kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on Humble Choice - November 2026 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    It absolutely works.

    It absolutely works.

    1 vote
  2. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Whiplash/Fatal Racing (Abandonware) Time travel back to the mid-1990s with me for a moment. You've just gotten home from school, and you've checked the mailbox on the way in, delighted to find...

    Whiplash/Fatal Racing (Abandonware)

    Time travel back to the mid-1990s with me for a moment.

    You've just gotten home from school, and you've checked the mailbox on the way in, delighted to find that your new copy of PC Gamer magazine has arrived. You think you're getting one over on your parents because they're paying for a magazine subscription about videogames, and they think they're getting one over on you because you spend hours reading them over and over again, cover to cover.

    There's no YouTube, no Twitch, no on-demand way to see games being played. These print magazines are your only window into games, with many titles getting only a few words and some tiny screenshots. Your mind is tasked with filling in the gaps and extrapolating, based on that very limited data, what any given game might be like. It lives more in your imagination than it does on the page.

    In this new issue, you see a new racing game (your favorite) called Whiplash. Next to a writeup making the game sound thrilling, you see these screenshots.

    • A car, flying through the air.

    • A car, driving down a road literally twisting itself upside down.

    • A car, upside down, at the top of a loop.

    Young 1990s you has never seen anything like this before. Your racing game references at the time are the original The Need for Speed and Ridge Racer, neither of which did anything so exciting.

    You are utterly captivated at the idea of a car flipping upside down and launching itself through the air in 3 dimensions. After all, just that third dimension itself is still quite novel. It wasn't that long ago you were playing RC Pro-Am and Rad Racer which were both amazing but feel so, SO limited compared to Whiplash's promise of unprecedented multidimensional driving FREEDOM.

    You want the game. Badly. You yearn for it.

    But games are hard to come by. One, they're expensive. Two, your parents don't want to buy you too many of them, and you and they have VERY different opinions about what constitutes "too many." Three, you're limited to the games that happen to be in the stores around you. No Amazon or eBay. No online ordering. If it wasn't on the shelves at your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy, it might as well not exist.

    Every time you go somewhere with games, you can the shelves. You never find it. Even years later you find yourself rummaging through bargain bins full of old, discounted jewel-case versions of games. No dice. You never find a copy.

    Years go by and the game slowly fades from your memory. You're older and gaming has developed. The promise of such exciting car acrobatics aren't nearly as gripping as they used to be. You discover and fall in love with Trackmania Nations Forever which offers roads in every conceivable configuration for your car to drive on and fly off of. You follow the series for the next decade, playing every iteration of it for combined thousands of hours.

    You've now forgotten all about Whiplash. It's not even a faint memory. It's simply gone.

    And then one day, 30 years later, a much older you is surfing through titles in the GOG Dreamlist, looking at stuff to vote for, when your memory is jogged. You remember some old game that looked SO cool when you were a kid. You think it might have had a corkscrew or something? You search around and suddenly your memory clicks: Whiplash!.

    After finding out there's no way to get a legit copy anymore, you find an abandonware release of it almost immediately. After updating DOSBox-X and playing around with the settings, you've got a playable version of it with a modern-ish resolution and only minor framerate issues. You are so excited.

    And then you never come back to play it.

    For some reason, you really like the process of getting games set up to play and then just... leaving them there. This has happened with your emulation library countless times. Or those times you spent hours modding games. Or one of the MANY abandonware games you've troubleshot, trying to get them going on modern hardware.

    But then a Backlog Burner event comes along, and you commit to playing one of those abandonware games. And, wouldn't you know it, you really want to play this one. The one that captivated you for so long. The one with that corkscrew that looked so, SO thrilling.


    I'm happy to report that Whiplash still slaps.

    It shows its age, of course, but its core essence is still undeniably cool and fun.

    It felt like the devs, playing around in three dimensions, wanted to use them to the fullest and just decided to go all in on the cool factor. Tracks rise and fall and bank and loop and, yes, corkscrew. There are lots of jumps giving you ample airtime. Drawbridges that open into ramps. Banked jumps that cause your car itself to corkscrew through the air.

    I'm not kidding when I say that these are genuinely fun to experience, even today.

    Also of note is that the game's physics are quite robust. Your car isn't magically stuck to the ground, and it's affected by gravity. You'll feel the gravity pulling on your car when the road banks. If you slow down at the top of a loop, you'll fall off of it. This means that that ever-inticing corkscrew isn't just a cool trick: it's a genuine physics problem during the race. It is not as easy to make it through as you would think -- I fell off plenty of times.

    This not only gives the game depth, but it helps enhance the drama. Whenever I did actually nail that corkscrew and sail through it successfully, it genuinely was thrilling -- the exact kind of experience I'd wanted it to be thirty years ago when I was a kid and imagining what it might be like.

    I played through the campaign twice, and then played a good amount of single track races. The game is genuinely quite hard. I was consistently getting stomped even on the easiest difficulty. It's listed as "Girlie" which is undoubtedly derogatory, but I chose to gay re-appropriate that and played it with 💅GIRLIE💅 vibes instead.

    The game has damage meters for your cars, and each track has a pit lane that you can stop in to repair your car. Damage carries over between races, so you have to time out when it's optimal for you to repair versus keep pushing to hold on to a position.

    Higher difficulties increase speeds as well as the number of laps. I tried out a grand prix on Impossible difficulty (the highest), and it was wanting me to do 15-18(!!!) laps on the tracks. A bit much, in my modern opinion, but I would have thought nothing of it at the time. In fact, I probably would have liked it. My parents bought me a new game only every few months, so those long races would have helped me fill SO much time.

    I can't quite recommend the game to anyone, simply because I think I'm riding the high of a 30-year wish fulfillment. While I do think the game was great by the standards of the time and still legitimately fun today, I think that probably only holds for people my age or older. I think anyone younger trying this would probably be all "let's get you to bed, grandpa" as I ramble on about how it's legitimately "fun" and "thrilling."

    Whether or not I'm out of touch, however, I'm super happy to have played this game that got away. I would love it to get the modernization treatment -- whether that's from a remaster, a spruced up GOG release, or just some fan TLC. I closed the door on the dream of launching my car through a corkscrew, so the new dream is being able to do it on my Deck at 60 FPS.

    2 votes
  3. Humble Choice - November 2026

    November 2026's Humble Choice is now available with 1 Battle.net game and 7 Steam games. Steam Page OpenCritic Steam Recent/All Operating Systems Steam Deck ProtonDB Mafia: The Old Country + 2 DLC...

    November 2026's Humble Choice is now available with 1 Battle.net game and 7 Steam games.

    Steam Page OpenCritic Steam Recent/All Operating Systems Steam Deck ProtonDB
    Mafia: The Old Country + 2 DLC Packs 74 74 / 71 Win ❌ Unsupported 🟨 Gold
    The Outer Worlds 2
    Note: Redeems on Battle.net via account link
    83 59 / 73 Win ✅ Verified 🟨 Gold
    SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance 87 82 / 90 Win ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
    Yakuza 6: The Song of Life 84 88 / 95 Win ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
    Crisol: Theater of Idols 74 76 / 79 Win ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
    Space Haven -- 77 / 84 Win, Mac, Linux ✅ Verified ✅ Native
    DYSMANTLE 77 85 / 90 Win, Mac ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
    Squeakross: Home Squeak Home -- 95 / 98 Win, Mac ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum

    Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

    6 votes
  4. Comment on CGA-2026-11 🌍️🪀 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Mother 3 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Of course! Do you want to go on the notification list for all CGA topics (a different game each month) or just for this month with Mother 3?

    Of course! Do you want to go on the notification list for all CGA topics (a different game each month) or just for this month with Mother 3?

  5. Comment on itch.io reveals just how much AI slop is flooding gaming storefronts in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Update: Indie game website itch.io expands its AI disclosure filter as 'AI slop' continues to overwhelm Steam and other storefronts

    Update: Indie game website itch.io expands its AI disclosure filter as 'AI slop' continues to overwhelm Steam and other storefronts

    Indie game storefront itch.io has expanded its AI disclosure filters, allowing its users to better separate games made with the controversial technology from those who don't.

    This expansion, revealed on its official BlueSky account, includes Itchio's search page which now features a "No AI" box. By ticking this, users can hide any game on the website that features the generative AI disclosure. Games created using generative AI must have this disclosure to be present on the platform, similarly to Steam, although without an option to describe to what extent the tech was used.

    6 votes
  6. Comment on 2026 United States midterm elections distractions topic in ~talk

    kfwyre
    Link
    Self-serving self-promotion: Tildes has two currently active events for anyone into gaming: Colossal Game Adventure, our retro gaming club, is just kicking off our playthrough of Mother 3 for the...

    Self-serving self-promotion: Tildes has two currently active events for anyone into gaming:

    Anyone is welcome to participate, and you don’t need to commit to anything or go for the full month. You could try out a single game tonight and then post about it in the Backlog Burner topic, for example — or simply talk with someone else about a game they’ve played.

    The Bingo site lets you generate 3x3 bingo cards, so you could even go for a mini three-game bingo win!

    We’d love to have anyone who’s looking to get away from the news tonight and into some fun old games instead.

    13 votes
  7. Comment on 2026 United States midterm elections megathread in ~society

    kfwyre
    Link
    I went ahead and made a corresponding distractions topic for anyone that wants/needs it. Sorry if I stole your thunder, @ICN. Any credit for the idea should go to them!

    I went ahead and made a corresponding distractions topic for anyone that wants/needs it. Sorry if I stole your thunder, @ICN. Any credit for the idea should go to them!

    10 votes
  8. 2026 United States midterm elections distractions topic

    It was quite popular last time so I figure we could use another round of it. This topic is a casual chat space and link drop for literally ANYTHING besides US politics for those of us that want to...

    It was quite popular last time so I figure we could use another round of it.

    This topic is a casual chat space and link drop for literally ANYTHING besides US politics for those of us that want to occupy our time with something other than scrolling feeds and checking the news.


    This will be a noisy topic. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.

    39 votes
  9. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I love save states too. They’re a huge accessibility and quality of life improvement on old games, I feel. Yes, they can also be used to cheese things, but also sometimes old games are so...

    I love save states too. They’re a huge accessibility and quality of life improvement on old games, I feel. Yes, they can also be used to cheese things, but also sometimes old games are so unforgiving in their design that they’re kinda worth cheesing? “Nintendo hard” is a phrase that definitely earned its stripes.

    The OG Ecco is one I’ve always wanted to play, having only played the Dreamcast one myself. It features the same non-rapid turning you mention, which definitely does make you feel like you’re controlling a real dolphin and not just a cartoony avatar of one. Happy to hear that the original holds up (with save states), and also happy to see a Genesis game getting played for the Backlog Burner. It was one of the systems I had to cut for my Platform Party, so I’m thrilled it’s still making an appearance.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on CGA-2026-11 🌍️🪀 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Mother 3 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the catch on the link! I’ve fixed it.

    Thanks for the catch on the link! I’ve fixed it.

  11. Comment on 2026 United States midterm elections megathread in ~society

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    In case you missed it and it’s your kind of thing: (not) solitaire runs right in your phone’s browser, is super addictive, and lets you high five other people when they win. It’s a fantastic...

    In case you missed it and it’s your kind of thing: (not) solitaire runs right in your phone’s browser, is super addictive, and lets you high five other people when they win. It’s a fantastic distraction. I’m going on 50 wins now.

    15 votes
  12. 2026 United States midterm elections megathread

    Post any/all news and discussion related to the US midterm elections here. If there is something substantially newsworthy, feel free to post it as a separate topic. Feel free to check out the...

    Post any/all news and discussion related to the US midterm elections here.

    If there is something substantially newsworthy, feel free to post it as a separate topic.

    Feel free to check out the distractions topic if you’re wanting to avoid the news.


    Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see this in your feed.

    47 votes
  13. Comment on Master Boot Record - Computer Metal (2026) in ~music

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Can confirm it’s great! MBR doesn’t miss.

    Can confirm it’s great! MBR doesn’t miss.

    2 votes
  14. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Death Crimson OX (Light Gun) Last year I bought a GUN4IR setup. I put Batocera on a hard drive on my TVPC and filled it up with different light gun games, all so that I can pick one up and play...

    Death Crimson OX (Light Gun)

    Last year I bought a GUN4IR setup. I put Batocera on a hard drive on my TVPC and filled it up with different light gun games, all so that I can pick one up and play whenever the "I want to go to an arcade" feeling strikes (which is maybe once every 6 months?).

    I genuinely do recommend it for anyone who's into light gun games. The accuracy is quite good; the IR nodes on your TV quickly become invisible to you; and Batocera has built-in light gun support, so it's about as plug-and-play as you can get.

    With such an illustrious light gun setup, which amazing game did I choose to play?

    An absolute trash one. :D

    Now, those of you who know me know that I'm a Dreamcast apologist through and through. I love it. I adore it. It's amazing.

    But, one of the common criticisms that gets levied against it is that it has a broad swath of not-great-downright-bad games. I have mostly refused to listen to this criticism, believing, either earnestly or with my head deliberately in the sand, that even the worst Dreamcast games are simply underappreciated diamonds in the rough.

    But occasionally I will find something that tests the tensile strength of that belief -- one that spurs me to push my head even farther into the sand so I can drown out the chorus of Dreamcast naysayers who are starting to sound like they might actually have some good points to make (they don't -- it's still amazing).

    Death Crimson OX has a Metacritic score of 46 based on the reviews of it at the time of release (as in, not a 46 by modern standards). It has a Mobyscore of 5.8, placing it in the 26,000s out of 29,000 ranked games in their database. There are only 32 Dreamcast games with lower Mobyscores, including some of the Dreamcast's famously terrible titles such as The Ring: Terror's Realm. South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, and KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child.

    It's with this backdrop that I'm happy to report that the game actually exceeds these scores. It's not as bad as what those numbers would have you believe!

    The actual shooting itself is pretty decent. My gun was accurate, and enemies have good animations that make hits clear and satisfying.

    It does follow an unconventional design principle though: nearly every enemy requires multiple hits. Often a significant number of hits, like 5 or 6.

    This reduces that aforementioned "satisfying" factor. Instead of the regular cadence of "aim-shoot-aim-shoot-aim-shoot" of other games, it's instead more like "aim-shoot-shoot-shoot-shoot." You're essentially just mashing the trigger. My forearm literally got tired on my first playthrough and I had to trade off hands.

    The game does have ample machine gun powerups you can find that, allegedly, make the shooting automatic. However, these simply didn't work for me. I'm going to choose to believe that it's because my gun controller didn't have the right inputs programmed on it to activate the powerup and not that the game itself is flawed/buggy. (I'm, OF COURSE, doing this on balance and definitely not as motivated reasoning to try to keep the Dreamcast on people's good side. DEFINITELY not.)

    In fairness to the game though, you the player are also allowed more hits than usual in a light gun game, so at least they're consistent. Of course, that only goes so far, because, in true arcade game fashion, there are a lot of cheap moments aimed at eating your quarters. Some of these are standard trope of the genre that I actually tend to like (e.g. friendlies popping up in your line of fire). But others feel cheap and frustrating: particularly the boss fights.

    You know how predatory mobile games will let you get REALLY close to winning something but then engineer your failure and try to upsell you on "energy" or "boosts" or "retries" or whatnot when you're at your most suggestible? Well, arcade games used to do that too so that you'd throw another quarter in the machine. Death Crimson OX's first boss fight wasn't too bad in this regard, but every subsequent one got worse.

    Of course, given that this is a home release that can't take your quarters, it's not as explicitly predatory in terms of design, but it's arguably more annoying. Who wants to feel fleeced like that in their own home? I think a lot of light gun games would benefit from being re-balanced for home play rather than just one-to-one dropped onto consoles with their quarter system intact, albeit faked.

    Now, if I've been polite in my critiques so far (and I think I have?), I'm hopefully forgiven for what follows: the story is absolutely atrocious.

    You are given nearly no information throughout the playthrough. There are intermittent short cutscenes that, allegedly, follow some sort of story arc. In practice, however, nothing makes sense. Who are the people on the screen? What do they want? Where are they going? You will rarely have any sense of the answers.

    It genuinely feels like the writers handed over an outline instead of a script and the artists and devs implemented that dutifully. There are characters and there are events but they are truly incomprehensible.

    Arguably, this actually helps out the game. I don't think the game is intending to be as campy as it comes across, but it ends up being so nonsensical that some of the cutscenes had me chuckling. Unfortunately, there's simply not enough meat on their bones for them to be truly so-bad-they're-good. They're a minor amusement rather than a main feature, and when they're not funny (which is often), they're simply bad.

    Now, if you're still with me (bless your heart), then you might be wondering about one big, very obvious question:

    Why was this game on your backlog, kfwyre? You knew it was bad before you started it. Why bother playing it?

    Here's where I'm going to level with you and toggle my tone from goofy observation over to genuine, earnest meaning.

    The Dreamcast, which I genuinely and unironically and wholeheartedly love, has a small library by mainline console standards. There were only 248 official North American releases. Add in the EU and JP exclusives and that number goes somewhat higher, but not by much. It's a shallow pool compared to, say, the PSX's thousands of games.

    What that means is that official Dreamcast releases are countable and finite. There is a limit to them. As as someone who has loved the Dreamcast for going on three decades now, I have played a LOT of them already.

    So the Dreamcast games that I haven't played (outside of fighting and sports titles) are ones that I genuinely would like to get around to. I want to get a feel for each, see what they're like, and move each one from a curiosity to an experience. I still, decades later, get excited to play new-to-me Dreamcast games. Even when they're bad. Even when I know they're going to be bad. The game itself doesn't have to be enjoyable at all for me, because I still get enjoyment from trying it out and crossing another game off my ever-shrinking Dreamcast titles list.

    No other console or system sparks this same feeling in me. I don't feel obligated to try out every N64 game. I don't want to see the entirety of the Saturn's output.

    But the Dreamcast still has a pull for me. I love it, warts and all.

    So why was this game on my backlog? Because it's a Dreamcast game. Simple as that.

    2 votes
  15. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I started on the 31st as well. It’s not cheating, it’s sequence breaking. 😁

    I started on the 31st as well.

    It’s not cheating, it’s sequence breaking. 😁

    1 vote
  16. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I genuinely was wondering about those! They're super crispy. :D

    I genuinely was wondering about those! They're super crispy. :D

    1 vote
  17. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Thrilled to see a Playdate game here! I never actually ended up playing Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, so it's nice to see a writeup of it. Glad to know it's one I can cross of my list (I'm...

    Thrilled to see a Playdate game here! I never actually ended up playing Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, so it's nice to see a writeup of it. Glad to know it's one I can cross of my list (I'm still not sure which one I'm going to pick for my Playdate square, but I've still got plenty of choices!).

    Also, with regards to stressing the Playdate hardware: something I learned during a previous Backlog Burner is that you can plug it into a computer and use Playdate Mirror to play it with a controller instead of the Playdate itself. You can set it up so the right thumbstick is the crank. Let an old controller take the brunt of all those spins instead!

    My Playdate's A button is borked, registering presses maybe 60% of the time at most, so the only way I play it now is via controller on my computer, which honestly is a better experience: bigger screen, more comfortable controls. I lose the portability, but I 99% of the time I'd want to be playing it, I'd be on my couch anyway.

    The goal would be to easily get it running on my Steam Deck, but that's more hassle than it's worth at present. It would be great if they would release a Flatpak of Mirror.

    1 vote
  18. Comment on November 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    So begins the great Backlog Burner tradition of playing one single game and then adding half a dozen more to my interest list. Thanks for the recs, Wes! (And one of these days I'll man up and...

    So begins the great Backlog Burner tradition of playing one single game and then adding half a dozen more to my interest list. Thanks for the recs, Wes!

    (And one of these days I'll man up and finally tackle La Mulana...)

    1 vote
  19. Comment on CGA-2026-11 🌍️🪀 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Mother 3 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    CGA Announcement: We have officially inserted the cartridge for Mother 3. Use this topic to get set up for the month, help other people get set up for the month, and start playing! (Sorry I was a...
    8 votes
  20. CGA-2026-11 🌍️🪀 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Mother 3

    Introduction There are some people who, when you mention the title Mother 3, feel a warmth in their heart and a stirring in their soul. And then there is everyone else who, when you mention the...

    Introduction

    There are some people who, when you mention the title Mother 3, feel a warmth in their heart and a stirring in their soul.

    And then there is everyone else who, when you mention the same title, go "huh?"

    The Mother series holds a cult-classic status: strongly beloved by those familiar with it, but often completely unknown otherwise. Part of the reason it's somewhat unknown is that the series itself has a somewhat storied and scattered pattern of releases, while the other is that it's known by completely different names depending on where you are in the world: Mother for some, EarthBound for others.

    Stay with me for a moment as we break down the series' release history:

    • 1989: Mother releases in Japan for the Famicom
    • 1989: English localization of Mother is completed but never released
    • 1994: Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū releases in Japan for the Super Famicom
    • 1995: English localization of Mother 2 releases as EarthBound
    • 2003: Mother 1+2 compilation releases in Japan for the Game Boy Advance
    • 2006: Mother 3 releases in Japan for the Game Boy Advance
    • 2008: Unofficial English localization of Mother 3 releases
    • 2015: English localization of Mother releases for Wii U Virtual Console as EarthBound Beginnings

    So, for Japanese audiences, the game had 3 releases spanning 17 years:

    • Mother (1989)
    • Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū (1994)
    • Mother 3 (2006)

    For the rest of the world, the game has only had two releases, out of order, spanning 20 years:

    • EarthBound (Mother 2) (1995)
    • EarthBound Beginnings (Mother) (2015)

    To date, there is no official non-Japanese release of Mother 3. English-speaking audiences have been using this fan translation.

    I have never played any of the Mother/EarthBound games and don't actually know very much about them myself. As our default host this month, I wish I had more to offer, but I hope to learn more as I play. If anyone else wants to chime in with background info, tips, or stories about the series, I'm sure it would be worthwhile as we settle in to explore this month's much-beloved yet still under-appreciated game.


    Mother 3

    Versions: JP, EN Fan Translation

    Platforms: Game Boy Advance

    Genre(s): RPG

    Links: Mobygames, Wikipedia

    Stores: eBay, Nintendo Switch Online JP


    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.

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

    <details>
    <summary>Spoilers</summary>
     
    Spoiler text goes here.
    </details>
    

    FAQ

    What is CGA?

    Colossal Game Adventure (CGA) is Tildes' 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.

    Do I have to sign up?

    No. Participation is open to all.

    There is a Notification List that will get pinged each time a new topic goes up. If you would like to join that list, please PM u/kfwyre.

    Are there restrictions on what/how to play?

    Each month will have a focus game or games that will guide our discussions. Beyond that, there are no restrictions. The philosophy of CGA is to play in a way that works for you!

    This means:

    • Choose whichever version of the game you want.
    • You can use cheats, save states, mods, etc.
    • You can watch a streamer or longplay instead of playing it.

    If you have already played a game and want a different experience:

    • Try a randomizer or challenge run.
    • Play a different version of it.
    • Play a related game (sequel, spiritual successor, something inspired by it, etc.)

    There is no wrong way to participate in CGA, and every different way someone participates will make for more interesting discussions.

    What is the schedule?

    Each month the Insert Cartidge topic will be posted on the 1st, while the Remove Cartridge topic will be posted on the 28th.

    Nomination and voting topics will happen in March and September (every 6 months).

    Schedules are also posted then.

    All CGA topics are available using the colossal game adventure tag.

    What do Insert and Remove Cartridge mean?

    Inserting and removing cartridges are our retro metaphor for starting and stopping a given game or games.

    The Insert Cartridge topic happens at the beginning of the month and is primarily about getting the game up and running.

    The Remove Cartridge topic happens toward the end of the month and is primarily about people reflecting on the game now that they've played it.

    There are no hard restrictions on what has to go in either topic, and each can be used to discuss the game, post updates, ask questions, etc.

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