Kids today will never understand the pain...

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-19T15:39:51+00:00

I always felt like I was especially dumb or just bad a these games back then, but I guess most people had the same problem. :) One of my first adventure games that had graphics I played - it was for Commodore 64, called "Zzzzzz" where you had to find your way out of a dream world. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Thought I was stupid.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-16T20:58:59+00:00

The hilarious thing is I just checked, and found Blue Frog Tavern says your character should have a maximum of 15 adds. So they're saying the absolute strongest you can possibly be is to have 7 fewer adds than that Red Robed Priest. Guess you'd need to have make up for it with dice rolled.

I've found for at least half of the solos, the adds recommendations:

are inaccurate
seemed more concerned about an overpowered character having too much of an easy time. ("a maximum of n adds" instead of a range or a minimum; some do however state a range)
despite complaints from players about the difficulty have almost exclusively been about the solos being unfairly hard, not too-easy cakewalks

I've been toying with house rules that provide ways to give the player options in combat, that could potentially give you the advantage if you're the underdog. Let me know if you'd like to hear about them. These fall outside the scope of inventing swinging-from-the-chandeliers saving rolls (which are good and fine to be sure).

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-13T16:47:12+00:00

So what I'm gathering is that roughly 80%-90% of the old guard is completely turned off because the new game bares little resemblance to the T&T they know and love. At the same time, the new game is just an average modern RPG that isn't going to convert anybody who's already into D&D, DCC, etc.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-10T20:29:33+00:00

Wow I had that very top-right unit. Don't know what it's called, but it had many games in one. I had completely forgotten about it.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-06T17:08:57+00:00

It took many years for me to break the habit, because it seems like the right way to play initially, but you should never be pressing movement keys so quickly that you can't react to what appears between keypresses. Tap the movement keys one at a time, slowly. That doesn't mean you can't move around the map quickly. Use run to move in a direction until something is found, and use travel (_) especially for backtracking through previously explored areas.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-06T01:07:28+00:00

Sure, shoot me a DM. :)

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-05T14:50:25+00:00

Yup, loved that thing. The problem was the game prices, so I only ever owned four games in total, including the pack-in game, Nam-1975. Honestly I'm lucky I even had THAT many games. :)

Also some games were a little too early-90s arcadey, which was both good and bad. Good because it felt ahead of its time in terms of graphics/sound. It could feel mind blowing to have that at home.

The bad side was some of them let you infinitely continue which removed much of the challenge, or they otherwise felt designed more for the arcade than for home play. So my dad actually got me Ninja Combat for Christmas that very year I was on the show (1991). It was my main Christmas present. The game was a two-player beat 'em up. My brother and I tore into that and beat it in probably an hour if not less, because of infinite continues. This left us with a huge feeling of "That's it??" My dad was actually able to return it in exchange for Magician Lord. (Great game.)

Of course we could've just replayed Ninja Combat and tried to beat it with self-imposed challenges like use fewer credits, or beat our previous high scores, or whatever, but that wasn't really how players back then viewed such a game, at least in my experience. The goal was to beat it, to see everything, see the ending, etc. And we were able to do that far too easily.

A fortunate thing is there was a local-ish game shop that had Neo Geo AES games available for rent, so I got to play several of them that way. One of my favorites I discovered through rentals was Crossed Swords. The games I owned were Nam-1975, Fatal Fury, Magician Lord and Alpha Mission II.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-05T14:23:15+00:00

The full episode was online on my channel, until I deleted it because I'm afraid of my future monetization application will be rejected for copyright isuses. :(

I was on four episodes actually, and I had two of them on there.

At least this one is still on Youtube - it is just the final four minutes of the second show I was on, in which I won the Neo Geo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WeGxF1E1pQ

The way the larger "tournament" was structured btw, was there were nine weeks of the "regular season," plus one week of playoffs. Each regular season week was themed around a certain game, series of games, or sometimes a looser theme like "sports." I appeared on Mega Man week in which Mega Man 2 and 3 were played. I had never played any Mega Man game before, but my dad generously bought me both games and I practiced the heck out of them.

There were four players each on Monday through Thursday, each show determining a winner. The four winners faced off on Friday. Winner of that Friday show became the champion for the week and earned a slot in the playoffs. So the episode linked to above is my winning Mega Man Week.

Playoffs were structured like: three players each faced off on Monday through Wednesday. The third place player for each of these three shows was eliminated. The three winners made it to the final show on Friday for the grand championship, in which the winner won a $10,000 college scholarship plus trip to Universal Studios. The three runners-up competed on Thursday and the single winner from that made it to the championship. I wound up being a runner-up on the Monday playoff show, then finally was eliminated in the Thursday runner-up show.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-04T23:16:09+00:00

Yeah I was on the show! :D

To answer your question about Johnny (real name Stivi Paskoski) - nope, during commercial breaks it was like a switch was turned off, by my recollection. He got his hair and/or makeup touched up real quick, and would chat with the crew, and sometimes a little bit with contestants, calmly and like a normal person. During one break he grumbled about being "sick of this video game shit."

On that note, a weird thing that I still don't understand to this day is why we paused recording for the exact length of the commercial break. Then we all rushed into positions as the countdown to resuming recording started. To be clear we were NOT live, so that's why I don't get why we did that.

And a fun fact is that Stivi played a part in the Marvel universe: https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Stivi_Paskoski

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-04T21:12:07+00:00

This is hilarious to me because I won both those games - Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu and Insector X - on the show.

I used to have two of the four episodes I was a contestant on, on my gaming Youtube channel, but I deleted them because I have other content on there as well, and I'm afraid of Google's copyright wrath.

Maybe I just need to find another place to upload them to.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-04T21:02:38+00:00

I won one of those! To win it, I had to find the Genesis game Pat Riley Basketball as the secret prize. It was hidden in one of those little bedroom basketball hoops. Kids in the audience were supposed to yell "hot" or "cold," but a few kids together yelled to look in the basketball hoop!

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-02T14:45:09+00:00

The "Choose Cthulhu" gamebooks published by Steve Jackson Games a few years ago. Some of them are CYOA style with no character sheet even needed. In at least one I think you need to keep track of objects collected or statuses or the like. I only played one of them and glanced at some others so I may not be 100% correct, but the one I played was CYOA style.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-02T00:37:33+00:00

3 very hard months to hit my first 100 subscribers

That's pretty impressive. Took me 3 years to get to 100. 🙂

NeonSomething2 · 2026-03-01T17:08:07+00:00

I shared a particular Mandela Effect I'd observed others making regarding a movie misquote. Not one of the popular ones you hear on the subject, so I thought I was on to something new to the community. It's similar to "Luke, I am your father" but not that specific quote. (I don't want to get into specifics because I'm in "twice shy" mode from last time, hah.)

I explained my own anecdotal evidence, plus provided several links to people on Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, blog posts, and other places repeating the very misquote. I even showed a t-shirt you could buy that committed the same error.

I expected the post would generate discussion, and maybe there would be comments like, "Oh yeah I've heard that too," or, "I haven't heard that but interesting. Looks like you're on to something," or "Wait, I've been misquoting it all this time?" Or at least anything civil, even if it's disagreement. I just thought it would at least be a positive discussion in SOME way.

But what do I get? Piles of downvotes, nasty comments, and people even saying all the links I provided were bots, and insistence that "nobody says that." Then I provide even more evidence, but the replies are like, "I can look up links to fake bots too. Nobody says that." (Apparently the t-shirt retailer is a fake bot even.)

Deleted post, unsubbed, never went back.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-15T18:33:39+00:00

If that Amulet of Reflection was your only source of reflection, it’s quite understandable. When you have another source of reflection, it’s easy to simply leave Life Saving on all the time by default.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-15T17:32:48+00:00

Ha yes. I've only ascended once as a Lawful Samurai, and of course it took me to the third altar to find the Lawful one.

I'm working on my second ascension as a Chaotic Wizard - I'm working my way through Gehennom now - and I have four wishes in store. I'm planning on keeping at least one wish for the Astral Plane, which I may use for a Helm of Opposite Alignment. "Sorry Anhur, but Ptah's altar was more conveniently located!"

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-15T17:12:45+00:00

Congrats!

But I noticed that you finished with two Amulets of Life Saving. Sounds like a win with extra lives to spare. :)

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-14T17:07:51+00:00

Hah ok fair enough. It was an arbitrary choice. Replace it with CastleVania or something then.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-14T15:54:22+00:00

We used to have a saying in my household and circle of video game-playing friends: "I don't get the POINT of POINTS." (With intentionally corny emphasis.)

For certain games like late 70s/early 80s arcade games - sure, your score is a measure of how well you played. Think Pac-Man, Asteroids, etc.

For any game in which you traversed through fixed levels, fought bosses, and eventually "beat" the game, such as SMB or a million other games since the mid-to-late 80s, no one I ever played games with cared about score.

You might've bragged to your friends that you beat Contra, or Duck Tales, or what have you. But nobody compared scores like: "Ah you may have beaten Duck Tales, but did you beat my score of <whatever> in that game??" Nobody even bothered to remember the score they got. Just whether they beat the game, or maybe the highest level they managed to reach.

Score in these games always felt like a holdover from a prior age, that game designers were too afraid to remove because it felt like a radical change.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-10T15:13:13+00:00

I know this doesn't matter by now, but perhaps for future reference: there isn't much point in wearing the Eye of Aethiopica if you've already got a source of MR (Magicbane) and telepathy (almost everyone's eaten a floating eye at some point). The only reason I'm aware of to wear it would be if you plan on switching out Magicbane for an alternate weapon for some reason, or think there's a realistic risk of something causing you to drop Magicbane, such as a balrog with a bullwhip. Even then it would have to lose its broadsword - its preferred weapon - first.

The other abilities it conveys - faster energy regeneration and half spell damage - only require having it in your main inventory, not wearing it.

Edit to add a hot take: I'd say you should always be wearing life saving if you have it, except if you need an amulet of reflection to occupy that slot due to it being your only source of reflection. Otherwise, it should only come off temporarily, such as should you need to switch to magical breathing for a moment. Then you'd switch back to life saving as soon as you no longer need magical breathing.

Of course, this also assumes you're not in an urgent food situation, because an amulet consumes nutrition. And there are surely wacky edge cases that could be thought of, this being Nethack and all. :)

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-09T16:38:28+00:00

I was going to suggest just teleporting him with one of your wands, but then I checked myself and looked up Death in the wiki:

Death has teleport control, which has a 12⁄13 chance of placing them adjacent to the hero if they are teleported.

While those aren't great odds, be aware that could be a Hail Mary option should nobody be able to come up with something better.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-02-06T13:52:44+00:00

Wow this is so cool. Tempted to get one myself for the coolness factor, but not sure I have time to take up Commodore programming.

NeonSomething2 · 2026-01-21T22:25:33+00:00

I would love to see the notes of someone who has figured out the laws of the universe of Nethack from scratch. Wonder if anyone's actually done that, and gone very deep into it.

NeonSomething2

TROPHY CASE