Happy Father’s Day!  A big thanks to my dad for all of his support (he occasionally posts comments on the blog, and generously and paternally subscribes to my SubscribeStar page).  I thought about doing some kind of Father’s Day theme for this edition of Lazy Sunday, but I opted to go the easier route.

Thanks to my dad’s hard work, his three sons grew up in middle class luxury playing video games.  Granted, back in the old days you pretty much had to pick one console—Nintendo or Sega (we were a Nintendo Family, as all good and decent people were in 1990—although we did love playing our cousins’ Sega Genesis) and you got maybe one or two games a year, so that meant lots of swapping and borrowing games.  It was always a treat to borrow Super Mario Brothers 3 from our other cousins.

So with that clumsy tie-in to Father’s Day, here are some posts about video games:

• “Fallout 76 Announcement Increases Tourism to West Virginia” – Fallout 76, a massively-multiplayer iteration of the traditionally single-player RPG series, ended up being a massive flop.  But it was pretty cool that the game takes place in West Virginia.  Recent Fallout installments took place in Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and (I think) Boston—all interesting settings, but exploring a post-apocalyptic rural area always seemed intriguing.  How would South Carolina hold up compared to San Francisco (better, I imagine).  Fallout 76 at least promised players the opportunity to explore that question, albeit in an extremely botched way.
• “Hustlin’: Minecraft Camp 2019” (and “TBT: Hustlin’: Minecraft Camp 2019“) – Due to my prolonged illness, I had to miss out on my beloved Minecraft Camp this year (and an estimated $1475 in gross earnings—a hard blow to yours portly, so feel free to ease the pain by subscribing to my SubscribeStar page).  Minecraft is a fun game—I liken it to LEGOs on a computer—that encourages open-ended exploration and creativity.  It has some boss battles, but there are no real objectives; you make your own.  Minecraft Camp is always fun for creating little projects and goals for the campers, and my counselors always hide little treasure chests and create “side quests” for the students.  It’s a game for young and old alike, and I highly recommend it.
• “SimEarth” – I started playing this a few weeks ago (around the time I got sick) using the DOS emulator DOS Box.  Like Minecraft, the objectives are pretty open-ended:  develop life, guide it to intelligence, then get that intelligence smart enough to vacate so another life-form has a chance to dominate.  I found I struggled to develop my planets (although I knew what I was doing as a thirteen-year old, I’ve apparently lost my world-building mojo in the intervening twenty-two years), and that just leaving the simulation to run on its own tended to lead to better results than any fiddling around I did.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy a good meal with your dad—and maybe play some games with him.

Happy Father’s Day!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

• Lazy Sunday – APR Pieces
• Lazy Sunday II – Lincoln Posts
• Lazy Sunday III – Historical Moments
• Lazy Sunday IV – Christianity
• Lazy Sunday V – Progressivism, Part I
• Lazy Sunday VI – Progressivism, Part II
• Lazy Sunday VII – Deep State
• Lazy Sunday VIII – Conservatism
• Lazy Sunday IX – Economics, Part I
• Lazy Sunday X – Economics, Part II
• Lazy Sunday XI – Walls
• Lazy Sunday XII – Space
• Lazy Sunday XIII – Immigration
• Lazy Sunday XIV – Gay Stuff
• Lazy Sunday XV – Work
• Lazy Sunday XVI – #MAGAWeek2018
• Lazy Sunday XVII – #MAGAWeek2019
• Lazy Sunday XVIII – SubscribeStar Posts
• Lazy Sunday XIX – Music
• Lazy Sunday XX – The Laziest Sunday
• Lazy Sunday XXI – Travel
• Lazy Sunday XXII – Reading
• Lazy Sunday XXIII – Richard Weaver
• Lazy Sunday XXIV – Education
• Lazy Sunday XXV – Techno-Weirdos
• Lazy Sunday XXVI – Small Town Living
• Lazy Sunday XXVII – Bric-a-Brac
• Lazy Sunday XXVIII – World History
• Lazy Sunday XXIX – The New Criterion
• Lazy Sunday XXX – Trump, Part I
• Lazy Sunday XXXI – Trump, Part II
• Lazy Sunday XXXII – Festivals
• Lazy Sunday XXXIII – Virtue Signalling
• Lazy Sunday XXXIV – The Desperate Search for Meaning Series
• Lazy Sunday XXXV – Corporate Grind
• Lazy Sunday XXXVI – Best of the Reblogs, Part I
• Lazy Sunday XXXVII – Best of the Reblogs, Part II
• Lazy Sunday XXXVIII – Best of the Reblogs, Part III
• Lazy Sunday XXXIX – A Very Dokken Christmas Series
• Lazy Sunday XL – Christmas Carols
• Lazy Sunday XLI – Food
• Lazy Sunday XLII – 2019’s Top Five Posts
• Lazy Sunday XLIII – Music, Part II: More Music
• Lazy Sunday XLIV – SubscribeStar Saturday Posts, Part II: The Search for More Money
• Lazy Sunday XLV – Techno-Weirdos II
• Lazy Sunday XLVI – Man Time
• Lazy Sunday XLVII – Winning
• Lazy Sunday XLVIII – Culture
• Lazy Sunday XLIX – Family
• Lazy Sunday L – The Best of Lazy Sunday
• Lazy Sunday LI – Just for Fun
• Lazy Sunday LII – Democratic Candidates, Part I
• Lazy Sunday LIII – Democratic Candidates, Part II
• Lazy Sunday LIV – Coronavirus
• Lazy Sunday LV – Animals
• Lazy Sunday LVI – Movies
• Lazy Sunday LVII – Christianity, Part II
• Lazy Sunday LVIII – Spring Break Short Story Recommendations Recap
• Lazy Sunday LIX – The God Pill Series
• Lazy Sunday LX – Music, Part II: Gigging
• Lazy Sunday LXI – The Tuck
• Lazy Sunday LXII – The South
• Lazy Sunday LXIII – Holidays
• Lazy Sunday LXIV – Grab Bag
• Lazy Sunday LXV – Rioting