Alexlotl

Some retro gaming with the kids lately on the Mega SG and Super NT: Sonic 2 - it just goes on and on, doesn't it? 8 levels would have been plenty. Some wonderful imagination and set pieces, though. Sonic 3 Complete - at least we can save, finally! Heaps of bonus stages though, which the Tails player finds dull. Never liked the graphics on this one as much as the first two. Turtles In Time / Hyperstone Heist (we mix them up). I find both versions about as good as each other, which is to say not bad, but nothing special - but I love the score system, which just tracks how many enemies you've defeated. I think at the end of game with my daughter last night I was 492 - 105. Megumi Rescue with the paddle controller - so much fun, such jaunty tunes as people hurl themselves out of burning buildings and splat on the pavement. Any, real reason I'm posting is to tell you all this One Neat Trick that professional cable untanglers don't want you to know. I nicked it off My Life in Gaming, but have finally got around to doing it, and it's pretty lifechanging. I keep all my retro controllers in a cloth cube box in an Ikea Kallax, and they gradually tangle together into a hideous rat king, making it impossible to get anything out quickly for a quick play. The trick is to store each controller in a ziplock freezer bag (£2 for 20 from Tesco) before chucking them into the Kallax. You can quickly root through and find exactly what you're looking for, thanks to the translucent bags, and there's zero tangle.

Aw, I still like Bournemouth, and the way Howe puts two up top against big six opponents rather than trying to park the bus. They occupy a sweet spot in value/effectiveness in FPL too, along with Crystal Palace. Their fitness record is absolutely appalling though. I don't know if they just buy hospital cases, or if it's something about their pitch/training facilities. It'll be interesting to see where some of their players end up if they do drop - Fraser's already out of the door, Callum Wilson will certainly go, Josh King and Nathan Ake could walk into any mid-table side, and loanee Harry Wilson has proven he's premier league (if not Liverpool) grade.

I've gone big on Wolves in Fantasy, they seem to be in the sweet spot of being both motivated and actually good. It is tight at the bottom! I'd pick Norwich to go down and Watford to survive, but it could be any 2 of Villa, Bournemouth and West Ham going down. Villa look better out of the blocks than the other two, IMO - whiff of toxic CBAs from West Ham, and Bournemouth have somehow managed to come up with a new injury crisis after a single game, plus Fraser's on strike and Wilson's suspended for 10 yellows.

Prices for retro games have nothing to do with the actual game anymore, it’s all about the packaging. Particularly fragile, cardboard packaging and easily mislaid bits of box filler. Flash carts and drive emulators have basically eliminated scarcity of the actual games, even on original hardware. Bare cart of in-demand NTSC-US SNES game - £25. Boxed? £120. Didn’t someone on this thread get £80 just for the instruction manual for Shantae on the GBC last year?

I kept meaning to get to this all day, then eventually got ten minutes just before the deadline. Built a team stuffed with DGW players and players with good GW30+ fixtures, with the intent to wildcard GW31. Got my transfers done, quickly set my captain and played my bench boost… only to hit the deadline. So I ended up with Grealish as default captain and half my DGW players sitting on the bench unused. 26pts down on where I should be after only two games. Well, fuck.

I was reading about this the other day - KK has three “hazure” songs (which apparently roughly means “miss” in Japanese) which he plays if you ask for an unknown song. Then in the next Animal Crossing game, those hazure songs will be the secret songs which can only be requested by name, after which they’ll enter the general catalogue. Turns out some of my favourite tunes were once hazure - Stale Cupcakes, My Place, Strolling, etc. So you can look forward to getting a recording of it in the next Animal Crossing game!

CJ came to town today, for the first time since the start of June (and Shark Madness). Emptied out my wardrobe full of cached high-value fish and sold it to him - 285,000 bells. That's a bridge, and incline, and a little against the mortgage! I resisted the temptation to get an Aparima figure made, and went for a Red Snapper instead. My wife had an oarfish made last time he came to call, and it's a bit underwhelming - not sure the big fish translate well to collectable form.

HHA went ahead as usual for me this week. Does it still happen if you’ve changed absolutely nothing in your house?

I have Henry, he's rubbish. Nice house, mind - lots of ironwood stuff. But he's an annoying little tit. The only smug villager I've ever got on with was Lionel the classy middle-aged lion on my old island. Would sign him back up in an instant. Speaking of which, what's everyone's personality mixes on their island? We've got: 1 x Sisterly (Tammi the cub, who is OK, but I'd swap for Katt in a heartbeat) 1 x Peppy (Flora the flamingo, who is ace) 1 x Jock (Sprocket the robot ostrich, who I quite like for a jock, but find his weird little hairs repellent) 1 x Smug (Henry the dickhead frog) 1 x Lazy (Pudge the constipated cub, good lad) 2 x Snooty (Tipper the cow and Pecan the chipmunk - both OK, I prefer Pecan) 1 x Cranky (Admiral the bird, I like him) 1 x Normal (Annalisa the anteater, pretty ace) ...with one slot free in case I get someone ace turn up at the campsite. Just wondering if other people opt for a specific personality type, or if everyone likes a mix. I like the variety of conversation, and I think I read somewhere that only certain personality types craft certain recipes.

Here are 15, as it’s too good a platform to only take 10. Phantasy Star 1 (SMS Power re-translation with FM sound) Wonderboy in Monster World Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion Shinobi Alex Kidd in Miracle World Spellcaster California Games Comical Machine Gun Joe Ghost House Hang On Penguin Land Fantasy Zone 2 Enduro Racer (Japanese version) Golvellius R-Type I’m also very fond of Megumi Rescue, but I don’t know if it’s possible to play on the MD Mini (it used a special controller).

How did you get on with SD3? I think it’s a masterpiece and SoM is a mess, but this seems to be the reverse of most people’s stances.

Yeah, I had the same reaction when I randomly got the recipe for the Bamboo Wand and made that (Celeste had weirdly not chosen to give me the Star Wand recipe - perhaps my daughter got there first). I'm basically going to use it for having some total dress-up outfits on standby (e.g. Wizard, Astronaut etc) rather than for any kind of routine clothing, as losing those items from the wardrobe is a dealbreaker. On the plus side, presumably if the clothing disappears into your wand, then it doesn't take up space in your storage...

Polished off the last of my Highland Park, and am now progressing through a bottle of Caol Ila. It's doing the job - kind of medium peated, so you get the smokiness but not the fire-in-a-welly-boot-factory TCP thing. This makes it an easier drinker, but perhaps less distinctive as a result. Old Pultney lined up next, but I'd imagine it'll take me a few months to get there - most nights I'm too knackered for a dram.

My island is very cut up by rivers, by default - I kind of have a big hub, then four satellites, so to join up all the land on the plains I had to build four rivers from the get go. Used cheap log bridges for the lot just to get it done. Now I'm joining each of the satellites with a bridge, and going for fancier ones - Red Zen Bridge, etc. Once they're all finished, I'll demolish and replace my log bridges, then build my 8th bridge over one of my mountain streams. I really like the island the game generated for me, there's not much I'm going to change once I get terraforming. Paths etc, maybe nibble a bit off the hills in the NE corner to make it easy to get to Redd's beach, perhaps create some better bridge spots.

I'd dismantle them and clean the whole things with fairy liquid etc prior to attempting any sunbleaching, surely? The YouTube channel Retro Man Cave, despite the unpromising name, is actually a very calm and thoughtful show with a decent presenter, who does a lot of restoration stuff. Well recommended. The baking powder for fluffy muffins turns out to be very useful for cleaning, too.