Month: December 2025

Weird Gamer Thoughts I Had in the 90’s

~ mpklamerus ~ 7 Comments

Quest 64 has become kind of an ironic internet meme but here’s the thing, I remember getting that game when it came out and actually enjoying it a lot at the time. I don’t even complete that many RPGs but that’s one of them. This led me to start thinking about other weird things I thought about video games as a kid. Obviously most of these will be goofy since I was a child but I do remember thinking that it was a mistake for everything to keep moving away from 2D to 3D graphics and dangit, I was right. Unfortunately I had a N64 and not a Playstation at the time, or else I could have kept rolling with 2D games for quite a bit. Anyway, here’s some random thoughts that no one was asking for:

  • There’s a few games like Quest 64 and Gubble (I’m guilty of pushing this one) that have become a joke on the internet but I actually played both when they came out and had fun. Not even fun in the sense of not knowing that a game could be bad but it’s what you were stuck with so you may as well make the most of it, I just liked them.
  • For some reason I was very jealous that TurboGrafx owners had Bonk’s Adventure despite having access to plenty of great games on pc and Nintendo consoles.
  • Was also jealous that Philips CD-i owners got those Zelda games, even after I played two of them at CompUSA.
  • Was very impressed with how Bug! looked on the Sega Saturn. That was the game I was focused on for that platform and was sad my computer wasn’t powerful enough to run the demo on the pc.
  • Mortal Kombat was too violent for me but Doom was perfectly fine.
  • Couldn’t get enough of pre-rendered graphics in games. Thought Donkey Kong Country was the best looking thing ever and thought this box art for Kyrandia 3 was Very Good, Actually.
  • Games with lots of cds filled with fmv were better than games with less cds. In fact, graphics were never going to get better than fmv so why bother with other stuff.

End of the Year Music Wrapped….Thing

~ mpklamerus ~ 4 Comments

I don’t use Spotify and cannot provide a music summary thing. Nor should you use Spotify either. They stand by ICE recruitment ads, pay artists essentially nothing, the CEO uses money he makes from it to invest in AI warfare technology, it’s getting filled with AI slop, and the audio quality is poor. There’s really no reason to use it. Other streaming services pay artists more and you could probably gain a nice big music collection by just buying music every month with what you would be giving Spotify. I guess I can look at my Plex stats but I don’t wanna. But what I can do is list some of the things I liked that were released this year, with some extremely brief thoughts, and maybe you’ll find something new! All links go to the bandcamp page. I have very basic music taste that’s mostly goth and rock so apologies in advance for that.

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory – I’ve been a fan of Sharon’s music for a while and this has her putting together a band and moving into a much more goth direction.

Promise Mascot Agency Soundtrack – I have also been a fan of Alpha Chrome Yayo for a few years now and it’s been a lot of fun seeing him do his first game soundtrack. I don’t think you need to play the game to appreciate it but I also recommend the game. The soundtrack has a nice variety of sounds and use of Japanese instruments. There’s also a soundtrack album by Ryo Koike that I mean to pick up soon too.

gloomy june – I guess I would call this alternative or emo pop? Lot of fun. It’s their first album since they switched from being The Y-Axes. The new name is much better. One of the members makes tabletop rpgs.

andwhichstray by Mint Mile – Tim Midyett of Silkworm’s current band, although Silkworm has reunited so I guess that’s his current band too. They’ve done a few albums by this point and they’re all very solid rock albums. This is one of the final albums Steve Albini produced and one song was written by Jason Molina for the surviving members of Silkworm, the day after Michael Dahlquist was killed in 2005, so it’s definitely a heavy one.

The Squirrely Years Revisited by Ministry – Horrible album art but it’s fun to hear Ministry revisited the very early stuff, which I actually like the most by the band to be honest.

Trouble by NUOVO TESTAMENTO – Fun early 90s dance sounding stuff. Earlier stuff was more goth and darkwave sounding.

Dead Channel Sky Plus by clipping. – Technically a rerelease of an album from last year with new track but I think that still counts. A little embarrassing that I haven’t really listened to clipping before this year since they’ve been around for ages but there’s some massive gaps in my hip hop library.

New Dawn by Marshall Allen – The debut solo album by the 100 year old (yes really) bandleader of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Physical by youryoungbody – Just some fun goth dance music

Evergreen Plaza by Previous Industries – I’ve been a fan of Open Mike Eagle for a while and this supergroup is new to me. All the songs by them are named after defunct spaces, mostly retail.

Phantom Island by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Heard about this band for a while and knew they had a really devoted following. I didn’t quite get obsessed when I heard them for the first time this year but they’re good. Sometimes you can just enjoy rock music a normal amount.

Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan by The Mountain Goats – I’ve liked everything by TMG and I like this album too. Nothing too interesting to say about them. I think it’s kinda funny Tommy Stinson played on this album knowing that Jon Wurster (the drummer) previously made fun of him on a call to The Best Show like 8 years ago after Tommy canceled an appearance at the very last minutes (30 minutes into the show). I don’t think there was any actual grudge though. Not a big Lin-Manuel Miranda fan but it’s just backing vocals.

I’m sure I left out a ton since I was just looking at stuff on Bandcamp that I have. Sorry if I left you out. Whatever you made was probably great.