Introduction

July, 1914. Paris.

Tensions are high all around the European continent. A long-growing discontent has reached a sharp peak not even a full month earlier with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In the midst of these ever-uneasy days, a young American doctor by the name of Robert Cath gets a sudden invitation from his best friend, urging him to join him on the now-legendary Orient Express.

As he boards the train, he cannot predict the chaos that will follow. Luxurious as the train may be, this will not be an idyllic trip, but the scene of a murder. Blood will be shed, conspiracies will unfold, secrets will be revealed and romance will have a chance to blossom. With the official beginning of the Great War only a matter of days away, he may be the last passenger to step aboard what will be...

The Last Express

Welcome everyone to the first month of the Colossal Game Adventure! I am sure most people reading this will know the details already given the activity on the setup threads. Just to reiterate though, the Colossal Gaming Adventure is a monthly event where we will be playing through older games together. While @kfwyre organized the voting and nomination phases, each month will have a different host. We have seven months' worth of games already scheduled through March 2026, and I have the honor of being the conductor for the inaugural round!

As you saw above, our first leg of this grand journey will have us board The Last Express, a 1997 adventure game about a mystery on the Orient Express. I myself have not played it yet and will be experiencing it for the first time with most people here, because this game seems to be the poster child for hidden gems. A game that received critical acclaim and praise from critics and players alike, and clearly a work with serious passion and effort, but according to Wikipedia it sold only 100,000 copies on its initial release.

Luckily for us, one of those 100,000 copies belongs to kfwyre, who brought it to my attention with this passionate recommendation back in May. That link has some mild spoilers for the very beginning of the game, so you may not want to read it, but here's the key takeaway that made this game so interesting: this game plays out in real time. As you explore the train, characters will go about their set routines and events will unfold off screen regardless of you being present to witness them. These events can set up unknown domino effects that will impact you, and your own choices can also have unforeseen consequences that won't come into play until much later.

To that end, don't be discouraged by failure. Many adventure games of this era rely on trial and error but in this game failure is particularly integrated into the gameplay. Someone might somehow get the luckiest run ever and manage to complete the game on their very first playthrough without ever encountering a fail state, but ultimately, this game will call for a bit of patience. And maybe guides if you have the original version or the hints don't help. Which I personally think is pretty neat. Doesn't get much more classic/retro than looking up walkthroughs on GameFAQs!

So all aboard The Last Express, and enjoy the ride.

Game Information

Versions: Original Release and DotEmu/Gold Edition. The DotEmu version is a re-release which has additional features such as hints and tutorials, which may make it easier.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS, MS-DOS, iOS, Android

Genre(s): Adventure, Mystery, Point-and-Click

Links: Mobygames, Wikipedia

Stores:

• GOG, Original: The original 1997 release, in all its 1990’s glory for purists. (Also may come with some extras like a soundtrack and "making of" from a 2011 Collector’s Edition published by DotEmu, but which is now wiped from the internet...?)
• Steam, Gold Edition: The remake/remaster released by DotEmu with added hints and tutorials, as well as interface tweaks. (Note: while it lists macOS, the game is 32-bit, which is unsupported by any macOS versions beyond 10.14 Mojave.) This version is on sale for only 11 more hours at the time of this topic being posted!! An extreme time crunch for sure, so if you see this message, now's the time to buy it!!
• iOS (Apple App Store) and Android (Google Play Store). These ports are also by DotEmu and predate the Gold Edition.

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

With all the pleasantries out of the way...

> PRESS START

(Credit to @Boojum for the splash screen. It's too awesome not to include!)

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Schedule

There was a three-way tie for 5th, so instead of scheduling the next 6 months, I scheduled 7. Bonus month!

@CannibalisticApple will be hosting her nomination, The Last Express, for our first month. If you're interested in hosting a month, see the Hosting section below.

Also, I selfishly scheduled PlayStation WHAT? during the Backlog Burner so I can use those games in my Bingo Card. :D

For the rest, I tried to create variety in the schedule so that we weren't playing the same systems or genres back-to-back.

Discussion Topics

Each month will have two discussion topics:

• "Insert Cartridge" - 1st of the month
• "Remove Cartridge" - 20th of the month

Insert Cartridge topics are primarily for getting the game set up and running. Remove Cartridge topics are primarily for reflecting on the game once you've played it. However, the game itself and anything else related to it can be discussed in either one.

Hosting

Each month, the discussion topics will be posted by a different "host" who will act as the emcee for that month.

Hosting is not required, but it is encouraged that people host months for games that they are either already very familiar with or that they are strongly interested in playing.

People who nominated a game will be given preference for hosting, otherwise it will be given to whomever claims it first.

If you would like to host a month, let me know which one and I will add you to the schedule.

Before your month begins, I will send you a "Hosting Package" featuring templates that you can edit to your liking.

If no one claims a month, I will host it as a fallback.

Voting Results

The top 6 games from the voting round were chosen to be played.

Of the remaining games:

• The top 50% will advance to the next round. They will start the next round with a base score of 70% of their vote totals.
• The bottom 50% will be removed from the list.

Removed games will be able to be re-nominated in future rounds if someone chooses to do so.

I'm attempting to be more active on Tildes (after my last attempt), and I noticed that there hadn't been a new fortnightly thread, so here's my contribution!

https://tildes.net/~health.mental/1oax/victories_and_challenges_an_a_u_dhd_community_and_support_fortnightly_thread

The year is 2025. The C programming language is something like 50 years old now - a dinosaur within the fast-moving environment of software development. Dozens of new languages have cropped up through the years, with languages like Rust and Go as prime contenders for systems-level programming. Bootstrapping a project in C these days will often raise eyebrows or encourage people to dismiss you out of hand. Personally, I've barely touched the language since I graduated.

Now, with all that said: I still consider learning and understanding C to be key for having an integrated, in-depth understanding of how computers and programming really works. When I am getting a project up and running, I frequently end up running commands like "sudo apt install libopenssl-dev" without really giving it much thought about what's going on there. I know that it pulls some libraries onto my computer so that another program can use them, but without the requisite experience of building and compiliing a library then it's kind of difficult to understand what it's all about. I know that other languages will introduce this concept, but realistically everything is built to bind to C libraries.

System libraries are only one instance of my argument though. To take a more general view, I would say that learning C helps you better understand computers and programming. It might be a pain to consider stuff like memory allocation and pointers on a regular basis, but I also think that not understanding these subjects can open up avenues for a poorly formed understanding about how computers work. Adding new layers of abstraction does not make the foundation less relevant, and I think that learning C is the best avenue toward an in-depth understanding of how computers actually work. This sort of baseline understanding, even if the language isn't used on a regular basis, goes a long way to improving one's skills as a developer. It also gives people the skills to apply their skills in a wide variety of contexts.

I'm no expert, though: most of the programming I do is very high-level and abstracted from the machine (Python, Haskell, BASH). I'm sure there are plenty of folks here who are better qualified to chime in, so what do you think?

Dutch Grand Prix
Circuit Zandvoort
August 29-31, 2025

Next race:

Italian Grand Prix
Autodromo Nazionale Monza
September 5-7, 2025

My understanding is that Android emulators primarily exist for mobile development and app testing and such-like, and maybe secondarily, to play mobile games.

I want to explore the possibility of using them as a, basically, full-time replacement for installing apps on my phone. More and more apps and services have no "desktop/laptop" version, and no website version. Installing the app on your phone is starting to become a non-negotiable requirement ... one that I'd like to find a work-around to.

So, yeah ... I guess that's the question. Is this a 'thing'? Has anyone experimented with--or flat-out used--an emulator on a desktop/laptop to run their banking app and the like? Is this even possible? Can you connect an emulator to an app-store and just start downloading/installing stuff?

Thanks.

A long, complicated story, summarized: (apart from Tildes, on which I lurk) I swore off all social media years ago. Then my job required that I have an account on LinkedIn. I reconsidered, and attempted to make the least disclosive account possible in an effort to protect my privacy. Things aren't going well. Despite logging in with the correct credentials, on the same device, using the same browser; and with access to my signup email, and access to the phone I used to enroll, LinkedIn has flagged my account the second time I tried using it and now requires me to upload images of myself and my government ID to regain access to their cesspool. Are you familiar with their protocols and can share insights, so that if I start again I don't face the same problem?

I have read what LinkedIn says and I have read discussions on Reddit on the topic. LinkedIn says you can opt to "use your work email" or mail them an affidavit. These options were not given to me. Everyone else I have seen reporting facing this seems to have triggered the system by losing their login credentials or moving countries; what brought this upon me and can I avoid it?

1. Is it that I use a VPN, and it may have routed through a different IP address on the second login?
2. I use an email alias. Is LinkedIn purging accounts with email domains that offer aliases?
3. Is it a result of clearing cookies?
4. Is it easier to maintain a Google account (!) which LinkedIn allows as login without this ID thing coming up?

Please be gentle with your advice as I am kind of panicking.

Introducing: Colossal Game Adventure

Colossal Game Adventure is Tildes' brand new retro video game club.

Each month we will play a different retro game/games, discuss our thoughts, and bask in the glorious digital experiences of yesteryear!

Colossal Game Adventure is a reference to Colossal Cave Adventure. It's one of the most influential games of all time, one of the first text-based interactive games, and one of the first games to be shared online.

What do we want to do with this group? Play influential games; interact with each other through text; and share the love for retro games online!

It also abbreviates to CGA (because we love chunky pixel art), and its name communicates the Colossal amount of fun and excitement that we have with retro video Games in our shared Adventure of playing them together.

Nominations

In this topic we will be gathering nominations for games to be played.

If you're looking for ideas:

• This Wikipedia list of "games considered the best" is a great place to start.
• RacketBoy has "hidden gem" lists for many retro systems.

Importantly, not all games for CGA have to be "significant" games. Zany, offbeat, and experimental games are welcome too. Anything you think might make for good discussions.

We will also have some "Arcade Special" months where we play several smaller/shorter games together in one batch (e.g. Pac-Man, Frogger, and Galaga). If you're not sure how big/long a game is, HowLongToBeat can help.

Single Game Nomination Rules

• Choose any game you feel is "retro" -- there is no hard and fast rule on what does or doesn't count
• Maximum of TWO game nominations per person
• Link to the game(s) on MobyGames

"Arcade Special" Nomination Rules

An "Arcade Special" is a batch of games that you feel could be played together in the same month.

(They do not have to be proper arcade games and can be from any system or genre.)

You might choose them because they're shorter or don't have as much staying power. You also might choose them based on a theme, series, or franchise. You also might do a completely random grab bag! There's no wrong way to make an Arcade Special (except for choosing games that are too big to fit in a month together).

• 2-5 games per Arcade Special
• Maximum of ONE Arcade Special nomination per person
• Link to the games on MobyGames

So, one person can nominate up to TWO single games and ONE arcade special (of up to five games).

Optional Extras

None of the following are required, but they make things more interesting:

• Explain why you're interested in nominating the games
• Explain why you think they'd be a good choice for the group
• If the game has multiple releases or multiple platforms, you can choose to specify which release/platform to target if you feel it's important. (Note: participants are still free to play whichever version they want.)
• For Arcade Specials: list why you think the games would be a good candidate to be played together.
• For Arcade Specials: give the batch its own cool name!

Next Steps

Nominations will be open for 48 hours from the time of this posting.

The voting topic will open on August 29.

Once the voting is over, we will post the schedule for the next six months and start our first official month on September 1st.

Notifications

If you want to be added to the notification list for our Colossal Game Adventure, simply comment in this topic. I will add all commenters here to the list unless they explicitly mention otherwise.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

IMPORTANT

We now have a splash screen. (Thanks @Boojum!)

ALSO IMPORTANT

Please read all directions for submitting a proper ballot.

Any improper ballots will NOT be counted, but you will get a polite message from me before the count asking you to fix them. XD

• All ballots must be top-level comments.
• All top-level comments should be ballots ONLY.

I will be using the Collapse Replies button to tally votes, so any ballots not in top-level comments will not be counted.

After you submit your ballot, you can respond to your own post in a new comment to lobby for your choices (which is optional but highly recommended). It's completely fine to have conversations downthread from the ballots, but please make sure that the top-level remains clean.

Submitting Your Ballot

• Each person has 20 votes to distribute among games they see fit.

• Each person can allocate a maximum of 5 points per Single Game/Arcade Special.

• Arcade Specials count as one block (do not vote for each game in them individually).

• Votes should be listed as NAME (VOTES) -- e.g. Pong (3)

• Voting closes 48 hours from the posting of this topic.

Please ensure your titles match mine exactly (copy/paste highly recommended). I will be using CTRL+F to tally votes u/Spore_Prince has written a program to tally the votes, so any different spellings will not being counted. See examples below, as well as my actual ballot in the topic.

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (5)
Portal 3 (5)
Half-Life 3 (3)
Team Fortress 3 (2)
Night Trap (2)
Xexyz (1)
Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1)
Left 4 Dead 3 (1)

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (10)
Protal 3 (7)
Wand of Gamelon (5)

Voting Outcomes

• The top 6 games/Arcade Specials will become the next 6 months of CGA.
• Of the remaining games, the bottom 50% will be cut from the list.
• The remaining 50% will stay on the list and will enter the next voting round starting at their current point totals instead of 0.
• The next round of nominations will happen in 6 months, and participants will be limited to nominating 1 new game OR 1 new Arcade Special.

Nominees

Arcade Specials

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

I was reading this Reddit post and was curious about whether the passengers of this theoretical spaceship could experience 1g of acceleration forever assuming the ship has an infinite fuel source.

They shouldn’t be able to pass the speed of light relative to an outside observer, but is there some phenomenon where the passengers can feel like they are accelerating forever?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?