Before it became overrun with AI slop and bots, the Internet was the good kind of wild frontier, brimming with jokes and otherwise lost content. Well, the Internet is still that, there’s just a lot more trash to wade through to find the good stuff.
One website that provides “the good stuff” is RetroGames.cz, which makes possible the playing of some classic games via emulation in your browser. I spent a good chunk of time last year playing through the old Dragon Warrior game; eventually, I’ll get around to loading up my save state and finishing it. It’s the grindiest RPG I’ve ever played!
Occasionally, I find myself nostalgic for the rudimentary, homemade websites of the late 1990s and early 2000s, wherein website design philosophy consisted of cramming as many animated GIFs onto the homepage as possible, and everything was typed in Times New Roman font. The formality of the font contrasted with the frivolity of the overall design, to the effect that webpages in those days were akin to early digital folk art. The amateurism—which, it must be remembered, still required a good bit of working knowledge of HTML and JavaScript at the time—leant those websites a certain charm, even if that whimsical form came at the expense of function.
Well, enough of my waxing artistical. Go play some good games.
Summertime is upon us, and yours portly is all but done with the academic year. That means it’s time for video games.
Civilization VII dropped its huge update, which brings some major changes to the game; I’m hoping to sink some hours into that again soon. I’m also hoping to get back into Old World, which devoured so much of my time back in April with its deep gameplay.
Of course, I still have my lovable Zelda Game & Watch by Nintendo (that link is an Amazon Affiliate link, which means I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you). I haven’t played it in awhile, but it still keeps time like a tiny Hyrulean champ.
The topic of Darwinian evolution and its staggering inaccuracies and inconsistences has been on yours portly mind of late. As such, it seemed appropriate to look back this Lord’s Day to some posts about (or at least related to tangentially) Darwinian evolution:
“Gelernter Gives up Darwinism” – Yale computer science professor David Gelernter rejects Darwinism on mathematical grounds.
Yesterday I wrote about how bogus Darwinian evolution is as a theory. It’s one of those concepts that sounds both so radical and logical that it must be groundbreaking and true.
Then you start to examine it more closely and realize it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. There’s an entire Facebook page that just shows weird animals with hyper-specific “adaptations” that are so outlandish, there’s no conceivable way they could have gradually “evolved” to that state. Any median point in the process would have made the creature unfit for the conditions. Sometimes, the animals have some odd characteristic that doesn’t even do anything in particular.
That said, the concept of evolution is fun in video games and science fiction. Sure, maybe that’s just pro-Darwinist propaganda embedded into popular culture, but evolution works well in the context of a video game, where progression is encouraged through rewards. I’ve always liked games with a grand scope that require incremental improvements over time.
Of course, even those games prove intelligence: the development of a species, or a civilization, or someone’s neighborhood in The Sims, is itself a process of intentional, ordered choices. Granted, players aren’t God, but they get to guide development over many turns or rounds or what not.
That’s all to say that I loved playing SimEarth back in the day.
Yours portly is running on fumes, and it’s totally self-inflicted. I usually go to bed around 9:30 or 10 PM for a 5:45 AMish wakeup. Lately, I’ve been staying up until midnight while still dragging out of bed. It’s not because I’m losing myself in composing or writing (as today’s ultra-self-indulgent post demonstrates); it’s because I’ve been playing Old World.
Since moving to the new house, my commute is forty-five minutes one way. I teach lessons most days until about 5 PM, after which I spend about thirty minutes updating my budget, prepping for the next day, and catching up on all the e-mails and comments and such I’ve missed while in afternoon classes. By the time I get home, it’s already after 6 PM, even later if I have to get groceries. Then it’s whatever chores and such I need to knock out around the house.
But the bug of late-night gaming has hit hard with Old World. After everything is done and I’m finally unwinding for the night, it’s around 9 PM. That’s a dangerous time to start playing an immersive 4X strategy game, because what starts as “I’ll just play for an hour” turns into three hours. Sometimes “just one more turn” will morph into another thirty minutes of playing, as that “one” turns evolves into four or five (I’ve figured out that a turn in Old World, even in the midgame, takes about five minutes).
This post contains a handful of Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you. —TPP
Dr. Wife is visiting a friend this weekend, so I’m dog and koi duty. It’s a pretty easy duty, so I’ve been playing lots of video games.
It’s rare that I spend extended periods gaming. When I did have the free time to do so, my pattern was to play a game obsessively for about a week or two, then not touch it (or most other games) for months. It’s one reason it took me four years to beat the main quest in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (and because I snuck everywhere and spent most of the time exploring outside of the main quest). Every time exam week would roll around in college, I’d have several days of unlimited, unstructured time, during which I’d play for four-to-six hours at a stretch—then I’d barely touch the game until the next exam week.
It’s a testament to how easy college was that I was able to do that and still graduate magna cum laude (I was a mere three-thousandths of a point away from summa). I don’t think it’s that I was particularly smart; I just knew how to take notes and study, and my mind for historical minutiae is like a Venus fly trap, absorbing and dissolving the meaty goodness into a nutritious synthesis of knowledge.
But I digress—that gaming pattern has persisted well into adulthood. Now the time horizons are both more constricted and more expanded. If I’m way ahead of work and composing and writing, I might play a game a couple of hours at night before bed for one-week period, but sleep deprivation hits hard and fast at forty-one, and I soon mend my ways as my gaming sessions creep beyond 10 PM. On the other hand, the periods of fallow gaming time grow longer, where I might not touch any game (beyond a time-wasting phone puzzle game or the like) for months and months, other than an occasional round of Civilization VII with my boy Justin.
That’s all a long way of saying that—finally—conditions were ripe for an extended gaming session. Dr. Wife is living it up in Charleston; the Internet is installed in the new house; packing continues, but we’ve put a huge dent into it; and I’m on Spring Break. And way back in January I purchased the deep 4X game Old World.
Old World is from one of the guys who worked on Civilization IV, which is considered one of the best installments in the storied franchise (I agree). The game’s composer is Christopher Tin, the guy who wrote the Grammy-winning “Baba Yetu,” the title music from Civ IV:
“4X” stands for “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate”—the pattern that such games follow. Players start in a wreathed in darkness, and must explore it. As promising spots for new cities are found, players expand to them, exploiting the valuable resources of those locations in the process. Finally, players—either through direct conquest or some other means—must exterminate their opponents (or out-compete them) to achieve victory. Each “X” builds upon the one that came before. Explore well, expand well; expand well, exploit well; exploit well, and—well, you get the idea.
Old World follows that pattern, one familiar to legions of Civilization fans, but deepens the experience. Like my exam week Morrowind adventures, the timeframe of the game is shorter than Civ—it’s just the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, not the entire world from 4000 B.C. to the distant future—but the focus is deeper. Instead of an immortal leader, the game introduces mortal rulers and complex family dynamics, the likes of which Paradox Interactive games like Crusader Kings III feature prominently. Instead of all of your cities remaining loyal because you keep the “happiness” at or above zero, cities are ruled by different aristocratic families within your kingdom, with whom you must curry favor. Even your wife can get made at you, which has direct repercussions on the effectiveness of how you govern (“happy wife, happy life” is now gamified).
There’s way more to it than that, but just from playing through the tutorial—which I highly recommend to new players—I am hooked. I started a semi-guided “learn by playing” game (a sort of self-guided tutorial after the more on-the-rails, five-part tutorial) as Babylon last night around 9 PM; the next thing I knew it was 2 AM!
Dr. Wife and I went to see the smutty literary adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2026) this weekend, not because Dr. Wife is into that kind of thing, but because there’s been so much buzz around the film, she wanted to be part of the cultural moment. I was going to review that film today, but that’ll have to go on the backburner due to time constraints.
The quick version: like all modern movies, it’s thirty minutes too long; the script is flabby and ponderous; and the middle act is basically just chick lit p-word smut. It setup several ideas that never had payoffs. It did have amazing sets and costumes, and the sense of bleak tragedy from the novel (which, to be clear, I haven’t read) was, according to my wife, there, even if the film took great liberties with the source material.
But I digress. A piano student of mine brought in a little Mario doll he’s had since he was a baby. He asked me at the end of his lesson to film a quick movie review of the 2023 hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie; I obliged:
That being the case, I figured I’d reblog this review of the film from 2023.
My family and I took our annual-ish trip to Universal Studios earlier this week (Dr. Wife, sadly, is still in the depths of residency, so she was unable to join us). This year’s trip was a bit different from those of yesteryear, however: we visited Universal’s new park, Epic Universe, on our last day in Orlando.
Epic Universe has been in the works for years, and suffered (I believe) some delays due to The Age of The Virus. The wait and the delays were worth it—it was truly, as my younger brother put it, the “theme park of the twenty-first century.”
The premise behind Epic Universe is that a central hub of celestial-themed rides and attractions leads to various “universes” or worlds. Each one is accessed through a portal, and once you’re in one of the worlds, you are in it. You can’t see the other worlds or the main hub until you leave that specific world. Instead of areas blending together gradually, they’re distinct little pocket universes.
That separation greatly enhances the immersion. When we were in Super Mario World—the subject of today’s post—it felt like we were inhabiting the world of Super Mario Brothers. When we were in Dark Universe, the monster world, it was like being in an old Universal or Hammer horror flick. The Harry Potter Ministry of Magic was akin to walking the streets of Paris—and so on.
Epic Universe consists of four separate worlds: Super Mario World; Dark Universe; the Ministry of Magic (Paris); and the Island of Berk, from the How to Train Your Dragon film franchise. There is also the Celestial Park hub area, which features the park’s signature coaster, Starlight Racers, and a celestial carousel at the center.
Today, I want to dive into the first of these worlds, the world of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, and the rest—Super Mario World.
It’s hard to believe that Civilization VII has already been out (almost) a year. Tomorrow will mark the fateful day that big spenders (like yours portly) began their early access to the game, which was clearly incomplete at the time of release.
That said, the game—for all of its flaws—was still fun. Indeed, I still find it super fun. If anything, the game has gotten better—much, much better!—over the last year.
Perhaps the best improvement to the game has been the big naval update a couple of months back. That added lots of new water resources and improved naval combat. It also added Edward Teach (Blackbeard the Pirate) and, in the Exploration Age, The Republic of Pirates. I currently have a game going as Blackbeard and it is really fun.
Will the game ever reach the heights of Civ VI, it’s much-beloved predecessor? It seems doubtful at the time of writing. Have I played Civ VI since VII‘s release? Nope! That’s a testament to how much I enjoy this game.
In my never-ending quest for lo-fi, low-effort YouTube (and blog) content, I make the most of whatever limited assets and time I have to churn out highly-compressed but—I hope—charming content for the masses.
Such is the case with today’s post. I made this video with just one picture I took with my iPhone SE’s camera (mainly to show Dr. Fiancée that I was playing as Blackbeard the Pirate in Civilization VII). I recorded the voiceover with the Voice Memo app on my phone, and used iMovie (again, on my phone) to put in the picture (three times) against the voice message.
Apparently, when I send the finished video file to Telegram, it deeply compresses the video quality (although I think it does the same if I save the video to my phone and upload it to YouTube from there). The most it can muster is 360p, which might as well be a VHS recording that I’ve sloppily converted to a digital format.
Whatever the case, the video was a fun experiment. I hope you agree!
