This is where I let loose and share things that are miscellaneous or more casual posts than most. There’s a lot in here now, since I’ve been cleaning up my archives!
This weekend, I had a very fun opportunity to visit Arcadia: America's Playable Arcade Museum in McLean, Illinois. Arcadia is located just off of Route 66 right outside of Bloomington. Started in 2009, the arcade is the passion project of owner John Yates and is home to loads of retro hard to find arcade cabinets and pinball machines. There is also an annex called Pinball Paradise that is just pinball across the street. And this year, the arcade plans to open an expansion called Arcadia Unlimited, which will initially have 275 games and eventually have three separated areas with over…
From the game's vintage instructions pamphlet as transcribed by ChatGPT. I do not know own the copyright to these instructions, if you would like me to take them down please contact me. I am providing this for historical and educational purposes only."TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLESHeroes in a HalfshellINSTRUCTIONSAGES: 5 and upPLAYERS: 2 to 6OBJECT:Be the last player with "Turtles" letters remaining on your score sheet.YOU SHOULD HAVE:1 card deck1 card tray1 score pad5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle® ShellsHeroes in A Halfshell™ Card Game"In a Nutshell"Each player is dealt four cards with the remaining ones placed face down to form a…
Everybody who was born in my generation grew up with the old box style TV based on the cathode ray tube technology of the time (or CRT for short.) In this article I'll be talking about the pros of doing your gaming on these CRT style televisions instead of the more modern HD or flat screens that are prevalent today. I first started using an old box style CRT for all my retro gaming last year, after acquiring an Emerson tabletop box CRT from an estate sale last year for $5. I'll talk about some of the places you can…
If you ever wondered what the backstory behind apple Slice soda or Real Ghostbusters Kenner Proton Packs were, you may have heard of Matt and Jay of The Purple Stuff Podcast. They also go by the internet pseudonyms of Dinosaur Dracula (Matt) and Sludge Central (Jay). Matt and Jay have been broadcasting The Purple Stuff Podcast everywhere you can download podcasts and on Patreon since 2015. They are what I would call experts of all things retro and use their platform to talk about anything and everything nostalgically remembered by the youth of the 1980s and '90s with a passion…
I've been doing content creation since the beginning of the pandemic, and it started off for me with such high hopes despite the bleak circumstances. I hope to impart some wisdom onto you as to why I continue to make things for this website, my YouTube channel, and why sometimes creating things requires a unique brand of positivity. Things are not always easy for someone who is any sort of creative. We do a lot of grunt work for something which is not valued by the almighty dollar in the same way that things like commerce or industry are. Yes,…
This April, I grabbed an Amtrak train from a small Illinois town and headed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The reason? To visit the 2024 Midwest Gaming Classic at the Baird Center in Downtown Milwaukee. It's an annual trade show that celebrates gaming in all its forms with vendors selling used games and cool merchandise, free to play retro arcade games, a plethora of free to play pinball machines, live music, talks and panels, a gaming museum filled with consoles and computers from every era of computing, a board game room, and a bunch of really, really cool people--even some video game…
I see it in the cards. Whether you know it by its formal name, D&D, The Forgotten Realms, or just DnD, I have a few tips on Wizards of the Coast's 2022 The Dungeons & Dragons Tarot Deck for you! The D&D deck was developed by Adam Lee from WotC and illustrator Fred Gissubel. So listen up, adventurers across the lands, this deck has some serious potential for your gameplay and study! For a little brief background, I have been entrenched in roleplaying games and a have had a genuine interest in tarot for over a decade. I find these…
First of all, indie games are my favorite "genre." I think this is an important cultural phenomenon--and also a fun one--but for argument, let's scrutinize it. So, Indie games usually have fewer details, less polished graphics, and are often focused on the simpler things, so why are indie games popular? And additionally, I might even ask, are they? I've been playing and writing about indie games for a couple of years now and I have seen so many genres and concepts that make the games I used to play seem unnecessarily photorealistic and expensive. Knowing what goes into game development actually helped me realize the simple joys of low-scale projects scattered across Steam and the bizarrely creative ItchIO platforms. I'm going to answer this question, because well, I need to, and it's an important question.
If you've ever felt cool sand between your toes or watched moonrise on the beach, there's something unequivocally enticing about the ocean. I'd like to reflect on a trip I took to the coast recently, and how it basically has healed many stresses from the last few years. Nope, not video games, nature. Our new spot on the ocean seemed to change every day like Poseidon's will or endless rolling glass, stained portraits in a cathedral with each its own marine creature. There were manatees flying on the surf and peaceful, anonymous specters of other people entranced by the waves, sanderlings tracing in their step to peck at bubbles.
I read in the news that shipping bottlenecks are uncomfortably poignant this year. It's like every time we get some new way to make things faster, the system gets flooded by shoppers. I wondered even if I should order anything at all. In the process of doing some gift shopping, however, I noticed Target has a deal for free shipping over $35. I'm not totally fond of these humongous retailers on principle, but they can be a good source for fandom memorabilia. So, I picked up this Funko Pop Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cardboard turtle van packaged t-shirt. And because they had it, I grabbed a DVD of the original Ghostbusters film DVD for $5! I don't do many unboxings here, but I could start. Enjoy some pictures and a bit of brief commentary.
