I haven't been reading much of anything for a long time. I have quite a few books on my list, but either don't have the time to read or can't commit mentally to doing just one thing in my spare time.

But since my phone has two screens, I spend most of my evenings sitting in bed barely paying attention to a youtube video on one screen and mindlessly scrolling through/refreshing a few websites on the other. So I decided to replace the doomscrolling on the second screen and give e-books a try instead. I downloaded the kindle app and purchased digital copies of a couple of the anthology books I've been wanting to read. So now I'm slowly working my way through the Conan the Barbarian and John Carter of Mars collections.

I'm actually regretting picking up John Carter. I really liked the Disney movie, but Edgar Rice Burroughs leans a lot heavier into the fact that he was a confederate soldier. So ... like ... fighting on the side of slavery (where's the puking emoji when you need it?). That made getting through even the first chapter of the first book a challenge. Maybe he changes his views later on, but so far it isn't written like his racism is a problem. Given that the series Burroughs is best known for is Tarzan, it's probably safe to assume that he himself had right-wing views. I might have to give up on John Carter because I definitely can't slog through a dozen books of confederate sympathy.

Not only that, but it's also written really ... not poorly, but I guess you could say "simply." What I mean is that it reads like a YA novel, which I have never enjoyed. I honestly expected a lot more sophistication from such a revered author. I don't mean to sound pompous, but books written for young adult readers like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. never appealed to me. When I was done with kids books, I moved straight into the adult fiction section of the library.

Conan the Barbarian, on the other hand, is a treasure. I absolutely love it. The stories are brilliant and the world that Robert E. Howard crafted is so fleshed out that it feels real. I would honestly put it up there with the detail Tolkien put into defining Middle Earth. And even though there is definitely a degree of titillation, I heard a story a while back (I think it was on an episode of Extra Sci Fi) that Howard only included that in his stories because the magazine he submitted them to for publication was more likely to feature your story on the cover if there were sexy scenes they could illustrate and attract more sales. Cover stories thus earned a lot more money and Howard needed the money to support his mother.

So I definitely recommend Conan the Barbarian, but wouldn't recommend John Carter at all unless you can overlook the confederate sympathies.

I never got too deeply into the Sierra games. Maybe I should. Where should one start?

I was definitely raised in a LucasArts household.

My favourite is Torin's Passage.

I only briefly played one of the old Monkey Island games at a friend's house as a kid. I never got into any of the LucasArts adventure games. I was more of a Sierra fan.

But I do really appreciate Ron Gilbert's place in the industry. He's one of the last bastions of the old guard, keeping the creative spirit of those old PC adventures games alive.

Because I have a very short attention span, I switched from Skyward Sword to the GTA Trilogy ":grin:efinitive" Edition.

Despite its reputation, I don't think this collection is that bad. Yes, the games are ugly, especially compared to what some of the PC mods were able to achieve. But the original games were quite ugly too. The mods replaced the original art style with something more realistic, but these remasters just update the old style with an AI upscaled version. So even though the games don't look as good as what modders achieved, I think it's truer to the original aesthetic.

I also haven't experienced many bugs, and definitely none that are game breaking. I know the trilogy released in a really sorry state, but it looks like they've fixed most of it. There are a couple of textures I've found floating above the ground, and one cutscene in Vice City had no audio, but that's it so far.

The big upgrade is to the controls (for the console versions). I recently tried to replay the old PS2 versions of GTA 3 and Vice City, and the controls are really outdated. It's like trying to play a console FPS today without dual analogue control. The remaster plays pretty much like GTA V.

A version of this song played on the last episode of M.O.D.O.K. on Disney+. Clearly someone working on the show also subscribes to NewRetroWave.

I just wanted to share this clip because I'm always mentally shouting "Melonnn!" whenever I visit this forum.

I always find it sad when I see a new video from a YouTube channel I love and it only gets a tiny amount of views. So I wanted to make this topic for people to share those channels or videos to help give them a boost.

One that I recently subscribed to is thesummerofmark. He's a Romanian game reviewer who focuses on longform retrospectives and has a really dry sense of humor that I enjoy.

I stumbled across his channel when I was looking for content on two of my favourite retro PC games, Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. His latest video is a look at the original Splinter Cell.

I feel like you took the words out of my mouth with this one. I wanted to like this game so bad when it came out but it felt like they designed so many features with the intention of making you frustrated. Every time I felt like I was finally past a tutorial section, they'd surprise me with another. It resulted in the gameplay itself feeling like a really long tech demo.

I'm glad to hear the Switch version is significantly improved; I may have to pick it up.

I remember the last time I tried to replay the Wii version, I gave up before leaving Skyloft. It was just so unbearably slow. I'm much further than that now and can confirm it's way better on Switch. It's still not my favourite Zelda game (that will always be Wind Waker), but if you're curious and have the money to spare, I can finally say I recommend it.

I've been drawing all morning and listening to one of my playlists but keep rewinding to this song. I love how RHCP never lost their funkier sound that I attribute mostly to Flea's amazing bass playing (which he apparently does while chilling in the kitchen sink, according to the music video...).

Has anyone else ever listened to Neil Cicierega's mashup albums? He turned smooshing two songs together into an artform. Most are hilarious combinations, but some are just genuinely good listens.

Here's one to ease you into it...

And here are my all-time favourites.

I had no idea this was such a '90s thing. I mostly associated them with John Lennon.

I've been listening to this EuroVision-style cover of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom." I would have posted it in the covers/mashups thread, but I don't think it's quite as good as the original.

I just want to post an update on this because I finished catching up on The Mandalorian and it's even better than I was remembering.

Boba Fett's cameo also finally managed to convince me how much of a badass he is, so I decided to give The Book of Boba Fett a chance and I feel like I was misled. I hadn't read any positive comments about it, but I thought it was great. It's not as good as The Mandalorian (even though the second half is basically season 2.5), but it was definitely worth watching. I even liked the "vespa gang" more than I expected to. But what really solidified my opinion was when they brought in Danny Trejo. He's only in one episode, but I'm sure he signed up just so he could put "Rancor Tamer" on his resume.

Oh, and Ahsoka is just as good as I was expecting. She was perfectly cast in bringing her to live action.

Oh this fills me with pain. I got this for my birthday after begging for it about half a year long, and then the first dungeon had a pretty realistically moving sp//er in it that jumpscares you from the ceiling. I threw my wiimote across the room, screamed and never touched it again. I let down a lot of people that day including myself.

Giant spiders in movies and games never bother me, but I can't even watch a video with real/normal sized spiders. 8 Legged Freaks was hilarious, but Arachnophobia still gives me the creeps.

I admit, despite Star Wars being one of the biggest sci-fi franchises out there, I never really got into it. I'm not sure why, admittedly. Is it because the few things I did see was the sequel trilogy? (I also saw Rogue One and a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian too.) Is it because I'm scared of what's known as the "fandom menace"? Or do I like other sci-fi franchises better? Either way, I was never really big into Star Wars for some reason.

I think it might depend on your age more than anything. Episode I came out when I was 12 and I got really into Star Wars afterwards. Similarly, my nieces were about the same age when the sequel trilogy began. And I would wager a guess that the people who got really into the original trilogy were Gen X kids between 8-15.

It is a really childish series compared to other scifi properties. And when the next trilogy comes along, it's always criticized by the fans who got into the previous trilogy. I never had a problem with Jar Jar, even though older fans hated him; and yet I wrote a big long spiel about how disappointed I am in the Disney era.

So maybe if you miss that age window you'll never see the appeal. Someone correct me if this doesn't apply to you, though. I'm just basing it on personal experience.