Lamp, broken circa 1988

Today I accomplished two things. #1: WIN #4 #2: I just got eliminated by KevinDDR, THE American Tetris Grand Master. I placed 6th, and he got win number 185 of 259. The fact that I could hang with him and fight him off, even as briefly as I did, feels like a fifth win.

Listen. I know that this is effectively double posting. But after Tetris 99 Win #3 I have something to say. Tetris 99 is probably the best video game I'm ever going to play in my whole life. I will be stunned and elated if I am ever proven wrong. I am in considerable bliss just having it. Like, think about the component parts here. You start with Tetris, which was already the baseline answer of the objective greatest game of all time. Then, you have Arika's Tetris, the finest playing of all the Tetris games. Then, on top of that, you have competitive tetris, the natural extension of the ideological purity of Tetris. Now you add in the biggest advancement in the global spread multiplayer as a dominant form, the internet. On top of that, you add in the perfect idea of the Battle Royale, of letting roughly 100 people into the same environment, to feel yourself tested against the world and not just a small sample size. AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT, make it trivially easy to play. It takes two button presses to go from the Switch UI to the Video Game. You load the game in the UI. The title screen is the loading screen. It disperses by itself. You are immediately on the main menu. You press the button marked Tetris 99. You're in matchmaking, moments away from the single greatest video game ever made. The only way you could improve on it is if you moved the rematch button to another button, and let me tape that button the fuck down. That is all I can possibly conceive of as a way to make the game better. That is the only reason I cannot say it is perfect. It is otherwise the greatest video game I will ever see, and I am straight up and down blessed to have been alive at the same time.

TETRIS 99 WIN #3 2:40 AM GAME FULL OF JAPANESE MONSTERS I AM THE BEST IT'S ME

i keep trying to vote for riki choshu over all of these people but it wont let me??????

lol just got my second win in tetris 99 i'm the best

I don't have a win in PUBG. I have two second place finishes, at 1 on 1, that both left me trembling from the sudden decrease in adrenaline. I have a win in Fortnite. I was dead at the time. It didn't feel much like an accomplishment, but it was fun to needle friends of mine who cared about it. I have a win in Apex Legends. It was my third game I ever played. I had two kills and did a lot of good support stuff. I acknowledged that I probably would never win again. Tonight, I got a win in Tetris 99, and I felt like my whole nervous system blew a fuse immediately when I realized I got it. I, loudly, at 10:30PM, announced to everyone in my house that I was the best. I couldn't help it. I can't help playing it. If I hope to sleep, I have to put it across the house from me. It is probably the best video game ever.

TETRIS 99 [4] GAME OF THE CENTURY, MAYBE BETTER

Anyone looking to improve at playing Apex might want to look into playing Titanfall 2. For one thing, it has all the same guns with all the same recoil patterns, so you can go through the campaign and get used to the guns. For another thing, it's amazing. I bring this up because on PS4- where I've sank probably over 100 hours into Titanfall 2- I'm useful and good at it. On PC, where I'm not used to the recoil patterns at all, I am garbage. So I'm thinking about getting Titanfall 2 on PC and playing through it to relearn the guns.

Game 1: died immediately Game 2: killed two people, died embarrasingly Game 3: Champion Game 4: died immediately i like it and finally have a BR game I can play with my friends that like that stuff that isn't fucking fortnite lol

I've started Yakuza Zero. I love it. I love it with such incredible force. I am no longer interested in games about The End of the World, whether it be Stopping it, Causing It, or Hanging Out After It. Yakuza Zero is a game about crime, naivete, and real estate. It has small stakes. I'm so fucking here for it. Also I'm now adding the Judgment/Judge Eyes thing to the games I want to play this year, which is now officially One Game I Want To Play This Year. Also Siege and Tekken still. A Tekken Update: I have friends that rage a bunch and make it hard to play stuff with them. Someone in that group suggested that he wanted to start getting together regularly and doing something, and the first thing that lept to mind was Tekken. With great reluctance, I floated the idea and got curious responses. The first night was tonight and everyone fucking loved it. I have missed being able to play Fighting Games with people in person, and even though it's thoroughly clear we're amateurs with gimmicks, it's a fucking blast and I'm just elated.

That Tom Jones cover is the first thing to take a real run as the worst thing posted in this thread, holy shit that's amazing

The thing is, I can go see cover bands fuck up just as bad as, say, Aerosmith did with that Come Together. Or for an egregious example that no one's mentioned, the Panic At The Disco cover of Karma Police where they add an additional vocal melody over the bridge because that's what pop punk bands do. What I'm saying is, all that stuff's dull. It's the Everyband's Fuckup. It is not noteworthy in any way other than the paradoxical nature of why so many rich people try to live inside the skins of other rich people. And you say "failed experiment" like they're academic papers failing to prove a hypothesis, when what I see (and what I want) is the hulking flesh masses begging for death with their shitty little vocal chords. In more literal horror story terms, y'all are talking about Misery, and I'm looking for I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. A machine beyond comprehension grabbing life by the genetics and condemning it to eternal shame, despair and suffering while screaming "LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I HATE YOU" into the surface of it's nervous system. You know, the good stuff.

WHICH REMINDS ME (not that I think Jim James/My Morning Jacket is any good, just that I know a lot of people do)

shhhh let me be the antagonist it's my thread

I'm not gonna lie. I'm frustrated with y'all. I need worse covers. Every time anyone posts "A person I don't like plays a song with all the right notes" I just get that much more depressed at your ability to understand a task. Points go to the nu metal George Harrison cover, the Five Finger Death Punch cover of LL Cool J and that Duran Duran thing (lord, that Duran Duran thing). As few of the right notes as possible. That Bono cover of Hallelujah has literally none of the right notes. That's what I'm looking for. Sink lower into this muck, you fucking cowards.

You did, that's true. And that Paranoid cover is... really something.

@D.Z yo put that one in spoiler tags

Takakeisho fascinates me. I remember two years ago, his first match against Hakuho made me cry laughing. Hakuho was chasing the wins record, and he just taunted Takakeisho, who was using the very earliest version of his now impressive style. He wanted to be a thruster, but he had very short arms, and so Hakuho had no reason to really fear him. Here's the match if you've never seen it. And now, a year and a half later, he scores his first win over Hakuho with the full version of his style. He's turned his short arms into an advantage: his huge torso allows himself to force anyone out once they're in his range, but for someone to try to get him they have to put themselves in range of that attack. However, if they over extend he can pull himself out and force the opponent into an unfavorable position. His body is now his offense and defense. It's a fascinating approach, especially since it covers for the deficits he'd have belt wrestling with short arms.

lol yeah he endured a serious pectoral tear and shoulder injury on day 13, refused to pull out, and spent the rest of the tournament not able to use that arm in any real way. Here he is, winning the tournament in a tiebreaking playoff against Terunofuji with a one armed throw.

I will always love Kisenosato for his one armed basho performance, but for complicated reasons. See, my main man is Kotoshogiku. At that basho, he had just got demoted from Ozeki and was at Sekiwake, struggling to win the 10 he would need to immediately reclaim Ozeki. He was at five losses when he went up against the leader of the basho, Terunofuji. Terunofuji jumpstarted to broadcast a charge, and then the second time, immediately Henka'd. Kotoshogiku didn't get a fucking fighting chance. So when one armed Kisenosato beat Terunofuji two times in one day, first by Henka and then by straight up belt wrestling with one fucking arm, I laughed so much I almost cried. I'll always love Kisenosato for that.

(it helps that 1 & 2 are legitimately good light gun games but Typing of the Dead is straight genius)

because I feel like being weird and ornery I went through all the sega franchises I could find and turns out Sonic is probably like 10th best. in order, Yakuza Virtua Fighter Panzer Dragoon Phantasy Star Shining Force (NOT THE ARPGS) Streets of Rage Puyo Puyo House of the Dead Jet Set Radio and then Sonic, unless you're one of those weird fukin Shenmue people in which case you should go play the Yakuza games, they're Shenmue But Good Instead

For total clarity: the "I'd be willing to let two through" is for the thing where I listen to it and write the reviews. Around 12 people participate in that, so that'd be 24 albums, which is still A Lot to write about. If you think I'm going to do five albums per person in that format you're out of your mind, or, alternatively, you'd all need to pay me first, and it wouldn't be cheap. If people want to do ballots, I'm totally fine with ballots. I was just trying to gauge where interest was.

CODECOMBAT [3] I dont know why this is the year that I've decided to learn how to code as a hobby, but this is the year that I've decided to learn how to code as a hobby. Codecombat is a browser based python tutorial with RPG framing. I am enjoying it as a logic puzzle. Ideally this turns into an ability to make a video game later. My goal with learning how to code is to make a game for my mom, who likes Castlevania but has been passed up by 2D action game design in the last twenty years. Maybe I'll put it out. Maybe I wont ever finish it. Either way, Codecombat is a good enough time. THE ETERNAL CASTLE REMASTERED [4] GOTY candidate if your brain is broken in the same way mine is. It is a modern Flashback/Another World style game with an artstyle that is 100% completely amazing. It's only using four colors for the palette at a time, but what it's doing with those colors is just incredible. But, honestly, if you read "modern Flashback/Another World" and went "ugh why the fuck would you do that," you're good, this game will do nothing to convince you. It's also fascinating as a performative co-opting of nostalgia. The Eternal Castle isn't a real game. It's framed as remastered because the conceit of the design is that it's based on a game the developer remembers playing but doesn't remember the details of, so they made it again from scratch. So while that original game doesn't exist, that kinetic awkwardness of old PC games absolutely does. I strongly conditionally recommend this game.

I'm trying to think if it would be arrogant to point out the times I've done this in my own music