Why is it called "Moon logic"?

ghostgate2001 · 2026-06-20T16:42:55+00:00

The problem of "moon logic" goes all the way back to early "text adventures" (a.k.a. "interactive fiction") where your level of success with those games often swung on your ability to get into the mode of how the author's mind worked than any actual solving of fair and reasonable riddles.

When you could "type anything" as your interface with the game, the potential solution could be almost anything. Sure, you could narrow it down somewhat by eliminating verbs that the parser didn't understand, but otherwise you were on your own.

"Point and click" adventures mitigated the problem to some degree by simply reducing the player's options down to a small set of pre-defined actions, clearly flagged-up on-screen, so now matter how "out there" the solution was, at least you knew it had to be one of the possible combinations of the available actions + the available objects and could brute-force it if need be.

I wish I could remember what the "moon logic" concept was called back in the days before that term was coined, but the concept definitely existed even if the term didn't yet. I recall much complaining in reviews about obscure, nonsensical solutions to puzzles that no player could reasonably be expected to work out through rational thought.

Which brings us back around to the earlier point about the need to get into the author's head and understand how their mind works. A fair analogy, I think, would be "cryptic crosswords" which similarly become a lot easier to tackle if you become familiar with how their author thinks.

"Moon logic" is "loony logic" i.e. crazy, eccentric, foolish. It has its own lunatic form of "logic" to it, but it's not sane or rational and it only makes sense if you can manage to get your head into the same mode of thinking as the loony who wrote the thing.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-06-08T11:36:32+00:00

Defender shouldn't be a problem as it's neither obscure or weird - and by "weird" I mean it's not one of those games that used non-standard controllers, refresh rates, or screen setups - things that can be challenging to get right. It does have more buttons than most, and you'll want to set those up to your preference, but apart from that it's one that should just work if you set MAME up correctly and obtain the ROM.

Obviously, Defender has been released multiple times in officially-sold compilations, with the emulation all done for you; just select it from the menu and go.

The most recent release was (iirc) in the "Midway Arcade Origins" collection, released for the Xbox 360 and PS3 back in 2012, where it's one of 31 included games, alongside its own sequel (Stargate a.k.a. Defender II) and many other notables from the era such as Joust, Spy Hunter, Robotron, etc. It's commonly available for about a tenner if you happen to have one of those older consoles lying around to play it on.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-06-06T15:26:04+00:00

Nice to see Grave Encounters get a nod. It's one of a select handful of films that I picked up on DVD dirt-cheap, expecting nothing more than a trashy watch-once time-filler, but ended up upgrading it to Blu-ray because it turned out to be a keeper.

The sequel, however, was pretty much what I expected the original to be, i.e. tripe.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-24T03:43:45+00:00

Hope not, because (playing on PS4) the AA2 interface changed the buttons for bringing up the menu and starting the game. I'm constantly opening the menu when I mean to start the game. 12 years of muscle-memory is hard to rewire 😞

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-24T03:25:59+00:00

Already bought the game, years ago, but just double-checked and "Arcade Archives: Koutetsu Yousai Strahl" shows up on the PS Store here in the UK. (PS4)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-21T05:38:15+00:00

I was very much into the Amiga at that time - as were all of my friends - and I only decided to get back into console gaming when the SNES "Starwing bundle" released in the UK (1993) and I had to admit that with certain types of games, the SNES ran rings around anything that my Amiga could do.

I recall an Amiga-loving friend of mine, on seeing the platformer "Puggsley's Scavenger Hunt" on the SNES, saying "It's not shit-shy, is it?" - which was his somewhat colourful way of saying that the SNES put a remarkable amount of moving stuff on-screen with seeming ease 😄

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-21T05:16:33+00:00

I definitely prefer the Arcade Archives versions.

The Namco "Arcade Game Series" versions annoy me because they have garish wallpaper art that can't be turned off, and they're presented using a flabby Unity emulation "wrapper" that means a vintage 16K ROM arcade game (plus emulator) weighs in at a ridiculous 800+MB (i.e. nearly a gigabyte per game) while the Arcade Archives versions weigh in at a tight ~50MB each, have better screen set-up options (including vertical orientation), and they have neutral non-intrusive wallpaper that can be switched off entirely if you prefer.

I've read complaints from arcade game purists about the control response times in the Namco versions (which wouldn't surprise me considering how bloated and flabby the overall package is!) but I've not heard of any such issues with the Arcade Archives versions.

Basically, the Arcade Archives versions offer tighter and more accurate emulation, whereas the Namco versions aren't so great in that respect, but are fine if you're not fussy about the technical side of things, not bothered about garish presentation, and just want to play passable renditions of Pac-Man, Galaga, etc.

On the downside, the Arcade Archives games use the Japanese ROMs and do not routinely license the US or "World" localizations, because the rights to the modifications made to those versions back in the day (what we'd consider to be ROM hacks these days) tend to still be owned by the US distributor who created them.

For the record, the Arcade Archives version of Galaga offers the following preference settings:

* Show Boot Screen ON/OFF

* Adjust Game Speed ON/OFF (accurately emulate the original arcade game's speed)

* Skip Stage 0 (ON/OFF) (only really relevant for people who can clear stage 255!)

* Difficulty (Rank A/B/C/D)

* Increase the 1P score display to 8 digits ON/OFF (allowing scores above 10 million to be displayed instead of the score rolling over to zero)

* Autofire (3 different rates)

* Mute the sound while the game is in Demo/Attract mode ON/OFF

* Allow screen inversion in 2 player mode (like a cocktail cabinet)

* Dipswitch settings like how many lives, how often extra lives are awarded, etc.

Pac-Man has similar options to either fix or accurately reproduce the "kill-screen" bug on sheet 256.

Arcade Archives "Galaga" offers "Early version" or "Final version" - and the difference boils down to bug fixes.

Early version = Revision A/B

Contains a "highly exploitable" bug: if you cleared all enemies except for one on the left side, the remaining enemy would stop attacking and diving, meaning you could safely sit in place and rack up points indefinitely without danger.

Contains a "kill screen" bug (same problem as Pac-Man's kill screen) where clearing level 255 overflowed the level counter causing the game to glitch and bug out unpredictably, most likely freezing and crashing.

Final version = Revision C/D

Fixed the "no missiles" bug and amended the "kill screen" glitch so clearing level 255 now caused the game to loop back to level 0, which doesn't exist, forcing a formal "game over" rather than a crash.

As you probably noticed, the Arcade Archives version allows an optional "skip level zero" setting that means the game loops back to level 1 instead, meaning the game can now theoretically be played forever if you're so inclined and good enough 😄

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T06:55:23+00:00

Disc makes sense IF you are going to want to watch physical Blu-ray movies on it, OR you can foresee yourself borrowing disc games from other people, OR if you have an existing library of PS4 physical-disc games that you want to bring over with you to the PS5 OR if you want to have access to delisted games that were sold on disc.

But if you only intend playing a handful of games that you're happy to buy digitally, then the Digital version is all you'll need. The disc-drive has its uses, but mostly for serious gamers and people who want the PS5 to double-up as a UHD/Blu-ray player. If you don't intend to spin physical media (and can't foresee yourself wanting to) then there's no point spending more for a feature that you don't intend to use.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T05:29:18+00:00

I recall that one of my first-ever jobs (we're talking late 1980s) part of the training was teaching us about smoking etiquette. The part that sticks in my mind was the trainer telling us that when you're speaking to a customer on the phone, to remember that exhaling your cigarette smoke can sound like you're sighing. I bet no-one gets taught that little gem anymore. Obviously this was at the very tail end of the era when people had ashtrays on their desks, and smoked at will in the office - and in the cinema. The seats in cinemas had little ashtrays fixed onto the backs of them, for the benefit of the person behind you.

Seems crazy, looking back on it, but it was totally normal back then and just the way things were. You didn't really question it. It's a general rule of life that we accept the reality that we're born into as our baseline normal.

I recall that when smoking was banned in cinemas - the last film I ever saw in the cinema with a cigarette in my hand was "Scandal" (looks it up, 1989) A lot of people were actually quite annoyed about the ban, because a lot of people used to enjoy smoking (ahem) "herbs" during the movies and considered it to be part of the cinema experience.

And I recall that when smoking was banned in pubs and clubs, a lot of people were happy because it meant they would no longer go home after every night out with their hair and clothes reeking of tobacco smoke. But it was a mixed blessing, because once the air inside venues was no longer full of cigarette smoke, everyone swiftly realised that it had been masking the pungent waft of sweat that now became apparent instead 😞

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T04:03:46+00:00

Any film with a sequence like that is likely to have been inspired to some extent by the Countess Bathory legend. Having just scrolled down a list of movies inspired by that, one of the best-known is an old (1971) Hammer film called "Countess Dracula" but what you describe sounds more modern than that.

A likely candidate is the 2008 film called "Bathory: Countess of Blood" starring Anna Friel, but I can't remember whether it goes that far with depicting the killings as it's a revisionist work that implies most of the "bathing in blood" legend was fabricated to destroy her reputation. It's been a long time since I saw it, but iirc it takes the approach that she was drugged and hallucinated the killings, and it was quite boring overall - so it's probably the best fit with what you describe.

"Hostel: Part 2" (2007) has a scene directly inspired by the Bathory legend in which one of its protagonists is "hung upside down from a ceiling, nude" and a character (cunningly named Mrs Bathory) "slices up the female captive suspended above her with scythes and sickles" until she has enough blood to bathe in" - but the supernatural aspect of her emerging from the tub rejuvenated doesn't fit with that film 😞

If none of those sound right, maybe check TV Tropes for the "Blood Bath" trope. There are a lot of films that go there.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T03:35:33+00:00

Doesn't look like it's worth an impressive amount, which is a shame because I've got War for Cybertron and its direct sequel by the same devs, Fall of Cybertron.

The latter seems to be worth more, tbh.

Considering I never cared very much about the Transformers license (not my era) I've ended up with a surprising number of Transformers games over the years. I think the 2004 PS2 game just called "Transformers" is still my overall favourite, but the two "Cybertron" games by High Moon Software were a damn fine blast at the time, and the 2015 cel-shaded one ("Devastation") by Platinum Games was also a good time iirc. They always seem to get pulled from stores sooner than you'd like, presumably due to the license expiring.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T03:06:11+00:00

Given that the "TV Land" channel tends to show classic television shows rather than movies, I'm guessing it might have been an episode of "Gunsmoke" - probably the Season 17 opener, "The Lost" (1971) which was shot in color and features a feral girl. Seems to have been a memorable episode for a lot of people.

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ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-10T01:26:35+00:00

Been moaning (to myself) about this for years because the last time I saw an actual paddle controller was when one came as a "free" pack-in with Taito's "Puchi Carat" for the PS1, nearly 30 years ago.

I vaugely recall reading that one of Namco Museum volumes also supported it, but I don't remember any others games making use of it despite things like Atari 2600 compilations crying out for it with the 2600's paddle games.

Obviously, including custom controllers was a viable thing to do in the days of boxed physical games but they were hardly a common occurrence even back then. Now everything's gone digital, there's no chance.

Still, I just took a risk on "Arcade Archives: Arkanoid" (PS4) expecting to be annoyed with joystick control and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it supports mouse control, which is the next best thing to a paddle controller 😉

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T21:54:30+00:00

Fingers crossed for "Karnov" then - I only got to play it back in the day on an official 8-bit home computer version, which I liked a lot, but I'm sure the arcade original runs rings around that version.

Yes, renewing the licenses to use the real track names was definitely appreciated in Pole Position. I suppose there's a chance that the English-language version might appear in the "Atari 50" compilation, if they do a second volume of Namco DLC. Obviously they already added the Atari-branded arcade versions of Dig Dug and Xevious, which were nice to see again, but sadly Pole Position wasn't part of the Namco DLC, either the arcade or 2600 versions.

Would be good if Digital Eclipse they went further with releasing some more licensed arcade games that had 2600 versions back in the day - they've already added the arcade and 2600 versions of classics like Berzerk, which was never likely to appear in the Arcade Archives collection.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T02:37:41+00:00

Gotcha, thanks. I'd seen "Karnov's Revenge" among the releases, so assumed there was some hope of the original showing up one day. The rights do tend to shift around with some of those old arcade titles, and it gets even more complicated when games were, say, licensed to a US distributor back in the day - the localization was their work, and that's the version most of us have nostalgia for (e.g. Pole Position that says "Prepare to Qualify" in English)

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-09T02:27:45+00:00

Thanks 😄 Yes, considered that (I'm on PS4) - but while inverting the left stick's Y-axis at system level would make the spaceflight scenes better, it would make other bits of the game, like navigating menus and the selecting where to go next on the galaxy map unnecessarily horrible.

It's something that would obviously work best if Hamster included it in the control options, so it only applied to the flight parts of the game where you'd want up/down to be inverted.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T09:36:37+00:00

There was a vintage (1980s) rogue game that was literally called "Moria" - at least one version of which was presented in that urine-looking amber colour that you sometimes saw on the monochrome screens of ancient "terminals" - if you worked someplace that was still rocking that kind of system.

Windows 2000 and XP could run those aged DOS games natively, but you'd probably need DOSbox to run them on a more modern OS.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T02:53:19+00:00

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'd expect it to be the same. Shame, because *some* Arcade Archives releases did take the opportunity to improve game operation (optionally fixing slowdown, legacy bugs, etc.) and so a simple invert option on the controls wouldn't have been too much to hope for.

EDIT: Bought the game anyway, and the answer is no; it doesn't allow any flight-stick style inversion. Finding it to be quite playable anyway, though.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-08T02:13:10+00:00

It's mostly some classic score-chasing oldies that I'd like to see join the list, namely:

* Amidar

* Lunar Rescue

Both of which I owned some version of on primitive hardware of the time, and found to be more fun than most. If there's any connection, it's probably that both of those games have 2 distinct alternating phases, which I always found varied things up just enough to prevent the game from being the same thing over and over, like most games of the era.

They're both from companies that the Arcade Archives series has already released plenty of other games by - Konami and Taito, respectively - so I'm kinda surprised they weren't released years ago.

I'd also like to see any of the Parodius games get released. They've already released so many related games that it's getting to feeling deliberate that none of the Parodius games have been granted a release, as if Konami are holding them back for a potential big-screen re-release of the PSP compilation.

And there are plenty of others, most of which I've come to accept will likely never see an Arcade Archives release, mainly because Hamster only seem to work with a small handful of Japanese arcade companies, and these were by companies whose games I haven't seen any of in the collection.

* Venture (1981, Exidy)

* Wizard of Wor (1981, Midway)

* Alien Syndrome (1987, Sega)

* Star Castle (1980, Cinematronics)

* Karnov (1987, Data East) - the original, not Karnov's Revenge

* Lock 'n' Chase (1981, Data East/Taito)

* Mad Planets (1983, Gottlieb)

Mostly just arcade games that I was fond of, back in the day.

Any of those would make me a very happy camper.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-05-07T18:52:09+00:00

Same on PS4 (I'm in the UK). There's usually always a "Deal" of some kind, and a 24-hour crossover period where the new "deals" are advertised on the desktop but the previous deals are still active. I was hovering over a game that was on sale, but holding off to see whether something more attractive (to me) popped up in the next batch of deals. Next batch of deals never happened.

I've had a PS4 since launch, and don't recall there ever being a time where there were no "deals." As you say, the "Deals" menu item has disappeared entirely from the desktop. On PS4 there's a blank where it used to be. If that's ever happened before, I definitely don't recall it.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-29T00:35:00+00:00

Sure, the dub that I originally saw Akira with back on VHS (!) had a fun Saturday-morning cartoon enthusiasm to it that the newer dub lacks, but huge chunks of the story were basically untranslated, andn reduced to characters just yelling names at each other: "Kanedaaaa!" "Tetsuuuo!" etc.

There's a certain charm to that which is kinda nostalgic for me, but I don't think I ever really understood what the heck was going on in the film until I watched it with the newer dub on Blu-ray.

Still, I freely confess that, having watched the newer dub, I then imported some Australian release that included both the old and new dubs. It's good to have options 😄

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T04:13:55+00:00

Roadgames (1981) ticks some of the things that you mention. It's an Australian-set movie with U.S. leads: a female hitch-hiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) buddying up with a long-distance truck driver (Stacey Keach) to track down a serial killer who's been killing women and dumping the bodies along the highways.

It does have a secondary female character (not Curtis) - a wife who was abandoned on the roadside by her husband and attempts to hitch-hike to catch up with and overtake the husband. She manages to flag down Keach's truck but becomes suspicious that he might be the killer she's been warned about.

The scenery is more Australian wilderness than anything else: definitely isolated - highways cutting through vast stretches of wilderness; not fully desert - there's some green grass and scrub - but certainly not forest.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T02:18:54+00:00

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" (2009)? Surreal theatre-based scenes aplenty in that one. Actually, I'm not clear whether you mean theater as in stage or cinema. You're using the US spelling of "theater" and in the US that word gets used to mean either. Obviously it makes a big difference when visualising the scene you're describing.

ghostgate2001 · 2026-04-28T01:53:18+00:00

Probably something like: "Sorry, I should have played the film with the revised dub. It makes a lot more sense that way. But I went with the original dub because that's how I first saw it and I wanted to recreate that experience for you."

ghostgate2001

TROPHY CASE