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[gemuvidya]

Fun fact: there is an inkling character mod for Super Metroid

orange nintendo girls with guns squad...

[gemuvidya]

Headcanon: Samus Aran is not called "the Hunter" for being good at stalking, but because despite all her training, she still can't aim for shit and constantly has to run off to farm more ammo off of random wildlife

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Right now brainstorming & vaguely testing, i.e. goofing around with, something like a new Super Metroid run category: some premise that will call for a couple hellruns but is not quite RBO. Basic idea is "Low% except etanks don't count" [tentatively maybe "Tanking%"], which means you want to get 6+ of them and can then skip Varia altogether. Makes for nicer mid-to-lategame bossfights too than in many categories! I've still never beaten Ridley with less than 4 tanks unless I also have charge+wave+plasma or the 30 super missiles… suitless Phantoon with 1 tank is also a wall and even 2 tanks takes me excessive mid-fight farming.

Speaking of whom, good runners would just combine this premise with Phantoon first and end up having Gravity for all of their Norfair business, but since the point is we're assuming a player who's not a pro, they're most likely not going to be CWJ/HBJing to Wrecked Ship and will at least need to go get Speed Booster; or maybe Grapple, for completing something more 15%-adjacent. Doubling back thru Brinstar for initial tank collection seems like it'd be a good idea too, even if again not actually required for good runners.

Combines also, it seems, further nicely with my earlier similar concept of "Low% except missiles don't count" a.k.a. "Spam%", for people who don't like low weaponry bossfights; see above on Ridley-walling, and I have no idea what would be my tolerance on a plain-Charge fight because at my current skill level that just does not sound like a fun thing to try

[gemuvidya]

A little-known fact about the SNES edition (1991) of the first SimCity: while most graphics in the game are basically the same in the Japan and North America / Europe versions, the gift building Expo is entirely different in the two. The slightly later-released western versions show a spherical dome-like building surrounded by greenery and flashing lights:

The Japanese version, however, shows a tower-like building on a field. This is, IMO, clearly modelled after Tower of the Sun, a landmark of the 1970 World Fair:

Probably the "Western Expo" is therefore also not just any convention hall — but rather modelled after another World Fair landmark: the Montreal Biosphere from 1976.

[gemuvidya]

Gēmuvidyā

Hello! We are opening up shop here with … an etymology.

This will be, of course, a video game blog. Gēmu you can maybe recognize as the romanization of Japanese ゲーム ‘(video) game’, vidya as the eye spelling of a casual pronunciation of English video, and established internet slang for ‘video game’.

But it also happens that vidyā / विद्या is additionally the Sanskrit word for ‘wisdom, science’. (Not entirely by accident, either: both this and English video, coming to us via Latin, are descendants of the same Proto-Indo-European root, *weyd- ~ *wid- ‘to see, know’.) Gēmuvidyā, in this order, can be therefore read as ‘the science of gēmu’.

This probably tells you a few things about what kind of nerdery to expect around here. But more on that a little bit later.