Lapbunny's recent activity
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Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Voting Topic in ~games
Lapbunny LinkCastlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5) Mother 3 (5) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (5) Tetris (4) Resident Evil (REMake) (1)Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (5)
Mother 3 (5)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (5)
Tetris (4)
Resident Evil (REMake) (1) -
Comment on What are some bands you regret not seeing live (or, just never had the chance to see in the first place)? in ~music
Lapbunny Link ParentSo I got into them via Cavalcade and then Schlagenheim, first thought they were great but that I liked some of the songs kinda selectively. Then Hellfire came out and I blasted it nonstop but was...So I got into them via Cavalcade and then Schlagenheim, first thought they were great but that I liked some of the songs kinda selectively. Then Hellfire came out and I blasted it nonstop but was too busy with life, somehow missed they broke up, and suddenly it occurred to me I TOTALLY screwed up not going to the tour... Been trying to see acts after they throw out a banger album more often now.
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Comment on What are some bands you regret not seeing live (or, just never had the chance to see in the first place)? in ~music
Lapbunny LinkGeordie Greep and Cameron Picton don't really seem on working terms, so I think my chances at a black midi revival are shot.Geordie Greep and Cameron Picton don't really seem on working terms, so I think my chances at a black midi revival are shot.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Lobbying Topic in ~games
Lapbunny LinkCastlevania: Aria of Sorrow I've plugged it a bunch of times, so instead I'm going to spend my time negative-lobbying by negging every other game. Space Rogue certainly likes to show off those two...Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
I've plugged it a bunch of times, so instead I'm going to spend my time negative-lobbying by negging every other game. Space Rogue certainly likes to show off those two CG screenshots! Link to the Past was definitely a great baseline for improvements down the line! Most cinematic is a cool accomplishment for an interactive medium! I can't wait to play Tetris again! Yeah, that should help my cause. Thanks everyone, I'm here til Thursday. That's today? Shit!
...OK, honestly those are really all solid choices. But back to Aria of Sorrow!
I think Aria captures a goated bite of a genre as it exploded. Everyone involved was firing on all cylinders, with a few games on the GBA platform under their belt to make some interesting mistakes with. They got to a position where their experiments came out of the gate nearly pristine, some numbers balancing aside. It's everything good about the genre, accidentally compressed perfectly by the considerations to make it a mobile game; never too plodding or long, but made to feel like a big, sprawling adventure due to some excellent secret design, peaky boss fights, and a fresh spin on its own aesthetic.
This is, in my opinion, the best corporate Metroidvania got between those two series. I have quibbles with games like Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid as early adapters, for all they did. The DS trilogy oscillated between annoyingly experimental (certified Ecclesia hater, sorry) and too conservative (Dawn didn't really add much, even if it's deep in my heart). Nouveau-Metroid always seems to suffer from Nintendo's inability to balance gimmicks with the prime (ha) feeling of exploration. Right here is I think what influenced more ambitious projects like Hollow Knight to feel right, and new entries in the genre need to contend with games like Aria when they add to the recipe.
I'll say it again - with the recent death of Shutaro Ida and the announcement of a new Castlevania, what better time?
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Comment on I built a space simulation that runs in the browser and it feels good enough to share it now in ~space
Lapbunny LinkI'd like to report a bug that violently ramming about 13 maximum-size gas giants into the center of the Solar System crashes this simulator. But Earth was still like 45% habitable, so we've got...I'd like to report a bug that violently ramming about 13 maximum-size gas giants into the center of the Solar System crashes this simulator. But Earth was still like 45% habitable, so we've got that going for us
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Nominations Topic in ~games
Lapbunny LinkBoost - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Between the very recent death of Shutaro Ida and the announcement of a new Castlevania, what better time? To me it's the cleanest entry of the Metroidvania...Boost - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Between the very recent death of Shutaro Ida and the announcement of a new Castlevania, what better time? To me it's the cleanest entry of the Metroidvania series style - learning up lessons from SotN in a pocket-friendly format, but never missing an opportunity to make a lofty castle with a slew of customization. Secrets around every corner, excellent bosses, propped up by a dream team of IGA, Ayami Kojima, and Michiru Yamane putting out some of their best work.
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Comment on Giving away three copies of my friend's recently-released game in ~games
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Comment on I'm annoyed with mundane revisionist history in ~talk
Lapbunny (edited )LinkBear with me for a paragraph or two, because I know I'm going to draw comparisons to this topic, but that's a very ironic example to land on. SotN isn't a 2D game; it's produced by generating tons...in spite of a massive library of titles that directly prove that they both draw 2D and 3D graphics just fine - heck, there's a bunch of people out there who think Symphony of the Night on PSX is one of the best pixel art games of all time.
Bear with me for a paragraph or two, because I know I'm going to draw comparisons to this topic, but that's a very ironic example to land on. SotN isn't a 2D game; it's produced by generating tons of 3D quads made up of two triangles with a texture applied to the front to create a "2D" platformer. Its pixel art is gorgeous, but the aesthetic was enabled by 3D-enabled physics and rendering effects: rotations, alignment free of the "grid", scaling, particles, transparency, etc. Then Konami ported SotN over to the Saturn, where it had slowdown from a mix of a 3D engine they couldn't tweak appropriately for the console, a higher resolution, and having to take some of the rendering effects out... With time/resources they probably could've done it more properly, but difficulties porting a 3D engine were certainly the root cause there. It was endemic to Saturn programming and porting, from what I'm seeing - more complicated software solutions which could've been solved by better 3D hardware architecture, and devs didn't or couldn't put in the work. (A few discussions draw comparison to Sony biting themselves in the ass with the PS3's Cell.)
Don't sell yourself short on getting annoyed about these things! I love the pixel art in Undertale, but the way the characters rotate and otherwise transform give the game a very comparatively contemporary indie feeling, not that of an older system. To use something in GameMaker might break suspension of disbelief someone could do a particular effect on an older system. It's something I've thought about as someone who someday wants to make a game that has an older console feel. That's art, babyyy!
Part of my point bringing all that up is that we're here. I see you regularly through tildes! I don't want to be venomous about talking about any of this, or get on your ass! I'm happy to have someone come in and teach me more about these things if I got something wrong! And I try to modify my writing to be less impersonal because it's a much closer-knit group here of people who I'm more conscious of not being a dick to. Meanwhile, thousands of reddit threads involve people getting into giant chains of bite-sized corrections in the weeds, and it's because the site thrives on faster, shittier interactions. It's goddamn exhausting and grating dealing with the greek chorus about all this, and it's never going to change because there's nowhere but the bottom line for reddit.
Being frustrated is not your fault, try your best not to let it get to you, but, yeah. reddit. Expect stupid out because the site incentivizes stupid in. There are a decent number of people across generations who are recognizing all this crap in their feeds, and I hope it results in some upending of these systems, but until then we just gotta strive to make something better.
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Comment on CGA-2026-02 đšī¸đ INSERT CARTRIDGE đĸ Racing Lagoon in ~games
Lapbunny LinkSo I gave this a very quick try on my PSP. First off, ohhh boy is this maximum 90's vibes. A PS1 Square RPG about street racing, with street-Sephiroth pontificating about cars, a jazz fusion...So I gave this a very quick try on my PSP. First off, ohhh boy is this maximum 90's vibes. A PS1 Square RPG about street racing, with street-Sephiroth pontificating about cars, a jazz fusion soundtrack, and the dorkiest neon jacket tuner fashion sense? Fuck me up.
Except like, then I jumped into the game proper. You learn about the rule where you have to lose a car part whenever you lose, and the game throws you - equipped with a
Toyota AE86-Levin Corolla, a car with an absolutely anemic engine even by 90s standards - into a random encounter drag race? This is absolutely combative levels of obtuse game design, holy shit. I'm probably going to give this another try because the people who like this really seem to like it, but I think I'm either gonna need to take advantage of this save file with a tricked out car from the beginning, or I'm gonna need some crazy-ass hints on how to get past this learning curve... -
Comment on Super Monkey Ball web game in ~games
Lapbunny Link ParentHuh, I was gonna correct you that Super Monkey Ball was GameCube, not Dreamcast... But the original Monkey Ball arcade release was actually on NAOMI arcade hardware, which was Dreamcast...Huh, I was gonna correct you that Super Monkey Ball was GameCube, not Dreamcast... But the original Monkey Ball arcade release was actually on NAOMI arcade hardware, which was Dreamcast architecture with some upgrades. SMB must've been a fairly significant test case to determine how easy DC-GC ports were, looking at the billion Sega rereleases over the next few years on the system.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure Schedule: September 2025 - March 2026 in ~games
Lapbunny Link ParentThank you for posting this ahead of time, I might need to replace my PSP battery... This also might run OK via Psx-ReARMed on the 3DS, for what it's worth. Does running it off flash memory speed...Thank you for posting this ahead of time, I might need to replace my PSP battery... This also might run OK via Psx-ReARMed on the 3DS, for what it's worth.
Does running it off flash memory speed up the loading screens?
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Comment on CGA-2026-01 đšī¸âĩđĄī¸ REMOVE CARTRIDGE âī¸ The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in ~games
Lapbunny (edited )Link ParentWill repurpose some thoughts since I think it's sort of an answer here. I've played The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Oracle of Seasons, Wind...- Exemplary
Will repurpose some thoughts since I think it's sort of an answer here.
I've played The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Oracle of Seasons, Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword, Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom in some regard. Majora's Mask was very formative to me as my first console game, despite the fact I never got past Woodfall Temple. (I still haven't beat it!) The level of quality for these games has never been low, as a product. As an experience, there's a clear level of intention around most of their gameplay that serves the feeling of high adventure.
I only beat a few of em, though. And I find quite a few of them, personally, very boring and repetitive! I had little drive to complete them. Wind Waker ain't one of those, though. I LOVE Wind Waker.
There are a lot of faults dancing around the core Zelda tenets with stuff they tried in Wind Waker; the Tingle quest really could've used some tuning (pun intended!) (and it got tuning in HD!), the first dungeon being a stealth experience is a little wonky and negatively affects the pacing, and the experience is very compressed for a Zelda game. Rather than presenting the game and sort of nudging you to make your own decision about exploring it's nooks and crannies, the ocean kind of funnels you directly to those places during the latter half; from that, there seems to be less to discover yourself by the end. But iunno, man, I just don't care about any of the problems. I think this swashbuckles more than anything else I've ever played, faults be damned.
As mentioned in the thread, people saw this game with confusion at the start, and some celebrated when the Twilight Princess trailer signaled a return to a kind of conservative outlook on what Zelda "should" be, even before that game came out. You can boil Zelda games down to how they execute their gameplay motifs; dungeons, fights, Link's arsenal, the Hyrulean mythos, handling the Master Sword as the central macguffin, what the fuck an Octorok looks like, etc. But from a gameplay standpoint, Wind Waker feels kind of ironically on the conservative side of Zelda, very iterative - they don't really shake up the grand skeleton of the things that conventionally define the series. If anything, it goes backwards in raw number of dungeons.
Instead, I feel like they polished the formula into the finest sheen they could manage by distilling Zelda stuff. The lore feels like it's at its most well-developed up until this point. Link's weapons aren't too crazy, but the Deku Leaf especially allows you to get more free-form in navigation. Regular enemies are more interesting to fight than those in the earlier games. The dungeons work around very neat concepts, even if the side character gimmicks are a bit clunky via Command. And oh my god, the bosses. Chef's kiss. All of em. God I fucking love the bosses in this game.
I bounced off Twilight Princess, I bounced off Skyward Sword. I think I expected them to turn into something that captured a new, fresh way to tell the story. Personally I think the team was mired in Ocarina cues, and Ocarina was already technically mired in Link to the Past cues. Wind Waker tried to capture a different spirit without losing the general narrative, and I think that's what felt so fresh to little me at the time.
And man do I fucking love the aesthetics. The visual style never drops the weight of the story any more than 8-, 16-, or 64-bit graphics ever did, even while it's so super-deformed. It gets your guard down, but it delivers stuff like the Helmaroc King fight that's so grand and personal through that "cartoony" demeanor. The music drives all this with one of the most gorgeous, stylistically-diverse soundtracks the Nintendo sound team could manage. Even the writing feels very lively; every little thing on Windfall feels oddly quaint and loaded with some individual conflict, unaware of what's literally below the waters. The characters are more dimensional; many of the good guys are abrasive, and even the grand evil is extremely relaxed and charming. That all results in a very refreshing, cathartic climax, which is tinged with some bitterness but acts as a serious tale of movement. Nintendo didn't seem to get that message for a bit.
But! If you don't latch onto the aesthetics as much, or you don't think they prop up the gameplay narrative enough, or you just plain dislike Zelda in any reconstituted form? No, I think it's extremely valid to find it's "just" another Zelda game. Anyone who doesn't feel those so viscerally, though, I believe should give it a fair shake.
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Comment on What's a culture shock that you experienced? in ~talk
Lapbunny LinkWhen my wife and I went down south to South Carolina and Florida we did our usual chart of Celiac-friendly gluten-free food so we can, practically, plan the trip backwards from where we eat. Up...When my wife and I went down south to South Carolina and Florida we did our usual chart of Celiac-friendly gluten-free food so we can, practically, plan the trip backwards from where we eat. Up here in NJ it's often a minefield with cross-contamination; even when we find a new place that'll do a GF order, we take a huge chance and my wife occasionally gets horribly sick for a day a few times per year. We thought food prep was going to be worse down south.
Nope! Holy shit, so much better. Not only is there some real good GF food down there, but restaurants who were serving GF were way better about managers swinging by to make sure they got her order correct. There was a GF chicken and waffles chain, Bantum and Biddy, that was like crack in Amelia Island. We ate there three times in 24 hours. Zero glutenings in a whole week. Y'all got it good.
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Comment on Hooters | Bankrupt in ~food
Lapbunny (edited )Link ParentFunny opposite story - my wife and I were looking for gluten-free restaurants when we were in Vancouver and found a place called The Black Lodge. We laughed at the name, then looked at the menu...Funny opposite story - my wife and I were looking for gluten-free restaurants when we were in Vancouver and found a place called The Black Lodge. We laughed at the name, then looked at the menu and realized that, yes, it was actually a Twin Peaks-themed restaurant. Unfortunately I think we caught them right before COVID shut them down, and I think the newer owners at the time bought the place without having watched the show, lol. But they did keep some stuff like a little shrine to Laura Palmer in the corner, and their cherry pie was a miracle.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
Lapbunny (edited )Link ParentThere's a funny soundbyte from Trump signing the recent EO about loosening CAFE, where he says he went to South Korea and saw subcompact cars that were "very small and very cute", and you're "not...There's a funny soundbyte from Trump signing the recent EO about loosening CAFE, where he says he went to South Korea and saw subcompact cars that were "very small and very cute", and you're "not allowed to build" them as his justification. I have no doubts this will be a negative for the environment, where American car manufacturers will address none of the concerns you mentioned out of laziness and no motivation for innovation, and that this will drive zero market interest in small cars. As a car enthusiast, though, if he convinces even one brodozer-driving MAGAt to march to a dealership and buy a kei car I will laugh. Hysterically.
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Comment on CGA-2026-01 đšī¸âĩđĄī¸ INSERT CARTRIDGE đĸ The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in ~games
Lapbunny Link ParentI don't have time to join, but I have ran part of a rando before and found what I was able to play at the time extremely enjoyable. Ran out of obvious checks at one point and realized I had to...I don't have time to join, but I have ran part of a rando before and found what I was able to play at the time extremely enjoyable. Ran out of obvious checks at one point and realized I had to navigate through Dragon Roost with the Deku Leaf...
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Comment on A treatise concerning the properties and effects of coffee (1792) in ~food
Lapbunny LinkI'm reading those as 'f'. you can't stop me.I'm reading those as 'f'. you can't stop me.
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Comment on Street Fighter (2026) | Sneak peak in ~movies
Lapbunny (edited )Link ParentEl Fuerte is in there, albeit getting his ass kicked. Not sure what you're trying to say, though..? The SF2 cast is central to any plot. (Or at least, at this point after 3...)El Fuerte is in there, albeit getting his ass kicked.
Not sure what you're trying to say, though..? The SF2 cast is central to any plot. (Or at least, at this point after 3...)
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Comment on Whatever happened to _____? in ~talk
Lapbunny Link ParentNot even joking - I wrote this, was looking for the draft stats thing, found Fleem in my chat history, and immediately regretted not mentioning Fleem.Not even joking - I wrote this, was looking for the draft stats thing, found Fleem in my chat history, and immediately regretted not mentioning Fleem.
Yeah. I actually watched a metric shitload of stuff with an anime club in college, and even ran it for two - good group of people, and we curated it well to do good crowd watch stuff at first before tapering off into the more niche stuff. Zero regrets, of course, I watched a lot of formative stuff. But the second I dropped out of college it was really rare I'd actually stick with watching any anime. Even JJBA, which I've watched parts 1-4 a good 2-3 times very happily, I just kinda dropped in the middle of 6 and don't regret. Feel like I'll need to eat my veggies and finish it before I watch Steel Ball Run.
I think a lot of it comes down to formula? Not just genre or "the anime tropes" but that there's kind of an interplay there where people who "like anime" tend to like certain things; it's kinda baked into the demographic, and I feel like I've seen too many shows which didn't want to show something outside of what the audience expects to want. So I ended up with a massive distaste for shounen, and the second I hear people recommending certain things like JJK I completely tune out. It's zero judgement or offense intended towards anyone who likes them, of course, I know some of these shows are legitimately solid. I just can't.
Plenty of exceptions, though. Bocchi the Rock is the best fucking TV I've watched in like a decade; it got me to pick up the bass again. I also loved Umamusume: Beginning of a New Era last week, which is a wonderful movie about sports, self-doubt, and why racing throbs in certain people's hearts. Also, y'know, horsegirls.