KneeOfJustice99

1-1's looking more like Sand Hill right now...

The funny thing about Trump's plan to supposedly bring back Alcatraz as a prison is that I can say with near-certainty that it isn't going to work nearly as well as it did in the 60s - not because of something like new technology or whatever, but because some Alcatraz-interested historian is inevitably going to ask Trump "are the showers going to have heating?"

Trump, wanting to appear "tough on crime", will say something like "I, uh, um, uh, crime is, uh, bad, and, America, America won't pay for criminal's heating, nope, no way", and everyone will cheer because Lord Trump Has Spoken, and the heating will be turned off so all of the prisoners of Alcatraz have to have cold showers, and then Alcatraz will be ruined.

(One of Alcatraz's main claims to fame was being one of the first American prisons to have heated showers, making it near-impossible for prisoners to acclimatize to the cold waters of the surrounding ocean in order to attempt escape by swimming.)

funny thought thst ring fit is probably one of the biggest new ips coming out of the switch era almost exclusively because it would be so funny for ring fit 2 to come out (you need to buy a second ring for the joycon 2 because the first one isn't compatible)

...seems as fused terms like MetroidVania have been in vogue for around 15 years, I may as well propose my own. Note that despite their similarities, these terms are not interchangeable, and have different meanings.

• Kinoludo - Games that are masterpieces in a similar sense to cinema. Describes elements like visuals, tone, cinematography, etc. where applicable. (Note that this shouldn't be compared directly to cinema, just in a similar way, considering things like hardware limitations.) Think of it as "kino" (cinema) "ludo" (game).
• Ludokino - Games that are masterpieces specifically in the context of being games. Primarily describes gameplay, game design, and related concepts, but can also describe how other elements like sound and visuals interact with gameplay. Think of this more like "ludo" (game) "kino" (cinema, albeit in the less literal artistic sense, ie "this is cinema".)

So, for example; Metal Gear Solid could be considered kinoludo (in light of cinematography), Sokoban could be considered ludokino (in light of its game design), and Mirror's Edge could be considered both (meshing both.)

I expect these to be added to the Oxford English Dictionary by 2027.

It's so cool that every time I find myself thinking "damn, it could be fun for this concept to exist in a platfighter", it turns out to already exist in Rivals. Like, damn, I think people are sleeping on a lot of the base characters over there and how their unique mechanics work, because it's genuinely interesting stuff. (Of course, a lot of it is adapted from more traditional fighters, but that's still fascinating in itself.)

genius idea alert (please note that this makes me smarter than both atari and bandai) - video game controller that features four face buttons on both sides in place of face buttons and a d-pad, allowing for left-handed and right-handed configurations without having to physically turn the controller upside down (simply using either a menu option or even a physical switch in the controller)

something something two nickels. though the wonderswan at least occasionally had you hold it vertically instead which i suppose gives it a leg up on the lynx. makes emulating rockman & forte 2 a pain though lol

With more info on how MKW's character selection screen works having been released, I'm genuinely curious as to if there's been some mass exodus of in-house UI/UX designers at Nintendo, or at least anyone to playtest it.

I'm sorry but the whole "scroll through one MILLION options" is getting silly. Why aren't character costumes placed under each character? Why not have smaller profile images? Like, I get that it might not be possible to show every character in one screen, but there's workarounds for this. Don't even get me started on the fact that it takes twice as long if you're in multiplayer.

I feel like I'd be thinking about this less if it weren't for the fact that this exact issue has been a sticking point of mine in the newer Zelda titles, and I'm genuinely getting curious as to if there's some kind of throughline here. Maybe some mysterious internal mandate that says menus should have no basic categorisation options and should take twice as long as they reasonably need to?

It just seems weird, and really backwards for a company that's ostensibly supposed to be one of the more forward-thinking out there. Idk, that's just me. Can't wait for Smash 7 to have another horizontally scrolling menu that takes 20 minutes to get to Ryu Hayabusa and Goku.

Okay, I know I'm a huge hypocrite for this, but; if Gilgamesh (Babylonian Castle Saga) were to be in a fighting game, I think it'd be really funny for his main "gimmick" to be that certain, seemingly random sequences of actions taken in a round will result in him gaining a buff of some kind which lasts until the match's end - be it to attack, defence, speed or otherwise - and then have there be 50-something sequences that are just straight up never explained, some of which require really specific elements like particular stages or opponents.

Yes, I know it'd be awful and horrible and would fly right in the face of the whole "simplicity" thing I tend to lean into with these things, and it leans way too far into "source accuracy" in a stupid way to be viable, but counterpoint; it'd be really funny.

Fun Smash trivia quiz because I'm bored (but this one should be a lot easier than others I've posted in the past) - when a character performs a parry or receives their Final Smash in Ultimate, there's a little glint in their character portrait's eye on the HUD.

There are technically four playable characters who are exceptions to this rule; who are they, and where does the glint appear for each of them?

Probably a bad take but here goes; I don't think Ganondorf's moveset still containing Falcon DNA, even to the extent of making him a "Falcon clone", is actually a bad thing in a vacuum. Rather, I think he's an example of being caught between Smash's two distinct design philosophies - the older "we'll try and make it feel like this character, but take creative liberties to make it more fun/easier to develop", and "it needs to be as accurate to the source as possible to celebrate its legacy". Ultimately I think he's fun to play so really I'd argue that's more important than "representing the Zelda series", but admittedly that's just because I don't think going for absolute source accuracy is really a smart idea when so many genuinely greatly designed elements of the Smash series came about from a combination of some respect for the source material but also a willingness to adapt and change it as needed for the new environment (and some of the more clumsily designed elements of the series have come about from that desire for "source accuracy", like Mega Man's characterisation or the increasingly complex fighter-specific gimmicks which I don't think is a coincidence)

I wonder how the guy who shouted "ICE CLIMBERS?" during the E3 2001 Melee reveal is doing these days? Sm4sh must have been hard for them...

i always find it tragically hilarious when new studies come out about how playing video games is ruining your hands, eyes, posture, back, ears, and brain, because to memory, i've never come across a study into another sedentary activity performed in front of a computer screen for extended periods of time; office work. funny how that works isn't it. it's almost like we've been socially conditioned to view one activity as morally correct due to it consisting of "work" and the other as morally wrong because its an activity associated with leisure or something

On a more positive note;



Came across this recently while aimlessly trawling around Wikipedia (surely it's not just me who does that?). It's honestly a pretty interesting way of framing the whole "retro game collection" concept, and it's also a neat way of making a game about Game Center CX given what kind of a series that actually is.

Thing is, while it's presented as a minigame challenge collection centred around fictional games from the 80s (think a little like NES Remix), it's also unique in that it includes the "entire games" as bonus content (unlike NES Remix. Grr.) - but then also fully-featured manuals as they would have been printed in the era, and even issues of a fictionalised gaming magazine from the era, featuring interviews from the developers and whatnot (as well as the bottom screen featuring yourself and Arino characterised as children in the 1980s, sharing rumours about the games as an additional information source.)

Then, as I keep reading, something jumps out as being familiar.



Technically, I came across this game years ago (by technicality) through Haggle Man, who was also featured in Super Mario Bros. Crossover (a pretty cool Flash game featuring different NES-era characters with their own mechanics going through SMB1 and Lost Levels) as a skin for Ryu Hayabusa. Kinda wild to realise years after the fact that this character I always just assumed to have been from a real, presumably Japan-exclusive series, was made for a fictionalised series in his own right.

...I find this kind of approach to creating "alternate histories" in video games really fascinating. It's one of the reasons I really loved UFO 50, but from what I can tell, the Retro Game Challenge series is more specifically trying to ground itself into our own history, just with fictionalised companies and slightly-altered details for the sake of copyright (ie, the Famicom being changed to the "Game Computer" or whatnot) - and, obviously, it doesn't go anywhere near as far as a project like Player Two Start.

From what I understand, there's actually an entire trilogy of these titles out there. It's really neat to see this kind of thing existing in a few different forms even before the more well-known example later down the line... but damn, there's a small part of me that would love to see at least one of these "fictionalised" series get more entries. (Haggleman, specifically.) I've seen a few people suggest that they wish Bandai-Namco had used actual licensed titles, but... I think that'd detract from the appeal, honestly. The fact that there's an additional kind of barrier to looking things up on the Internet even today helps cement the game's concept really well - even if you're really into video games, including the types of games included here, you're highly unlikely to know anything about the games included. That's a cool thought for newcomers and diehards alike.

Almost makes me think some kind of "alternate-universe company compilation" would make for a cool creation thread, though there's of course a bit of overlap with MartianSnake's game-pitch thread (and the "alternate universe Smash" thread from a couple of years back.) Maybe that'll be a summer project?

Okay, dumb rant/take, but - I sometimes hear people talk about the music distribution for certain series in Smash being really out of whack, and I totally agree with that to a certain extent - the fact that there's some series that basically never get remixes or even new tracks overall kinda sucks, especially when they're series that happen to have a lot of potential in the musical department.

Why do I never hear people talk about Street Fighter in this sense?

"Oh, but Street Fighter has 39 songs! That's way more than a lot of series!" Four of them are unique remixes, the other thirty-five are just straight up gamerips from Super Street Fighter II Turbo. I genuinely can't think of another instance where the musical selection for a series was literally just pulling the entire soundtrack to one game and then a handful of remixes. That just seems utterly bizarre, and while I totally understand that the mindset behind Ryu and Ken's inclusion is that they're specifically based on their SSFIIT appearances in terms of design and characterisation, it just... feels off.

Imagine for a moment if a series like Mega Man was exclusively represented with like, two remixes and then basically every single song from Mega Man 2, but nothing from the rest of the series. It's just bizarre. That's not even getting into how many interesting pulls you could go for that'd genuinely fit really well - the more recent V and 6 would lend decently well, stuff from the Alpha and SF3 subseries would be great picks, and I'm sure people wouldn't mind stuff from related games like Final Fight in a similar vein to Fatal Fury's music selections - but instead we just get... the entire Super Street Fighter II Turbo soundtrack.

I feel like I shouldn't even complain, because the obvious alternative is something like "yeah okay we'll exclusively include the Type A variant for Ryu for source accuracy because that's the only track that plays on Susaku Castle" but the way its actually handled genuinely just feels kind of bizarre in the sense that, like, I can understand the mindset, and it's something that I guess could be cool in a vacuum, but it just doesn't work in practice? Maybe this is just me being entitled.

been listening to blarf recently

I find it kinda funny that, in 2025, we're still really struggling to find ways to handle double K.O.'s in fighting games in a way that seems fair. Judgement is all well and good (and it's always fun to have judgement-specific characters or cameos), but here's a fun fact; this problem was solved in 2002.

Glove on Fight, a game made by French-Bread before their Melty Blood series, effectively has it that if a double K.O. takes place, both characters are launched backward and wallbounced back into a neutral position. (Admittedly that game also has it so that only heavies can actually K.O. and lights aren't capable of doing that, which probably lends to that too.)

I mean... that solves a lot of problems, right? The main problem with judgements is that no matter how it's calculated, it feels anti-climatic - not to mention occasionally unfair - when it'd create more tension to be able to solve this in, well... combat. Sure, dedicated Sudden Death rounds work fine, but they slow down the pace of combat too. This kinda just solves all of that by keeping it in the same round, resetting to neutral, and keeping control of the game in the player's hands.

You'd obviously need to work out a position that works well for all characters - one character's zoning range is another's punish range - but you could probably give a small amount of directional influence for their landing positions (in a similar vein to how games like MvC handle the same "what is neutral?" problem at round-start by letting you move during the countdown.)

Idk, just a thought that occurred to me lmao

Random fun fact; when the first measurements of Everest were made by surveyors (namely, the British), they determined that the mountain was exactly 29,000 feet tall. However, they decided that people wouldn't believe the mountain's height to be such a round number, so they added 2 feet to dissuade those concerns; which actually wasn't checked up on for decades after. Funny to think the British put two feet on the summit long before Hillary (and Norgay!) made it there...

I feel like the best way to go about a horror project in something like The Simpsons isn't some "subversive blood and gore creepypasta" route, but rather, probably a Lynchian exploration of what it actually means to have been completely and utterly static for over 30 years; despite also having evolved and changed.

I can only imagine the bizarre, dreamlike scenarios you could play around with. How strange it must be, to know the name of your town, but not your state? Or to think back to your childhood and remember simultaneously being a child of the 1960s and of the 1990s, finding it impossible to reconcile the changes that've occurred despite knowing that your recollection of events just doesn't make sense? Or perhaps realising that people just disappear when out of eyeshot, or that they seemingly become more... abstract, the further away from you they are.

...just a silly thought.

why are there two baskin-robbins/dunkin' donuts in the pentagon. i don't get it. like why two of those specifically when there's only one of everything else? (mcdonalds, subway, taco bell, etc)

that aside i'd highkey be fascinated to see what it's like working there or whatever because you just know for a fact that, for a minimum-wage fast food job, the background checks must have been absolutely insane. that aside imagine being the guy who can genuinely say "i work at the pentagon" and you still get minimum wage. tragic.

that aside like... if working at the taco bell in the pentagon is mission critical would you be bound by law not to inform future employers that you worked at the taco bell in the pentagon? like imagine being asked about your employment history and you know damn well you exclusively served taco bell but you're not allowed to actually say or you're going to share a prison cell with snowden so you just say "i'm bound by law not to disclose that" and you never get a callback because employers think you're just bull****ting

i kinda hope p6 is willing to have a more unorthodox navigator of some kind in a similar manner to how p5r akechi worked. mainly thinking the "bro" character in that kinda role would be not only be pretty interesting narratively & character-wise (given the magician arcana's association with creativity and action, but then also having your main navigator in the field is pretty interesting too), but also really funny.

like a random encounter hits and you audibly hear him tripping over himself to try and analyse as quickly as possible, before peaking the mic by screaming "DUDE, HE'S WEAK TO PHYS, CREASE HIS JAYS"

...would a Persona 4 remake be called Persona 4 Rewind or Persona 4 Replay?

there are two solutions to the "prophecy says no weapon made of man can defeat me" conundurum. these are as follows;

• most prophecies were developed before the introduction of the rocket launcher
• female blacksmith

man had i known sooner that there is a semi-official magical girl gijinka of internet explorer that was featured in a dedicated animated short and is treated as a dedicated advertising mascot for internet explorer in asia, she would totally have been a submission to nirvanafan's xbox roster creation thread lol

y'know shoutout to nintendo for having the balls to keep a universally accepted standard port for essentially any piece of audio equipment manufactured since the mid 1970s on their latest console. which is apparently really difficult and an utterly unthinkable proposition for many manufacturers in 2025 because "actually our latest ewaste slop that will literally be unusable in two years because we shut down our app entirely supercedes this".

a pair of elvis impersonators stand in front of me. one of them has a wig that is slightly crooked. i point this out, and he runs away, crying. "ahuh ahuh auhh" he cries. "do not worry" says the other impersonator. "he was the lesser of two elvis"

Okay, dumb hot take probably, but I think the flurry rush in BotW/TotK feels... not unfinished, but underexplored. Sure, it's inarguably unbalanced (I did see a neat idea a while back that suggested the Flurry Rush should maybe use stamina, which could help with balancing? It'd need tweaking...), but I think the baseline idea in the earlier game - that is, a risk/reward type deal where you can use the correct dodge at the right time while in harm's way for a more powerful state - is pretty good. But...



...come on, why is mashing the Y button to attack multiple times in rapid succession the only thing you can do? Okay, that's probably not a fair criticism but like... you're already jumping, right? So why not be able to whip out your bow into bullet-time and get a stun, letting you follow up. That feels like it'd at least give you a bit more of an option than just "well done, you've timed the button correctly, now mash!"

I saw one concept somewhere that proposed uses for the other face buttons, and while I recognise the mindset behind that, I'm not 100% sure doing that with all of the face buttons would be a good idea? But like, at least being able to use your other weapon could be nice, rather than just switching to whatever melee weapon has the biggest number on it. And, honestly, I think this is just a smaller element of a bigger issue with melee combat being a little... underdeveloped in those games. (Yes, it doesn't need to be SoulCalibur, but... a little more, maybe?)

it's funny that people seem to think silver's boss battle in sonic 06 is "glitched" or whatever because like no. my guy just came back from the ruined future and is absolutely determined to defeat the iblis trigger by any means necessary. he is canonically yeeting sonic into orbit and there's literally nothing you can do about it

not like he'd have any trouble surviving up there though because like i guess space is pretty much breathable in the sonic universe huh

man considering they only did two games in the "series" the sonic storybook saga has so much potential and honestly it'd be so cool to see sonic randomly shoehorned into other myths, legends and stories with weird gimmicks that somehow fit the theme in general.

something based on greek mythology where like all the characters are somehow imbued with some element of the greek gods could be neat, where sonic's got like winged shoes as the main gimmick and hangs out with hermes or whatever. alternatively sonic's house is transported to sonic adventure windy valley and sent to oz. (which would actually be very funny if only because eggman would be a perfect candidate to fit the role of the "wizard")

kinda wild to think that the cheetahmen, ostensibly something that really shouldn't have even been remembered past the 90s, didn't just become a huge meme once, but twice, in two completely different parts of the internet - and apparently completely seperate to one another. like on the english-speaking net we all know of action 52 because of avgn but apparently it was a huge meme like three years earlier on nico nico douga despite james having literally no knowledge of that fact. idk obviously it's just a big coincidence but that's kind of wild to me lol

wait what the **** 2020 was five years ago

WAIT WHAT THE **** 2016 WAS NINE YEARS AGO

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

indiana jones in atlantis. lucasfilm pay me eight billion dollar

if we used a time machine to bring an internet user from 2005 to the modern day they would think the internet of 2025 is straight up malware. and would be just as baffled as the rest of us that jimmy fallon is still on television

the next smash game should actually just get rid of all the content and stages and fighting and whatever. in fact it should be about a young witch trying to solve the disappearance of her neighbor's cat in a small village in the alps. goty 2026

If I stop you in the street and ask you for £500, would you give it to me? If not, you might be a serial copyright infringer. Depriving people of the money they might have made from a potential transaction is a criminal offence.

lol does anyone else remember back in like 2016 when a ton of people seemed to think that pokemon go would be ported to switch as either a launch title or a summer 2017 release

Y'know, in hindsight, it feels like a slightly odd move for the Switch to never really have taken advantage of the ability to be used in "portrait mode" (given there was only one kickstand and whatnot). This might seem like a slightly bizarre suggestion at first glance, but I do genuinely think there might be something in the vertical screen orientation on a gameplay level if it were to be experimented with a little; and weirdly, this wasn't even entirely absent from the Switch's library, either, given a couple of Arcade Archives allowed for vertical play.

Idk, I think it'd be a cool addition if the "Switch 2" maintains a similar sort of baseline design to it overall. It might seem silly nowadays given how people look at consoles with a similar "gimmick" (like the WonderSwan) but I do genuinely think there might be something in giving people the option; especially for genres like vertical shooters, tile-based puzzle games, video pinball, maybe certain visual novels, and like a whooole bunch of arcade titles; not to mention people's suggestion of potentially having it as an option if DS ever gets added to NSO or something like that.

I know there's some aftermarket things that've been invented to support this, and like I mentioned it's not been entirely absent already; but it'd be nice to see some official support for something like that. Even if games aren't made specifically with vertical play in mind (understandable given connection to a bigger, generally-landscape television) I don't see why it shouldn't be an option at least; and besides, it'd be something pretty unique on a development front compared to any other console on the market beyond like, smartphones (which have touchscreen inputs anyway)

wario & waluigi 2d platformer but instead of being focused on multiplayer wario just uses waluigi as a blunt weapon the entire time. like a big sword. but with sound effects

flawless kidnapping strategy for resident evil fans; create a trail of yellow paint from their front door to the open door of your van. they will be forced to follow this trail due to the inviolable laws of game design and then you can experiment on them to turn them into leon kennedy but real. just like umbrella probably

shoutout to the super game boy screen border for pokemon pinball for being weirdly sophisticated. idk on a design level this kinda feels more like it got dropped from the mid-2000s in terms of feel. pretty cool honestly

the next mario sports game should be mario chess and it's like chess but you can also get powerups n ****. there's also probably enough characters for this kinda thing. worst case scenario just make everyone wear chess-themed hats rather than always, for argument's sake, having bowser and bowser jr. as the king and queen or something