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?

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!

I've wondered before what it means to be anti-racist. I recall once asking online and got a not so helpful response of "well maybe you should think about that". But today my friend exemplified the idea.

He was sitting in a bus in San Francisco when an older white man started yelling racist shit at someone else on the bus. My friend is a model citizen. The kind of guy to call in issues to 311 as he's walking home. A frequent volunteer as well. So when he saw this altercation he stood up and got in front of the yelling man. That was enough to interrupt him. But more action was needed. Justice was needed.

He just so happened to have a need to relieve some gas. And so he aimed... and fired right onto the guy. When he walked off he turned to the racist and said "To be clear, I farted on you intentionally because of what you said". I'm told the face he got in response was exactly the same as Hide the Pain Harold's.

We should all strive for this level of bravery. And maybe, one fart at a time, we can end racism.

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.

Long story short, I'm making an everything arcade cabinet and soaring no expense. At this point, I have a racing wheel and plan to install wind sim receptacles on a custom pull-out wheel drawer.

My challenge now is that really want to build flip out armrests that have cockpit controls attached and give me a spot for the car gear shifter, so I'm thinking of buying two VKB Gladiator joysticks to mount into the armrests.

Most of all I want it to look awesome and fit the design I'm after. Second, I want to actually play sim games.

My issue is as stated. Is a purchase like this crazy? Should I be starting with a second hand hotas unit to see if I even like it?

And for those of you who do enjoy racing, flight or work sims, were you once a casual user who got hooked? Did you wish that you'd bought decent gear right away?

Hello! I’m finally going on an international trip! I live in the US and have always wanted to go to Europe. In June, I’ll be spending two weeks there in Norway, Amsterdam, and Germany!

My plane tickets are purchased and I’m starting to form my itinerary and am willing to take advice on travel tips or if people have any specific recommendations for things to do!

I’m a woman traveling solo. When I travel, I tend to plan one or two specific things a day and then just figure out the rest, I’m pretty flexible. I am high energy when I travel, though, so even if I only plan one thing a day in the months prior, I can easily spend 10 hours a day exploring. I also like to see a few typical tourist things, but I also want to experience what actual local culture is, I don’t want to only spend my time in the places that only tourists go to. I want to talk to locals and even though I know I’ll stick out like a sore thumb, I want to get some sampling of what life is like in the places I travel to.

I usually travel light, just a backpack, but may need another carry on bag for this trip. If I spend a couple nights in on hostel, do they usually have secure storage or anything? My worry about an extra bag is it being inconvenient since I don’t want to bring it around cities with me. I guess even if I’m in a hotel, I have the window between check out times and getting to my next destination… I guess that’s why I normally like just having a backpack, but let me know if that’s a bad idea and you think I should have a second bag.

The things I’d be looking for advice on are things like hostels vs hotels, should I book hostels/hotels ahead of time or fly by the seat of my pants, how easy is doing laundry, what little things have I forgotten (like making sure my phone plan works internationally, which it does), etc, as well as any recommendations for specific attractions, museums, or restaurants to visit!

The loose plan is that I land in Oslo, spend a few days there, take the train to Trondheim and spend a day or two there. I think then I’ll rent a car so that I can get to Stenkjer (small town, but it’s where my family emigrated from, so I want to see it) and then travel down the west coast, stopping at cool nature spots, and ending up in Bergen or Stavanger for a couple days. I’m planning about a week in Norway.

I then plan on flying to Amsterdam and spending 2-3 days there. I really don’t know that much about the city besides what touristy things friends and family have done. I will be visiting De Poezenboot, but am otherwise all ears.

I will then be renting a car and traveling to the Nürburgring so that I can race a car around it. Then I’ll have 3.5 days to road trip east across Germany, see some castles, and fly back home from Berlin.

I am extremely into cars and motorsports, so I imagine there’s no shortage of museums I can visit in Germany, but I also want to see a few castles as well, so I’m unsure if I’ll have one or two full days in Berlin, yet. I’ll be flying out of Berlin at 9:30am on my departure day.

Before I go into my rant I would like to ask you: Have you played Destiny or Destiny 2? What are your thoughts on Bungie, the imminent death of Destiny, their push for Marathon, and “games as a service” in general?

As for my opinion, I think that the real problem is that (probably) most managers, CEOs, investors, and shareholders involved in live service games aren’t gamers. They don’t care about the quality of the games. A majority of them probably don’t even play what they publish.

What they care about is to maximize revenue with minimal effort, cost, and risk.

The programmers and artists suffer from low wages and job insecurity, and the gamers suffer from live service slop that eventually gets sunset even when it has a dedicated fan base (that could grow if the game was better).

We can’t win against this horde of managers, CEOs, investors, and shareholders. They got AAA in a chokehold, especially in live service.

We gotta continue to vote with our wallets and give our money to the companies who deliver quality games, and pull our money out when they don’t.

If Bungie dies, I’ll be sad because I have a long history with Halo (Combat Evolved, 2, 3, ODST, and Reach), but so be it. Something better may rise from their ashes.

We gotta resist the slop. It’s like fast food. We gotta resist it even if it’s addictive, and go get better quality grub elsewhere even if it costs more. If we keep eating the slop, they’ll continue frying more of it.

Edit: To make sure I don’t confuse anyone, I should add that Destiny 2 will receive one last content update this month, and will remain playable, just as its predecessor, for the time being. What I think most people are complaining about is that a game that could potentially be excellent, will be left in a messy state, designed mostly around maximizing revenue through micro-transactions, rather than offering a good experience. It has a large and passionate fanbase, but will basically abandoned by Bungie, in favor of their new game Marathon, which no one cares about

COLOSSAL GAME ADVENTURES PRESENTS: 🦇🧛‍♀️🔥 Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Yarrr! Now it be me... [ahem] Sorry, we're out of Pirates!. Now it's ACTUALLY my time to post! Let's set the scene. Looking for a nice summary last month, I found this one from TCRF:

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a Castlevania game that, shock, isn't about one of the Belmonts! Instead, we get some white-haired emo kid that happens to have the ability to absorb souls.

... Thanks, TCRF. I'll spoiler the writeup for the sake of scrolling through twice.

As always, mark ya spoilers as such with the following text block:

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

Game Setup

A couple years ago, Konami released the Castlevania Advanced Collection with Circle, Harmony, the SNES version of Dracula X, and Aria. This is pretty much the only way to legally obtain Aria nowadays - and if I'm not mistaken, it includes the .gba ROM in case you'd like to play it in a way other than the official emulator. (Someone fact check me on that...)

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
• Share if you ever cosplay as Soma Cruz
• 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?
Which Castlevania game has the best Death fight? 

FAQ

A problem I have every summer is either going to sleep cool and waking up in the middle of the night hot or going to sleep warm and waking up in the middle of the night cold. I used to have a similar problem in the winter, but I was able to solve that by getting a down comforter. Any recommendations for a good summer blanket for midwestern summers?