The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Curtain

A receptionist dressed in a Willy Wonka purple velvet suit sits at his desk in a richly appointed mahogany trimmed office.

As customers approach from the southern entrance, he sees them, facing west. This is possible because of a wall to wall and floor to ceiling mirror placed at a 45-degree angle between himself and customers.

Another man sits in an alcove behind a curtain, watching both receptionist and customers on a video monitor.

The man who set up the monitor, curtain, and mirror is long gone, but used to work repairing old arcade games.

Pinball Tournament Opening Ceremony

At the start of the tournament, all contestants routinely played an obscure Japanese platformer demo on the Super Famicom. Completing the short game resulted in a credits roll that, when translated, described the virtues of perseverance, fair play, and unconditional respect for videogames and game players.

PGC

Procedurally generated cows eating procedurally generated grass in procedurally generated pastures on a procedurally generated farm in a procedurally generated videogame.

Sightseeing Philadelphia

Start at the Paramount Hotel.

Walk about 10 minutes to the underground shopping district, near the train station.

Browse the shops - many stalls are closed this early in the morning, as are the midway games and arcade machines.

Exit the mall and decide to head back to the hotel.

Readjust my trenchcoat awkwardly and realize I lost my backpack.

Notice a man in a khaki coat awkwardly adjusting a suspicious bulge; underneath is my black backpack.

Strip him of my backpack after spying my black wallet, cash and ID within the folds his coat.

Yell and accuse him of stealing my belongings, threatening to call security and waving my ID around.

Confidently storming back through the mall, stopping to play a security-monitored Simon-says videogame where I hold my ID up to the camera.

The thief fails the game and sits down.

Further on down the mall the shops are opening up.

A VR classroom dodgeball game catches my eye.

Storyteller’s Gap

A Traveling ________ smiles broadly at your approach. Colorful goods are spread before you.

You travelled through the ________. The path turns treacherous. You twist your ankle on loose stones. (-1 HP)

You hear a faint sound ahead. Nearby, a ____ its phylactery pulses with cold light.

Yet Another Arcade Warehouse

Browsimg the dimly lit halls illuminated by purple and green colored lights, we stop to examine two games:

1. A Dolly Parton gacha machine that features capsules shooting out of her open mouth.

2. A Robotron: 2084 cabinet with a control panel painted all white, and miniature track balls in place of joysticks; unplayable and frustrating.

I Am The Lava

Neither good nor evil.

Waiting. Bubbling. Glowing. Hot.

I ruin all your plans.

I destroy all your possessions.

I am what I am. I am the lava.

8-Bit Battle Royale

8BBR is a new cross-platform Battle Royale videogame developed by stv2049 studios, drawing inspiration from the pedigree of classic and modern games:

- Venture 

- Archon 

- Spy Vs. Spy

- Realm of the Mad God

Candy Combo Shower Shuffle Dragon City GO!

Friends gather in a dorm room to play a new mobile videogame.

Their neighbor accesses the shared jack-and-jill bathroom to take a shower but forgets to lock the adjoining door.

Friends With Words

I invented a new word game, but struggled to find a suitable name for it, seeing as the best descriptive titles including ‘word’, or ‘letter’, were already taken by other games.

I invented a new word for the game, “Squiddle”, and adopted a smiling squid as the game’s mascot. It can write words with a quill and its own ink.

Elements & Motifs

Vegas.

Uncarpeted spiral staircase.

High five.

Out of order videogame.

Lost $1,000 bet.

Someone else did it too.

Loudspeaker congratulating graduates.

Suitcase contents strewn about.

Empty guard chairs.

In a hotel.

I Guess That’s $20 Gone

I put $20 into a Video Poker machine and started to play.

The display and console were very dim; I pressed buttons to hold and deal, then the screen went black.

I pressed a button for service and a technician appeared and said, “I guess that’s $20 gone!”

Super Mario Lemonade Stand

True to their continuing commercial hustle, Mario and Luigi open Lemonade Stands to earn precious Coins.

A Harry Potter collaboration event sees Golden Snitches as a restocking currency.

It’s All Code

I’ve been playing Boggle With Friends since February 16, 2011. In my journey to reach Level 100, I began to see a pattern:

- the majority of my opponents are also Level 100

- many of them have also been playing the game for over a decade in its many incarnations

- each of their profile pictures features a dog, including mine

I began ‘collecting’ Players who matched the description above into my Friends list. There are over 250 now assembled.

The Chat feature of the game isn’t functional anymore, but messages ARE being sent if you carefully examine the results page after a game:

After a recent game, I read down the list of words, and removed all but every 4th letter to reveal this message:

“<NAME_REDACTED> IS DEAD”

I recorded further confirmation of this message when the 4th video I scrolled on TikTok after writing this post was from <NAME_REDACTED>

Image

Chuckie Finster cosplaying as Samus Aran

Seems Like I’m Always In Someone Else’s Convention

Hotel

Carpet

Staircase

Crowds

Jacket

Bed

Couple

Shower

Towel

Seems like I always end up at RR’s house playing this rhythm game that’s like OSU! meets Flamin’ Finger

Welevator

Underneath the main entrance to Nintendoland theme park, there’s an elevator with a capital ‘W’ on it that rises back up to ground level directly in front of an arcade cabinet.

I don’t know which game is in the cabinet, but there are always extra quarters strewn about.

Collision or No?

The protagonist’s prosthetic leg needs to lack collision in order for them to walk and kick without it binding up during the animations.

Get Set!

Leaving an Air B&B, I collect a photo collage of me vomiting water in different poses.

Over and over I repeat this message:

- from IKAI US Army General RET

- 31 arcade games drop tomorrow

Demo Build

I’m previewing a demo build of a game by a four-person team; one of them is controlling the movement of the camera over mountainous terrain.

I ask about the development hardware and frame rate target, suggesting to try a cinematic 24fps as we glide over highly-detailed rock formations, and applying LOD techniques to optimize the geometry.

About the time I became annoyed with the camera operator trucking sideways I gained control over the movement of the game, navigating closer to the surface of the terrain, noticing details like craters and crop circles.

I wondered and asked whether these features were interactive, as a kind of mapping mechanic, when I noticed that most of the craters were filled with mossy vegetation, while some were empty, here and there.

I followed the empty ones when I answered my own question, reaching out to a moss-filled crater; the green lichen dissolving to the rim of the crater, and extending a little beyond its circumference.

With a kind of hand-over-hand locomotion I continued following the dot-to-dot trail of cleared craters, discovering a square opening in a sheer cliff face. The trail of craters became a string of dried puddles.

Gliding through the square opening, I continued following through a cave system, spotting the continuing trail of pock marks dotting the walls, floor, and ceiling.

An unmistakeable large cavern contained a rectangular abstract skull inset into the floor, while a suspicious blank panel faced it from an opposite wall. Near the panel lay a glass beaker half-full with a neon magenta liquid among a few more empty ones.

I didn’t hesitate before lifting the beaker and consuming the liquid.

Nearby, another assortment of beakers lay with different-colored liquids inside: black, white, green, yellow. I mixed liquids until achieving the same neon magenta color in the first beaker.

The demo ended there.