Cool Things in the Internet, Oct 2024: Old PC game retrospectives, traces of Eggbug, literary analysis
One disadvantage of blogging over social networks is that sharing cool things you've found on the internet is much more difficult: no reposts or boosts in the blogoverse. But life finds a way: I've seen so many people make it a regular feature on their blogs to simply link to things they've enjoyed. I'm going to do the same.
So, first edition of Cool Things in the Internet that I've discovered or enjoyed during the start of Autumn.
Majuular - Ultima Retrospective Series
One of my pet peeves about gaming discourse in the internet is that it is so heavily console-biased. You can throw a stone and hit a hundred Final Fantasy full series playthrough video essays or a hundred more articles about every NES game ever; meanwhile it doesn't matter how huge or influential a PC game or series was, it may as well not exist. So when I do come across a place devoted to that topic, it always sparks my interest. Majuular's Youtube channel is exactly the kind of thing I want from a Youtube gaming channel in general - calm narration, dry humour, not a single shot of the person in front of the microphone - and his retrospective series on the humongously important Ultima series (which also doubles up as a history of Origin Software, the developers) has been by far my favourite discovery in October and heavily recommended for anyone who's into gaming history. The series is only up to Ultima 6 at the moment (out of 9, and not sure if he's going to do the spin-offs), and I'm very excited to watch the rest as they come.
The Digital Antiquarian: The Truth Is Out There
Speaking of old PC games, one of my favourite blogs going is The Digital Antiquarian, which specialises in analytical retrospectives and reviews of notable games throughout PC history, advancing year-by-year chronologically (currently in 1998) and using the game reviews as a launchboard for general analysis of the context and times these games were released in. They recently finished a four-parter article on X-Files: The Game, which only spends about one article on the game itself and the others talking about the general UFO hysteria of the 1990s which the show used as a launchboard and then discussing the show itself, before the development and impact of the game (and the game itself) is discussed. I've linked to the first article of the series, hopefully any interested parties can navigate to the other parts - and I heartily recommend the blog as a whole, because really this entry is a thinly-veiled recommendation for the blog as a whole
CoHost NES Pictionary in Memoriam
A wonderful tribute by Luna to one of CoHost's (RIP) most delightful community features, which frequently graced my feed and delighted my days.
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age
When Geocities shut down, its contents were saved in one massive archive. This blog (which sadly hasn't received an update in quite a while) goes through every page in that archive, one by one. In this era where going back to the Old Internet is cool again, it's lovely to revisit what the real deal actually was back in the day.
Bulletin Board Nonsense
One of the most annoying things about CoHost closing was that during the frenzy of its final days, I discovered so many interesting people and accounts which I would have loved to have followed. Some have fortunately moved their projects and writings elsewhere, and this includes Bulletin Board Nonsense: a daily themed collage built around little pieces of memorabilia and trinkets picked up on the road. It's the definition of a delightful personal projects that's just neat to be greeted by daily.
A Critical Analysis and Review of Withdrawn Traces
So this is very niche and maybe not even interesting to most people, but it's a bit of a doozy if you're into the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers. More specifically, this is a multi-part (and very long-form) intense analysis and breakdown of the 2019 book Withdrawn Traces, about the band's disappeared-presumed-dead wordsmith Richey Edwards. The book's authors call it an attempt to actually understand the person behind the mythos, but as the article series makes it clear, not only does it do anything but lean against the mythos but it also adds in a bucketload of incorrect information, willfully bad lyrical interpretation, bad faith arguments and conspiracy theories. It's a fascinating research piece that may not have intended to start its life as a supersized takedown of the book and its authors, but slowly evolves into one. Very fascinating.
More links next time, in Cool Things in the Internet.