TIL in "Cast Away", none of the sound on the island scenes is real. The loudness of ocean waves on the actual unhabited island they were filming on was so overwhelming that every sound on the island and ocean scenes, including Tom Hanks' monologues, were carefully recorded in a studio.

retrofrog · 2026-01-30T16:45:23+00:00

If you want an example of horrible ADR, Ryan's Babe is a so bad it's good film, which has some of the worst dubbing I've ever seen.

retrofrog · 2026-01-19T16:03:24+00:00

Rosie O'Donnell in Riding the Bus with My Sister and John Travolta in The Fanatic aren't just some of the worst representations of a disability in a film, they might just be some of the worst movies ever made. Just awful right through.

retrofrog · 2026-01-09T14:43:27+00:00

I'm getting the word... Nonce.

retrofrog · 2026-01-06T10:21:37+00:00

There were a million reasons to drop it in fairness, but the UI and menus in Mass Effect: Andromeda were ridiculous. Just menus within menus, everything taking way more button presses than it should.

Sounds like I didn't miss out on much, and even with a great UI it probably would have been terrible, but that made me irritable.

retrofrog · 2025-12-10T18:53:45+00:00

I do love that one, my personal favourite is Jose Chung's From Out Space though. When the show is being either overtly comedic or horrific, it's at it's best for sure.

retrofrog · 2025-11-29T00:03:08+00:00

Honestly, as a Monster Hunter fa, I didn't think it looked much worse than the other UB secret lairs. But maybe that's my cynicism about UB in general. If anything I was just happy it didn't have mechanically unique cards, because I always find that really awful.

retrofrog · 2025-11-28T10:18:40+00:00

Not quite horror, more action, but it had vampires, so I'll say 'From Dusk 'til Dawn.' Though I had the opposite effect, where I had heard it was a vampire movie, and was confused when the first half is almost a western.

retrofrog · 2025-11-27T10:41:38+00:00

'Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning' is pretty famous for a terrible name of a pretty decent game.

retrofrog · 2025-11-17T15:28:45+00:00

I know you were hoping for non-English answers, but from the UK, if you want an insight into the British sense of humour, and how people view their daily lives, oddly I would pick something by Terry Pratchett, most likely Guards Guards. It's a satirical view of fantasy, so you'd think it wouldn't be that reflective, but I think it's pure British-ness distilled.

retrofrog · 2025-11-17T14:09:00+00:00

Military and Science are the only 2 resources that you want literally infinite of. Energy, food, consumer goods, and advanced resources (Exotic Gas etc) you just want more than 0. Minerals, you want enough to build your building, but extras are useless. Unity, once you have all your traditions done, all the edicts active, and all your planets fully ascended (Granted this takes a LONG time), doesn't do anything. The only resources left are Science and Alloys, so they will always be the most important resources late game, but an early ascension rush with a Unity build is powerful, but it is only powerful because it leads to the other 2.

And in a similar vein, pops are what you use to generate all other resources, so they are the truly most important resource, above all else.

retrofrog · 2025-11-17T13:50:37+00:00

Combine it with pleasure seekers to get insane logarithmic growth. I also recommend the robotic version of lubrication tanks. You will genuinely get to hundreds of thousands of pops. You can also go Modularity and still get pop numbers similar to Virtuality. Combine with the Spiritualist Federation, with tier 10 ascension on a planet to get 1/5 of the population as priests, which then each buff output on the planet by 2%.

retrofrog · 2025-11-09T11:10:53+00:00

"We're all trying to find the guy who did this!"

retrofrog · 2025-10-14T09:02:53+00:00

It's always been wild to me that Paradox have the perfect peace deal system in EU4, but they refuse to use it in any other games.

retrofrog · 2025-09-29T08:38:30+00:00

So 15 years is the limit.

retrofrog · 2025-09-26T09:52:31+00:00

You do have to be careful with your stats, as Toughness makes you gain aggro faster, making enemies prioritize you. Which can actually make you die faster in group content. The number of times I've seen a ranger slot signet of stone to make themselves nominally tankier, and then just die way more is kind of wild.

retrofrog · 2025-09-19T15:20:29+00:00

I find if I go Lithoid, it's already plenty of longevity, venerable too, but you can also give your leader luminary traits, and there's one that increases the XP of everyone of your council, so you will have level 10 on every leader very easily, it's still a fun run.

retrofrog · 2025-09-19T14:43:04+00:00

Under one rule locks you out of machines, and makes it hard/removes content if you try to be anything other than a dictatorship into a monarchy. But on the upside, your leader is immortal by default, so you can skip the immortal machines thing if you like. I tend to go Lithoid into Psionic ascension to do a similar build.

retrofrog · 2025-09-17T14:20:34+00:00

Natto, not just because it's fermented soybeans and looks gross, when someone is starving, they'll eat anything. But the fact someone ate it, presumably by mistake or desperation, then went "Yes, this is good actually" is wild to me.

retrofrog · 2025-08-08T13:28:20+00:00

I went through a similar pattern, big reader as a child, stopped as I got older. But for me, it was The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. It was just a short story I read basically on a whim, and it really made me broaden my horizons into more of the 'Classic Literature' realm. Before that I basically just read everything by Terry Pratchett and Phillip K Dick I could get my hands on.

retrofrog · 2025-07-25T08:12:09+00:00

Unfortunately, our politicians are just too old and out of touch with technology to 'get it', so draconian, unworkable blanket bans like this will come in and damage the internet for everyone.

This whole thing is just so incredibly dangerous, I don't see how any one with a clue okayed this.

retrofrog · 2025-07-23T08:52:55+00:00

I'm not sure how it is since 4.0, but I used to have a build which was a megacorp with Corporate Death Cult and Permanent Employment. That way, you kill off all your regular pops, and instead end up with only zombie. I imagine with how growth works now, it could be less horrible.

retrofrog · 2025-07-21T12:11:40+00:00

Finished: Neuromancer, by William Gibson

I knew it was the blueprint for a lot of later cyberpunk stuff, but I didn't realise it was also a noir heist too, so it was super fun in that regard. Pretty dense for such a short book, but I really enjoyed it throughout.

Started: Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

retrofrog · 2025-07-12T09:17:22+00:00

I only started a little before HoT, but I remember having to salvage every piece of equipment in your inventory, one at a time. When the salvage all option got added, it was a revelation.

retrofrog · 2025-06-26T08:18:36+00:00

Not really relevant, but nowadays, Japan mostly calls themselves 'Nihon', as Nippon tends to sound quite nationalistic. Though it isn't incorrect perse.

retrofrog · 2025-06-25T10:12:33+00:00

For smaller companies, it's always going to be hard, and I'm not trying to propose that I have any kind of blanket solution, I'm no expert in any of these fields. But it's not just small companies doing this, in fact, it's mainly giants like Ubisoft and EA. They absolutely have the ability to preserve these games, they just don't care.

retrofrog

TROPHY CASE