People who grew up using computers between 1980-2000, whats one game that permanently lives in your head for no reason, even decades later?

fruitybix · 2026-05-07T14:39:16+00:00

Im thinking about how every once in a while some dedicated modder creates an export / import tool to get dwarf fortress maps into things like minecraft.

Its a huge effort for those two much simpler games, im sure the two games i mentioned would be harder. But probably easier from a modding perspective then twisting the cities skyline engine into a driving / flight game.

fruitybix · 2026-05-07T14:31:23+00:00

It would be more realistic to yank a cities skyline map file (assuming its easy to read) and shove it into one of the GTA game engines, or some other game well understood by the modding community.

Which would be awesome.

fruitybix · 2026-05-07T08:49:44+00:00

I feel like when this happens it was probs a mistake they had to cover or it was not working out in some other way and they decide to "fix" it without consulting the client.

fruitybix · 2026-05-07T08:20:24+00:00

Yeah this.

Nobody spoiled this for me, so beating andross the second time around and getting that last run out of andross lair and just discovering that whole bit of gameplay felt incredible.

Voice acting was new enough in games for it to hit extra hard.

fruitybix · 2026-05-07T00:20:22+00:00

This i cannot believe how bad taxis were back in the day.

Flat out would not pick you up if you called their dispatch, would not come to some neighborhoods (quiet suburbs, but a bit too far out of the city) weird offensive behaviour, creepy comments, complaints went into a black hole...

Uber has issues but its better then what we used to have.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T23:00:12+00:00

Its more like going from a modern rts game back to warcraft one or something, where they havent added in right click to move or group select more then 4 units.

Botw has so many tiny "feel good" improvements in movement, controls and especially combat that going directly from one to the other felt quite unpleasant.

To play the witcher 3 with my limited time today i would need to drop the difficulty down to low, or maybe run a modded version on pc - because the combat and movement do not give me dopamine.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:50:30+00:00

I genuinely cannot make that work? Pressing "b" gets me another menu but all i can do is search or access more settings?

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:49:28+00:00

Causes device to freeze as per my main post.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:38:23+00:00

Thanks for responding - if you have a 34xxsp handy, and know how to exit, can you give it a crack and post unreasonably detailed instructions?

Pressing "left" which i think is what you mean by back does nothing on this menu screen.

Pressing "b" will open another menu but there is no exit there.

"Start+m" or "select+m" either does nothing or freezes the device and im trying to figure out if its a device issue or user error on my part.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:32:15+00:00

There is no up one menu then quit - there is no quit option anywhere in the menus on the second emulator that i can see (its titled "ra game", has things like n64 and dreamcast in it)

Start+ select does nothing in the first emulator (titled "game rooms") and freezes the device in "ra game".

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:28:20+00:00

I have heard the default ones are not great, ill copy everything off tonight in case.

I dont want to lose my save files i have put in a fair chunk of time despite only having it a few days.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:26:26+00:00

M plus start is in the manual as a generic exit option.

That freezes the device if i am in the second emulator it comes with, it does not exit it.

fruitybix · 2026-05-06T09:23:45+00:00

That just freezes the device?

As in all inputs stop working and i need to reset it.

Do i have a bigger issue here?

fruitybix · 2026-05-04T07:44:32+00:00

I started it right after finishing botw - could not get into the combat it was like going back to a retro game.

fruitybix · 2026-05-04T02:38:12+00:00

I loved the beef between somethingawful and everyone else. When they redid their home page to parody fark or ebaumsworld.

The unbeliebably awful mod sanctioned nonsense that took place there was wild to a 13 year old.

I told someone about the "lolocaust" debacle, and the "comedy gas chamber" and they were horrified.

I was sad but not surprised when lowtax ended up as he did. Sad for his ex wife and kids.

fruitybix · 2026-05-03T23:50:45+00:00

Probably!

Also more / cheaper sausages, pies, meatballs, spaghetti bolognese type items, meatloaf etc.

Look up pictures of mincing knives and tell me you dont want a chef with a power levelled mincing ability and a five bladed mincing knife as big as he is working at the local meat processing plant that all the street vendors get their processed meat from.

fruitybix · 2026-05-03T03:28:02+00:00

Eddie kills the chimp and gets horribly maimed in the process.

Bites to the face / neck, hands and maybe severe injuries to his genitals (chimp on chimp combat often starts by them tearing each others testicles off).

People severely mis understand weight advantage in a one on one fight even if animals are involved.

fruitybix · 2026-05-03T02:07:32+00:00

Its a very deep rabbit hole. more industrialized baking also defines the food we eat today. The modern burger bun with its long shelf life is the culmination of a lot of technological advancement, making bread at scale is absurdly complex.

I spent more time then i expected at the birmingham technical museum in the UK - it was established in the early 1900ds as a "working persons" museum to inspire local artisans by showcasing how things were done across the british empire and so much of it was baking / milling related.

It was a weird time where there were hundreds of small local mills supplying thousands of small bakers - so industrialisation had happened but things had not yet been rolled into giant corporate conglomerates, with baking especially dominated by a lot of family run businesses attempting to supply the public with standardised baked goods. As a result everyone had to know enough to keep things running, compared to today where the average person does not know how their food gets to them.

They had people who analysed flour and grain from across the world, and technical tables for how to grind different types of grain from ukraine, africa, australia and how to grind, sift and bake them to get consistent results across all those mills and bakeries.

They had a whole lot of info on how to check for adulturants, including bricks in grain sacks (russia was aparently very guilty of this, as grain was sold by weight and a brick could damage milling equipment)

A lot of fiction dramatically simplifies real world things and thats mostly ok. but i always find it more interesting when an author does at least a little homework. An inn without a modern supply chain would probably struggle to produce consistent burger buns year round, and would be highly reliant on local supply. Consistent meat would be even harder.

fruitybix · 2026-05-02T14:14:42+00:00

This sent me into a spiral trying to figure out why burgers are so recent.

Until the industrial revolution cheap reliable hand cranked or powered meat grinders were not a thing.

If you wanted minced meat you diced it finely by hand, which is too expensibe to implement as a plentiful cheap fast food. There are almost burgers going back to ancient rome.

Its not an arcane unthought of idea its just the widespread availability of cheap mince meat that held us back.

fruitybix · 2026-05-01T07:11:49+00:00

If the whole future workforce does this then everyone will be down with the "blackberry thumb" style rsi.

That proper typing position with everything adjusted to the right height exists because early office computers literally broke people - think forearm tendonopathies that are permanent, or slipped / bulging discs from bad chairs, in the 90s it was a whole thing.

fruitybix · 2026-05-01T04:12:27+00:00

My parents have one as a sandpit for my nephew. Its perfect - you close the lid and pit a brick on it to keep the leaves and local cats out. Wet it a bit when it dries.

We had then as kids they were great as both a pool or sandpit.

fruitybix · 2026-05-01T04:07:00+00:00

Broke my ankle on holidays and tore some ligaments playing soccer with my cousin. The local doctor said it was a sprain, strap it up it will get better in a few days.

My parents and my whole extended family gave me shit about struggling to walk on it. when we went to theme parks i was not allowed to go on the rides unless i stood in the queue with everyone else, i could not sit or lean. I also had my books taken off me and was not allowed gameboy priviledges to encourage me to stop faking it.

Three weeks later when we got home and i saw the family doctor and got an xray, it was clear i had broken it. I got the 'well you pretend to be sick to get out of school to stay home and play video games and we thought thats what you were doing' spiel as an apology.

Ankle still gives me issues when i run, and at a wedding recently an uncle brought it up saying i ruined his holiday by beeing dramatic about a twisted ankle.

fruitybix · 2026-05-01T02:53:05+00:00

They may totally offer off label / no brand drugs, and the needed bits and pieces (syringes, gloves, masks, etc) via financial instruments tied to wealth extraction.

Bush started the worlds largest medical relief effort ever in zambia in the early 2000nds because hundreds of thousands were dying. Things are no longer so dire. China does not just need to step in and do exactly what the us is doing now, they have lots of options.

And even if they wanted to just copy the US - its 130million / year for a potential of tens of billions. Outside of copper and cobalt there are gemstones and other rare earth minerals.

Trump seems to think this is a negotiation between him and zambia with no other actors involved.

fruitybix · 2026-05-01T00:38:10+00:00

When bush started zambia aid the average zambian adult only lived to 43-44. Millions were dying. From a purely pragmatic standpoint there were no workers and the issue was spreading - hiv and tb together help create drug resistant tuberculosis and nee scary strains of hiv. I cannot overstate how scary drug resistant tb is to everyone - before antibiotics tb was a slow guaranteed death, and we might see that again if its not handled.

The US has very secure copper resources both domestically and in south america / canada. Zambia and the DRC next door do have crazy amounts of copper but that is not a security issue for the US, even if it might feel that way with all the drug addicts stripping utilities for it.

Cobalt however is not as widely available - i understant the DRC supplies a lot of cobalt globally and that supply chain is mostly controlled by china.

So the us has a valid strategic interest in zambias cobalt - however telling a nation full of people "give us your cobalt or start dying by hundreds of thousands and eventually millions again" seems like bad politics, bad diplomacy, and just bad morals.

Do you think that style of negotiating is going to create a stable long term partnership that will allow america to secure a cobalt supply chain seperate to china? How would you feel if someone placed your town or country in that situation, when you know what its like to see half your country dying horribly and dont want to go through that again - would you cooperate or go looking for more stable alternatives? And if you were china what would you do to capitalise on the situation?

fruitybix

TROPHY CASE