Category: /b/

So long, Best Social Media

Miiverse is dead, long live… well, I guess that’s just the end of it.

Today, Nintendo shut down Miiverse forever. It was a wonderful little social media experiment that let Wii U and 3DS users share thoughts, drawings, and screenshots of games. Nintendo also used it for special promotional events, and it was a valuable avenue for communicating with smaller game developers.

Of course, Twitter does all that, and from your phone, so.

Miiverse wasn’t perfect, but it did add a lot to Nintendo and video games culture. It gave rise to many memes, like “Y Can’t Metroid Crawl?” It provided us with one of the best Twitter accounts ever, @BadMiivesePost. And of course, there were the completely mind-boggling things on there like the always delightful Miiverse Water Guy.

If you were so inclined,  Nintendo offered a download of all your Miiverse posts up until last night, but I didn’t opt in. I felt it was better to just let it all go, rather than have another meaningless file to stick in a folder somewhere and forget about. It’s not like I had any especially insightful or funny posts, anyhow.

Honestly, I think the memories of how exciting Miiverse was at first are more important than the actual posts. It was a cool new feature to a cool new game console (which ended up being a dud for most), and I’m sure that I’ve spent much more time scrolling through Miivese posts than I ever will spend with the Twitter app. Oh well! It was a fun ride, but nothing lasts forever.

I think most of all, I’ll miss all the dick drawings that pop up after a game in Nintendo Land.

A problem from the first world

October is the worst time to be taking a course. It’s the only time of the year where doing season-related stuff really feels important, but all my free time is being sapped up by class and assignments and studying. That time is supposed to be wasted on spooky video games and cheesy horror movies that I’ve already seen seventeen times!

Jeez!

(Blogging is also falling way behind, I have like 46 draft posts that I have no time to finish.)

Game of Numbers

I ran some numbers today, and came out with the following information:

I have acquired 100 video games so far this year.

Now, this includes freemium games, free PS+ games, games purchased in bundles, so on and so forth. So it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Still, the point remains that I really need to stop getting new games, because I don’t have anywhere near enough time to play all this garbage.

Anyway, that’s just a tease. I have a massive spreadsheet from which I plan to come up with all sorts of irrelevant data come yearend. The one thing I haven’t ever kept track of is dollar value spent. Because, quite frankly, I really don’t want to know.

Ribs tickled? Check.

I was reviewing my bank account the other day and nearly died laughing when I saw this credit card payment entry:

(If you’re not aware, a merkin is a wig for your genitals.)

This came about because you aren’t allowed a ton of characters in a transaction description, so I often truncate it… this payment happened to be for Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and my ticket to The Merkin Sisters.

On pube wigs

A couple days ago, I went to see my very first Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival show. It was called The Merkin Sisters and I have no idea where to even start.

While my immediate reaction upon being asked to go to the show was “ugh, not some hipster amateur-hour bulls**t,” I took a few minutes to think it over, and decided that it would be something new and different to do. If nothing else it would likely be something vaguely interesting to talk about, if by some chance another human were to engage me in conversation.

Then I learned that it was a comedy show, and I was 100% on board.

Now, comedy is… not an entirely accurate descriptor. There were many laughs during the show, for sure, but it was more like a series of weird performance art pieces that just happened to elicit laughter from the audience. This was a bizzare show, a strange combination of interpretive dance, puppets, giant wigs, and some sort of weird menstruation bit involving a pink sweater and a red scarf. It was like a cross between sketch comedy and a hallucinogenic drug trip.

A show more about physical comedy and just being weird, the actresses (is that the right word?) were weirdly robotic throughout the show, often moving in quick, stilted motions and barking out lines emotionlessly in that weird way that performance artists do on TV. It was somehow even weirder after the show when they dropped their stage personas and acted like regular human beings as they thanked the audience, recommended other shows, and presented their merch.

I think that the nicest way to sum up my feelings about the experience is that I’m not smart enough to have really “gotten it.” It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. I just felt confused and bewildered more than anything. I was acutely aware that I wasn’t laughing as much as the rest of the audience, which makes me a little sad. I wanted to like it more than I did, but what can you do? I’d definitely recommend seeing The Merkin Sisters though, as it is absolutely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. Maybe I didn’t get all the lulz, but I’m still glad that I went.

What is happening in my head?

Stockholm syndrome is real.

Do you want to know how I know this? I miss ArcaniA. That buggy hot mess of a game that I played for roughly a month to help justify buying yet another Humble Bundle. I was so glad when it was over, because it was not very good, and I didn’t care at all about the plot or characters, and it was grating on my nerves because I had to play on the Very Hard mode to get the platinum trophy. My weekends were once again free to play whatever the heck I wanted instead of being chained to this trainwreck “project” game!

But now I miss it. When I sit down to pick out a game to play in my free time, my mind often wanders to ArcaniA and then I feel an emptiness inside because it is no longer a part of my life.

How in the sweet, crispy Hell did this happen?

On another note, the fact that I will doggedly play games I don’t like because I feel obligated to “finish” them (whatever that might mean) is a completely separate mental illness.

Overthinking

Should I make a Switch category? I kinda want to make a Switch category. What do you think?

Nah, I don’t think I’m gonna do that. It wouldn’t be fair to all the other consoles that don’t have their own category. And I’m way too lazy to go back and tag all the archived posts accordingly.

This post probably should have been a Tweet, if I were the type to Twitter.

Unfortunate headgear

One of the best features of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is how it allows you to approach nearly any situation in any way you like.

For example: the super dramatic scene where Link pulls the Master Sword from its pedestal, which I completely ruined by making him wear a goofy rubber fish hat.

Okay, that’s a terrible example, but I thought it was funny.

Also it would have been better for you, the reader, if the camera had been a little closer to Link, so as you could actually see the goofy rubber fish hat. Alas.