Speedrun Tower

Speedrun Tower is a Sega Genesis demo specifically designed for speedrunning. It's set in a building with pseudorandom floor connections. Your goal is to reach the top floor in the fewest steps possible.

My Loser Phase

Reflections on Video Game Retail from 1992-1997

A look back at the 16 and 32 bit wars from the perspective of a lowly retail clerk. Relive all the highs and lows of the era - from the Sega CD launch to the rise of the Sony PlayStation and everything in-between.

Retail Clerk '89

Retail Clerk '89 started as a personal exercise to learn Sega Genesis programming. It's now a complete, albeit short, game demo.

Electronics Boutique December 1994 Catalog

December 2, 2023
December 1994 was the twilight of the 16-bit era. The Saturn, PlayStation, and Windows 95 were just months away. The 16-bit to 32-bit shift seemed to happen over just one week in 1995. These are the last days of the 16-bit era and we didn't even know it. This is it, the last xmas of the great 16-bit console war.

Electronics Boutique November 2003 Catalog

November 24, 2023
Exactly 20 years ago three consoles were battling it out to win the holiday season. Meanwhile the last survivor of the previous generation was somehow still kicking and the Game Boy Advance was hitting its stride.

Electronics Boutique May 1993 Catalog

July 15, 2023
I didn't plan to do a "summer of scans" but here we are. This catalog turned 30 recently and has the first preview of Street Fighter II for the Sega Genesis. It is also the first catalog to list the Turbo Duo which is exciting for a small number of people.

Electronics Boutique January 1993 Catalog

July 15, 2023
Well this is embarrassing. I scanned this all the way back in August 2012 and forgot to post it for almost 11 years. Better late than never I guess.

Electronics Boutique Fall(?) 1987 Catalog

July 8, 2023
There was a period of time around 2013-2018 when I posted these catalog scans to Tumblr instead of this page. It was simply a matter of bandwidth and storage. Once I fixed those issues I moved all these catalog scans back here. Except for this one because I confused it with a very similar catalog. Here it is again.

I try The X-Files DVD games so you don't have to

July 3, 2023
The first 8 collector's edition X-Files DVD sets included a bonus game playable on PC & Mac. These appear to have been lost to time. I can't find any pages about them but maybe I'm bad at searching for stuff. So I'm restoring an old virtual machine and trying them. Not all of them worked but the ones that did offer some interesting ways to recreate fan favorite episodes.

Let's track down those paintings that keep appearing in Falcom games

May 27, 2023
Despite having no background in art, or anything even close to it, I try to determine the paintings used in Falcom games from the Vita to PlayStation 4 era.

Midwest Gaming Classic 2023

April 8, 2023
The annual Midwest Gaming Classic was last weekend. Here are 80 or so pictures of things I felt like mentioning. Along the way let's see how the show has evolved over nearly 20 years.

Cloudfront + Athena + Pi + Java mini monitoring thing

March 18, 2023
For no real reason I'm going to write a Java program to read AWS Cloudfront logs (via AWS Athena) and display the results on a small screen connected to a Raspberry Pi.

Those GTA remakes sure are, uh, interesting

February 26, 2023
I try to keep pieces on this site positive. Or at least that is something I recently committed to. I won't always succeed and I'm afraid this might be one of those times. In this article I look at the GTA Definitive Edition remakes and find some odd things. I also finally finish San Andreas nearly 20 years after it was released.

Why are so many sites using the Dummies font? (but are they really?)

February 4, 2023
It's another rambling article where I try to figure out why some weird browser thing is happening. This time around I'm going to solve the mystery of why so many web pages are rendering with the Dummies font.

Electronics Boutique Summer 2004 Catalog

January 28, 2023
This is the second of three catalogs I recently acquired. Unfortunately this isn't in the best condition. If you can get past that you'll find some good things in here. The PlayStation 2 vs Xbox vs GameCube battle is in its 3rd year and there many important new game releases. There are also some amazing deals on previous-gen games.