Daniel Achterman

Look what opened in Washington State! I haven't had In-N-Out in like a decade.

Is it like a million hours long?

The last Dragon Quest I played was VIII and I was kind of under the impression that it wasn't that long ago but apparently it's been two decades and they've made 3 more so...

I find that undermines it, sadly! Like watching M. Night Shyalamalan's third movie, it's less fun to know a twist is coming.

Like, deceive me. Keep any hint out of the promo materials. Tell me I'm at 100% map completion at the halfway point. Grab this rug under me and really yank!

I love a good game where you're pushing to the final encounter and it's like "surprise, there's a good 30-50% more game left and it's getting REAL."

SotN of course. Final Fantasy VI. A good turn is just so great.

Post you from a different era.

From 20 years ago. I will not be taking questions at this time.

Like, your first sentence completely threw me. "Castlevania" doesn't include saving at all. Castlevania 2 and 3 give you codes instead of saving to storage like Zelda did.

The result is that asking someone their favorite Zelda, Mega Man, or Pokemon game is a decent way to guess how old they are.

One of my favorite things about talking about videogames is how different generations of players consider different games in series as the default or definitive one. Your using Castlevania as an example of how save media works reveals that your default is SotN, while mine are 1, 2, and 3.

She and, like, maybe Leigh Bardugo are kind of horror-ish.

A couple authors you might enjoy:
Stephen Graham Jones
T Kingfisher

Some books I liked:
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Our Wives Under the Sea
My Murder
Mr. Magic
Just Like Home

I personally find Silksong bosses more satisfying than Elden Ring bosses because the controls and success / failure conditions are so much more crisp.

The last game to land like this for me, and to make me stubbornly push through it to prove I'm still a gamer, damn it, was Nine Sols.

Number of bosses that were like "yikes, this is tough" but not at that "this may be impossible for me" level: very, very many.

The number of Silksong bosses that I've been convinced are impossible that I then managed to progress to a kill over multiple attempts has been, like, 10.

I'm sorry Nikki, it's clear you both loved her very much, and she lived in a joyful home. Give my best to Graham.

Grief is a shitty journey. Be good to yourselves.

It really was so good.

I think I broke my controller's right bumper.

It's so great to see the Midnight announcement today, and read the posts of folks who have been working on zones and features that are now revealed.

I have also been working hard on Midnight, and while much of my work is still secret, I'm looking forward to people seeing it too.

The trick is to leave negative seconds between speakers. New speakers wait for current speakers to be near finishing a point, then start talking over their last few words. Any silence is a failure condition.

This last month I've been learning to recognize intervals and scale tones by ear, which has always seemed like a kind of magic to me.

This week I've been struggling through notating chords in songs and I'm so bad at it but I can see how I might get good at it.

I've been taking guitar lessons the last few months to try to see what I can do if I commit to it, and he's been encouraging me to do the hard things I kind of just... never got to when learning on my own.

I'm finding that's the most impactful aspect of taking lessons, for me.

All the answers to this are fun and some are pretty bad date movies, but my answer is "Requiem for a Dream" so enjoy your silver medals.

"I pressed my Tears of the Goddess perfectly, I swear. It must have been lag."

Frantically pressing my game show buzzer and shouting "The City and the City!" but not getting the point.

Holy hell, dude.

I was about to post this, but it feels like bragging.

After mastering Mega Man 1, 2 felt pretty straightforward, almost a letdown. Surprised to see its reputation for difficulty here, but I guess it'd be a rough go if it was your first.

Oh, yeah, like, "Dad reading it to us before bed" core memories associated with that thing.

I grew up with that same illustrated version of The Hobbit!

Took me a second to realize that CD Projekt Red is not working on Myst.

Cool As Ice.

Sometimes a world-class cinematographer gets their start on a Vanilla Ice vehicle.