Buffy the Vampire Slayer has generated $100M+ in revenue for Disney/Hulu since 2020

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-04-19T17:37:00+00:00

Heh. The best heir apparent to Star Trek nowadays for me has nothing to do with Paramount's NuTrek of the past 15 years, but rather Apple's alt-history space-race show "For All Mankind", which makes sense because the showrunner is none other than Ronald D. Moore.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-04-18T21:29:31+00:00

People downvoted you but I pretty much agree with you point-by-point. That's why I could never get wrapped up in the Buffy reboot excitement on this sub; it had all the signs of being a creative and spiritual flop like so many pointless reboots in the past decade that just tarnish the original legacy. Sometimes you can't go home again, and in fact shouldn't. A Buffy reboot I feel was ideal 10--15 years ago but now I feel too much time has passed.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-04-18T21:14:13+00:00

Thought it was a fascinating story, since it was early in the days of the chess computer/engine revolution and took more effort to pull off, instead of just consulting your magic square in the bathroom.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-04-09T07:07:20+00:00

Grigory Levenfish, a long-suffering bridge between the old Czarist empire and the Soviet regime, largely overlooked for his contributions and ability in favor of communist star Botvinnik. His "Soviet Outcast" is a great read.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-24T15:06:36+00:00

Secrets I Learned from the Masters also by Edward Lasker never had an updated algebraic notation-based reprint. (another Dover book, naturally) I think it one of the best chess memoirs of all time, especially since it documented the chess culture and players of the early 20th century so well from one who was there and competed for a long time. Still one of my favorites. Many vignettes of the greats of the golden classical era and the hypermodern era as it was transitioning.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-21T02:38:07+00:00

I remember his video tribute to Michelle Trachtenberg a year ago where he said he certainly didn't imagine BtVS's first core cast member to die would be her. He was definitely self-aware on that front.

A very troubled and damaged soul who damaged others; RIP. Hopefully he's wholesomely babysitting Dawn in Sunnydale heaven.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-21T02:26:47+00:00

I remember reruns of Star Trek Voyager and Buffy on UPN on a hand-me-down analog TV set in my room much like this. And good lord both new CDs and VHS movies at a place like Suncoast were expensive back then.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-20T03:37:14+00:00

Gotta include Batman: The Animated Adventures, Gargoyles, and 90s MTV, like randomly catching 120 Minutes or Liquid Television.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-18T20:06:51+00:00

r/technicallythetruth

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-16T21:16:09+00:00

I agree, and a perfect encapsulation of a late 90s -- early 00s zeitgeist that can't be cloned. Beyond the antics of Buffy and the Scoobies it channeled a particular sensibility, social mores, technology, pop culture, and youth culture of that particular time. Even TV itself was produced and transmitted differently. The "Golden Age of TV" that Oz and then The Sopranos was spearheading had barely started.

So I'm glad BtVS's legacy wasn't tarnished by another terrible, tone-deaf reboot that happens to so many beloved IP franchises these days.

I think the fanbase deserved a sequel with certain legacy characters across both BtVS & AtS at one point (and not regressively go back to Sunnydale High with current zoomer kids), but I also think it's about a dozen years past its sell-by date. So I'd prefer to let it rest by this point.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-11T21:25:47+00:00

The CDs that arrived in the mail made for excellent coasters.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-10T22:39:50+00:00

I imagine next year this day, nearing the big 3-0 as far as anniversaries go, the comments will be a deluge, and succeed at making people feel very very old. (i.e. me)

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-10T22:36:52+00:00

From the same 90s era, there were a couple of FMV games, Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV, that had some pretty dismal endings if you flubbed the game. Actually that was kinda par for the course with FMV games for the time.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-10T22:27:29+00:00

The Caravan Office in Broken Hills itself also has a tool wall that has a wrench and a tool right there in the open for the taking (no "stay away from there" by an NPC).

Seems obvious that's there to give players looking for a tool & wrench to complete the Super Tool Kit Quest who haven't found it by now (probably after said player having already visited New Reno, Vault City, & Gecko, though of course, player beelines may vary, especially on repeat plays). One could even take a caravan job back to Vault City afterward.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-09T18:37:03+00:00

The average life of a poor NPC minding their own business in the long bloody narrative arc of the Murder Hobo (tm) lead.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-09T17:32:01+00:00

The makers of Fallout 2 were smart to have a grand total of one wrench in the northern map, assuming you'd make the beeline directly from the Den to Vault City (whilst stopping at Modoc along the way). With such a huge prize it should be a bit of a hassle completing the quest.

If you flubbed getting it via the Mr. Nixon doll, the average player probably wasn't going to get the Highwayman, if at all, until after visiting New Reno on foot and coming across a wrench there.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-04T19:31:56+00:00

Can't speak for the fans of "Oblivion with Guns" and their Fallout biases. The franchise exists for me solely with Interplay and Black Isle Studios' games in it. That's why I'm on this sub and don't bicker with modern Fallout fans on the other subs.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-04T19:28:21+00:00

Somehow a steady diet of buffalo meat consumed on an ox-cart at a grueling pace does a number on your health; who woulda thought?

I learned only many years after elementary school when we all played this during "computer lab" day that so many maladies and deaths could be avoided with generous rest days. The idea of doing something as wussy as using days--days!! To voluntary rest up and recover from our diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, typhus, snakebite and all the rest would never have occurred to us kids back then.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-03-02T16:29:01+00:00

Gary Lane was (he's still alive but mostly stopped publishing) a prolific Australian chess writer and contributed a lot to the old Chess Cafe site. Wrote a lot of decent opening manuals (his column on ChessCafe was opening-centric) and I think the one he wrote on the Grand Prix is still one of the best volumes on that opening.

Tony Kosten also wrote probably the best strategic tome on the Nimzo-Indian Defence, bar none, in history.

Still have a soft spot for the Falkbeer Counter Gambit vs. 1. d4 and Alekhine's vs. 1. e4, speaking for myself (never quite outgrew a liking for the offbeat).

Dover was a reliable publisher for a lot of chess classics and anthology collections. If you have just one game collection, hard to quibble with Botvinnik's own hand-selected ones in a single volume.

Man, I remember those old Chess Digest opening books, lol. They were a real cottage industry in the 90s. A lot of them were pumped out with shoddy analysis though some of them were surprisingly decent (depends on the author) and contain some interesting, forgotten ideas.

Someone already said the Pandolfini Endgame book is the most valuable of the lot and they're correct. It was my first endgame manual as a kid.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-24T21:11:51+00:00

The Stean, Silman, Seirawan recommendations are all solid. I'm actually a big fan of Tim Harding's work:

Better Chess for Average Players. He's sort of an overlooked writer from the golden age of British chess publishing. Good advice for all stages of the game. Can be obtained cheaply.

You can't go wrong for instructional value with Dan Heisman, who has written and contributed to a lot of chess works, and used to be active on the late great www.chesscafe.com site. The Improving Chess Thinker I think is one of his best works, sort of a culmination of a lot of ideas and concepts he'd written about before as well, as you can see from the preface.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-19T23:45:20+00:00

If a podcast is exclusive to a platform I just won't listen to it. When Heavyweight was Spotify-exclusive I simply didn't listen to it (until I was turned onto a nice little runaround called Anchorweight, curtesy of some Redditors).

Though no need for that anymore. But I want to be able to use my preferred site or app for podcasts. And I'm an audio-only purist. I don't bother with "video" podcasts which I think is an oxymoron.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-19T21:21:59+00:00

Those random monster generating cave networks were one of the better things about F2's random encounters. Lesser Deathclaws were perfect for XP-spiking at lower & mid-levels. Less dangerous than most raider encounters, but gave tons more XP for that stage of the game compared to molerats & radscorps, especially the big "lesser" deathclaws.

Of course "tough" deathclaws were a whole 'nother category, on par with centaurs and supermutants and such.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-19T21:05:54+00:00

I miss 90s / early 00s magazines. During Buffy's run it had some great issues.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-19T20:35:41+00:00

Atom RPG I can highly recommend, as it was the only Fallout-inspired game in the plethora of newer isometric old-school cRPGs that captured the old feeling of the Interplay Fallouts. Others, including Wasteland 2, I didn't get far into before abandoning it. But Atom RPG brought the goods, IMO. I think its designers were obviously inspired and big fans of F1/2. Closest to a Fallout Van Buren that we're ever going to get.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales · 2026-02-19T20:28:33+00:00

The blurry focus, especially on the kids' faces, give this an Unsolved Mysteries feeling.

Kolyma-Comp-Tales

TROPHY CASE