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THIS GAME LOOK FANTASTIC
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dumping some stuff i was tumblring

ERE Informatique
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwTf9h-FBsA  Birdie (fantastic, keep skipping ahead)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3BVA1bcObU Sky Hunter (yes)

Early-ass Ubisoft
Zombi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDimqGCMzk CPC (austere)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bua3ZBwqJPk Amiga (bonkers)

Cryo's Ubik:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liumLWd_B7g
Ubik.
It's licensed.

The Ubik License.
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Austere lonely places filled not with humans, usually not even humanoids. Peahats and tektites are so abstract. They don't even look like animals.
The few humans you can find scream strangely worded clues at you or else they want your money.
The absence of any hope for making a connection.
Statues and temples of an unknowable culture, built by no one.


did i say tektikes i meant leevers
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There is a good reason that zelda is the one series that outshines all others in the sheer volume of amateur game developers attempts at re-making the game along with the systems that lie within, but I have personally never heard that reason put forth so eloquently.

They go about assuming that it would be a simple task, an ideal 'starting point' for their budding journey of game-development self-discovery, where the concept is simple enough for one man to accomplish given enough time/effort, but still robust enough for that one person to earnestly care about the amount of time/effort spent regardless of how many times it may have been done before.

But they always learn the task is far from simple, and that anyone going about it from the standpoint that "anyone can do it" are going to almost surely fail to meet the standard that kind of game set forth.
A pixel art 8 bit pastiche in 2012 can tap into ways the visuals in these games functioned but it can never operate in exactly the same way that works made for that hardware in that era did/do

Drawing with pixels in low-rez, low-color, adding tile restrictions, these things make you reduce any image to a absolute statement, but an image more complex than a tiny grid of colored dots is also reduced to an absolute statement through endless digital replication of the sort you're seeing in the screenshot at top. In a past time, in a past context, pixel art was the art that could be economically digitally replicated. That's not where we are.
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This is radically different now, as an adult. As an adult, I understand how and why these things come to exist. To a child's mind, they are still inexplicable artifacts of an adult world whose workings and motivations are opaque. The digitally reproduced grid of trees, each mysterious, each potentially concealing a secret, does not tug the mind as it did at age X when it represented boundless space to explore and wholly unknown frontiers to discover, a kind of test run to emotionally prepare you for probing an even more incomprehensible world outside of the TV screen.

The same tree stamped out a thousand times. "Fuck it, every tree's the same tree." You get the idea: some trees are here. Here's some water. Here's a weird looking monster. Here's a crystal. Playing with blocks, playing with legos, any modular system for visual representation. An idea is vaguely expressed and it's "good enough." Humans understand "good enough." Machines don't. Seven year old me yearns to touch the alien, machine consciousness behind the black and the glowing shapes. I want it to terrify and overwhelm me, but the machine doesn't know what it's talking about.
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I feel the struggle of the developers as they fight the hardware limitations just to be able to depict anything at all
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These games had a pile of stamps to communicate with and they got you to feel something anyway. I recognize that and respond to it the same way I respond to any work where the artifice is so evident that I feel the humanity & see the human trace. The tile grid can't conceal the seams in the world.
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I fall in an unescapable cravasse... all i wanted was a beautiful red ruby or 2.... alas
try to get more goblet next time
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am i allowed here


"dont' Get them wet"
"no bright Light no SunLight"
"dont Feed them after midnight"
" Do what thou Wilt shall Be the whol of the Law"
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Is there reason not to kill and eat all and every?
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the sound of rusted oven door, tied to burglar, scraping across surgical museum's roof
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How is anyone's ultimate dark fantasy vampire bondage lord under 30

What is this strange era
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Thimble Theater in the 30s was as prevalent as one of those ghastly, mega-popular TV comedies today (the ones that are shot like documentaries, and so forth.)
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There's this book

about fucking

and the writing

is ridiculous

in a kind of banal way

that becomes amazing

given the context

that literally millions of people are reading and talking about it
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Quote
“You know, you’re topping from the bottom,” he murmurs against my lips.
“What?” I don’t understand what he’s talking about.
“Don’t worry. I’ll live with it,” he whispers, amused...”

quick revision here

Quote
“You know, you’re topping from the bottom,” he murmurs against my lips.
“What?” I don’t understand what he’s talking about.
“Google” he whispers, amused...”
“Urban Dictionary” he whispers, amused...”
“Wikipedia” he whispers, amused...”
“Do you...Yahoo?” he whispers, amused...”
“Ask Jeeves” he whispers, amused...”
“Bing and you're done” he whispers, amused...”
“Cruel Site of the Day” he whispers, amused...”
"The BOTTOM 1% of the Web" he whispers, amused...”
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“This is a man in need. His fear is naked and obvious, but he's lost. . . Somewhere in his darkness.
His eyes wide and bleak and tortured. I can soothe him. Join him briefly in the darkness and bring him into the light.”
I am the healer, the yang to your yin, let me rub ointment all over your skateboarding injuries, spike your volleyball into my head so hard it gives me a concussion
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“He's naked except for those soft ripped jeans, top button casually undone. Jeez, he looks so freaking hot.  My subconscious is frantically fanning herself, and my inner goddess is swaying and writhing to some primal carnal rhythm.”

Quote
“No. No!” he says.
“I . . .” He looks wildly around the room. For inspiration? For divine intervention? I don’t know.

“You can’t go. Ana, I love you!”
“I love you, too, Christian, it’s just—”
“No . . . no!” he says in desperation and puts both hands on his head. “Christian . . .”
“No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic, and suddenly he drops to his knees in front of me, head bowed, long-fingered hands spread out on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move. What?
“Christian, what are you doing?”
He continues to stare down, not looking at me.
“Christian! What are you doing?”
My voice is high-pitched. He doesn’t move.
“Christian, look at me!” I command in panic. His head sweeps up without hesitation, and he regards me passively with his cool gray gaze—he’s almost serene . . . expectant.
Holy Fuck . . . Christian. The submissive.”
any of these could be fake and I wouldn't know
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Incidentally, I have also written a story where a character forwent paperwork for sex

So what I'm saying is E.L.J. is a fucking thief.

And I'm floored.

By this fuckery.