Games I probably won't be picking up again (Post No. 11)

     Welcome to today's blog post about games that I likely will have played at one point or another in the past, and likely have no either in the long-run or eventual plans to pick any of these games up again. As in, don't play them again. Just forget I even have them, and if I can get some money for them from the used store; Probably just sell them to the used store for less than five dollars, and if they refuse to take it, or offer me around the same price in trading value (about $1 minimum- $4.00 maximum), then I'll just take the offer, allow the trade, and walk away once the trade has finished. 

     Now as a general rule, I'm only going to talk about games that I have played once or twice and decided that the game itself sucks butts, or I have to essentially hack/cheat my way through the game in order to get to where I want to go, or the game had some novelty a while ago - and because it held that novelty to me all that time ago --- Whatever entertainment value it had is gone now and I probably would be better off wasting my time in a more fun/productive way. 

    Games I have not picked up the first time & played, games that are not English-language or International versions (meaning they were Japanese titles on SFC for instance) and games that are somewhat more obscure to most Serenity dorks that I have played at home are staying off of this list. Far off. So, without further ado, I'm going to present to you, blog reader --- 

GAMES I PROBABLY WON'T BE PICKING UP ... AGAIN

(Well, probably not at least anytime soon, anyway...)

(Well, probably not anytime immediately soon...)

(Maybe after the next blue moon, I'll consider it.)

   OK, enough about the titling. I'm going to start with the actual list now, anyway: 

1. School Tycoon (PC): School Tycoon for the PC was one of those games that I thought I could pick up and emulate the experience of running my own school, doing everything from paying the bills, to hiring all the staff, and maintaining the classrooms, and adding a few facilities that schools would not normally have on site, such as amusement arcades, burger joints, pizzerias, and skate parks. Basically, it was a fusion of SimCity and Sim Theme Park. You could hire and fire teachers, and even create new students and expel ones the game generates in or your created students. Of course, the game was about as fun as actually being in school, and the novelty wore fairly quickly - from the AOpen IQ systems PC which was my main PC throughout most of High School until I donated it to the Valley Learning Community Association in Kentville in 2009, and leaving that basement with a much older Performa (in retrospect I should've taken the Packard Bell home instead!) until the Katana's almost decommissioning in 2019. I pretty much elected against playing this game on the "Claymore", and I won't be playing this title on the "RedEye," or if and/or when the "Excalibur" computer gets built, then I will be absolutely not playing School Tycoon. 

2. Hot Rod Magazine Hot Rod Game (PC): For the time being, I have no Windows XP machine to play this game as one of the primary games on - but basically, the point of the game is to build a hot rod from a junky car to make it to the cover of Hot Rod Magazine. I will likely not be picking this game up for a revisit again anytime soon, because for one thing, I want to be able to mostly play the game using an XBOX controller instead of my keyboard - which the keyboard would be fine for things like [Redacted] I guess, but I will mention that I don't do well using a manual transmission. Not in real life, and definitely not in a digital car. 

3. The Sims 1 (PC): At the time I got this at the Book Fair in Middle School (originally) I had way too much fun with this game similarly to how over 20 years later I would be having fun crashing Burnside Specials in the sandbox game BeamNG/.drive and watching them explode since my nostalgia period of interest primarily is from 1970-1989, believing that anything 1969 and older is an antique, and anything from the end of the 19th century - 1960 belongs in a museum, be it one as large and expansive as the one I personally visited in Lunenburg on Monday, August 22nd, 2022, or one I would plan to visit just not volunteer at anytime after today this August, but back in full again on September 6, 2022, the Old Kings County Courthouse Museum, but enough about old things which belong preserved behind museum glass & nostalgia for just one second. We're talking about The Sims 1 for PC. I tried using the PS2 game, but it didn't work, but I guess since the game mechanics are going to be likely extremely similar to the real PC game - I'm not going to spend much further time with the PS2 game, even if I somehow manage to find another working PS2 - which may be a task I may add, easier said than done in the post-COVID pandemic world when probably a lot of my peers were buying up a lot of the stuff from their childhood and adolescence which they remembered as nostalgic things. I mean, at the time "The Sims 1" for PC released, it was cutting-edge, and very impressive for its time. Me revisiting this game in the 2020s now, as well as in other years in this decade should I make the error in judgment or mistake of so doing ever again - will be purely nothing except for nightmare fuel & I should probably consider seeking spiritual counseling if I want to consider touching any disc or digital disc image of TS1. 

4. The Sims 2 (PC): The sequel of the first game, I wanted this game on my at the time main PC AOpen IQ Systems PC more than I did the Sims 1. Probably because The Sims 1 was a much more difficult game to do without me either causing the Sims that I was taking care of to die or in the case of the kids, get shipped off to military school because they got an F grade on their report card - and plus since there was no aging mechanic in the Sims 1 vs. this game, it would be a game that I would've gladly just had not played anymore on the Claymore. It's indeterminate if & when I may decide to choose to play this game again on the "RedEye" but when I do, I feel like I'm probably going to have to put a little bit more brainpower into it, as opposed to simply thinking primarily with my male genitalia. Although some male genitalia will likely be involved in my thought process as I probably might just make it so my waifu gets canonically placed with my character as according to my own Sims lore, which I may add, I may so conveniently choose to ignore the Sims lore that Maxis wrote for the game with the default characters. 

5. Corvette Challenge/SuzukiSuperBike (PS2): This is likely more due to lack of compatible working Hardware as opposed to likelihood of not wanting to play it, but both of those racing games didn't hold my interest for very long. I'm considering just keeping those games around for mental torture to adversarial neighborhood Annapolis Valley girls who have brother-in-law pioneer dorks that would probably rather I be a pioneer so our friendship can be preserved in the unlikely event that I would become the brother-in-law to such an individual. 

6. The Sims 3 (PC): Well, I'm not too interested in all the lore going backward & forward & backward & forward again. End of story. 

7. Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (PS2): Sure, it has cars, and it has drifting, but I never got very far in the campaign mode, and probably might have been responsible for a wedge being put in between the friendships of myself and a boy which I want to keep out of my life for the foreseeable future right up until Kingdom come. Maybe that guy and I could meet again someday, just to see how much we've changed in the years we've been apart. Maybe that won't happen. I don't know. 

8. Pac-Man World: 20th Anniversary (PS1): Do I have working hardware for this game? All PlayStations from the original 1994 gray PS1 to the later generation Sony PlayStation 3 consoles could easily play this game, so I doubt it's a big issue here. But the amount of time I've often sunk into it, plus the fact the second boss in the open-hub area (Anubis Rex) is a deceptively easy boss. I initially assumed that "Anubis Rex" would just be a short level where I would have to evade a mummy walking through the hallway of a ruins maze and then when I made it out with my life, while avoiding spears which protruded out from the floor, and then after having sunk the HMS Windbag and causing King Galaxian to supernova, I would have access to the next two areas of the game, the funhouse & factory levels. I was wrong. And even after using the infinite health cheat to effectively cheat the mechanic where I could die due to environment damage from molten rock sputtering out of the gurgling lava, I doubt it was worth my while to attempt to get to the funhouse & factory levels to begin with. Supposedly, the biggest redeeming quality of Pac-Man World is the fact it has the full classic Pac-Man arcade game included on the disc, but that's an overrated way to buy the game Pac-Man. There are so many other ways to play it. For example, all of the earlier, pre Super Nintendo era consoles have Pac-Man as a game which can be purchased, even Nintendo Game Boy has the game itself. And, for PlayStation 1, there is Namco Museum Vol. 1, which has the Pac-Man arcade game, as well as Galaga, Pole Position, Rally X and New Rally X, Bosconian, and ToyPop. Nintendo 64 has Pac-Man as part of the NamcoMuseum N64 title. PlayStation 2 has both NamcoMuseum for PS2 and Namco Museum 50th Anniversary, which the latter title is also on other systems, including the Microsoft Windows PC. Pac-Man is also on Return of Arcade for Windows 95 and other Return of Arcade Releases, for the PC which will work on the 32-bit path from Windows 95 all the way to Windows 10. (Provided you go on the 32-bit path only --- Put 64-bit into the equation, and you have to use NTVDM workarounds.) 

   Plus I guess MAME emulation? So, in other words, why play Pac-Man World 20th Anniversary if you just want to play Pac-Man? I mean, I guess if you want a fun, challenging platformer and probably a few head-scratching challenges to try to figure out how to beat, then by all means : Play Pac-Man World 20th Anniversary. But just the PAC-MAN game itself, there are so many alternative options out there, you might as well just not bother counting. 

9. Lego Racers (PS1): Lego Racing is just a go-kart on PS1. True, there are some pre-built racers you could use, but also --- there are some ways you can make your own Lego Race Cars. Not fun, and not recommended for anyone over the age of 10 1/2. 

10. Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (PC and Other Platforms, but mostly PC): DDLC+ was not really a "sequel" to the game, Doki Doki Literature Club! but rather an expansion pack released by Team Salvato and Serenity Forge, instead of primarily having the DDLC game function on the ren'py engine like the base DDLC game did, which ren'py actually increased the replay value somewhat, DDLC+ is based on the Unity engine, which made it somewhat more platform-universal. Although that making DDLC more platform universal may seem like a good thing, (especially if you have the platform devices to play on) It also comes with a few downsides. Downsides such as: 

   (a.) Since Unity is a proprietary engine, not anyone can make alterations to the code or game executable of Unity. 

   (b.) By the time a Player gets to the third act of DDLC, then the Player has a choice to make, which one might be slightly more difficult than the other for his/her/their conscience. Do they delete monika.chr from the game directory in the VM main menu? Do they just walk away from the Act 3 game and just forget they have it there? Or, do they leave their PS4/PS5 XBOX ONE or Series X/S running 24/7 and rack up massive power bills and risk causing fire or get an interdimensional visit from the ghost of Act 3? 

   (c.) A+B combined = Lower replay value, by the time you complete all the unlocked side stories. 

So, tl;dr at this item of the list, seeing as how Doki Doki Literature Club! Plus is the same game as normal Doki Doki Literature Club! minus the near infinite replay value, then I've pretty much decided that I'm not re-visiting DDLC Plus again. I will however, instead wait for the new Team Salvato visual novel to drop, if and when one does. 

11. Any NFS game released by EA which has a cop game-over mechanic: I'm talking about not necessarily games I've just recently discovered & are new to me, such as Road & Track Presents The Need For Speed, where there are Fox Body Mustang Cop Cars that once they catch you, they immobilize your car a certain number of times, I forgot how many times precisely they need to immobilize you during a car race in this game, maybe once or twice, and then the third time, it would be seeming pretty funny to me, but if I happened to be playing with some little kid, and I explain to them they are going to be going to a correctional facility, prison, jail, and the concept of such institutions has not really been done away with, they turn on the waterworks and start crying like the big poopy babies that they probably aren't too far away from in all honesty in my opinion, and depending on how nice or mean-spirited I feel toward the kid, my adult feelings get hurt, or it just makes me want to laugh my rear end off, but I'm talking games like NFS: Most Wanted, or NFS: Carbon, or NFS: Undercover where I would rather not sully my own reputation by registering my own name/pseudonym as the game alias, but rather registering the given name of my brother-in-law as the game alias instead. Those arrest scenes make me genuinely mad, and during gameplay I intentionally (a.) Try to avoid them as long as possible, not really caring so much about Bounty objectives, (b.)When I feel exceptionally mentally ill and really don't feel like trying to get the car that say, in the case of Most Wanted, Razor took from me, just get a game over on purpose, impounding every single one of my cars when funds are low and walking away from the game - and never touching it again. I mean, even if I had my license, I wouldn't want a BMW. If I really want a German luxury car that badly, I'd be more partial to either an Audi which is just a fancier more upscale Volkswagen, or a Mercedes-Benz, which is absolutely not related to Bimmers or Volkswagens anyway, and no requirement to take some stereotypical BMW Driver's course, as in, make my name be the name of a stereotypical driver, and be a total maniac to everyone else on the road. Of course, a luxury car I would prefer to lease (because the insane repair bills would scare me away from purchasing one of those Benzes if I absolutely must have one new, never mind the drive off the lot cost.) would be either a Lexus or an Acura. Essentially just a fancier Toyota or Honda, which I would be just fine with in theory. But back to Cop-Game Over Mechanics for a second. Cop-Game Over Mechanic Games I would not touch with a 10-ft. pole from now on, as made by Electronic Arts from the 2000s onward, and probably discounting ones that I have not properly played yet: 

- Need For Speed Most Wanted

- Need For Speed Carbon

- Need For Speed Undercover

(Oh, and I'm aware that they may have made ports for PS2/XBOX... So, I'm not buying either of those three games because they're hardly worth my time - never mind money.) 

   So, yeah. While there are plenty of games out there having been released in the past and present; and likely going to be continued to be released for the foreseeable future, I will probably be somewhat open-minded and not defecate on all of them. Of course, there are in reality only a small amount of games I could probably play in one year from January 1 to December 31, and I'm not going to spend all my time and money getting them all. Or beating ones that I may have in my library somewhat properly in the first place.

Many Evolutions of My Digital Portfolios, The (Post #10)

      Over the nearly thirty years I have been using technology in some form or another for the expression and creation of my technology, many means have been used to store the works which I have thought of writing stories and stuff like that and journalling thoughts on the Internet, starting from my Grade Primary days of Elementary School in 1995. Although it may be impossible to fully archive the portfolio works I have archived over the years from Grades P-XII from start to finish, as well as works I have made and continue to make long after the halls of academia no longer have a person of Spinney family line blood (and if I get my way, probably never will ever again) walk up and down them trying to find their way to some class they have in order to at the very least, just pass the class because they obviously don't want to bad, disappoint their parents and despite the best efforts of the teachers at that time in history, which were transferring away from the model of if you fail, you fail, and if you pass, gold star, to something which is like we have today, where teachers often have blue hair and preferred pronouns, who would believe that everyone should have an equal opportunity at success, and that "No Child Should Be Left Behind." 

     So, without further rambling, I'm going to share some of my digital portfolios from the year 1995 to presently as of August 2022. We don't talk about anything after September 2022, since (1.) September 2022 is not here yet, and (2.) Who knows if this blog is still going to be up? If I still edit it somewhat actively, and there are still going to be posts made to it without censorship being required so that nobody is offended, then there will be some continuance of the story of my digital portfolios. If it's gone, I have decided it's probably best for the Deep State and Shallow State and State on Shore that either I have no more Digital Portfolio, or it exists, but on a somewhat intranet type of deal where those who can get into the portfolio, can get in. And if it doesn't exist, it's either been altered, deleted, or destroyed, or kept encrypted behind cryptic levels of encryption. 

1995: Digital Portfolio File Size: 1.44MB

   1995 was a lot simpler, and probably more primitive time. Sure, back then when games were purchased, full titles were released on either a cassette cartridge or a compact disc, depending on which console you got, and even in a lot of cases, PC games were full back then too, only being re-released as Special or Collector's Editions with newer levels that the original vanilla games didn't feature, making the game technically more like an upgraded version of the same game --- what gamers nowadays would simply refer to as DLC.

    Simply put, the size of my "digital portfolio" was about 1.44MB on an IBM floppy, actual size when formatted, 1.38MB size for MS-DOS format, or Microsoft Windows FAT16 format, which despite being primitive in comparison to the formats of FAT32, which was released in the later 1990s, as well as formats which have existed in one form or another since around the same time as NTFS, (Think early Windows NT) and the early versions of the EXT file system, (Which surprisingly, was more superior to the NTFS and FAT versions commonly in use @ the time, and also in computers that were more expensive), and the Mac file system which had remained relatively unchanged since the 1984 Macintosh, only difference being that instead of requiring a 3.5" floppy diskette to be put in the computer in order for it to boot, it booted off of a hard drive on the SCSI interface, which at the time was cutting-edge, but later IDE and SATA drives years in the future would likely make the SCSI drives of back then seem loud, slow, and hillariously outdated. 

    Oh, and another thing. If you wanted to watch a movie, you either picked something off the VHS shelf at home if you had one, or went to the local video store to rent a flick if you were in the mood for one, as DVD technology would be a mere two years away at this point. Internet always on? More like, not always on. Windows 95 was the de-facto home version of Microsoft Windows back then, and Windows NT 3x (from 3.1-3.51) was in use in the business/institutional world, which was rather just a more updated version of Windows 3.1. 

2005: Digital Portfolio File Size:  700MB

    Ten years have passed since 1995. Technology has improved greatly from the days of dial-up Internet, which comes as both a blessing and a curse. Gone are the cartridges of the Nineties, as Nintendo and Sony, as well as the newly replacing Sega from back then video game company Microsoft are releasing all their video games on disc-based systems. Video rental is on the way out in favor of streaming services like Netflix. 

    DVD was king in the home movie market, as it had been always. My "Digital Portfolio File Size" soon grew from the measly 1.44MB it had been in the year 1995, gradually to enough of a portfolio size to fill a 700MB blank compact disc, which I had to ultimately fill since I kind of did some stupid things like unleashing all kinds of viruses to my AOpen computer which was my high school workhorse for the entirety of my High School career, from Grades IX-XII. Which had to be repaired several times, and likely never restored to the AOpen OEM that it had left IQ Systems in Greenwood originally back in 2004. 

   However, my next increase would be coming just three years later, at about the time I would be leaving the regular West Kings institutional environment behind for good, and when I would be entering NSCC. 

2008 (2 months) Digital Portfolio File Size: 4.0GB

   For a brief period of time between my actual graduation date of June 27, 2008 - July 31, 2008, my Digital Portfolio size had grown in size from 700MB total, to 4.0GB total. However, due to my distaste for Windows Vista, even going so far as to brandish it as "Windoze Pi$$ta", this lasted until late in July, as we will soon be learning. 

2008 (Rest Of) Digital Portfolio File Size: 504.0GB

   Because of my curiosity of living a computing life without Windows, I figured that because I had a computer which could theoretically handle Ubuntu 7.10 (as my Pentium 4 AOpen could not), I ended up buying an external hard drive sometime around the time I would be returning for one post-graduate year at West Kings District High School, and partially spending the time at the Nova Scotia Community College, as a sort of transition year from my late adolescence into adulthood. Plus, I guess my curiosity of life computing without the Micro$oft brandishing anywhere in my user environment, and not defecting to the Apple Mac Camp (that comes later in the story) kept making me recover the computer back to factory settings, and once it pissed me off (conveniently again) back to Linux. Never keeping one or the other for long, as on the one hand, my parents don't want me to be on an alternative UI. But, on the other hand, it's only going to be a matter of time before Micro$oft released a product so shitty that I'm pretty much going to be ready to fly the Micro$oft coop and don't look back. 

   It had grown from a recordable CD size or singular DVD size into one external hard drive and a memory stick size, it has. Even though the total formatted combined capacity was somewhere more in the neighborhood of 502.7GB, which means about 1.3GB was left unaccounted for in the difference. 

2010 Digital Portfolio File Size: 1.1TB

   Although I didn't have a computer (yet) which would break the 1TB storage internal barrier, for 2010, my combined NTFS and HFPS capacity limit would be closer to 1.1TB, and it would continue to grow gradually throughout the decade. No further comments here. Oh, also, a website I designed in 2009 is a thing because I could try to code it from scratch and load it to the snap ednet server, but I figured I would continue to use it as a portfolio even after my exit from the course.

   However, my portfolio would ultimately only continue to grow over the years... 

2015 Digital Portfolio File Size: 3.1TB

  In December 2015, I originally envisioned the "Katana" to be a computer which would eventually have 3.1TB internal hard disk space, with the OS being Microsoft's Windows 7, which was still supported at the time, and 120GB out of the combined space being used for booting the OS (Windows) off of, 2TB for internal storage drives, 1TB for all my games (both legally purchased and don't ask don't tell where I got them), 1TB for music, and movies, and a final 1TB to run the at the time then latest release of Ubuntu LTS as I was planning on transferring away from the operating environment of Micro$oft Windows. This meant that by the time I had finished building the "Claymore" in 2020, like I would've originally planned on; I would be running Ubuntu LTS (and telling 10 to go [CENSORED] itself.) But, after having a love-hate relationship with 10, I figured I would ... Well, actually, now that I mentioned it, we better save that in actuality for when I can have it properly written down. 

2020 Digital Portfolio File Size: 7.1TB

  At the end of the support officially for Microsoft Windows 7, the actual portfolio size for my install had grown from the 3.1TB I had with the then in-use "Katana" to a planned 6.2TB portfolio which would eventually be in the "Claymore", with its OS dual-boot choice being Ubuntu-Linux likely the latest LTS release at the time, and Windows 10 Pro edition. Neither of those ended up becoming what I ended up planning on being in use. The only reason that this was not as planned is probably likely due to me consulting with relatives who meant well, and friends who gave me some of the essential components for free effectively. The next time, if and when there is a next time I build a computer again - I'm sourcing everything myself and not leaving anything to chance/anyone else's suggestion. 

2022 Digital Portfolio File Size: 4.1TB

  Thanks to an accidental rabbit bomb (fork bomb + Suicide Linux) I pretty much lost "everything" on the Claymore. I'm planning on putting everything back where it's "supposed to be" on the RedEye, but for the time being, I'm just going to say my digital portfolio size is way smaller than 4.1TB. In actuality, of course. Could be larger for all we know. 

Future: Digital Portfolio Size: ???.0 ?B

  Information is not available for this section at the present time, sorry.

Blog Deletion (Post No. 9)

    Formerly, I had plans on making the "Excalibur" the computer that would be the Linux-only gaming and media workstation that would be starting its use as of September 2022, and probably continuing such use until the end of the 2022/2023 Service Year of JWs, and beyond that perhaps, or the end of the apocalypse times,(I will not be factoring in what conservative conspirators call the "Great Reset" where people who are not members of the elite classes are expected to own nothing & be happy, while the aforementioned elite classes probably conveniently neglect to add, "We will be the ones OWNING EVERYTHING and BE EVEN HAPPIER THAN YOU LOWLY, VILE, FOUL, PEASANTS!"

   Because of this sudden development, there will be a few changes of plans as of today, Saturday, August 20th, 2022. And, the following changes of plans are as follows: 

1. The Claymore Build Post which was originally edited and journalling the build of the now decomissioned and sold NCSE Claymore from December 2019, at the tail end of the Katana's life, and the initial development of the NCSE Claymore using an older AOpen case and a few random spare parts and Windows 98, my favorite version of Microsoft's Windows OS, will be deleted today, at 13:00 ADT and the takeout will be placed on the technician laptop, in addition to the entirety of the posts from the introduction post, to the final "EXTRA" Post which was written on December 23, 2021. 

2. The Excalibur build post, (or in other words, the Linux computer post) will be taken in a new direction, and will be deleted once the new Excalibur setup will be activated & ready to roll as soon as everything is online. In fact, the RedEye in some ways kind of "replaces" the Claymore, instead being an "upgrade" to the Claymore which saw its heaviest active use in the Windows partition from January 2020 when the build was complete - through to December 2021 when it was repurposed as a Zoom PC upstairs, and later rabbit bombed (fork bomb + Suicide Linux) in April 2022, and sold to computer parts collectors in July of 2022 as a working system with No OS. 

3. After the completion of the Excalibur build post as of whenever occasion the date of the Excalibur build post has finished, the Excalibur blog serial + the "Weeb Cafe" blog post will also be deleted, forever. And nobody will ever stop that again. 

  While it is true that this content could be viewed as Internet generated content, content like this will not be broadcast for much longer online. It will instead be put on a local intranet and kept from those who wish to view this the wrong way. 

   I know that this seems awful extreme for something that has no foundation in reality (for the time being) but, face it. I may have grown up learning 2+2=4 my entire life, but one morning, it could be that 2+2=5 instead. 

   I hated reading the George Orwell novel Nineteen-Eighty Four in high school. If such a dystopia becomes a reality too close too home gradually over the course of a couple of years, I shouldn't stick around too close to government facilities where my behavior could be hypothetically easily surveiled. I should probably just head for the hills, and hope that the nearest governmental facility that would be as far as I am concerned closer to my new home, is about half an hour away. Just to live there, and watch the world end.