I hate that this was my first thought… but just in case no one else was aware of this literal classic moment in gaming villain history…
I hate that this was my first thought… but just in case no one else was aware of this literal classic moment in gaming villain history…
I’d wait for one of these.
I think it’s because some people reading who aren’t terminally online like some of us, just see the word “liberal” in there and just immediately ignore everything else and take a defensive stance as they see themselves as aligned to their perception of the meaning of that word, and decide to push back as if you weren’t actually just accurately assigning blame to the economic school of thought that largely has led us to the massive upward curve of inequality we now see still growing…
…A curve which FDR had initially reversed starting in the 1930s after the Great Depression, but has since increasingly been clawed back by the rich getting a hold of all the necessary levers of power since then.
In the long run Metal Gear certainly outshined them, but I think the Syphon Filter games were ultimately very different and so it wasn’t like one was just a better execution and you had to ignore the other.
One of my favorite little bits of goofy trivia between both series though was the joke in the dialog of MGS 3 : Subsistence where Snake asks the Colonel why “Sam” (presumably Sam Fisher of the Splinter Cell series) or “Gabe” (presumably Syphon Filter’s protagonist) couldn’t do the Ape Escape side mission instead since Snake said it wasn’t really his “thing.”
GameCube³
Is this the non-American cover? As an old Yankee, I may be forgetting a few things, but I remember the corner art (specifically the “only for” bit) looking different.
Edit: yep this is the one I remember :
Leisure suit Larry is not really a parody like Conker was though, was it? I thought it was just a point and click adventure game with dirty jokes.
Forgive me, if I’m wrong on that. I actually have not really played the leisure suit Larry games. 
I think, Conker not only makes fun of platformer games and game mechanics in general, but directly references movies like Saving Private Ryan, the Alien franchise, and the Matrix. 
I guess it should have qualified it as a “major console release.”
A lot of early 3D console games - whether platformers or FPS games, have aged pretty poorly. Go try to play GoldenEye again and see how it feels compared to modern shooters. Really Super Mario 64 is kind of the outlier.
Conker and Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 are all cut from the same cloth at mid-90s Rare. The Xbox release version fixed a few things with Conker but broke others. Honestly Conker was one of the first “parody” type games (at least as major console releases went anyway) and it only works well if you have the nostalgia goggles to appreciate it as it existed in an era where if you wanted to play 3D platformers, you were mostly limited to baby games like Croc, Spyro, or the other Rare platformers.
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Corporate media sanitizes raw information for the masses to redirect the public’s collective anger and diffuse the otherwise clear responsibility that is nearly always a direct result of the oligarchs’ own actions driven purely by abject unchecked greed.
Individual journalists (who usually don’t get paid millions like the pundits who help “manufacture consent” from the public) usually barely can make ends meet are the ones who do the incredibly hard, thankless, and sometimes even dangerous job of actually attempting to inform the public through an unfiltered lens are few and far between.
In fact, even a large number of the supposed “independent” ones are astroturfed and just pretending to be genuine… but are in fact financed by dark money from groups propped up by billionaire libertarian shitheads like the Kochs in an attempt to muddy the waters and further disingenuously reframe issues by scapegoating minorities and the marginalized for problems - again - caused almost exclusively by the absurdly rich.
Yeah the “over-consumption” bit rubs me a bit wrong as it generally provides “neutral framing” for an otherwise EXCLUSIVELY greedy massive capitalist-driven issue. Families aren’t “overconsuming” drinking water or taking too long a shower, nor are our toilets not being a low-volume flushing devices the primary cause of our issues.
Instead things like like Nestle claiming aquifers for themselves, companies fracking using all available ground water in their proprietary chemical mixes and then dumping the waste water into surface pools that not only are deadly, flammable, and completely impossible to separate from water except via high-energy-cost processes like distillation… but that also slowly seep down into the ground water for places that then become permanent wastelands where clean water is no longer available in the ground.
The framing here is always like the fucking paper straws :
How about you stop saying “overconsumption” and instead tell the truth and say "a handful of massive multi-conglomerate companies are completely decimating all clean drinking water sources and their CEOs should be put in prison, have their personal and companies’ assets liquidated and re-declared public goods.”
I remember being angry at people saying it was “too on the nose.”
Alright buddy. I get it. My last response sounded patronizing. We can stop pretending to “bless your heart” each other now. I sincerely apologize.
Glad to finally have an actual discussion again online! :)
I do actually want to know though - do you really think the iPhone has had that much innovation over the past decade?
Also, on the subject of tech, I fucking hate that Facebook of all companies got a foothold on VR on the consumer-facing side.
Yes, they injected fuck ton of cash to make it more viable main stream VR headset product, but they also fucking stuck their Facebook tendrils and every part of it and ruined what might’ve otherwise been a really exciting new space that now feels stagnant and stalling and artificial and shitty.
Edit 2 :
Hey - sorry to stalk, but you seem to have a knack for writing smut! My S.O. likes doing the same. I will say she doesn’t tend to work using historical figures as her characters - but hey maybe in the future she could try!
Calm down. No one is shifting goalposts. You’re the one who brought up the ridiculous idea of making a comparison between pictures of different types of swords.
My original “implied point” was that there is not the same level of innovation that occurred 20 years ago when we shifted from things like Nokias with tiny screens and not enough space to even hold a midi file to BlackBerry and then iPhone.
The entire tech industry has consolidated over the last couple of decades to the point that every major startup these days ends up being a grift, or quickly gobbled up by one of the FAANG type companies and enshittified to avoid competition and market share erosion.
I didn’t say a handful of rich people did anything. I actually believe the opposite.
Passion drives innovation… not money. Money helps pay passionate people to innovate, but it also sometimes will stifle innovation when seeking profit first.
I was saying with my shitpost pic showing the visual similarity between all the different models of iPhone from the last decade that - at least from a base standpoint, Apple is not really innovating much anymore. No different shapes, bezels, no thickness increases for better battery life… Hell the fucking LIGHTNING port is ancient now and only still there so Apple can keep getting their bridge troll toll for people making iPhone accessories.
For the last 10 iPhone iterations the major features we can easily see are slightly bigger brighter screens, more lenses (and consequently better pictures) and trading fingerprint recognition for facial recognition.
As far as points though, please - by all means, make a better point for me.
Yeah photos don’t encompass the entirety of evolving technology… but come on… it’s not like Apple has put the iPhone through a literal evolution of metallurgy or material science like the hundreds of years time difference from going between the bronze to steel age.
before the display - “until you can figure out how to make a faster printer, there’s only so much you can do to get your calculation results from the ENIAC system.”
before the keyboard - “until you figure out a way to create punch-cards faster, there’s only so much you can do to enter data into a computer.”
before the mouse - “until you figure out a way to make people tap the arrow keys faster, there’s only so much you can do to navigate a screen array of interactive elements.”
before GUI operating systems - “until people get faster at typing in “DIR /P” on their keyboards and read the list of possible applications quicker than other folks, there’s only so much you can do to navigate and access a computer’s installed software.”
before the iPhone - “Until you figure out a way to make a better keyboard there’s only so much you can do with these Blackberry devices where half of the device is a screen and the other half is a full-size QWERTY keyboard.”
There is room for innovation.
Just because you cannot imagine it, does not mean we have reached some sort of “pinnacle” of design for these stupid little glass screens.
Apple has not innovated since Jobs died. Not because Jobs was some sort of genius engineer or even a great innovator, but because as Apple’s head, Jobs was an asshole tyrant that terrified those below him into doing crazy things he suggested on a whim… and sometimes that meant they came up with dumb shit like the 20th Anniversary Mac and the Newton… and other times it meant they came up with a couple of new good ideas like the iPod, and the iPhone.
Yeah dude, just look at all the innovations Apple has made to their phones for like the last 10 years…
They got bigger… and the screens are brighter… and there are like 4 more cameras.
So much innovation. :|
My man. Now THIS person knows about CRT gaming. I’m merely an old man with limited time to research all this. Anyone talking about phosphor strips and halation and magnetic interference /gaussing probably knows their 💩.
I just know I like wearing the nostalgia goggles that add those artifacts my old eyes still hazily remember and weirdly prefer.
thx. fixed.
Also, what a fucking piece of shit Google is for doing that. I fucking hate them so goddamn much.
I immediately installed this extension in Firefox to auto-strip that out from now on.