Hey! You wanna know why we're here? Go read this. It's because Sony UK's marketing department misappropriated £100k for random campaigns they couldn't possibly get in front of higher execs in time, which they used to make cardboard flyers saying the PS1 was "more powerful than god" and had perforations in the perfect size to roll up as roaches for people to toke up in the Playstation room at your local club. Yeah, baby.

They also mention the same T-Rex that Rodney Greenblat saw! That had to have been one rad fucking dinosaur. Anyway.

We've had more than our fill of rapping, bunnies, crises, electric shocks, and Pepsi this month. Outside the novelty, why do these crazy-ass games matter? WELL:

• It's great upheaval! CDs weren't just a major shift in storage, but production and cost. CDs took something like a week to order instead of two or three months. Imagine you have an extra eight weeks or so to develop an idea and put it in front of an exec, and they're not spending buckets on the cartridges. Why not accept those ideas? Why not take the risks? We're not quite at the indie boom and the internet, but it was certainly quite a step in development and risk-taking for the end product.

• Fuckin' money! Much like Nintendo's infamous war chest, Sony firmly planted themselves at the top of the pole for a long while. All this speed meant that - per GamePro's approximation in 1997 - there were 400 PlayStation games were in development by the end of 1996, whereas the Saturn had ~200 and the N64 had ~60. That variety lead to something like a 4-game attach rate to people buying a PS1 console, and the games themselves cost less because the CDs were cheaper. I was an N64 kid, but those cartridges were expensive. (Plus all the rando peripherals - the transfer pak? Expansion pak? The VMU for Hey You Pikachu!? Jesus, my parents were good to me.) The PS1 probably gave people leeway to take a buying risk on a zany idea. Even from more conservative spenders, it had to have been way more appealing to anyone on the fence.

• Music games! We had two here, and the Playstation was the home of Bemani for quite a while. Not much question why for the developer of the Walkman...

• That T-Rex! Golly!

• Age! Mascots and color grabbed kids, but kids aren't necessarily attracted to cool vector line art and an outlet for enormous CD collections. (They also, hopefully, weren't rolling too many joints at the club?) There was plenty of room to attract kids with Spyro or Crash - why not push the median age up at the same time? One study estimated that the "average gamer" was something like a 30 y/o woman in the 00s; nudging that number up and broadening the appeal had a lot to do with Sony's aggressive marketing. Another neat idea I saw mentioned was that the number of extreme sports games being produced gave video games another angle as a sort of lifestyle machine; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater itself was just as skate-punk as its people and bands. It sounds like a lofty thought, but THPS2 got me to pick up a skateboard, sooo...

• Finally, Japan! Obviously the 80's and early 90's brought so many mascots and characters out of Japan with enduring appeal, like Mario and Sonic, but their impact was very often with localization or marketing crews adapting that. Here we have stuff that's very distinctly Japanese making its way over here, rather than getting edited in trepidation over the original idea attaching. Why not? Throw a couple CDs our way, see what sticks.

And as a reminder, we're only scratching the surface! This console is a trove. I wanted to wait until the Remove thread to discuss more games, so the biggest one I'd leave everyone with is LSD: Dream Emulator, which is as much an art installation as it is a "game". You wander around randomized environments and "wake up" after 10 minutes or by being killed by things like lions, cars, or giant dudes coated in kanji characters. It's pretty fucking weird, and it was a fairly obvious point of growth from other projects like Yume Nikki, itself a springboard for dozens of ideas in games like Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale. More recent popular projects like hypnagogia 催眠術 and Ena: Dream BBQ have obvious lineage - the former was from an LSD-themed game jam!

There are SO many others. Gaball Screen, a shoe-flying simulator (??) released by a music label where you collect music videos produced by Tetsuya Komuro. There's Heart of Darkness, a puzzle-platformer and influence for contemporary "gore game" horror titles. Its greatest puzzle is perhaps its absolutely baffling E rating! And No One Can Stop Mr. Domino... Really? No one?? Who possibly can???

We're left a neat legacy of ideas, experiments, and a time capsule for the advent of the CD-ROM, to those brave enough to dig through the library. Nintendo may leave a creative mark of their on their games, but the marks all over these games are maybe left by the machinery itself. A console that was willing to foster weirdos and prop up their chance to shine? The Playstation was radical.

_{Yo, and that T-Rex tho?}

That concludes this month of our COLOSSAL GAME ADVENTURE! I imagine this was a less-accessible month, so for those tenacious enough to get the games running I salute you!

This topic is to share your thoughts on our selection, and weird shit on the Playstation in general:

The good
The bad
The fun
The interesting
What ideas aged well
What ideas were total crap
The things it reminded you of
Other games that belong here
And absolutely anything else!

We've got an extra ten days. so feel free to keep playing or to throw other PS1 curios at the group.

Next month, December 2025, will be The Secret of Monkey Island, hosted by the esteemed u/balooga! Thankfully that should be a MUCH easier game to get running than Vib-Ribbon, so be ready to walk the plank! (For less than twenty bucks!)

Virgin

This album is a banger. Very different in character than her earlier work, much more mature and introspective. I enjoyed her earlier music in the "oh, if it's on the streaming mix I will listen to it" but this album is something else.

I connect to most songs first through the lyrics, then through the music, so here's a lyrical sample.

From Hammer, opening song:

There's a heat in the pavement,
my mercury's raising
Don't know if it's love
or if it's ovulation
When you're holding a hammer,
everything looks like a nail

Bonus, two songs from her previous album. Solar Power that I love, though I feel Virgin is stronger as an album.

Stoned at the Nail Salon

Well, my hot blood's been burnin' for so many summers now
It's time to cool it down, wherever that leads
'Cause all the music you loved at sixteen, you'll grow out of
And all the times they will change, it'll all come around
I don't know
Maybe I'm just
Maybe I'm just stoned at the nail salon again

Secrets from a Girl (who's seen it all)

Welcome to sadness
The temperature is unbearable until you face it
Thank you for flying with Strange Airlines
I will be your tour guide today
Your emotional baggage can be picked up at carousel number 2
Please be careful so that it doesn't fall onto someone you love
When we've reached your final destination
I will leave you to it
You'll be fine
I'm just gonna show you in
And you can stay as long as you need
To get familiar with the feeling
And then when you're ready, I'll be outside
And we can go look at the sunrise
By euphoria mixed with existential vertigo?
Cool

Week 4 has begun!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion

Week 3 Recap

11 participants played 11 bingo cards and moved 40 games out of their backlogs!

There were 3 bingo wins. Congrats to u/dannydotcafe, u/kfwyre, and u/Wes! 🎉

• Nearly 70% of the games played this week had a one or two word title (one = 38%, two = 28%)
• The kitchen was a feature this week, with "knife", "eggs", "coffee", "garbage", and "Pepsi" being mentioned in game titles.
• If you play magnetic poetry with the titles, you can uncover some sage wisdom:

The darkest coffee must fandango.
Literature is irritating; torment.
Die, prodigal robot beasts of the midtown.
Katamari Caravan: stick, room, Tokyo, Sun

Game List:

• Agatha Knife
• Arco
• Arctic Eggs
• Baba Is You
• A Bird Story
• Cassette Beasts
• Children of the Sun
• Coffee Caravan
• Cursorblade
• Darkest Dungeon II
• Death Must Die
• Doki Doki Literature Club!
• Firestarter
• Grim Fandango
• Hacknet
• Inkbound
• Irritating Stick
• Katamari Damacy REROLL
• Lunacid
• Midtown Madness
• Moonlighter
• No Straight Roads
• Paper Beast
• Patron
• Pepsiman
• Planescape: Torment
• Prodigal
• Pushmo
• A Simple Garbage Sorting Game
• Skul: The Hero Slayer
• SOMA
• Starsector
• Super Robot Wars 30
• The Room 4: Old Sins
• Tails of Iron
• Titan Quest
• Tokyo Dark
• Trek to Yomi
• Vib-Ribbon
• Wanderstop

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/4

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

On November 24, 2025, Artist Hayden Clay (reddit user Strawbear) was permanently banned from the r/art subreddit for mentioning their art prints. In addition, all their content-- many years' worth-- was also removed from the subreddit.

r/art has always had extremely strict rules against self-promotion, to the extent of being actively hostile to artists. For example, if you post your art there, you are not allowed to have a link to your website in your reddit user profile, and you may not put a watermark which includes your social media handle. As of December 3, 2025, their official rules stated:

9. DO NOT SPAM. No art sales, no links to social media, stores, or anything spammy.
   DO NOT mention SALES or SOCIAL MEDIA. AT ALL.
   DO NOT MENTION ART SALES. AT ALL.
   DO NOT LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA. Or talk about your social media, or include any watermark that references your social media.
   DO NOT link to a sales site, or have a link to your sales site in your personal profile, or have a username that refers to a sales site.
   Basically, if your Reddit account exists only to sell your art, DO NOT post here.
   Broken record time: This applies to anything that looks like spam. ANYTHING. For example: product marketing, fundraising, charities, surveys, contests, collaborations, exhibitions, requests for submissions, research projects, business ideas, requests for prints, social media usernames, links to sales pages, website promotions, sneaky usernames, and whatever else we feel is spam.
   If you still think, somehow, your spam doesn't fit this list, DO NOT post here.

Hayden Clay's post prompted plenty of backlash against the r/art mod team. On November 27, Hayden Clay tweeted that the r/art mod team rage-quit, leaving the subreddit locked. CORRECTION: Sorry for my mistake-- the mod team did not rage quit, it was one mod that removed everyone and then pretended like everyone decided to quit. Thanks to @teaearlgraycold and @CannibalisticApple for the correction!

On December 2, the r/art new mod team introduced themselves. They are promising to have updated "non-draconian" rules in the next few days. They understand that artists need to make a living and advertise their work, and want to moderate the subreddit in a way that balances that against spam. They've been unbanning users (including Hayden Clay) and they said that out of 5000+ bans issued in 2025, only 60+ had a valid reason.

UPDATE: As of December 4, r/art has been reopened, with updated rules in place. I think this is much more fair with regards to self-promotion:

5. Advertising / Self-promotion
   Promotion/advertising of products or services (e.g., art materials, software) is not permitted without mod approval.
   Links to personal sites/socials/merch should be in your Reddit profile, and can be mentioned once in your post body and sparingly in comments if asked. Direct links to personal sites/socials/merch should only be shared in our weekly Wednesday megathread.
   Promotion of OnlyFans or other pornographic sites is not permitted.

I remember being new to reddit and thinking about sharing my art in the r/art subreddit, but then I was turned off by their anti-artist rules. I'm pleasantly surprised by this turn of events-- though I wish it had happened earlier. The new mods sound reasonable, and have expressed dismay about the negativity of the previous mods:

Honestly it's pretty insane and a bit depressing seeing the modmails from the old team. Very rude, disrespectful, and extremely harsh to people making simple, innocent mistakes, older people or non-English speaking people misunderstanding little things, etc. Those mods were seriously troubled.

I'm glad that it looks like reddit's most established art subreddit has a better future ahead thanks to the new mods.

I learned French to schoolboy level as a, well, schoolboy. I've remembered quite the remarkable amount I think. Learned The Klingon Language must be 20 years ago, to a point where I could converse with other speakers to some extent, but never the best.

More recently I've become quite interested in historical linguistics, from watching Simon Roper with Old English, and Jackson Crawford. Old English fascinates me as we were never considered clever enough at school to study English properly - that was only for the clever kids.

Because I couldn't find a good Frisian online learning resource, I decided to try my hand at modern German.

Been following Babbel for about 2 months now so super early. I "completed" the first set of lessons and have been doing the vocabulary tests to try and make sure these sink in before progressing, but I find that I regularly only get 2/10, 3/10 on the flashcards.

I've started doing whole first lesson set again, and I find them really easy. I'm basically intuiting a lot of the questions from knowledge of English, French and "common sense" I suppose. Is it odd that I can 100% the lessons easily and quickly, but the vocabulary tests just aren't there for me? My listening and speaking seems quite good according to the app.

Is it too early to tell (I think it might be), should I supplement Babbel with something else, like live learning (perhaps eventually, not right now - I think it'd be pointless at such a low level).

Anything else? Interested in anyone's thoughts.

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.

Ive been playing nonstop for the past two weeks basically, took last week off work so I could play. Lvl 67 as of this morning and I’m a little behind my clan mates who are 80s pushing 90s

Thoughts in general? Thoughts on salvaging nerf this am?

Haven’t played in years and think it sounds neat? It is. Bond up and play, sailing is a meta skill so you can lvl up while you level up but watch out for random crates of alcohol in the sea cause while you get xp from sampling…. Sometimes they tele you to the abyss cause Jagex is pro troll

Hi!

I've decided to move some of my selfhosted things from on-prem (at home ;)) to the cloud, and at the same time I'd like to try and run this in EU, or at least europe. I'd like to get started fairly quickly as this was prompted by one of my home servers halfway dying on me.

The features I'm most interested in are approximately:

• Virtual machines.
• Storage. Cheap long term for backups (similar to S3 Glacier).
• Managed DB, most likely postgresql.
• Serverless jobs (similar to AWS lambda).
• IaaS (I've got a bit of experience with terraform, but it doesn't have to be that).
• Builtin monitoring.
• Git hosting, it's likely that I'll just go with github/gitlab here, but if there's a nice alternative I'm up for it.
• Automated sending of email. I'm using AWS SES atm, and I'm very happy with it.

Some other things:

• I intend to run a combination of services written by others, e.g. nextcloud and software I've written myself.
• I'll most likely be running linux only, but I prefer to select my own flavour where it makes sense.
• I much prefer managing permissions and users in gcp than in aws as I find aws way too complicated for my needs while gcp mostly just makes sense.
• I'd prefer a platform that's being developed and improving over time with big potential for the future.
• This is a hobby project, and some of these requirements may seem a bit contradictory or non-optimal, but that's ok.
• I have some experience running kubernetes (self-hosted), and I'm not a huge fan of the complexity and yaml files, at the same time OpenStack is getting kinda old, and I don't know if I think it's a platform for the future. But from what I see most of the options seems to be built on top of one of those.
• Cheaper is of course better, I don't have a company-sized budget, this is all coming out of my "hobby pocket".
• I live in Sweden, so datacenters geographically close is a plus.

Right now I'm looking at European alternatives to Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Scaleway is looking the most promising, but I'm really skimming the top when it comes to info atm.

Hope that makes sense =) I'm interested in all kinds of feedback.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/3

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>