Daily Linksplosion: Monday, March 02, 2009
- Laughing Squid – Video Game Themed Music VideosDoctor Popular compiles a list of some of the Internet’s very finest video game -themed music videos, including that brand new Röyksopp one.
- Technotica at MSNBC – Watch out. The Internet will cut you"A couple of years ago, the hot trendy thing on the Internet was to be a well-versed technology writer of the female persuasion with a tech blog so popular that for some reason unknown to sane people, it inspired commenters to respond with vile and misogynistic threats of sexual violence and imminent death." Why do people on the Internet send death threats to, uh, tech writers? No, really, why?
- CNN – In a recession, tech gadgets become a luxury"Ignoring what you want. Recycling the old. Fixing what can be saved. Is this the new American way when it comes to tech toys and electronics—an industry in which new gadgets can become outdated within months?"
- Popular Mechanics – 5 Oregon Trail-Style Classic Games We Want for the iPhoneWith the iPhone version of SimCity already here and a port of Oregon Trail on its way, my pal Seth names five more classic games he’d like to play on his iPhone. (The last one is a weird one.)
Something fun we can go to next weekend
...if you live here in the Bay Area, I mean. And I totally understand if you’re busy. But if you are anywhere near the Haight on Saturday night, you could pop on by Giant Robot—the one here in San Francisco, not the hip LA one—and check out art by heavy-hitting art bigwigs (David Horvath) and unsung heroes (Martin Cendreda). I mean, only if you’re up for it.
EarthBound is no p***y; it will destroy you
Filed under things-I-absolutely-did-not-know-before-this-moment:
Yesterday, writer Bob Mackey dispelled the myth that EarthBound is twee, cutesy, and lovable. Oh, no. It is not. If you wrong the game, it will string you along, waiting for the exact moment to mete out its terrible, cruel justice.
Mackey discovered this in an article at Edge Online, which explains:
Perhaps the most prominent example of cartridge-based DRM was in the SNES classic Earthbound. Those that had Super Nintendo disc copiers would find that their illegal copy of Earthbound seemed to play fine. What they didn’t know was that the game was spawning way more enemies than normal, making the entire game an endless annoyance. And to those intrepid pirates who slogged their way through anyway, Earthbound had a special treat for them—the game would freeze in the middle of the battle with the final boss, taking the time to instead delete whatever saved games it could find.
Because this truly gut-wrenching moment happens in the endgame, the video depicting said horror contains big spoilers I regret having seen, even though everyone said, “Hey! Spoilers!” If you’re still curious, there’s a YouTube video of the final boss battle, complete with the game pausing to systematically delete all of the saved games, here. Skip to 1:33 if you want a spoiler-free experience.
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