From its debut at MacWorld 1999, Halo was originally intended for a personal computer. This is not where most people first played Halo though, as Microsoft bought developer Bungie following the game’s unveiling and turned it into Xbox’s flagship launch game in 2001.
It took two years for Halo to come to Windows (and Mac), with the PC version ported by future Borderlands maker Gearbox.
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Sometime in 1996 I was in a Target with my grandmother and I saw an endcap with Virtual Boy systems clearance-priced at $19.99. As a Nintendo Power subscriber, I definitely knew about the system and was intrigued, but my attention and hype was solely focused on the upcoming Nintendo 64. The Virtual Boy didn’t really feel like a console I could actually own, until that $20 price point. My grandma saw me looking at the box, took a look at the price and asked me if I wanted one. I mean, if you’re offering!
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It took me a week longer than I expected when I started this journey, but last night I finished my recent playthrough of the original Diablo. Everything I said about the game in my previous post still rings true- Diablo is a game that remains unique in both its genre and series.
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Shit’s pretty bad.
Trying to be a good person and do the right thing feels naive and futile in the face of the corruption that is spreading through and beyond the country where I live. Like everyone I know, I’m exhausted and don’t really know what to do at this point, but I’m able to find some comfort in recent media.
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Despite having no experience or interest in fraternities or the navy, I’ve always had an affinity for the term Hell Week. So when I was thinking about replaying the original Diablo (PC / Blizzard Entertainment / 1997 – GOG version), I decided to make it a week of posts. I figured that I’d easily be able to wrap up a standard playthrough in a chill seven days- this was a game I’d beat in a weekend as a teenager! Turns out my confidence was misplaced and using the term Hell Week was prescient, because after eight hours or so, I’ve only made it a little more than halfway through the dungeon, but what an eight hours it has been.
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Big week for pope stuff!
Literally everything I know about the pope and the succession process comes from the movie Conclave, which goes to show how long I’ve gone through my life knowing nothing.
But the succession that I’m most interested in right now is not who will follow Francis, but what Papa V Perpetua will bring to Ghost.
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My expectations for Star Wars Celebration Japan announcements were fairly low, which led to me being pleasantly surprised in a few instances. It seems that *maybe* LFL has learned their lesson about announcing projects prematurely? Everything discussed this weekend had either a release date or a clear indication of when production will begin. I’d call that growth!
Here are my thoughts on some of the things that were announced (or given updates) this weekend:
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If you follow my various Bluesky accounts, you may find me posting about digital encyclopedias, trivia games, the Star Wars podcast I cohost, and DVD menus. Lucasart’s 1998 release Star Wars: Behind the Magic combines all of these in a way that only a product of the multimedia era can.
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I love to see hardcore kids make it in the music biz. From AFI in the early 2000s to Turnstile more recently, it’s awesome to see bands go from screamy 2-minute tracks to (semi)mainstream success.
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Silicon Cowboys is the incredible story of Texas-based PC manufacturer Compaq. I was drawn to it from the perspective of having a soft spot for a Compaq computer I had as a teenager, but it turns out that the perception of Compaq that I’ve held for decades was far from the whole story.
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