Why do I live up here?

It’s a question I get asked on occasion. My area is pretty far removed from…a lot of things, really; it’s at least a four-hour drive to get to any sort of truly large city. The local economy isn’t exactly great, property values are absurdly high, when you look at how little there is to do around here, and while there is nice scenery, it tends to be buried under multiple feet of snow for a third to half of the year. (Sometimes, multiple feet of snow fall all at once, as is the case now in Snowpocalypse, Part 9: This Time There Are Sharks for Some Reason.) And if you’re new to the region–or if you’ve never been to my neck of the woods–I can see why those things would drive you away. But if you actually spend some time in upper Michigan, and develop a feel for the place, you might find the solitude and the slower pace of life to your liking. Which brings us to today’s word.

callow, adj. – inexperienced, young, immature

Learned from: Jack Move (PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, XBox One)

Developed by So Romantic

Published by HypeTrain Digital (2022)

Jack Move is a short, sweet cyberpunk RPG about Noa, a hacker who gets wrapped up in a web of corporate intrigue while just trying to get by in a dystopian world ruled by megacorporations. Fairly bog standard stuff, but there are some emotional beats thrown in here and there, along with some fantastic pixel art. One of the more interesting bits of background plot involves a complicated history between Noa’s mother (who is dead), her father (who she feels abandoned her), and her uncle (who largely raised her).

Her uncle, Guin, is a bit of a dandy. Indulgent and permissive toward Noa, he does have his limits, and at one point where she’s getting in his face about something, Guin verbally slaps her down, calling her a “callow hypocrite.” And really, he’s not off base. Noa is young, and when you’re that age, you think you know everything. And to be fair, sometimes a teenager might know quite a bit; but sometimes, they might be in over their heads without realizing it.

That’s really what the story of Jack Move is about, at its core. Beneath all the evil corporate trappings, and cyberpunk lingo, there’s a story about a girl just trying to find her footing, discover what’s truly important, and figure herself out. Again, the game is nothing revolutionary, but it’s colorful, fun, and has a lot of heart.

That’s Noa, front and center, her dad to the far right, and the suave bastard in the upper right is Guin.

Just a light knuckle-dusting

Awhile back in my last post, I mentioned that I was heading off on a trip to Minneapolis. I did not, in fact, get arrested and shipped out to El Salvador or something–in fact, the trip went better than I would’ve ever expected. I saw one protest, and no actual ICE presence; it actually ended up being a pretty nice trip. No, the reason I haven’t posted in so long is because it’s winter in upper Michigan, and I have become a machine that moves snow and produces back aches.

I think we’re up to Snowmageddon Part VII for the year, which in most franchises means we’re long past going to space, and we might be Back to Da Hood, or possibly ready to Take Manhattan by my calculations. While it’s true the last couple years have spoiled us, this is still the worst winter I’ve seen in a very long time. The snow banks by my house are taller than I am. Side streets are frequently mired in enough snow that it’s like driving through the world’s worst milkshake, and sidewalks are largely non-existent. And in a roundabout way, this brings us to today’s word.

flurry, noun – a sudden burst of activity

Learned from: Streets of Rage 2 (Sega Genesis, arcade, Game Gear, Nintendo 3DS, Sega Master System)

Developed by Sega

Published by Sega (1992)

Up until playing this game, I’d only known a flurry as a light snowfall. You know, something gentle, peaceful, and almost calming to look at through the window when you’re nice and warm inside. I’d never known it could apply to a rapid succession of punches, kicks, and headbutts, until I read through the manual for Streets of Rage 2.

The series as a whole is a fantastic example of what the beat ’em up genre should be, but the second installment is largely regarded as the best in the franchise. More levels, more enemies, more characters, and a much, much larger move set that actually had differences between each protagonist. They all had similar inputs, but whereas one character’s flurry of blows might be a series of kicks, another might focus more on punches, or incorporate elbow strikes. And these different executions really did make the characters feel more distinct than the first game’s simple “speed, strength, jumping ability” distinctions. It’s still a fantastic game to this day, and well worth breaking out on an evening when a different kind of flurry has long since given way to blizzard conditions.

Into the hornet’s nest

Have you ever had a rude awakening when you’ve gone out to your shed, or garage, or heck, even just in your backyard, and you discover hornets building a nest, and suddenly your day’s ruined? Like, maybe you wanted to just do some relaxing gardening, or fire up the grill; maybe you had a trip planned out to an old family cabin in the woods to just get away and unwind, and between when you made the plans and now, there’s this swarm of angry, unreasoning bastards who’ve just set up shop, and now you’ve got that to worry about? Yeah, that’s how my impending trip to the Twin Cities area is feeling right about now. Which brings us to today’s word.

agonistic, adj. – aggressive, combative

Learned from: Chaos Zero Nightmare (PC, mobile)

Developed by Super Creative

Published by Smilegate Entertainment (2025)

But hey, things could be worse. Humanity could have been chased away from Earth by eldritch horrors, the very fabric of the universe could be unraveling, and our best hope to fight back could be a bevy of attractive anime girls. Huh, I guess there is an upside to the world of Chaos Zero Nightmare.

Yeah, it’s one of those games, but honestly, CZN is one of the best of its type I’ve played, because it does so much to distinguish itself from other gacha games whose selling point is sexy waifus. (Side note: I got a red squiggle under the word “gacha,” but not “waifus.” We really do live in weird times.)

If I had to describe CZN, I’d have to call it a free-to-play cross between Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon, with a sci-fi twist. That is to say, you could save yourself $25 on Slay the Spire, and get what I would argue is actually a better experience for free. Sure, if you really want a character, you can spend money to have better odds of getting them during their banner (a limited time event where you’re more likely/eventually guaranteed to end up with them), but you can grind in-game resources up to a point, and often get them that way.

Like Narja, the current banner combatant, who’s a failed experiment trying to replicate the abilities of a protos (no, not those Protoss from Starcraft; the short version is, they’re humanoid weapons that only one government controls, and others out there in space want a fighting chance without having to cave to the whims of another political entity). In the story, you rescue Narja, but if you want her (or her partner, Gaya), to actually fight alongside you, then you need to engage with the gacha system.

Oh yeah, the word. Once you recruit Narja, you can play through some of her memories, where the lab that made her puts her into training fights against simulated monsters in virtual environments. Despite not being real, the scientists tried their best to emulate the agonistic instincts of the various chaos creatures. Initially I thought this was just a misspelling of “antagonistic,” since gacha games sometimes have small errors in translation, but nope.

Anyway, stay safe out there, folks. Especially if you live in the US, like me. Shit’s getting crazier out there every day. I hope to be back home in about a week, relatively safe and sound out in the middle of nowhere. Until then, take care of yourselves, your friends, and your neighbors.

Narja’s the one in the upper right, for those who were curious.

Shrug it off

Happy New Year, everyone! I know 2025 wasn’t…great, for a lot of reasons. And I know that the whole concept of a new year being some momentous turning point is largely manufactured with nothing to really back it up, but the only way to really go is forward. So, if 2025 has left you damaged, try your best to keep pushing on, and leave as much of that unpleasantness behind you as you can, even if it’s only a little. Which brings us to the first word of the year.

ablative, adj. – relating to the loss or removal of something, often via surgery, melting, or evaporation

Learned from: Cyber-Cop (known as Corporation outside the US) (Sega Genesis, Amiga, Atari ST, PC)

Developed by Core Design, Synthetic Dimensions

Published by Core Design, Virgin Games (1990 – Amiga, Atari ST; 1991 – PC; 1992 – Genesis)

Cyber-Cop was a wildly complex and ambitious game for a system like the Genesis. Not the only first-person shooter on the console, it was definitely the least-approachable. The story of a corporation developing a genetic supersoldier that went rogue, and the government contracting a shadowy spy organization to break in and get evidence (covertly, so as not to chase the corporation out of the country and hurt the economy), is pretty straightforward. If a bit depressingly representative of dystopian capitalism. It’s the execution where things get wonky.

As you’ll see in the screenshot below, there are multiple regions on your character’s body where you can sustain damage. Each of those areas could have various pieces of armor or gear attached to them (from visors, to cybernetic implants, to ablative armor that shears off as it takes damage). And you had to make sure you healed damage to flesh with med-kits (but not too many, because you could develop a dependency, from what I remember–which was baffling at the time, since I’d never seen side-effects to healing before), and damage to cybernetics or equipment with different repair kits. I think the game had an encumbrance stat, so you couldn’t carry too much at once. Oh, and you also had stamina that you had to manage by sleeping or taking stimulants; similarly, you had to keep the batteries on your various gear charged. And…

Really, that’s just the stuff related to gear. The environment (while made mostly of the same gray walls), was pretty interactable, with control panels to use and/or hack, environmental hazards to account for, enemies with different tactics to take down or avoid, and puzzles to solve (including one that involved shifting your view of a hologram so you could see all of a door code, which I always thought was pretty damn cool).

Cyber-Cop was really more System Shock than Doom, rewarding slower, more methodical exploration (despite your stamina and energy constantly draining). But I only ever rented this, and when I had a real-life, 3-day time limit, that sort of approach really wasn’t in the cards. I’d probably enjoy it more now, but at the time, I never really got very far.

What? No, not *Robocop*; I distinctly said *Cyber-Cop*, a completely original and legally distinct intellectual property!

Jackpot

Well, we’re coming up on the end of 2025, and what an ending it’s proving to be, on my end. My wife and I got back home yesterday, threading the needle between closures of the Mackinac Bridge: one due to an, er…incident that thankfully was resolved safely, and the other due to weather. The weather-related incident is ongoing; it rolled in a few hours after we got home, and dumped over two feet of snow in less than 24 hours, with high winds making for some pretty high drifts. As a result, neither of us had to go back to work today, since pretty much the entire city is shut down. All in all, I think we really lucked out. Which brings us to today’s word.

croupier, noun – a person who runs a gambling table

Learned from: Dispatch (PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5)

Developed by AdHoc Studio

Published by AdHoc Studio (2025)

Dispatch is a title that grabbed my attention as soon as I saw the first trailer. Written by some of the talent from the old Telltale Studios (of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us fame), Dispatch casts you as an Iron Man-equivalent character who loses his suit during a fight with his nemesis. Unlike Tony Stark, however, your guy isn’t rich, so he can’t just rebuild and start over. Dejected, and suddenly directionless, he gets recruited into a program for rehabilitating supervillains, acting as their dispatcher for jobs. The logic being, even if he doesn’t have the suit, he still has the tactical mind of a hero, and can still do some good.

What follows is something of an office comedy with metahumans, as you try to find a new purpose in life, and form relationships (both good and bad) with this band of misfits. One of them is a winged assassin named Coupé, which I understand is French for “to cut.” But there’s a scene where the team is all talking at one point about doing something after work, and someone (maybe Punch Up, the 3-foot-tall circus strongman with the strong Irish accent), says Coupé wouldn’t have much fun since she’d have to be manning the roulette table or something. Punch Up does not speak French. Though, as mix-ups go, even knowing what a croupier is (as Coupé herself angrily points out), is still kind of impressive.

Dispatch tells a great story, full of quirky humor, difficult choices, and oddball characters who end up strangely endearing by the end.

Even Coupé is less stoic and humorless than she seems at first. It isn’t all about the stabbing with her.

Well, what did you expect?

It’s a very busy time of year at my job, and the main thing getting me through it is the fact that we finally rid ourselves of the most toxic member of the staff. Over the past year and a half, this guy–let’s call him Chungus, because seriously fuck this guy–has stuck around despite making the lives of everyone else in the office miserable. No indoor voice, no sense of boundaries, no concept of what’s appropriate for a work conversation. He probably only lasted that long because he’s related to someone on the board. Yay, nepotism (not today’s word).

And lest you think I’m being too harsh toward someone whose worst crime is having a voice like if Rocky Balboa was a frat boy, and a laugh like Woody Woodpecker with a traumatic brain injury, there’s also the fact that Chungus was caught driving drunk with a loaded gun in his car, which he may or may not have had a license for. But even that wasn’t what finally rid us of him–no, that happened after Chungus got drunk again and started harassing one of our female coworkers outside of work, and she filed a police report. At which point, I really have to ask, just what did you think was going to happen, you stupid prick? And that brings us to today’s word.

query, verb – to ask a question (also noun – a question, itself)

Learned from: Space Rogue (Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC, FM Towns, Macintosh, PC-9801)

Developed by Origin Systems

Published by Origin Systems (1989)

Most people, if they’re familiar with Origin at all, probably know them as the developers of the Ultima games, but they did have other credits to their name. The Wing Commander series (which I’ve sadly never played), is probably the best-known of their other projects, but they had the odd standalone title here and there, too. Space Rogue is one of those, and for being a one-off project, it was surprisingly ambitious.

You start as a crew member aboard a ship that was sent to investigate a distress beacon (if memory serves). While you’re out on a spacewalk to investigate the small, derelict vessel, aliens attack and destroy the ship you flew in on, leaving you alone and in command of the abandoned ship you were sent to find. From there, you can…well, kinda do whatever. Try to discover why your other ship was attacked; become a pirate; learn the economies of various star systems and try to become rich as a merchant; help a robot find love; wile away your time on the game-within-a-game you can play on various space stations; just explore the galaxy, wherever the wormhole network happens to take you; etc. and so on. Space Rogue was an early example of what we think of today as an open-world sandbox; there’s no right way to play, and the story is largely optional if you want it to be. Exhausted everything to do in one star system? Pilot your way through a wormhole, and query your computer for points of interest where you end up–there’s always something new at each destination.

Speaking of the star systems, kudos to the development team for trying to account for actual physics and space hazards. Wormholes aside, planets would move in their orbits as you plotted courses to them; velocity was constant unless you fired your thrusters; inertia in dogfights felt believable; radiation and space debris were real concerns; you could crash if you tried to land too fast at a space station–this was impressive stuff for a game with 4-color CGA graphics that came on a couple of floppy disks.

The free-form open universe felt a little too open to my 7-year-old self, and I don’t think I ever beat this game, insofar as there was a way to “beat” a sandbox, sci-fi space adventure. But it was certainly different from anything I’d played at the time, and it left an impression on me, even all these years later.

*Look* at this guy, like he’s getting ready to drop Aldeberan’s hottest album of 1989.

Phrasing

Sometimes, you run into a game with a title that just doesn’t quite make sense. A lot of these are foreign games using English words, and maybe something got lost in translation. See: Infinite Undiscovery, Under Night In-Birth, or Chaos Zero Nightmare for a more recent example. But every so often you’ll get one from a Western developer where they clearly didn’t think things through. Such is the case with Tritryst, which is probably the least-sexy game you could imagine with a title that essentially could be read as meaning “menage a trois.” Which brings us to today’s word.

tryst, noun – a romantic encounter

Learned from: Tritryst (PC, Mac)

Developed by Cinematronics, LLC

Published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc. (1995)

Tritryst was a match-3 puzzle game. But despite the obtusely spicy title, you’re not matching up naughty bits or anything. Heck, it doesn’t even feature the fast-paced action of Columns, or even have a timer like Bejeweled, that might provide some excitement. Tritryst gives you a series of static, grid-based boards in various layouts, and gives you all the time you need to place pieces composed of three randomized colors so that you can match three in a line until you run out of room. You can rotate each piece in 90-degree increments, but that’s about it–I don’t even think they came in different shapes; I’m pretty sure they’re all straight lines.

You could almost classify Tritryst as a cozy game, since I suppose there is a certain calming appeal one could find in mulling over where to place each piece at their own pace. But honestly, I just remember it being kind of dull. I only ever played the demo, because even back then, I couldn’t see it being worth paying for. Good for winding down before going to bed at night, maybe, but nothing I could see most people playing for extended periods. And that title just had me perplexed, once I looked up what “tryst” actually meant.

Have I mentioned how much I miss the box art for old games though? Because, *man* I miss this kind of insanity!

Catching flak

I don’t normally give the word of the day away in the title of the post, but most of this story is going to be so convoluted, I thought at least some part of it should be straightforward.

So, Thanksgiving is a few days past at this point, and my cat has barely eaten since then. Like, she saw us preparing all these different and extravagant types of food in large quantities, looked at the food she had been eating–quite contentedly I might add–for awhile up until that point, and decided, “No. I also want something new and different. This plain old food simply will not do, human.”

At least, that’s the conclusion we eventually reached. Initially, we were worried that she was sick, or had swallowed something that was causing a blockage, or that she was depressed or something. But she would still eat treats–she caught and ate a spider, for that matter. And she’s eaten bits of the new food we’ve picked up for her. She was just throwing flak at us for having the audacity to celebrate a food-centric holiday without cutting her in on the deal. Which brings us to today’s word.

flak, noun – anti-aircraft fire, (or in the example above: harsh criticism)

Learned from: Mission X (Intellivision)

Developed by Data East

Published by Mattel Electronics (1983)

Mission X is a vertical-scrolling shooter, in the same style as the much better-known Xevious. And while its graphics are nowhere near as good, it actually brought a lot more to the table. You still had forward-facing guns, and could drop bombs, but you could also change the altitude of your plane, to be more accurate with your bombs, or fly above enemy planes or flak. There was also a day/night cycle, where it was significantly harder to see your targets during night missions, as well as a pretty decent variety of things to shoot at and bomb. The only thing Xevious had over Mission X aside from graphical fidelity (and market saturation), was the thematics: fighting sci-fi space aliens, instead of Axis powers in World War II…unless you were me, growing up.

See, despite having the manual for this game, I never really saw it as a WWII shmup. And that’s because I always conflated Mission X with the 1987 movie Project X that they played weirdly often on weekends for awhile. It starred Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt, and it was about a secret Air Force project designed to teach chimpanzees how to fly fighter jets. And my five-year-old brain latched onto that concept for dear life whenever I played Mission X, because the idea that I was an escaped, experimental chimp who stole a bomber and was wreaking havoc across the countryside was automatically a better, more fun idea than whatever dusty old nonsense the game was trying to be about.

There’s our floofy little tyrant, who, despite going on a hunger strike, has plenty of energy to climb up the spare mattress we haven’t gotten rid of yet, so she can judge us from on high.

Old faithful

It’s been a busy few weeks, between traveling, seeing old friends, and being short-staffed at work in between all that. But it’s finally a weekend where I don’t have anything going on, and we finally had our first snowfall of the year, so I figured this was a good opportunity to get another entry out.

I say “finally” about our first snowfall in early November, because according to people who grew up where I currently live, there used to be snow on the ground before Halloween. Consistently. But better late, than never–I still like winter, despite all the shoveling I have to do as an adult. The colder temperatures just sit well with me. I mean heck, my wife and I had our honeymoon in Iceland, where temps in the 60s (Fahrenheit) are positively balmy. And in a roundabout way, that brings us to today’s word.

geyser, noun – a hot spring which periodically boils over, sending a spray of water and steam into the air

Learned from: Space Quest (Apple IIGS, Mac, PC)

Developed by Sierra On-Line

Published by Sierra On-Line (1986)

The first game in a six-game series, Space Quest was sort of the adventure game version of Spaceballs: all ridiculous situations, jokes, and references to established sci-fi franchises. Star Wars was the main inspiration, but there’s some Star Trek, Dune, and other things sprinkled in there. You play as Roger Wilco, a space janitor who ends up embroiled in a nefarious plot that threatens the galaxy, and only he can foil the villain’s plans and save the day.

After escaping the exploding space station where he, until just recently, worked, Roger crash lands on a desert planet, and must survive the sweltering heat, deadly wildlife, a speeder bike action sequence, and unscrupulous used droid salesmen to get back to space and foil an evil alien plot. One sequence on the planet has you making your way through a cave system with a geyser that you need to plug up with a rock, so the pressure will open a secret door. Adventure game logic is really odd sometimes.

Fun fact about the word, “geyser,” though: It’s actually named after a region (and a town) in Iceland, famous for its various hot springs, mud pots, and yes, geysers. The most famous one (called Geysir–not sure why the spelling changed in English), is now largely inactive. Strokkur is the most vigorous geyser in the area, going off every couple minutes, and it is pretty spectacular.

Fun fact about Geysir, Iceland: Everywhere we went in Iceland, was multi-lingual. Street signs, restaurant menus, signs on businesses; all of them were in at least two languages. Sometimes more. In fact, during our time there, there was only one sign we ever saw that defied this rule; the sign was at Geysir, and it was written only in English. Basically, “Despite appearances, this water is incredibly hot. If you touch it, you WILL get burned. The nearest hospital is over 50km away.”

I have a photo of it somewhere, but it’s on an old laptop I haven’t used in awhile. But yeah, if you ever wonder what the rest of the world really thinks about the United States, this thinly veiled jab toward famously monolingual Americans pretty well sums it up.

Also not my photo. The laptop my Iceland photos are on is old enough that it’s not compatible with Windows 11, so it’s sat untouched for some time.

Who are you, again?

I recently attended a presentation by author, Sue Harrison, where she talked about her journey to becoming a writer. She genuinely seems like a delightful person, and her personal story was an uplifting one. But when she mentioned that she has difficulty remembering faces–to the extent that the first draft of one of her books had virtually no facial descriptions of the characters–I realized I knew the technical term for that. Which brings us to today’s word.

prosopagnosia, noun – face blindness

Learned from: Rogue Legacy (Playstation 4, Mac, mobile, Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 3, XBox One)

Developed by Cellar Door Games

Published by Cellar Door Games (2013)

Rogue Legacy is, as the title might suggest, a roguelike platformer. The gimmick in this one is that when your character dies, he or she is replaced by an heir you select from a few possible options. Some of the options are pretty straightforward, like the character’s class, but the cool part is that each one has a selection from a vast variety of traits they can be born with. From the innocuous (being bald), to the mildly inconvenient (colorblindness), to things like prosopagnosia, which made it so you couldn’t see any of the traits of the next generation. Not horrible, compared to something like schizophrenia (which I think showed enemies and platforms that aren’t there, while sometimes not showing ones that are), but it meant you’d have no idea what to expect on the next run.

And really, that’s what kept Rogue Legacy fun. The actual platforming and combat isn’t bad, but without the quirky results of genetic chance, the repetitive runs probably would have gotten boring before the end. It’s still a fun little game, easily worth the $15 it’ll set you back on most platforms.