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1 week ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
The '90s were a fascinating time in gaming, with an incredible number of cultural forces dragging it every which way. The Sega CD, and to a lesser extent, TurboDuo had brought multimedia gaming to the living room (at least for the niche audiences who bought them), but it was clear which way the future was going even if it wasn't within reach yet.
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2 weeks ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug, but like any drug its strength wears off with overuse. There are endless games out there pandering to how things used to be, and a sure sign that it's ok to pass is when (Game) is bringing back (thing) where (thing) has a fairly strong library of recent releases already. The trick to nostalgia is to be reverent of the past while being something new, and it honestly doesn't take a lot to clear that hurdle.
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2 weeks ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
Back in 1958 Lego bricks were patented, meaning only the one company could do anything with them. Patents last for twenty years, though, so it's been a good long time since anyone has been able to make a brick-building system based on interlocking studs, which is why everything from Mega Blocks to Cobi can use the system to create any set they'd like.
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2 weeks ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
It's easy to take muscle memory for granted. You don't even have to think about a well-practiced action to get it done, the body just does the work while you think in general terms about the fine details. Driving, holding utensils, the controller layout on a favorite game; once you've got the motions down, auto-pilot takes care of the fine details so you can focus on other things.
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3 weeks ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
The old shrine has seen better days, not ruined but certainly showing more than a few signs of wear and tear. It's functional enough as-is, but with a big festival on the way it should really be spruced up and restored to its former glory. The only problem is the caretaker, a tanuki named Pon, means well but is also lazy, so while he'll do his best to get the shrine ready, there's no guarantee it will be anything more than serviceable when the big end-of-summer event arrives.
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1 month ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
Work is work and it doesn't really care who does it so long as it's completed. Washing all the dishes by hand may bring a little spark of pride in a job well done, but tossing everything but the delicate stuff in the dishwasher and hitting a button works just as well. There's also the question of time management, because the number of things that need to be completed is just about always greater than the worker-hours available for that artisinal hands-on approach.
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1 month ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
RPGs have been on computers almost since there were computers to play them on. Every Commodore 64 probably had a Temple of Apshai disk somewhere nearby, with about 75% odds it was copied in a high school's computer lab from someone else's also-bootleg copy. Wizardry and Rogue kept the dungeon-crawling going while more story-oriented RPGs started turning up like the Ultima games, all part of a long process of genre evolution that eventually sprouted the branch of the JRPG.
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1 month ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
The world came to an end again, as the world tends to do. This time it was flooding, with the melted ice caps covering almost the entire planet with a giant ocean that makes Earth's big blue marble even bluer than it had been before. Remnants of the structures created by centuries-gone humanity still poke above the waves, but that's the only thing indicating people lived on Earth for millennia before finally breaking it beyond repair.
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1 month ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
Everything breaks and entropy always wins, which is all very nice for the nihilists, but the rest of us are trying to get things done. Inevitable deterioration is a problem and in the long run all is dust and ruin, but the long run can be pushed relentlessly into the future seeing as people are basically tool-using monkeys that have gotten very good at making things as they could be rather than accepting them for how they are.
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1 month ago | 
hardcoregamer.com | James Cunningham
Out there in space are all the resources a planet could ever hope for aside from air, food, water and all the other necessary bits needed for Earth life to survive. Minerals are available in endless abundance, though, and what's scarce on Earth is merely inconveniently located far beyond humanity's current reach.
