desperate. you need hm in a way you didn't even know it was possible to want one of your friend.

he reaches over you, grabbing a condom from the book shelf. it was wedged between two books. clearly he was trying to keep it hidden from his maid of a mom and his nosy sister.

he opens the condom with his teeth and you might as well just have hearts in your eyes as you watch him. the wrapper falls somewhere unimportant on the bed. he rolls the condom on. you knew it was only a matter of time before you finally felt full with his cock.

© 2023 MORBIDEROTICA

[brain-usurped-by-bug]

Sugar and Smoke

King Candy takes advantage of the luxuries of his new life, while still longing for the simple pleasures of his old.

Characters: King Candy/Turbo, Sour Bill, Turbo Twins (mentioned)

Tags: Smoking, bubble bath, eating lots of sweets, angst

Completed on September 15th, 2024. 1476 words.

...

The new skin felt strange. It was softer than he was used to, higher definition. The flesh was unscared, the eyes bright, the cheeks jolly. The cadaverous pallor, the sunken eyes, the body he had carried his entire life was gone, phased out, banished into electric aether.

It wasn’t what he had before. He could smile again, but it wasn’t the same smile. He had a car again, but it wasn’t his red rocket. He didn’t have the simple pleasures of his home world; the gentle wave of the pixelated green grass, the earthy scent of the simple dirt loop, the reliable company of the twin racers…

Whatever. He didn’t need them. He didn’t need any of it. It was old software; untextured, primitive. The players had outgrown it, he had outgrown it. It didn’t deserve him. What he deserved was this! A castle, hundreds of subjects hanging off his every word, glitter graphics, high definition, a spotlight, a crown! It was the least fate could repay him for his suffering, rotting unknown in crawl spaces for ten years.

His honey brown eyes bounded over the walls of his new domain, cataloged it, let his mouth water. Pink cookie walls, rainbow sugar glass, sparkling white icing. It had been a long, long time since he’d had a taste of something sweet. 

At the urging of his tongue he dove in, flew through his castle, eager to see every room, sample every flavor. Devour it, all of it, literally and metaphorically. It was his, all of it, all of it! 

He admired the paintings of ice cream landscapes, chewed the corners off the nightstand in the cheesecake guest room, let the swirl of the lollipops hypnotize him, Let chocolate doorknobs melt in his mouth, ran his palms up the twisting licorice banister, broke peppermint decorations off the walls and sucked them to points. 

He was in the middle of licking the icing off a gingerbread headboard when he caught the movement of a stranger behind him. He leapt off the bed and hurried to make himself presentable. The stranger stared back, licking his lips, adjusting the cuffs of his purple suit. The stranger had that look on his face, the look of being caught in the act. 

He approached, cautiously. The stranger approached, cautiously. They lifted their hands, fingers meeting on the mirror’s glass. The strange reflection turned its head, ran it’s peach fingers over the wisps of gray hair above its ears, squished the soft cheek, pulled at the corner of the lip, ran a red tongue over white teeth. It stood back a bit, dusted itself off. The reflection wore a purple tailcoat, gold puff pants, caramel leggings, a lace collar, a gold crown and a shimmering red candy wrapper bow tie. 

Not a single color carried over, no textures, not a sliver of his old face. This was good. It was. No one would ever recognise him. Even he didn't recognise him. He left the room. The stranger moved to follow, then vanished as he shut the door.

…

His room…. His room…. Ooh… he couldn't make a decision on it. It was different. Very different from what he was accustomed to. There was a rug, a clean one. Gingerbread armoires, rock candy lamps, footstools, a fainting couch, a make-up desk, wallpaper, a four poster bed with satin curtains! All white and pink. There was no black plastic, no exposed wires, no oil, no rubber, no concrete, no trophy shelf. Just sugar. 

He wanted to fix it. Bring in the scent of tools and grease, rust, motor oil and gasoline, antifreeze, real dirt, real grime. Was there anything real in this world? 

He reached for the pocket of his jumpsuit. His fingers grazed gold silk. He chuckled nervously and moved a hand to the new pocket within the interior breast of his tailcoat. He removed the contents and laid them on the bed. His last cigarette. A nondescript lighter. The password to the code room written on the corner of a Tapper’s napkin. These three things were the only possessions he had deemed essential enough to take with him. His homemade beer bottle string lights, portable radio, cassette tapes, checkered flag pillow, the steering wheel of his old car, all had to be left in the bowls of GCS. They were too big. Too tied to his old name. They were useless anyway, he didn't need old junk dragging him down. 

He took the cigarette between his teeth, lit the end, and let the smoke ease his rattled code. Tabaco lifted his insides, wafted from his lips, overpowered the smell of sugar. He breathed, out and in, tapped the ash off and kicked it under the bed. His softened gaze fell on the door to the bathroom. His personal, private bathroom. A luxury the greatest racer ever had yet to experience. A smile pinched the corners of his mouth. He slipped his possessions back into his tailcoat and locked himself in the new room.

The bathroom was pink and white, same as the bedroom, but it had more of the later color than the former. The floor was tiled with sugar cubes and the windows were made from frosted sugar glass, but the pink clawfoot tub was remarkably normal looking. Finally. He turned the wheel atop the gold faucet and watched crystal water flow. He frowned. This wasn't some strange candy water was it? He wasn't going to bathe in soda. He parked his cigarette between his first two fingers and leaned over the edge of the tub for a taste. Alright, it was just sparkling water. He could deal with that. He put the cigarette back between his lips, tossed in a bit of soap that promised a perfect bubble bath and stood aside to remove his clothes. 

He found something to recognise once his model was striped to its base. The skin may be different, but he still had the same bones, the same basic shape. The oversized head, short limbs, long feet, pudgy belly. He shifted the cigarette from the right corner of his mouth to the left and stuck a familiar pose; chest lifted, right hand gripping a (nonexistent) trophy, left hand giving the thumbs up.

‘Turbotastic!’

He almost said, catching the phrase before it left his mouth. His arms fell to his sides. The cigarette drooped on his lip. 

Careful, careful. You can’t keep anything from your old life. It’s gone. You're not getting any of it back. You're above it anyway, you've grown beyond. Throw off the old rags. 

He breathed smoke from his nose, shaking his head and muttering nonsense. He tapped cigarette ash into the sink, turned the faucet off and eased into his bubble bath. The soap’s label had been honest, some of the bubbles were nearly the size of his head. It was probably scented like something sweet, but he couldn't smell it through the tobacco. The water was what he expected; warm, fresh. Cleaner than him, almost certainly. 

He lay back. Soaking. Smoking his cigarette down to its filter. He started to hum to himself. 

“Hmm… hm hm hm hm, hm hm hm hm, hm hm h-”

The trumpets of the Turbotime overture played between his ears. The cheer of the plywood crowd. The way his fingers gripped the wheel, the way he’d turn it at the south bend, the dust he’d kick up, the way the twins would curse him when it got in their mouths, the way he’d laugh. They would beat him up after the race sometimes, when he t-boned them or made them spin out, but they always forgave him in time. If they had lived, would they have forgiven him for-

No, no no no stop stop STOP. He had to stop thinking about it, it had to disappear, he had to forget. He needed a distraction. He should have brought his casetes, more cigarettes. He threw a bar of soap at the service button beside the door. He missed, badly. He threw a larger bar and hit it this time. A dreary voice crackled over the intercom. 

“King Candy?”

“Sour Bill! I need music brought to my bathroom!”

A long pause. “Like… a band?” 

“No no! A radio, a walkman, something along those lines!” 

“Mmmm… we have a record player.” 

“That will do. Bring it in.”

“Yes sir. What kind of music do you want?”

He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Anything, something… something energetic. I need cheering up.” 

“Yes sir. Is there anything else you need?”

He took a final drag, kept the smoke in his body as long as he dared, then let it escape. A ghostly tower, part of his soul fading into the air. He sighed. 

“No, that will be all.”

End

Author's notes: this was my first time writing fanfiction since like, 2019. It was fun to write something short and in a very different setting than what I normally write in. :)

[heretherebedork]

Not sure if you'd ever watched the first bunch of episodes of "CityBoy_Log" (the faux-day-in-the-life-vlog BL series on YouTube), but it finally just resumed airing after a bit of a break, and holy crap-- it was impressive enough that the idol actor was making out as hard as he was previously, but this episode? I cannot believe I just witnessed A CURRENTLY-ACTIVE K-IDOL filming a (quite long) full-on mlm morning-after scene, complete with frank innuendo, hiding wrappers from the camera, and even a little (pixelated) 'nudity'! 👀 I honestly couldn't care less about sex scenes or the like (of any variety), but I was just really amazed that - especially in a series that purposefully uses real names and references to real-life events from his actual idol promotions (he even mentioned the new song that was recently released in real life in this very same episode) - he (and, more importantly, his company!) were willing to let him go that far... 👀 Wild times in K-idol land, man. 😅

Absolutely fascinating and wild. I hope it works out well! Admittedly not a show I've kept up with well but that is just... wild.

[imconfusedwithallofthis-blog]

Math is Hard

Update on my odissey of trying to improve on vector rendering techniques using conic intersections, and I've stumbled on a problem that I was not ready for... math is fucking hard >.<.

I mean, lets go back... my Idea seemed solid in my head, in my previous post I came to a conclusion that the default SDF font rendering technique was similar to describing a curve Ax + Bxy +Cy +D = 0, my idea was precalculating those parameters for each pixel so we no longer needed to use linear interpolation, and then we could edit te final result being mindifull and precise about how exacly it would scale. Since I would already compute the valuer per pixel i could just go the extra mile and do the full conic formula Ax^2 + Bxy +Cy^2 +Dx + Ey + F = 0.

So i got a few tests going, created a shader in Godot, to get subpixel coordinates and caculate conic values for each pixel.

The problem is that dealing with 6 abstract parameters per pixel is really hard, so i came up with the idea of doing a 3d representation of the conic and the plane. So we would manipulate directly the cone position, it would be something like this:

I would define a cone by a point P, a direction V and a linear coefficient a.

So here i go puting my sings on the paper and I quickly notice that I'm gonna fill alots of sheets to get to an answer and looking at my track record i'll surelly get something wrong .

So I got searching for something to manage those formulas for me.

Geogebra was kinda cool, but it fell short of allowing me to manipulate the formulas in the way that i wanted, i tried a few other scientific calculators.

I didn't like symbolab, somehow it felt too complicated and too simple, kind like it would be amazing if I was doing homework or had ne of the specific kind of problems it is designed to deal with.

In a fit of despair I tryied chatGPT, and I had the classic chatGPT experience, at the start i got amazed with how it gave me a result that looked like what i was expecting, but then I noticed that it halucinated new terms in my formula, and even when i got rid of those I had absolutelly no way to validate the result, and in the end I would have to redo all the work =.= , but yeah, I'm sure I'll find a use for it in a few years.

The one that I felt that was actually usefull was something called SageMath, it seems to be kind of a wrapper that unify dozens of python math librarires it gave me a way to decrlare variables, execute vector math with them, and manipulate the resulting expressions.

The result made me happy that i didn't follow trough with the plan of doing it all by hand. well, Lat this stage i still had to paste the expression to a text editor, separate the elments tha depend on x^2, xy, y^2,x, y, and 1, past it back to SageMath to simplify, then I could hack a small editor in Godot and:

well, i still have some tweaking to do to make the coordinate system play well with the one in godot, but a big part of the math is solved. well, if it usefull for anyone I'll link a pastebin with the resulting formula

hopefully I will keep making progress and this can become a tool for developers at some point :)

[lazyrants]

Trash Trouble (prod 209)

Original airdate: September 27, 2006

Story by Magnus Scheving

Written by Magnus Scheving, Mani Svavarrson, Noah Zachary

Directed by Sigvaldi J. Karason

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stalling

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Sarah Burgess, Ronald Binion

This episode better not be trash.

Sportacus is in his airship and he flips, lands on a button and turns to the screen. He tells the screen to look for Sportscandy and it zooms into an apple tree. The record for obtaining it is 59 seconds which Sportacus believes he can beat. So, he rides into town using the Sky Bike, and once he sees the apple tree, he throws a boomerang at it, and it slices the apple off the branch and it lands in his hands.

If this was realistic it'd have just landed in the grass. While going back to the ship, the boomerang flies back to him. Without even looking he catches it! Then he goes back in the ship - the record was 51 seconds! Anyways, back in the town after the intro.. Sportacus is literally lifting a bench. Stingy is carrying a bunch a trash in his car (including himself) when Milford comes to him. He tells Milford that he found some stuff that he doesn't want - and gives it to him. Trying to carry it, Milford falls down into Stingy's car wagon, sending Stingy flying into the air. Lucky Sportacus is there to catch him.

That doesn't get a 'thank you, Sportacus' from Stingy. He is only concerned about his car. So, Sportacus pushes the mayor out of the wagon, then he goes after Stingy's car. Then he checks on the mayor, takes the trash out his hand and throws it at Stingy's car - Well, I'd do that. I am NOT cut out to be a super hero. He throws it at a far-away garbage can and makes a perfect shot! The mayor compliments him on it, and he goes back to the airship. Stingy advises Milford 'not to do that again'.

Back at Pixel's house, the kids are watching an episode of a show they've already seen and Stephanie asks Pixel where the remote control is, but his room is such a mess he can't find it. Stephanie proposes the idea of cleaning up but everyone including Steph declines. Then Ziggy panics and tells everyone not to move - he lost his lollipop. Stephanie promises to get him a new one. Then Trixie wants to play outside, assuming it'll be cleaner there. So they all go. Ziggy is reluctant, but little does he know..

Robbie is in his lair, eating gooey sticky taffy, and THROWING THE WRAPPER on the floor - making a mountain of taffy wrappers. Anyways, it's still dirty outside (Steph found Ziggy's lollipop), so Pixel says that they can't play - and that cheers up Robbie. Imagine being such a jerk your happiness is at the cost of a kid's sadness. Anyways, he goes to look at the periscope, and questions how simple it can be. He says the answers to his problems is episode thirty - Greatest Hits.. hey, he said trash. No difference. Anyways, he has the usual disguise time except this time it's not funny - Too fifties, too sixties, too seventies, 'eh', then he finds the trashman costume.

Ta-taa! His plan is to fill a cannon with.. well.. trash, and launch it into LazyTown! HAHAHAHA! Anyways, he launches it to test if it works - but he forgot to open the hatch and it all comes crashing down. LOL. He's happy it works, completely ignoring the fact his lair is a mess.

Meanwhile, the kids aren't fond of Stingy's idea to not be a lazy slob in a dirty town, and they run away when he bends down to pick up gloves. 'All you need is some organization.' So, he runs back to Pixel's house. But all his efforts won't be needed, because Robbie's finally driven into town with the cannon. Meanwhile, the kids are playing a video game (you pick up a MUSHROOM with a LEEK..?) when Stingy walks in angrily. Trixie's excuse is that they don't know how to clean - which gets Stingy to start performing 'Clean up'. Since the town is pretty clean, the kids tell Milford to take a rest and Pixel takes him to his room to play video games. After the song ends, Steph looks for a place to put her rubbish.

Then Robbie comes up in his trash-man costume, saying he is the trashman and tells her to give the rubbish to him. No hesitation, she does it. Not as easy with Trixie who argues with him for ten seconds before giving up. She's not too sure about this. He sees some more trash and smiles. Then for some reason he notices some taffy in his mouth he didn't even know was there. So, he throws it onto the ground before going to pick up more rubbish. Meanwhile, Ziggy is.. licking a lollipop.

Stingy is NOT being a lazy kid, and he is working on his very own recycling system, then Robbie comes to mess it up. Eventually he convinces him with three questions - 'Do you stay up late at night studying trash?' 'Have you ever been to trash school?' 'Do you even have a Trash Man Badge?' As suspected, the answer to all these questions - is no. Then Robbie spits out more taffy. Slob. Stingy scrapes it up and flings it into a bin, telling Robbie to 'not do that agaen'. He says he'll be watching him. Robbie's so annoyed by this once he leaves, he throws his taffy wrapper on the ground and says 'I'll be watching YOU!!' Anyways, Ziggy finally finishes his lollipop.

He jumps off the bench, takes a bin, and steps on Robbie's taffy. He's stuck to the ground. (That would be hard to get off but it's possible!) Anyways, Pixel is still attempting to teach Milford to play the Leek game when the kids all come into the house, informing Milford and Pixel the town is tidy. But not for long - Robbie has finally got his cannon to work and he pulls the lever, making trash fireworks. Stingy comes in and makes an announcement - the town is tidy. Thanks, I heard. So, he pulls up the window to demonstrate and boy does he get a surprise.

Stingy thinks this is just a dream so he tells someone to pinch him - and Trixie does. Really hard. By now, Robbie's broken the lever. Stephanie realizes Ziggy's missing - so Stingy DIVES IN the trash to find him. That's no use because Sportacus' crystal beeps (Man, this sucks, he was only in three scenes of this episode..) and he flips into town. The kids watch on Pixel's computer as if it's a movie. Sportacus calls for a boomerang and throws it at the lever. The trashpour stops! Hooray! Trixie has the audacity to say 'We did it'.. little brat. Sportacus finds Ziggy and tries to pull him up but he can't because of that bing bang taffy. Stingy pops up from some trash and throws a scraper at Sportacus, and HE dives in.

For a while nobody can see him, but he pops up with Ziggy! I don't know how he scraped off the taffy - he couldn't possibly see under all the trash. Ziggy preaches - 'I'm free!' Robbie jumps from a wall to another wall and climbs on top. He says that this was a bad idea and he wobbles and falls into a trash can. (I love how Stefan screams when he's trying to talk. 'Maybe this trash wasn't such a good idea after aAAAAAUGGGH') Sportacus hears the lid drop, and goes to rescue him. He pulls him out but his hat/wig and moustache have fallen off. Then he goes back into the bin after everyone realizes it's him. I'd do the same. Stingy says that they have a little job to do, and in the span of a fourty second long 'Bing Bang' they've CLEARED THE TOWN.

Maybe it wouldn't be as dumb if they sang the extended version of Bing Bang, but, kids show. Robbie is sulking in the lair, and he throws yet another piece of taffy on the floor. He steps on the piece he JUST THREW. Did he forget about it 1 second after? Then he falls onto the ground in the Taffy Mountain (TM, TM).

He greets the trash. LOL!! So simple and so funny.

7/10 - Needed more Sportacus scenes, the slice in the middle of Clean Up was unneeded, and frankly, Trixie and Ziggy annoyed me in this one.

[not-radioshack]

Writeup: Forcing Minecraft to play on a Trident Blade 3D.

The first official companion writeup to a video I've put out!

So. Uh, yeah. Trident Blade 3D. If you've seen the video already, it's... not good. Especially in OpenGL.

Let's kick things off with a quick rundown of the specs of the card, according to AIDA64:

Trident Blade 3D - specs

Year released: 1999

Core: 3Dimage 9880, 0.25um (250nm) manufacturing node, 110MHz

Driver version: 4.12.01.2229

Interface: AGP 2x @ 1x speed (wouldn't go above 1x despite driver and BIOS support)

PCI device ID: 1023-9880 / 1023-9880 (Rev 3A)

Mem clock: 110MHz real/effective

Mem bus/type: 8MB 64-bit SDRAM, 880MB/s bandwidth

ROPs/TMUs/Vertex Shaders/Pixel Shaders/T&L hardware: 1/1/0/0/No

DirectX support: DirectX 6

OpenGL support: - 100% (native) OpenGL 1.1 compliant - 25% (native) OpenGL 1.2 compliant - 0% compliant beyond OpenGL 1.2 - Vendor string:

Vendor : Trident Renderer : Blade 3D Version : 1.1.0

And as for the rest of the system:

Windows 98 SE w/KernelEX 2019 updates installed

ECS K7VTA3 3.x

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ @ 1466MHz

512MB DDR PC3200 (single stick of OCZ OCZ400512P3) 3.0-4-4-8 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)

Hitachi Travelstar DK23AA-51 4200RPM 5GB HDD

IDK what that CPU cooler is but it does the job pretty well

And now, with specs done and out of the way, my notes!

As mentioned earlier, the Trident Blade 3D is mind-numbingly slow when it comes to OpenGL. As in, to the point where at least natively during actual gameplay (Minecraft, because I can), it is absolutely beaten to a pulp using AltOGL, an OpenGL-to-Direct3D6 "wrapper" that translates OpenGL API calls to DirectX ones.

Normally, it can be expected that performance using the wrapper is about equal to native OpenGL, give or take some fps depending on driver optimization, but this card?

The Blade 3D may as well be better off like the S3 ViRGE by having no OpenGL ICD shipped in any driver release, period.

For the purposes of this writeup, I will stick to a very specific version of Minecraft: in-20091223-1459, the very first version of what would soon become Minecraft's "Indev" phase, though this version notably lacks any survival features and aside from the MD3 models present, is indistinguishable from previous versions of Classic. All settings are at their absolute minimum, and the window size is left at default, with a desktop resolution of 1024x768 and 16-bit color depth.

(Also the 1.5-era launcher I use is incapable of launching anything older than this version anyway)

Though known to be unstable (as seen in the full video), gameplay in Minecraft Classic using AltOGL reaches a steady 15 fps, nearly triple that of the native OpenGL ICD that ships with Trident's drivers the card. AltOGL also is known to often have issues with fog rendering on older cards, and the Blade 3D is no exception... though, I believe it may be far more preferable to have no working fog than... well, whatever the heck the Blade 3D is trying to do with its native ICD.

See for yourself: (don't mind the weirdness at the very beginning. OBS had a couple of hiccups)

Later versions of Minecraft were also tested, where I found that the Trident Blade 3D follows the same, as I call them, "version boundaries" as the SiS 315(E) and the ATi Rage 128, both of which being cards that easily run circles around the Blade 3D.

Version ranges mentioned are inclusive of their endpoints.

Infdev 1.136 (inf-20100627) through Beta b1.5_01 exhibit world-load crashes on both the SiS 315(E) and Trident Blade 3D.

Alpha a1.0.4 through Beta b1.3_01/PC-Gamer demo crash on the title screen due to the animated "falling blocks"-style Minecraft logo on both the ATi Rage 128 and Trident Blade 3D.

All the bugginess of two much better cards, and none of the performance that came with those bugs.

Interestingly, versions even up to and including Minecraft release 1.5.2 are able to launch to the main menu, though by then the already-terrible lag present in all prior versions of the game when run on the Blade 3D make it practically impossible to even press the necessary buttons to load into a world in the first place. Though this card is running in AGP 1x mode, I sincerely doubt that running it at its supposedly-supported 2x mode would bring much if any meaningful performance increase.

Lastly, ClassiCube. ClassiCube is a completely open-source reimplementation of Minecraft Classic in C, which allows it to bypass the overhead normally associated with Java's VM platform. However, this does not grant it any escape from the black hole of performance that is the Trident Blade 3D's OpenGL ICD. Not only this, but oddly, the red and blue color channels appear to be switched by the Blade 3D, resulting in a very strange looking game that chugs along at single-digits. As for the game's DirectX-compatible version, the requirement of DirectX 9 support locks out any chance for the Blade 3D to run ClassiCube with any semblance of performance. Also AltOGL is known to crash ClassiCube so hard that a power cycle is required.

Interestingly, a solid half of the accelerated pixel formats supported by the Blade 3D, according to the utility GLInfo, are "render to bitmap" modes, which I'm told is a "render to texture" feature that normally isn't seen on cards as old as the Blade 3D. Or in fact, at least in my experience, any cards outside of the Blade 3D. I've searched through my saved GLInfo reports across many different cards, only to find each one supporting the usual "render to window" pixel format.

And with that, for now, this is the end of the very first post-video writeup on this blog. Thank you for reading if you've made it this far.

I leave you with this delightfully-crunchy clip of the card's native OpenGL ICD running in 256-color mode, which fixes the rendering problems but... uh, yeah. It's a supported accelerated pixel format, but "accelerated" is a stretch like none other. 32-bit color is supported as well, but it performs about identically to the 8-bit color mode--that is, even worse than 16-bit color performs.

At least it fixes the rendering issues I guess.

[jtgunner]

New let's play video is up on my YouTube channel! This time I'm playing Classic Sport Driving for PC! I've been paying attention to this indie racing game for some time, and the devs were kind enough to give me a Steam key. So let's check it out!

WATCH IT HERE: https://youtu.be/scuYYzWzmXY

[xisadorapurlowx]

Jai's Story: Chapter 1

In London there is a building. This building is about a century old, originally made for public housing. 

In the basement of this building, all is quiet, with the faint exception of humming lights, clicking of a keyboard and the sound of the Undertale track playing softly on a speaker.

As we go into the basement, we discover there is a group of people living underneath the flats. 

There are five cots in a separate room, under the London streets, all of which is decorated to match the person who sleeps in the cot. The room is littered with gothic novels, a rubix cube, a deck of cards along with an array of other items. In the back corner of the room, there was an array of posters: One with a picture of an ogre and a donkey, one with a picture of a pixelated young boy, holding a sword above his head, light shining down upon his cast of monsters from another world.

Another poster had a picture of an infamous blue hedgehog, standing beside his dark and brooding fold, black with red spines and a frown on his face. The last poster, was a picture of a man in a porkpie hat, sunglasses and moustache with his young protege, dressed in baggy jeans, wearing a beanie with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. They stood in the middle of a desert next to a camper van.

In the main room, is a large table, housing fast food wrappers, an unfinished blank puzzle and a large computer, hooked up to a large server that blinks and whirs in the corner of the room next to a small kitchen, with white tiles, white cabinets and a sink with a drying board.

Sat at the computer is a man with umber skin, his hair is grown out as he stares at the screen vacantly. 

Jai couldn’t remember the last time he went out. He hasn’t changed his clothes in days, they were beginning to smell of B.O and even the rest of the group were commenting on it. He saw very little reason to go and change them however.

All he could do was type away at a keyboard, shut down security cameras, make sure that his friends were never seen or erase the footage if that wasn’t possible. Sometimes, he’d just take a recording and place the timestamp in the top corner to fake the footage. It gave him more work to do other than just sitting at a computer all day, letting his mind rot.

Doing this job was like playing a very dull video game to him. He tried to think about it like an indie horror game where you were tasked with watching security cameras at a fast food chain with animatronic characters. But it just wasn’t the same.

This was the home of the vigilante group: UND3RGR0UND.

The thin vertical line at the top left hand corner of the screen, blinks at him. The man sighed as he took his hands away from the keyboard and mouse, giving up on what he was working on. He leans back into his chair and looks around at the table. 

I should clean this up, he thought, but made no action to do so. He pursed his lips and then stood, walking around to the blank puzzle that had been abandoned by his friend. He took one look at it and then began placing the pieces into the puzzle. 

He finished the puzzle quickly and then there was nothing to do again. 

The man returned back to his computer and began to start up a video game when a beep came from his messaging system.

He assumed it was from the others, who were on their way back. But they never normally just outright text him. They normally give him a thumbs up on the security cameras and then he wipes the cameras of their existence.

Once the message was opened, the man felt his heart drop.

Hello Jai :) 

Jai’s eyes widen at the screen and sits down, beginning to type away furiously at his computer. He checked everything, the security, his friends' tracking devices, everything. Nothing was amiss.

Jai quickly typed back to the person who had somehow gotten through every security measure he set in place. 

Who are you? How do you know my name?

The person typed back:

That’s not important. Let me start by saying that I don’t mean any harm, I won’t reveal your location or your friends real identities.

I understand that together, you are the group UND3RGR0UND. I need some help from you and your friends.

Jai furrows his eyebrows and typed back: 

Listen, if you want our help, you are going to have to refer to me by my codename: Isaac.

His code name came from a video game series about hunting down and killing vampires. 

The person replied,

Ohh, I understand. That’s really cool, like a spy film! 

Anyway, I need some help uncovering any evidence for a murder that happened around sixteen years ago. The man who was the main suspect for the murder was never convicted and I know for a fact it was him who did it.

Jai furrowed his eyebrows. His group never normally did this sort of thing. They were more about stealing items that didn’t belong to certain groups and returning them or finding information related to politicians for smear campaigns. Investigating cold cases is not in their job descriptions. Nevertheless he replied. 

Tell me the name of the murderer and I‘ll talk it over with the others. What are you paying?

A reply came up almost immediately.

Antonio Angelico. I’ll pay whatever price you set.

Jai frowned. He’d heard that name before.

Where did that name ring a bell? For a super genius such as himself, he should know or remember who this person was.

He shutdown the message box and began his search. He started through the dark web, his eyes jumping about the screen as he worked, copying and pasting important information he came across into a document.  

Antonio Angelico, middle aged (Although he didn’t look it), widowed, single father of one child who was about to turn eighteen.

The more Jai looked, he found everything this man did infinitely more suspicious as he went. 

Apart from basic information on his person, there was barely anything else about him. And that was on the dark web, where there was information about nearly everyone and everything - from hiring contract killers to snuff films. This was strange.

Finally, he happened upon some FBI files and his stomach dropped. 

The man who he had been asked to investigate was Antonio Angelico, descended from the Angelico bloodline. His family had a history of organised crime going all the way back to the fifteen hundreds.

Jai stared at his screen, uncertain of what to do. The team might not want to take on the assignment if it included someone like… like that. He went deeper into the files and found his wife, Eliza Angelico.

“I knew I’d heard his name before.” Jai muttered to himself. 

Eliza Angelico, pop star of the early two-thousands. She made music full of energy, the kind that made you want to get up and dance until your feet bled and you dropped, exhausted. 

Jai went to read on more, before the door burst open.

“Isaac! We’re back!” Titan called as she walked through the door. She smiled at him as the rest of the group trailed in after her: Goldie, Tim and Lithop. 

Titan was a woman of short stature with topaz skin, her dark hair loose and floating around her head like a cloud. She had a brilliant smile, great for charming information out of unsuspecting people. Her codename, Titan, was derived from the moon of Saturn, its biggest moon. She has a way of taking over the room when she walks into.

Tim threw a duffle bag on the table, on top of the puzzle Jai had finished a few minutes before. 

Jai pursed his lips in irritation as Tim grinned at him, his long black hair draped loosely around his shoulders. 

Tim was a tall man with tawny skin, wide eyed with long dark hair that hung around his face loose. Tim was nicknamed after a character from an internet series.

“Careful!” Goldie warned, “That goblet is over a thousand years old.”

Goldie: Pasty pale, lanky and blond. Titan once said that his hair looked like it could have been spun from gold: Godlie just stuck after that. 

“It’s just an old cup, what does it matter if it comes in a few pieces? It might get damaged in transport anyway.” Tim shrugged and opened the bag, pulling out a cup wrapped in bubble wrap, “This was certainly not easy, Lithop could barely make it through the security without being spotted.” 

Lithop doesn’t say anything in response. Pale like Goldie, with a sharp black bob cut. If you saw her in the nineties, you’d have assumed she was Mia Wallace.

Jai remembered the first time that Lithop seemed to be the most talkative. It was a late night in their room, Jai had just finished building a projector and the group were talking about what to watch when Lithop spoke up, “I know, what about Daisy Brown?” And after that, she wouldn’t shut up for the rest of the evening.

The name Lithop, came from the series she was talking about.

Jai smiled at the thought.

“Which is more of a reason to be careful with it.” Lithop took the bubble wrap and carefully examined it, “Luckily, it’s not damaged, even with Tims’ recklessness.” She gave him a glare, which Tim seemed to ignore, pulled out a deck of playing cards and started to play with them.

The cards flurried between his hands as Titan and Goldie opened a steel case box and placed the cup inside.

“And back to Rome you go.” Titan shut the box, clipping its locks shut. 

“I’m glad you guys got it.” Jai smiled, “I think I have another mission for us.” 

“Already?” Lithop tilted her head to the side.

Jai hit print on the document open on his screen. 

The printer in the corner of the room sprung to life and printed off the information Jai had gathered. The print outs were passed out around the room as he explained, “I got a message from an anon who wants us to investigate Antonio Angelico for a murder. Looking into it, it looks like his wife was found dead in a river in Birmingham.” 

“Antonio Angelico…” Titan repeated as she scanned the sheet in front of her.

Jai held his breath. He had left out the fact that the man was in the mafia on the paper. He remembered his mother singing along to Eliza Angelico’s song and how much she enjoyed the music.

There was something fishy about her death, he always knew it. The day the death of the popstar was announced, everyone conspiracied on what could have happened. Maybe she was drunk and just fell into the river. Maybe someone had tied her up and thrown her in there. The coroner's report was inconclusive as to what caused her death. The whole case was just weird.

Jai rarely took personal interest in these cases, but this time, he now had to know. This was different from his regular jobs he got. 

There was a burning need in him to bring criminals to justice for their crimes. He used to think he would make a good police officer but was turned off by the thought. After digging through Scotland Yard files at four AM and discovering the many cover-ups they had for officers who had been caught in hate groups, for beating their wives and abusing children. Who wants to be part of a group like that?

He had to find out what happened to the popstar. His own way.

“Wasn’t he the guy who married that popstar?” Titan frowned and looked up at Jai, “And they want us to investigate the murder?”

“Essentially.” Jai went over to his computer and typed in the name again, finding his address, “I thought that we could just go in and have a snoop around his home and see what we can find.” 

“Did they offer money?” Tim asked, starting to make a card tower on top of the paper Jai gave him. 

“They said however much we charge, they’ll pay it.” Jai explained.

The group looked at each other, “I’m curious.” Lithop spoke up, “I can get us in and out without being seen.” 

“I could cause some kind of distraction.” Goldie looked up from the paper at Jai, “An explosion of some kind or…” 

“I think we’ve had enough of your explosions, Goldie.” Tim snorted.

“Remember the night we went to Buckingham Palace?” Lithop added.

Goldie buried his head in his hands, “you don’t have to remind me.” 

Jai frowned, “Did you guys blow up a section of Buckingham Palace?” He’d never heard of this before. He didn’t even see it on security cameras. Not even in the news, but then again, the government wouldn’t want the general public to know that Buckingham Palace had been attacked.

“Don’t worry about it Jai, you wouldn’t have seen it.” Tim waved a dismissive hand.

“Yeah, I don’t think we want a repeat of last time.” Titan furrowed her eyebrows, “Maybe you could just trigger some kind of alarm? Does he have any other locations we could use to lure him out of the house?” 

“I have some concerns.” Tim returned to his serious countenance. “This so-called ‘murder’ occurred… sixteen years ago? Who’s to say we’re going to find anything? He’s probably already destroyed all the evidence.” 

Jai sighed, “C’mon Tim, they said they would be willing to pay as much as we charge. Even if there’s nothing, we did as they asked.” 

Tim paused and stopped building his card tower, admiring his work briefly. “Alright, it sounds easy enough.” 

“What about you Titan?” Jai looked at her. 

Titan bit her lip, looking over the information. “I mean, we just have to be nosy, right? And then if we don’t find anything, we get out and that’s it. Easy job.” She nodded, “Okay, I’m in.” 

[jcmarchi]

Project Jarvis leak reveals Google’s vision for the next-gen Gemini

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/project-jarvis-leak-reveals-googles-vision-for-the-next-gen-gemini/

Project Jarvis leak reveals Google’s vision for the next-gen Gemini

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Google has big hopes for AI, as evidenced by the consistent improvements to its Gemini chatbot in recent months.

Google briefly introduced its vision for a “universal AI agent” aimed to help users with daily tasks at the I/O developer conference in May, hinting that elements of the technology could be incorporated into Gemini soon. Recent insights from The Information have shed more light on its initiative, known internally as Project Jarvis.

Project Jarvis represents a major advancement in AI for Google. Unlike traditional voice assistants that respond to user commands, Jarvis is designed to perform tasks autonomously, navigate the web, and make independent decisions. For instance, Jarvis could manage emails, conduct research, and even schedule appointments, reducing the cognitive load involved in managing digital tasks.

Jarvis’s core objective is to revolutionise how users interact with their devices. Rather than serving as a passive tool awaiting commands, Jarvis would actively engage in real-time task management, positioning it as an AI partner rather than a utility.

For legal professionals, Jarvis could review large volumes of case documents and organise them by relevance, streamlining workflow. Similarly, marketers could use Jarvis to integrate data from numerous sources, allowing them to focus more on strategy and less on administrative work.

The evolution of AI agents such as Jarvis may have an impact on specific job roles. Tasks formerly performed by entry-level administrative personnel may come within the capabilities of AI assistants. However, the shift is likely to generate opportunities in roles that require critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence—qualities not easily replicated by AI.

Industry observers anticipate a shift toward higher-value work, with people concentrating less on routine tasks and more on areas that promote innovation and strategic decision-making.

Privacy and security considerations

Project Jarvis raises significant privacy and security issues due to its ability to access sensitive information such as emails and documents. To prevent unauthorised access, Google will most likely deploy enhanced encryption, strict user restrictions, and, maybe, multi-factor authentication. Cybersecurity will also be essential to keep Jarvis secure from external threats.

Surveys indicate that, while AI holds considerable appeal, privacy remains a top concern for many users. Experts recommend measures such as a transparent privacy dashboard that enables users to monitor and control Jarvis’s access to data. To build trust and drive the adoption of AI agents like Jarvis, Google will need to strike a balance between convenience and robust privacy protections.

Enhancing user experience and accessibility

Beyond productivity, Jarvis has the potential to improve accessibility for a wide range of users. For those with disabilities, Jarvis could read web content aloud or use voice commands to assist with form navigation. For less tech-savvy users, Jarvis could simplify digital interactions by handling tasks like locating files or managing settings.

Jarvis could also assist in planning a busy workday or booking a trip by actively supporting task management. Project Jarvis aims to reimagine AI as a supportive digital partner, enhancing the user experience beyond that of a conventional tool.

(Photo by Igor Bumba)

See also: Google advances mobile AI in Pixel 9 smartphones

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: artificial intelligence, Google, machine learning

[ueberdemnebelmeerresources]

android apps masterlist

Universal Android Debloater GUI, for non-rooted devices

Fossify: privacy-focused FOSS apps (i.e. gallery, file manager, calendar, contacts, messages)

F-DROID CLIENTS

droid-ify, with material UI

Neo Store

FILE EXPLORERS

MiXplorer SD, FTP, Lan, Cloud and other storage explorers

Material Files

MANGA/ANIME (tachiyomi forks)

mihon: comic reader

aniyomi: reader + player

MUSIC PLAYERS

[offline] AIMP

[offline] Musicolet

[offline] Auxio

[offline] Symphony (N.B.: clunky queue & playlist management)

[offline] Gramophone (N.B.: clunky queue & playlist management)

[offline] Metro i.e. de-googled RetroMusic

[offline] Oto Music

[streaming, yt music] ViMusic ∗ SimpMusic ∗ rimusic ∗ Musify ∗ Namida

VIDEO PLAYERS

MX Player, plays DVD files too

mpv player

[stream from cloud] Bubbleupnp

VIDEO DL

Seal

YTDLnis: video/audio downloader from more than 1000 websites using yt-dlp for Android 7.0+

HOME MEDIA SERVER UTILITIES

Bookcamp: audiobooks for Plex

Symfonium: music player

MAPS & TRAVEL PLANNERS

google maps webview wrapper. blocks access to google trackers (navigation is not available, only turn-by-turn direction list)

osm2gmaps: convert OpenStreetMap-based application links into Google Maps, Apple Maps or other links and viceversa

[OSM-based] OsmAnd ∗ Organic Maps ∗ MapFactor Navigator

Mapy.cz: maps with elevation profiles for hikers & cyclists, offline

iOverlander

öffi for public transport (coverage here)

[🇯🇵] Japan Travel by NAVITIME ∗ Gourmet Navigator

MISC

Pixel Camera mod

[cross-platform alternatives to AirDrop] Xender ∗ LocalSend

Material Notes: offline notes app

Nunti: RSS reader

Shelter: isolate and run multiple instances of apps, depends on the Work Profile feature of the Android system

Quikshort: adds shortcuts to home page

AdAway: ad blocker

aliucord: discord app mod (which is against the Discord ToS) with plugin system, no root needed

[flaccidpancake789]

Digital Image Overview

Digital images are an important part of media, with many aspects that need to be considered when being used. There are many web formats, wrappers and codecs’, export settings, and the many ways tools are used to edit and manipulate images, along with many copyright laws that that artist will need to know when creating their own work, or using/appropriating others' work. 

Image and video formats are used to create the structure and organisation of a file's data, different formats are used for different kinds of files, like videos, images or text documents. They determine how the data is encoded and presented to a viewer, (What is a File Format? & Can It Affect the File Size? | Lenovo US n.d.)for instance an individual would not be able to view a video if the format was an mp3, as the mp3 format doesn’t include images and only audio, making it better for music or other sound audio based media. Although this individual could change the format by changing the wrapper which appears at the end of the name of the file from mp3 to mp4 which is commonly used for videos, this will convert the format using a program called the codecs which all computers have. Everyone is able to change the codecs which essentially decodes/encodes the file into the new format, allowing it to be viewed differently. Commonly used formats for particular files include; mp4 and MOV for videos, PDF and DOCX for text documents and, JPEG and PNG for images. Using the wrong format such as JPEG for a video will cause the data to be encoded wrong and the file won’t open. Additionally when downloading an image or video off of broadcast platforms there will be different export settings that means depending on what is downloaded, there will be certain things that the video will be downloaded with that the user can’t control. Such as the format it is downloaded in, image crop and colour space which will be changed around to fit, which is required for the website. For instance youtube is always downloaded in mp4 due to them being youtube videos, and comes with many different options for frame sizes while instagram has 4:5 image crop, and maximum 1080 pixels wide, (Jackson 2024) and can only be downloaded in JPEG, this are used to not only give the user the best version on the file they are exporting but also allows others to make a link between that file and where it was downloaded from. Overall these aspects of files and digital data, allow users with better experiences when downloading and organising sources. 

Moreover, when artist releases imagines they usually edit these images to make them even more palatable for an audience or use other images or sources online to create something new, this is done with editing softwares, such as photoshop and premiere pro to manipulate an image, for instance photoshop can be used to sharpen an artists photography work bringing out black and lighter colours or changing the colour intensity to fit the vibe they are trying to give off to an audience or allow them to edit existing photos such as taking parts of them for something new, such as using shapes and shadows from an existing image and combining it with there image to create meaning. This can be one for premier pro and video media also, as it allows creators to add down bites and text to the video along with different backgrounds if greenscreen is used they can take images to be used as new backgrounds to give certain effects this allows further creativity and higher quality art and content. However artists must be well informed when using other images, sound bites, music or videos from the internet as they need to make sure these things fall under fair use and copyright law. Artists need to be cautious when using others' work, as they could be stealing, they must make sure it either falls under fair use, “​​Fair use is a statutory provision that provides that a use of copyright material does not infringe copyright if it is ‘fair’' (What is fair use? 2013) or that they ask possession from the original creator to use their work, artists can also check the copyright as the media they are using may come under creative commons meaning they are allowed to use it under the specifications that come with the media they are using. Additionally larger companies such as video game companies can licence other works for example the game Dead By Daylight licences different slasher characters such as Micheal Myers and Chucky meaning they pay original licence holders to use their property. Thus creators are able to manipulate images and to create new pieces of content but must be vigilant when using others' art to make sure to obey copyright laws and regulations.

In summary there are many aspects a creator must think of when creating content like images and videos, knowing what formats they want to use and how to change and manipulate the work the way they want it without ruining the files while also making sure making everything ready to upload into streaming platforms, or exporting properly and being careful to keep within copyright laws while doing all these things.

[everygame]

Break Thru 

Developed/Published by: Data East Released: 1986 Completed: 18/04/2023 Completion: Got to the end by feeding credits. Version Played: Retro Classix / MAME Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

Stop! Before you read this, you should know that you can only order a physical exp. 2601 from my ko-fi shop until May 1st! Remember, as a subscriber, you get 35% off instantly!

You may have seen recently that the “Retro Classix” line of Data East re-issues, available on GOG and Steam, are being delisted at the end of April, and wondered “should I get those before they’re gone?” Well, I’m here to answer this, because I took a cursory look at them, downloaded the one that I think is earliest in the Data East chronology (Express Raider might be earlier?) and gave it a shot.

No. You don’t want to get any of them. Break Thru is probably the worst retro release I’ve ever played! To be clear, I’m not talking about the quality of the original game (which I’ll get to–it’s no great shakes, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever played) but the release, which is bare-bones to the extreme. Buy this and you get the arcade rom… and a 3D arcade wrapper that makes it feel like you’re playing it in Grand Theft Auto 3. You can, thankfully, turn that off, but what you can’t turn off is terrible smeary graphic smoothing, and you–at best–have to mitigate it by also using the included CRT filter. Now, I’m not a fan of “perfect pixel”–I prefer even a weak attempt at a CRT filter, usually–but the one here is nasty (maybe even worse than the Astro City Mini) with horrible curvature and a general dullness.

And that’s… it. There’s no save states, no dip switches or settings, nothing else. You'd be better off being handed a zip file with the rom in it.

I’m not entirely sure of the provenance of this series of Data East reissues. Before the Retro Classix line these were all included in the similarly weird “Johnny Turbo’s Arcade” series for Nintendo Switch, which all seem to have been yanked from the eShop at the end of October 2023 (which is after the Retro Classix versions were put on sale.)  I assume that whoever has the Data East rights has been selling them off cheaply but with limited and non-exclusive rights, which is why you get things as tossed off as this, but it’s interesting to note that the Johnny Turbo’s Arcade releases managed to have better graphical options and save states, so they at least did the bare minimum.

(Though it gets odder. The Retro Classix versions were also on sale on Switch until November 2023, from the same publisher as the Johnny Turbo’s Arcade series, “Golem Entertainment” though they all have the same crappy emulator wrapper as this release, even though the at least slightly better Johnny Turbo’s Arcade versions were already there. Confusing!)

Anyway. You now know to let the Retro Classix line go off gently into that good night in the hope that the next suckers to buy a job lot of Data East releases goes to the effort of putting them out nicely (I’m looking at you, Digital Eclipse). But should you play Break Thru anyway? The answer to that is… also no!

Gradius was released in early 1985 and set the benchmark, and this doesn’t even reach the lofty heights of Sega Ninja. A side-scrolling shooter with five levels, the “twist” here is that you’re driving a car, though the stand-out thing about the car is that it does two things that cars don’t normally do: it shoots bullets and it can jump, awkwardly, into the air. The latter quirk is supposed to be the highlight–as you now have to leap over obstacles, and can even leap to land your car on enemies and squash them.

There’s one power-up (a three way shot that’s generally on a timer, but sometimes it isn’t) and a small number of enemies. Shockingly, there are no bosses.

The thing about Break Thru, really, is that it… sucks. There’s little to no variety, the enemies don’t do anything much (only a few have interesting attack patterns) and the controls feels so bad that I actually had to test this release against the MAME release just to make sure the emulation wasn’t fucked up here. I mean, to be fair, the emulation could be fucked up on MAME as well, but the car in Break Thru controls horribly. You can speed up, but it feels like it makes everything on the screen speed up, and there’s no sense of friction. You get the idea–that you’re supposed to speed up to dodge bullets or enemies–but it just doesn’t seem to work.

In fact, once you know the levels, the majority of Break Thru is absolutely trivial, with the only speed bumps the few enemies that you only seem to survive randomly. There’s a helicopter that I couldn’t kill that you just need to be lucky to leap past, and a gauntlet of small tanks in the final level that almost goes full bullet hell.

I guess there’s actually a wee animation at the end to make this feel worth beating, but without a final boss or anything it feels wildly anti-climactic. Everything about this, really, is just very, very bad.

Will I ever play it again? If there really is a Digital Eclipse Data East collection I’ll boot it up… once.

Final Thought: Something else a bit strange: there were 17 Johnny Turbo’s Arcade releases, but only 12 “Retro Classix” releases, which is why I picked up Break Thru and not Shoot Out (I think the earliest of the Johnny Turbo releases.) I have spent too long thinking about this!!!

Hi. Thank you so much for being a supporter. I'd like to ask you for one more favour--could you check out the fundraiser my best friend Steven is running to help cover travel insurance costs? I know there are so many deserving causes, but Steven has a stage 4 brain tumour and it would mean the world to me if you considered donating, or sharing his page, to help make his remaining time the best ever.