440 - LIVE BY THE SWORD.
HELLO AND WELCOME to another Monday Post. If you are new here... Wait, who am I kidding? There are no new people here! Only the time-hardened veterans! Let's do this thing, old guard bros!
THE SHOP. This week's new gallery/shop item is a really weird one. Don't get too excited, the screenshots might make it look like it's a game, but it's not. It's just a few JPEGs (and a small PSD file), but it's something I never thought I'd be posting here on Patreon. For any additional information, just check the item itself in the shop. XD
Oh no! MY PHYSICAL GAMES! This week I saw a lot of whining about games not being released in physical form anymore. To me, it's just annoying to see normies suddenly deciding to wake up ten fucking years later. This stuff started with the PS4, a long time ago. All this whining gets on my nerves. It reminds me of the time when AI learned how to generate pictures and all the supposedly adult artists turned into children for a moment and started throwing tantrums. In my opinion, if something inevitable happens, you need to at least try to take it with dignity. I also saw some prominent account on Twitter saying that we should all boycott GTA6 to teach the corpos a lesson. Ha-ha-ha, yeah, right. XD Anyway, we're all gonna "own nothing and be happy." That was the plan from the beginning. Moving on.
PS3 (AND VITA) PSN STORE CLOSURE. I saw some outrage about this as well. Personally, I'm surprised SONY didn't do it earlier. I mean, if it were up to me, online stores would never get shut down, and every subsequent console generation would be backwards compatible. But SONY, XBOX, and not even NINTENDO have ever been thinking about the players. All they ever think about is making more and more money every year. Screw them. -_-
CANCER AND REPRODUCTIVE HARM. Last week I bought a set of car seat covers, but after changing my mind, I decided to return them. The box was still unopened, so I just took it to the pickup point. On my way there, I started reading the package, and there was a line of text that said: "WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm." I don't even know if it was referring to the contents of the package or the packaging itself, but that was definitely one of those "the WHAT?" moments. 0_0
REAL TALK. I have a strange fondness for old video game screenshots. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I've always been like this. Yesterday I picked up my Nintendo Switch for the first time in a while and went down the rabbit hole of browsing through old screenshots I had taken while playing. Most of them were over six years old. Half the time, I don't even remember taking them or doing those things in the game. It's an interesting experience, kind of like browsing through old real-life photos, but without the sadness. ^^
LUMINOUS ARC 3. Speaking of sadness, I continue to play LA3, and it has this story arc now where the main character is slowly losing his humanity. It's handled in an unexpectedly dramatic way. It starts with little things, like him losing his sense of taste, and slowly escalates into much more messed-up stuff, like not being able to see with one of his eyes and gradually losing his memory of recent events. I don't know why, but cartoony games always have a much easier time getting me emotional than photorealistic ones.
I FOUND A NEW HOBBY! Apparently, eBay is full of old video game posters, and I find it really enjoyable to browse through them whenever I need to relax a little. There are just so many great ones. I don't actually want to buy any of them... No, that's not true. I do want to buy them, but I won't, since I wouldn't know what to do with them. I'm having a lot of fun just looking at the digital versions instead. I'm really happy the golden age of video games happened when it did. XD
CHAMPIONS OF NORRATH! Check this one out! Doesn't it just make you want to "live by the sword"? I like how aesthetically pleasing everything about it is. So good. #^_^# I used to own this game on the PS2, by the way. It has couch co-op, so it's fun to play with a friend, but there's barely any story or character to speak of. What it did have, though, was some very sexy character designs for the female heroes. This poster is not lying. (The scan of this poster is attached to this post if you need it. :)
THE WORK. I have nothing exciting to report on the work front, apart from the fact that I'm getting a lot of stuff done. I'm still mostly focused on the whole Victoria-causing-problems-for-the-channel story arc. Like I said before, I want to focus on the main story for now, so there will be very few cool WIPs to show off. Those will mostly come from the "bonding" events, which I'm currently ignoring because they're the easiest thing to postpone. Working on the "educational" events is much easier than working on the regular story. But you need the regular story so the "educational" events have something to contrast with. Anyway, that's all the news for now. Thank you for your support, and I'll see you all next Monday. Laterz.
-Aka-
A few links just in case:
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Comments (22)
My take on it is, if I'm going to be buying unfinished games, I'm better off buying indie dev games and early access stuff. It's cheaper, and some of them actually do finish their games!
Agreed.
Hello akabur sir i just wanted to say i always have enjoyed your work since finding it 3 years ago on itch (i am 21) the humor, gameplay, and now reading your posts are nice, I'm glad you're still going strong i hope you are well, can't wait for more games you release :)
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you took the time to write this. Kind of made my day to be honest :) Thank you for appreciating my work :)
Honestly, the visual with April, Irma, and Derik "Vernon Fenwick" has me hyped more than anything. Seeing them together in an actual Reporter Trainer scene already makes the game feel so alive. April looking worried, Irma being Irma, Derik delivering that kind of line… it instantly feels like classic Akabur dialogue energy... This is exactly the kind of scene I’m dying to see in the game. Also, on the retro side of things, I already bought an old advert for Melbourne House’s Lord of the Rings game on Commodore 64 from 1985, purely out of nostalgia. And honestly, the video game thing I’m looking forward to the most this year is probably the launch of the Neo Geo AES+ and its cartridges. So yes, I fully support living in the past. XD
Thank you. I am happy to see you are looking forward to the inevitable release of Reporter Trainer this much XD Also I as well thinking about getting one or two posters and framing them. But I am hesitant, I am worried if I start I won't be able to stop myself. For now I will stick to window shopping I think ^^ Also you made me google Neo Geo AES+. Looks awesome!!!!
"My god, just noticed a thing that people have been talking about for 20 years has actually happened! I assumed someone else would stop it or something!" Yeah. Warned people about this with books for tabletop games. I'm still able to (and sometimes do) run D&D rulesets and the like from the seventies. I know people who have a computer crash and suddenly are scrambling to save games they've been running for over a year because nobody has the rules anywhere but on that one computer. As Ren of Ren and Stimpy fame would say: Eeeeeeeeediots!
You can never go wrong with analog and physical stuff! Never! People are too quick to give up on thing in the name of convenience.
U cute!
No u!
Actually they did try to close PS3 and Vita stores couple years ago but after pushback they changed their mind, I hope it happens again
I hope so too.
Thank you for sharing! Maybe a n X-ville game will be a game to make in the future 🤩
I am sure it exists already in a parallel universe somewhere o7 T_T
The console companies are going to shit. I'm trying to find the link to a program that a guy wrote. It lets you burn download only games to cd/dvd. The interviewer in that gif made one mistake, he put the wrong mike to her mouth.
I emulate almost all my games. Even though I have a PSP and a PS Vita... Hm... Okay, I don't emulate *all* my games. I play DS games on my DSi, and I also have a 3DS. As for the non-portable consoles, I think the only one I'd actually like to own for playing games is a PS3. Well, a PS2 would be nice too, but then I'd also want a proper CRT TV for it, and that would hurt my already thin budget even more. Maybe one day. :) Even though I emulate old games, I still like to buy the ones that are close to my heart on disc or cartridge. Just having them on my shelf and looking at them every now and then gives me joy. ^^
Patreon I think changed my name at some point in the last few months. I think there's merit in making an uproar. As much as I don't think it'll do anything, the most useless thing to do is take each incremental step towards the corporate dystopia lying down. There is meaning is saying you tried to fight it at least. Sony removed 500 movies from people's accounts, they will absolutely do the same thing with video games in the future if we move to exclusively digital. I hope we can put in some kind of regulation beforehand, but we're still struggling with the Stop Killing Games movement so I don't have much hope. At the very least, Sony is saving me money. I don't need their expensive paperweight, I am happy enough with the games I already have. Wholesome, family friendly and educational games such as the soon to be released Reporter Trainer. P.S. Did you know the teenage kid that did the GTA6 leaks a while back has been put in an indefinite hospital order? He will be detained FOR LIFE over a perceived loss in profit, unless his lawyers can argue against it somehow.
Thank you for the kind words. And it's really hard for me to argue with this: "There is meaning is saying you tried to fight it at least." Your story about the GTA6 kid sounds like something from an 80's horror movie. Is it really true? I would not be surprised if it is to be honest -_-
"... kind of like browsing through old real-life photos, but without the sadness." I hate to admit how right you are about that... The idea of taking a look at old screenshots strikes me as so good that I'm going to steal it for one of my posts. This whole physical games thing reminds me of the digital art vs traditional art (like a canvas). I don’t know enough for my opinion to matter on topics like this, but I think physical games will be more valuable than other types of games in the future, like a wonderful work of art, with their little booklets and incredible covers... Would be nice to make some physic editions of your games someday. Have a great week, man!
Yeah, I'm glad you understand what I mean, here, man. You have a great week too! Stay hydrated in this heat :)
The physical game situation is dire, now they will sell us even more incomplete games so the collection edition matters. The saddest part is that nothing will change if people keep buying.
Yeah. I am very pessimistic about all this. The wet dream of every corpo is to create a product they can sell without actually letting you own it. That's why they push cloud gaming so hard, for example, as well as live-service games. Oh well, I was young, full of energy, and had a great time during gaming's golden era. I'm thankful I was lucky enough to experience it. Those old games are complete games that I can enjoy whenever I want, so I don't really care what happens to the game industry from this point forward because, to me, it is literally dead.