A few days ago I mentioned I was going to sleep in a zoo and folks? I have slept in a zoo. Not very well of course, one does not simply snooze for 8 hours straight in a random zoo building when they are a light sleeper, but technically I have slept in the same building as pied tamarins thanks to my daughter’s Girl Scouts troop.

So anyway, here’s some blog posts I’ve enjoyed lately.

First of all, consider supporting Michael Coorlim and getting lots of cool games and writing! They’ve worked on some very cool stuff like the recently released Kathy Rain 2.

I like seeing what games other people are excited about and Aura has a nice one featuring stuff I mostly haven’t heard of before, which is always great.

Nicole Express breaks down the hardware for the arcade game Kiki KaiKai, which is more famous for Natsume taking the concept and making Pocky & Rocky. I really liked Pocky & Rocky as a child and never knew that it had something before it.

Nathalie talks about a ton of experimental games on Not Quite A Game (Games that go beyond the need to be understood)

Atari Archives goes into the history of BASIC Programming being brought to the Atari.

Point-and-click adventure Technobabylon has turned 10. Good lord. If you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend it. If you have played it, go check out this interview with the designer about the game’s queer themes and sequel plans. Great stuff! If this wasn’t a personal blog named after a moose I would love to interview game devs. If you’re ok with being interviewed on a blog that has nothing to do with moose, let me know. If you think this blog should talk more about moose, let me know.

Speaking of personal blogs, sometimes they’re fun because 90% of the time they’re focused on one thing like tabletop rpgs, and those posts are good, but then you come across what it’s like to work in a library.

If I see a post about the Amiga, I have to post it. That’s the rule. This time it’s a post that asks What is an Amiga?

Florence Smith Nicholls talks about what games get covered in academia. The article goes into wanting to cover Wurm Online and the importance of talking about MMOs that aren’t dead, but aren’t exactly thriving either and have low player counts, so they just kinda don’t get discussed. Since I am a massive fan of the NOT DEAD mmo Myst Online, which you can still play today for free and is still getting new content, this resonates strongly with me.

Speaking of MMOs, KRITIQAL has an excellent article about Ragnarok Online Indonesia and how it is still alive today through a fan server.

Read Only Memo has an interview with the modder who has brought the X-Box 360 game Chromehounds back online.

No Escape writes about Final Fantasy and those Pixel Remaster versions, and just about Final Fantasy remakes in general. I don’t really follow the series so I liked learning about the weirdness of these and what’s even going on in that series.

I’ve linked to this adventure game blog before but there’s some interesting computer history at Michigan State and Troy at the beginning of this article. The rest of it about the game The Final Countdown is very good too.

And finally, it’s not a blog post but Microsoft confirm they’ve supplied AI tech to the Israeli military for use in Gaza so if you aren’t already, try not to give Microsoft money to the best of your ability.

Well then! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I think I said this in the last one because I am currently not doing them on a regular basis, but this is probably missing a ton of stuff and some of these are a little bit older. Although maybe these shorter roundups are better? I’ll probably also have things from the last two weeks popping up in the next roundup. Sorry about that. Second, fuck terfs. Just the worst people.

The links!

Jolt Country is doing great review of older games, like this one on Adventure Construction Set.

A new blog appears! Read schledorn talk about the classic game Descent

Have a graph of all the Myst cards

Renga in Blue covers the obscure Interact computer made in Michigan through the text adventure games The Troll Hole Adventure and The Mysterious Mansion Adventure

Another new blog! This one is by the creator of Narrat and she put together a list of interesting game resources

A remaster of BioMenace has been announced! This post goes into the background on how that happened

Not a blog post but Benj Edwards wrote about the game dev Bill Williams, who made some of the most fascinating Amiga games. Although this article is focused on his non-Amiga game Salmon Run.

Seed of Worlds does better ttrpg blog roundups than I ever could

Ah jeez, I think I’m coming down with a cold. Or I feel like crap because I haven’t slept well over the past few days (my own dumbass fault). So I guess we’ll see tomorrow how I’m doing. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and it’s going to probably be missing a lot of stuff from the last week or two because things were a mess for a moment. But I like doing these because I get very excited about the internet existing outside a handful of social media websites and Discord.

Video Games

I never even heard of this Virtua Fighter game for the Game Gear.

Misty talks about an extremely Canadian trucking game.

There’s a new video game newsletter by Christian Donlan, Florence Smith Nicholls and Keith Stuart.

Have a primer for developing for the Playdate.

I’m sad about Myst developers Cyan being hit with layoffs. Andrew Plotkin talks about the developer’s history and how it’s definitely not the worst shape they’ve been in.

Music

I’m a huge fan of good radio stations so I appreciate this post from Yaffle recommending some to listen to.

Technology

Adam writes about bookmarklets

Here’s a guide to getting started in open source

Michigan

I love this history of the name of a hill in southeast Michigan.

The director of the Ann Arbor District Library writes about what the IMLS does.

Not a whole lot to say this week. Blogs are good and this week is very retro games and tech focused. Maybe you’ll find something new to add to your RSS feed reader.

Video Games

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Wes Fenlon’s Read Only Memo newsletter but it’s good stuff. Primarily focused on emulation, this week is about Nintendo once again going after emulators.

RetroStreamers.com reviews the new Amiga roguelike Roguecraft. I also just like the streams these folks do.

Leaded Solder makes a new game for the Famicom using Nintendo Family Basic.

Ephemeral Enigmas reviews the wild PS2 game TVDJ.

I didn’t know there was a blog about the Hugo IF standard library but here we are. This post is about Hugo file limits.

As everyone knows, I will take any excuse to post about Myst Online. The community recently had a contest to build to fan Ages in the game and here are the results.

I will also take any excuse to post about Golfshrine Online, a site dedicated to golf video games. I hate the real sport of golf but enjoy the video games. The most recent post is about getting Links: Flying to Phoenix – the Japanese PC release of Links LS 1999.

Nadia Nova, creator of adult games like Slime Feet, made a tutorial for getting started making VNs.

RoJo Aventuras is a great adventure games blog in Spanish and I appreciate this review of the newest chapter in the Stellar Mess series.

Not a blog but for whatever reason I get excited whenever a game dev posts a recipe (cmon, consider it) and liked this bluesky post of John Romero’s enchilada sauce recipe.

Technology

I never thought about how you could have a bot follow RSS feeds in Discord and post in a channel when a new post came up.

Computer Chronicles Revisited is back! The blog is a review of the classic technology show from the 80’s and 90’s.

Will Smith praises Fastmail and I have to agree. There’s probably a longer post in me about why moving from Gmail to Fastmail is great even though you have to pay for it, but I don’t think it costs that much, Fastmail has a lot of nice features Gmail doesn’t, the client is indeed fast, and also just not seeing ads in your email client is nice too.

I follow multiple personal blogs where people like to talk about their bikes and I just think that’s a lot of fun. So here’s one where someone talks about converting their bike to a cargo EBike.

Comics

I didn’t know David Petersen, creator of Mouse Guard, had a blog but now I do. So have some Mouse Guard cover art.

Photography

Have some nice photography from The Works of Egan and Renkon.

That’s it for this week. Have a nice Sunday!

I’m annoyed! Inoreader has introduced an AI Summary tool to their RSS feed reader! Why would anyone want that? People who follow blogs are reading nerds. Anyway, you should still add this blog and others to your RSS feed reader of choice, but now I’m looking for one that can synch what I’ve read but isn’t Feedly and Inoreader. If you have any recommendations, drop them in the comments

Chuck Jordan is spending a month only using his blog to post and taking a short break from Bluesky/Mastodon/etc. This sounds really nice and I’m strongly considering doing it for April. I encourage you all to join me. Not for any sort of moral reason, I just don’t want to miss out on good posts on social media.

This blog post on affirmations is how I learned about the IndieWeb Carnival, which seems to be a group that gives prompts on a blog post each month.

Video Games

Renga In Blue writes about a computer shop that had a game publishing business as a spin-off and their game The Colonel’s House.

Wraithkal continues doing very nice #ScreenshotSaturday posts for folks on Mastodon

Macintosh shareware developer John Calhoun writes about the shareware dev that inspired him, Duane Blehm. The developer passed away before John could even send him money for his shareware in the 80s so this post has John trying to learn what he can about Duane’s life from the materials that still exist.

Adrian Hon wrote a eulogy for Urban Dead, a MMO that ran for 20 years but is shutting down now because of new laws in the UK. While I haven’t played the game in many years, I’m always sad to see a MMO shutdown, especially when it was running just fine before the new laws came into effect.

WildWeasel of The Golf Shrine now has a blog. I liked this post about Daikatana and how it’s not too bad once you install the patches and get past the first few levels.

Rob writes a very short post about how if smaller, more focused games are the solution to the games industry’s problems.

Did you know The CRPG Addict is still plugging away at playing every crpg in order? They just played the German rpg Die Prüfung (1993).

Not a blog post but Damiano Gerli has a great thread on semi-obscure Spanish games.

Writing

Thom Cote has a short story on Neocities about worm tunnels.

The Lunar Flaneur has a post about dreaming about an anthology in their sleep and then putting it together.

Did you know that some of the folks from 90s pc game developer Dreamforge Intertainment started a sci-fi magazine a few years ago called Dreamforge? They just redid their site and you can read all the stories and poetry here.

TTRPGs

Seed of Worlds is doing better ttrpg blog roundups than I could ever do.

Music

My friend Erik just played music at monthly Enter the Void show in Minnesota. Check out the post for more info and neat noisy music.

Photography

Have some nice pictures of the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve been to Grand Rapids many times but still haven’t been here yet.

Dev Logs

Lunar Division talks about developing Amberspire.

localthunk posts Balatro’s dev timeline.

Megan Carnes writes about creating music for every tarot card.

An explanation of how Eldritch 2’s save files work compared to the first game.

Farfama talks about TO:RI Development. The game looks beautiful!

Technology

The Works of Egan explains why you should start a blog. Obviously I will endorse that.

Chuck Jordan endorses the Reeder app for RSS feeds on Apple devices.