I 👁 woke 💤 up ✊⬆🆙, Saturday 😤 morning 🌅, I 👁 was feeling 😨😎 good 👍 after 2️⃣ a long 📏🕚 sleep 💤. I 👁🏻 entered 🆕 the bathroom 🛁🚿🚽 to perform 🅱 my daily 🌞 routine 😊🍑🎃 of urinating 💦, brushing my teeth 👄 and washing 🧼🛁 my face 😀😃😊. I 👁 was wearing 👙 some tight 👉 ass 🍑 pants 👖 so my thumb ☝👍👅 was being strained as I 👁 held 📎 them down ⬇🆗 slightly ✋ to urinate 💦. My thumb 👍 lost 🏳 all 💯 strength 💪, pants 👖 close 😚 in, piss 🍆💦 is everywhere 🌍🌎, on 🔛 my face 😀😃😍 and the floor 😂 and walls 🧱🎶🎵, I’m pissing 💦 into the fucking 🖕 air 💨, that shit 💩 is about 💦 to hit 💥👋 the roof 🏠, I 👁 try 😐 redirecting it towards 😂 the toilet 🚽😎 in a desperate 😧😭 attempt 🚫 to recover 🚑 from my current 💰 situation 🎮. Now the toilet 🚽 is covered 🍆 in piss 💦🅾, I’m panicking, and only 15 🅱% gets 🉐 in the bowl 🍀. It was like 😄 that scene 🎬 from diary 📔 of a wimpy 😭📱 kid 👶🏼, I’m just spraying 💦 and spraying 🔊, I 👁 didn’t know 💭 what to do, I 👥 was scared ❌😖, panicking and spraying 🔊 piss 💦 on 🔛 the walls 🧱🎶🎵, not the ideal 💡 combination 🔗. So I 👥 took 👫 around 🔃 15 🔳 minutes ⏱ cleaning ✨ the place 🏆 up ☝🙎, cleaning 🛁 myself up ⬆, I 👁 didn’t even 🌃 shower 🚿 and now I 👁 feel 😜 like 👍😄 shit 👌.

The Motion Gravure releases are bad. They are a failed experiment utilizing new technology with very little to offer as either an interactive experience or a work of eroticism. BUT, they are also so incredibly bizarre to see; virtual nausea delivered straight to your eyeballs.

In this one, Harumi morphs and twists, body mutating, disfiguring. She points a gun at her head. Unlocked secret scenes appear over a pentagram, and when all are discovered, she bathes in milk.

Playing Motion Gravure is to experience something beyond us, something no person was ever meant to see. The camera cuts to the ocean waves, again and again, to which we will all return.

Read more here

This game's really good. You don't need me to tell you that. Anyway I wanna talk about something more tangentially related now.

So there's been this weird movement in the zoomer parts of our culture that goes by a lot of names. Weirdcore. Dreamcore. Nostalgiacore. Internetcore. Traumacore? Bunch of dumb names for what's essentially the same thing. It's a certain visual and auditory aesthetic thats supposed to evoke a general feeling of wistful nostalgia. I first became aware of this because of the weird resurgences of a bunch of indie acts that were relevant 10 years ago suddenly making a weird resurgence. I can safely say I would not have predicted zoomers getting really into shit like Roar, Crystal Castles, Nero's Day at Disneyland, Blank Banshee, Life Without Buildings, fucking Goreshit. All these random bands who peaked in relevance a decade ago all of a sudden are showing up on all your art hoe former-tumblr playlists along with Jack Stauber and Lemon Demon (and also spefically Falling Down from the Undertale OST, that song really captivates these people)

I mention this because somehow the Yume Nikki ost has been caught up in this entire "movement". Those feeling depressed for the first time zoomers sure do enjoy commenting weird stuff about how this song makes them want to "lay down in an open field in the rain" on the comments of the Snow World music in between whatever the fuck else they do all day. Go on TikTok, I guess? At first I was gonna call it mildly annoying, but the more I see this stuff the more I'm weirdly captivated by it. It's like watching a bunch of sea monkeys. Like a more earnest version of the amazing cultural touchstone that was Simpsonwave (Not the first time the zoomers cared about blank banshee, ho ho).

Anyway, I don't really know what I'm getting at here. Something something youth something something back in my day something gatekeep. I can't really say any of this really reflects back on yume nikki, since I'm almost certain the weirdcore zoomers aren't actually playing it, but I guess it's cool this game still lives on in our current cultural zeitgeist, even if it has to be through Youtube playlists made by people who misuse the word "liminal" all the time.

Guide for people who are new to Elite: https://pastebin.com/CgkRM05Q

A limited, but stunning space exploration game with completely fluid 3D play. You have an overworld and a huge universe to indulge in, but really your options and what to do are limited, when you mostly stick to trading things inbetween planets and shoot pirates who attack you. Buying additions makes life easier, but the primary objective of the game, reaching the Elite rank, is only attainable after you destroy about 6000 ships, which demands an impossible ammount of dedication for one person. More fascinating today as a tech demo, than as a skeleton of a gameplay that somehow wasn't even updated with Elite: Dangerous either.

On the original, BBC Micro version, the controls are nice and tight, and I recommend it. (3.5)

The ZX Spectrum version has nicer wireframe rendering(to be perfectly honest, any port after the BBC Micro hardware is an improvement), but the controls have suffered and for some reason are slippery. The steering never centers but almost as if it intentionally veers off into the sides. I don't know if the programmers tried to make the game more tricky by providing this element of instability to the controls, but it is not useful in the slightest, and makes flying and navigating the cosmic waters a lot more taxing than it already is. (1.5)

It might surprise some to find out that Hoodwink, one of the most prominent games to be greenlit during the early days of Steam's Greenlight program, actually saw a release. It might also disappoint that same crowd to find out that it was critically maligned on release.

You will never be able to find out if it truly is as bad as IGN and Gamespot's reviews make it out to be, though. Hoodwink is one of the most unfortunate victims of delisting out there. Technically, you were able to buy it on EA's Origin platform at one point and on various other platforms. But it never saw the light of day on Steam. Trying to find the page on Origin leads to a dead-end, and it's likely that all of the platforms that were selling it are either dead in the water or stopped selling it a long time ago. If there is a free copy of this abandonware somewhere out there, it's likely that it has maybe one or two seeders at the most.

If you want to read more about it, consider checking out a post I wrote to my blog earlier this year on the exact topic: https://yultimona.com/2021/03/14/whatever-happened-to-hoodwink-the-problem-with-forgotten-games-and-preservation/