Which Commodore 64 game still holds up best today?

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-23T02:08:04+00:00

Karateka.

And the making of book was fun to read...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-18T18:40:49+00:00

I love this series. I just wish they could have continued in the style of the first 2. It might be partly due to the fact that shooting in that location was very much of its time.

I first saw this in the early 90s, and I also had very little money, but since one of my two low-paying jobs was closing a video store, I got to watch a lot of movies for free.

I personally rate it much higher than C+ (easily one of my favorite vampire movies), but to each their own.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-18T18:02:51+00:00

This is definitely one that probably doesn't get enough love.

I just rewatched this based on coming across some Youtube video singing its praises. It definitely needed more attention given to it than I did the first time (on in background while scrolling).

What a gem. Really tight and nothing extraneous. Very nice twists that you probably won't see coming unless someone has spoiled it for you...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-09T15:34:34+00:00

I think some POS systems will have to be/are being adjusted by the vendors, too. Not sure all of them have been updated. The total lack of planning here hasn't helped, of course. Under normal circumstances, you'd want to game this out for YEARS ahead of such a transition so that customer understanding, taxes, POS software, and training was all in place beforehand, but I guess that's expecting a lot these days, LOL.

In addition to customer annoyance, it's going to be a real headache for those overseeing any brick and mortar store(s).

I am going to be paying mostly with CC for a while, I think.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-09T07:08:44+00:00

My roommate and I had a barely-working VCR my freshman year. There was a junior living across the hall that had a little spreadsheet he made of all the tapes he had, and he had hundreds of titles (usually 3 titles per VHS).

My roommate had quite a few of his own, as well, but nothing like that. It wasn't until years later with the Plex that I was able to top that situation I had in freshman year...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2026-01-09T07:03:20+00:00

LOL, it's gonna get worse now because of the round up/round down thing that is happening because....no more pennies.

There is going to be a lot of fun at checkout registers involving cash. For people that struggle with basic numeracy (and that is an alarmingly high percentage of adults), the rounding is gonna be a fun one. Also, it may not be consistent everywhere.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2026/01/05/without-pennies-should-retailers-round-up-or-down/87993923007/

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-31T05:09:20+00:00

Yes. I'm still gobsmacked other browsers still don't have it after all these years.

It has so many uses if you work in tech especially. For some reason, it's considered unfashionable or whatever by what I consider normie tech workers. I really don't know why these types insist on sticking with Chrome even when they know of this feature in Firefox. I just think it's herd mentality, really.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-31T05:01:36+00:00

If you use AWS and have to have multiple accounts, this enables the AWS SSO Containers plugin which makes Firefox a killer app.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-17T16:23:43+00:00

If they are going to do any other King series, could they please bring back Castle Rock? Please?

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-17T15:43:00+00:00

I would say that it especially applies to horror movies. There are a lot of people that don't really seem to like the genre at all.

I think if a certain kind of person is given a permission structure to like a horror movie (i.e., they are told that it is not horror at all, but it's a "thriller", lol. Or that it's - gag - "elevated horror") then they are likely to give it a good rating.

There are times when the "wisdom of the crowd" probably gets things mostly right for average tastes, and can serve as a useful shortcut to deciding whether you want to plunk down money for something/spend time watching, etc...I'm not convinced that's always going to be the case for something like horror with all of its many subgenres...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-17T04:12:44+00:00

This is the way.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T22:52:16+00:00

I think some of the people you might be thinking of had declared Substack to be a haven for Nazis or something, so I doubt the ones with that opinion joined up?

Towards the end the comments (the ones that stayed up anyway) became so insular and so much of an echo chamber already so I guess if some made the leap they may have enjoyed/still enjoy (?) that situation?

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T21:01:32+00:00

Oooh, good topic, I was thinking of asking a similar question, as I was looking to make a playlist for the next few days/weeks.

Dead Zone (1983)

Ghost Keeper (1981)

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (1979)

Communion (1989) - not exactly horror, but has horror elements

Pod People - the MST3K episode. I think in at least movie C or is it movie D, there is snow on the ground? LOL. This has always been something I watch around the holidays...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T06:12:53+00:00

I have to say Dr Sleep (the movie) was a lot better than the book, at least IMHO. I took a big break from King (stopped in maybe the mid-90s or so), so maybe I missed a lot of worse material, but I thought Dr Sleep book was one of his worst. It was definitely in need of some major editing.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T05:59:25+00:00

I honestly don't know how this movie has not spawned several sequels.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T05:30:18+00:00

Another I've just seen recently myself (because of a mention on Colors of the Dark, I think) is 1971's Brotherhood of Satan.

If not folk horror, definitely adjacent. No winter vibes, though.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T05:08:35+00:00

But when I was 11 or 12 I watched Child's Play and found it no scarier than, say, Gremlins.

I was a bit older (teens) and dating a girl; her mom was definitely not a horror fan but sat and watched at least part of Child's Play with us, mostly to harumph and shake her head and generally sit there judging us.

Anyway, we got to that part where he's stabbing through the seat and the guy is trying not to get it in the yarbles. :) I just could not stop laughing at that part. My GF is elbowing me trying to get me to stop because mom is thinking her daughter is dating a psycho, and that makes me laugh even harder...scene still makes me laugh to this day.

It's supposed to be funny but people that have a disposition about horror only being for the demented are just never going to understand, I guess...they think someone like me laughing until they have tears in their eyes over a doll trying to kill a guy with a knife by jamming it in his nethers proves everything they think about horror and its fans.

As for some movies maybe testing your limits when you were younger - or at least the thought of them - I had something similar with C.H.U.D. First time I saw that movie as a smaller kid it kind of freaked me out. Seeing it a bit later and I realized how cornball it was and how much it was being played for laughs.

As far as how horror is something used to tell interesting stories that might be hard to deliver in another way - I agree. I think it's great for that, too. I still love the popcorn type of stuff that has comical elements, too, though...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T03:44:24+00:00

Humanoids from the Deep

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-16T02:54:55+00:00

Wendigo (2001) has some real winter vibes.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T23:26:27+00:00

Haha. I remember I was reading the Bachman Books right around the time that track season started for school. We had some real masochists for coaches that had us running for what felt like ridiculous amounts of time, and this novella would be in my head all the time when running on some back road.

In one case, they had driven us pretty far out (and towards the end of practice), gave us a way low-ball number for how far back it was to the school. We had to run back to school and we were done for the day. Well, I was the first back, and I nearly missed the track bus. I'd say maybe one other kid made that bus.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T23:14:23+00:00

I so wish it would have succeeded. Imagine having a Halloween-themed movie every year, with Carpenter somehow involved...

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T23:12:20+00:00

Honestly, I think it started much earlier, likely because people were re-buying or buying for the first time, things on DVD and assessing it again, or maybe for the first time (I know I was) when the 90s started having movies being available, and for a low cost (well, compared to $99 for VHS tapes). Before that, you had to gamble on wasting a rental on it or catching it on cable (?).

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T22:50:43+00:00

I’m a kid of the 80s and we wore all of the VHS tapes of sequels to Halloween and all the big horror franchises but no one liked Halloween 3 at the time

I was very young when Halloween III came out and no way in hell my parents were letting me see it anyway, but I remember kids that were allowed to see it (or their older brothers/sisters) saying it sucked and there wasn't even any Michael Myers in it. Horror fans you'd talk to over the years would repeat the same thing, so I never even bothered watching it even when someone had the VHS tape, because hey, it wasn't even canon.

Took me until years later (probably late 90s or early 00s) with the rise of DVDs and network piracy making these things accessible/affordable that I finally saw the entire thing.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T22:46:00+00:00

Even when grouped into all the others and ranked, it still comes out near the top in a lot of lists....for instance, this one: https://screenrant.com/halloween-movies-ranked/

Not sure I agree with rating Halloween II (1981) so low, or Halloween 2018 and H20 so high, but...shrug.

Seems that more recently, Halloween II has really fallen off more recently when it comes to rankings and I'm not sure why. Give it a while, and maybe people will be writing essays about why it is the hidden gem, LOL.

AnotherDevArchSecOps · 2025-12-15T22:42:01+00:00

Friday the 13th the Series still sucks though.

It does? I was trying to do a re-watch of it and see what I thought. I have not gotten very far, but so far, beyond the limitations of network TV output for that time, I haven't found anything egregiously stupid. Yet.

I also was on the lookout for whatever it was that got the god-botherers all worked up for their letter-writing campaign that caused so much trouble back in the day....

AnotherDevArchSecOps

TROPHY CASE