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!

The reason for the season

It may not feel much like the dead of winter right now, let alone the holiday season, at least where I am. Normally, around this time of year, we’d have at least a foot of snow on the ground, that would have been there for weeks, already. In 2023? We’ve got maybe an inch, and it’s supposed to be above freezing this weekend, with rain in the forecast, most of the week of Christmas. This is not a good thing, despite how “wonderful” most of the geriatrics who show up at my job proclaim it to be; just because you’ll be dead before the planet fully goes to shit doesn’t make rain in December, north of the 45th parallel anything other than a horrible warning sign of things to come. You might even say we’ve got dark days ahead, which in a roundabout and not at all existentially horrific way, brings us to today’s word.

solstice, noun - the day in the winter or summer with the fewest or most hours of daylight, respectively

Learned from: Solstice (NES)

Developed by Software Creations

Published by CSG Imagesoft (1990)

I never owned an NES growing up, but I do remember seeing ads for this fantasy adventure game released late in the console’s life cycle. At first glance, it looks a bit like The Immortal, or the underrated Genesis game, Landstalker, with its isometric cameras angle, and fantasy setting, but upon looking up gameplay, I don’t think there’s any combat. Instead, it’s more of a puzzle game, akin to Airball, or the much-later Lumo, where you’re trying to navigate your character through a series of traps and monsters, without directly fighting them. It was, I hope, an understandable mistake to make, because the wizard on the cover was buff as hell.

These sorts of games can be fun, but watching a playthrough of it, it looks like it does share something in common with Landstalker, in that your character doesn’t have a shadow…which has to make it incredibly frustrating to line up jumps.

Touching on the subject that I originally began this post with, I’m sorry to be a downer around what’s supposed to be a happy time of year. I hope that wherever you are, things look more seasonal, and you find yourself in more of the holiday spirit. Whatever you celebrate, even if it’s just the fact that days will be getting longer, I wish you nothing but the best. Now, have a stupidly ripped wizard, to cheer you up.

Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!!

So, as you may know, today was Independence Day for those of us here in the United States. As you may also know, we…haven’t been doing the greatest at following simple instructions designed to keep ourselves alive. This combination brings us directly to today’s word.

lemming, noun – a small, Arctic rodent falsely made famous for the belief that they willingly run off of cliffs

Learned from: Lemmings (Genesis, Amiga, NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Sega Master System)

Developed by DMA Design

Published by Psygnosis (1991)

Video game developers seem to have a fondness for unusual animals, from echidnas, to bandicoots, to lemmings. I probably wasn’t the only kid whose first exposure to some of these critters was through games featuring them.

Lemmings is a puzzle game. You’re tasked with safely guiding a bunch of the titular creatures (depicted as green-haired humanoids in blue robes for some reason), across a series of hazards, by assigning them different tasks. The lemmings, themselves, have no sense of self-preservation, and will walk blindly into lava pits, spikes, acid pools, and many, many other deadly fates. It isn’t an easy task, and the fact that I was playing the Genesis version (with very sluggish controls in a real-time game) only made it harder. Still, it’s considered a classic for good reason, because it is a lot of fun. Certainly more fun than…

lemmings

This is an image taken today from a local beach. Half of these people are probably tourists, which means it’s anyone’s guess how many people they came into contact with, across how many states, before they got here. The faces of anyone close enough to be identified have been replaced with something more fitting.