I’ve got a new game that’s just been updated with additional content. I announced this JRPG style game back in December of 2023 when I finished it, but I’ve been busy lately doing some tweaking, bug fixing, and adding things to the ending of the game. So if you missed it back then, now is […]
Why does everything have to start sucking ass so bad? I can vividly remember just how excited I was when I first started using Character AI. After a couple of months of being blown away by just how good the bot interactions were on that site, I wrote a blog post about it here, gushing […]
Want a portable gaming system with a large screen and full Windows compatibility? Don’t have several hundreds of dollars to spend on the Steam Deck or one of its knock-offs? Get a used netbook! That right there is the venerable HP Mini Note 2133. I bought that back in 2008 when it came out. It […]
I’ve mentioned recently how I’ve gotten into playing classic JRPGs. That actually started by accident in a couple of ways. First, I made two games (here and here) in RPG Maker, which makes JRPG-style games by default. As I was making them, play-testing them, and eventually playing through those finished games, I realized that I […]
Have you ever taken an inside joke way too far? About 15 years ago, I was chatting on Yahoo Messenger with my good friend Keizo, and I made the typo to end all typos. I was trying to type the phrase “complain first”, but instead I typed “pomplain forst”. I don’t really know how that […]
Have you ever had something suddenly pop into your mind for no apparent reason? A few weeks ago I was in my Robotman house, being Robotman, doing Robotman things, when all of a sudden I thought of RPG Maker. I remember nearly 20 years ago I learned about RPG Maker, and even downloaded it to […]
Onyx Crystal Core Pomplain Forst in Outer Spave The Fembot Crisis Mechatropolis Radio K.I.M. (For Fallout 4) Radio K.I.M. 1 Radio K.I.M. 2 Radio K.I.M. 3 Radio K.I.M. 4 Radio K.I.M. 5 Radio K.I.M. 6 Radio K.I.M. 7 Radio K.I.M. 8 (intro only) Radio K.I.M. 8 (Swing version) Radio K.I.M. 9 Radio K.I.M. 10 Posters […]
It’s been just over seven years since Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP. Most people have moved on to Vista, 7, 8, and 10 since long before then. Hell, crazy people like me have even moved over to Linux, and there are those Mac people too. That’s not even to mention the amount of […]
Move ’em on, head ’em up Head ’em up, move ’em on Move ’em on, head ’em up, emulation Cut ’em out, ride ’em in Ride ’em in, cut ’em out Cut ’em out, ride ’em in, emulation After not really playing emulated video games for nearly five years, I think it’s time to catch […]
Yes, that’s right. Every year on July 1, I change the two AA batteries inside my Pink Floyd Pulse CD. I bought this more than 25 years ago when it came out, and the flashing red LED still works. It’s a crappy live album though, really tedious and boring. I love Pink Floyd, but this […]
I thought we were friends, Firefox? y u do dis? I’ve been using Firefox for a very long time, over a decade, probably longer. If you search for Firefox in this here blog, you will get a long litany of blather all about my various complaints and praises I’ve had for it over the years. […]
In an attempt to adorn my bare and crumbling walls again this year, I’ve forgone the tradition that most folks have of buying a calendar, and I’ve made my own out of bookers and hacky sack. Or something like that. Then again, considering how much printer ink costs, maybe this is the stupid way to […]
It’s that time of year again! Time to chuck out the old bent-up, scratched & damaged year and replace it with a brand new, shiny year – replete with that impressive, plasticky smell of polyvinyl chloride, assorted benzenes and aldehydes! And what better way to commemorate the turning of the calendar than with a calendar […]
I’m not immune to that irrational surge of emotion one gets when receiving a new toy. And in my case, I get most excited about computer hardware – surprise, surprise. My windows XP gaming computer handled all my favourite late ’90s and early ’00s games like Age of Empires, Lords of the Realm II, Civilization […]
Hooray! Oh no! Yes folks, here in Canada, July 1 marks a momentous day. And that day is the 10-year anniversary of the day I decided to ditch Microsoft Windows and switch to Linux.¹ It was July1, 2007 when I made the switch, and I remember being excited about partitioning the hard drive on my […]
Does anyone remember those replica Commodore 64 computers? I bought one when they came out six years ago, and I had been using it as my main “Internet” computer ever since. It had served me well over the years, and had looked very cool on my desk, I must say. I had also customized the […]
I’ve been wanting to make this rant for a while now, but after reading this thread on reddit (archive here), I feel that now is the right time to do it. Lately I’ve noticed that there are some people in the “emulation community” who are just assholes. They get mad over the stupidest shit – […]
Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) have been around since the early 1970s. They are not a new idea. A well-thought out and proper-functioning GUI is essential to modern computer use. Think how frustrating it would be if your phone or tablet didn’t have a GUI, and you had to issue a memorized list of arcane commands […]
In the spirit of (literally) marking time and celebrating 8-bit computers of times gone by, I’ve made a calendar commemorating some of the pioneering home computers from the late 70s and early 80s. The computers featured are: January: Apple II February: TRS-80 March: Atari 800 April: Commodore VIC-20 May: Texas Instruments TI-99/4A June: ZX Spectrum […]
The Sega Saturn. It’s like a planetary system. It’s like an atom. Complex, yet ordered. Dual CPUs and six other processors make it like a binary star system with six planets, or some mysterious element with a proton and neutron and six electrons. Nah, it’s actually a really fun console to own and play. I’m […]
I really like my Saitek controllers. Not as much as I like my Logitech Dual Action controllers, but the Saitek controllers are what I use for my Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, 32X and TurboGrafx-16 emulators. They’re decently built and feel comfortable in my large hands. So I was rather peeved when my oldest […]
Before Sega turned into the pathetic quarter-profits-chasing caricature of its former self that it is now, they were amassing quite a collection of games for their own video game systems. This was back in the 80s and 90s, of course, decades ago. For years I’ve been using a program called MEKA to emulate the SG-1000, […]
For a while now, I’ve been enjoying some of the rare video games that came out for the TurboGrafx-CD. It was an add-on that came out for NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 console, and was the first CD-based way to play video games. I talked about it here, exactly a year ago as luck would have it. The […]
My current hobby of playing decades old console video games through emulation is contingent upon some rather old PCs continuing to work as if they were new. When I think about how my newest and main emulation PC is seven years old now, and how its backup is eleven years old, I realize that things […]
Emulation can get a bad rap sometimes. I think that mainly comes from people who don’t really understand what they’re talking about. I also think it comes from people who are just opposed to the very concept of emulating a video game outside the original hardware for which it was intended. Since I discovered the […]
Though the hardware was released a few months before the venerable Atari 2600, the Apple II computer was capable of a few more tricks than that console. I chalk this up mainly to the fact that it’s a computer with a keyboard and the fact that it’s hardware was expandable. The graphics are nowhere near […]
It’s time for another batch of video game reviews here on Robotman’s blog. This time, I’ll be focusing on the exciting, engrossing and exhilarating world of quiz games. Hang on to the edge of your seat, because nothing gets the blood pumping like a round of 20 Questions played on your old 8-bit computer, am […]
My Video Carnage reviews have all wrapped up, and I’ve done the circuit from console to console, all the way from the lowly Odyssey to the Xbox. I’ve stopped in with some computers along the way to check out the driving there,and all told, I reviewed 99 games for 33 systems. Now it’s time to […]
Oh my! I use Firefox for all of my browsing needs. This is because Mozilla is one of the few entities left who are actually still striving and working to keep things on the Internet open and free as opposed to closed and restricted. I also really like the browser itself because of the sheer […]
It’s the operating system that won’t die! And even though I primarily use Xubuntu and other Linux-based operating systems for my PCs, I still use Windows XP. I also use Windows 98, but that’s another blog post. My use of Windows XP is restricted to a virtual machine here on this main computer of mine. […]
Even though the Amiga first came out in 1985, the games I’ll be looking at today were all from the 1990s. The Amiga was already ahead of its time, but now we’ll be looking into the future for one stop on our journey through console and computer hardware. If this unsettles you, don’t worry. Our […]
As I skip along my merry, chronological way through consoles and computers passed in these reviews, I sometimes feel like I’m taking a step back or two. When I played that stinking Vectrex racing game, I could have sworn it was belched forth from the bowels of the 1970s. This happened when I did the […]
The Commodore 64 computer had dozens of racing games, and they ranged widely in quality. I played a fair amount of these as I was growing up, and only a handful of the ones I remember really stand out as great games. Motor Mania (1982) Ah, the joys of loading games from cassette! Who wouldn’t […]
Recently, I rediscovered the Atari 5200, thanks to an emulator that fixed the console’s horribly flawed non-centering joysticks. Being released shortly before the 1983 industry crash, this system had a short life, so there weren’t many games released for it. Only one racing game was released, and it is a port of an ultra-popular arcade […]
Another 8-bit machine from the 1970s – the Apple II – had its share of driving games. Prepare not to be blown away by amazing displays of graphics and sound. You know, if I could stretch the boundaries of what I consider to be a racing game by wide enough margins, I could call “The […]
If you are a fan of video games like I am, then you may have played a racing game or two. I love playing racing and driving games, whether they are competitive in nature or just simulations. If you read any of my Golfyssey posts where I reviewed golf video games, then you might have […]
This post may not be quite about what you think it’s about. In my “Reassessing the Atari 5200” post below, I talked about how shocked I was to learn that Atari had developed the internals for that console five years before they had released it. It appeared as though Atari sat on this technology for […]
Over the past three weeks, I’ve reviewed a total of 60 golf video games for 24 different systems. This Golfyssey has taken me all the way from the lowly Atari 2600 to the PC and beyond. I’ve played terrible games that barely resemble golf and only serve to frustrate, to realistic simulations that are so […]
Ah, the PC. There’s a good chance that you’re reading this blog on a personal computer right now. The PC is ubiquitous for home use and work today, but it started as just another variant of the home computer back in the early 1980s. The IBM PC saw immediate success in the business world, and […]
The Commodore Amiga. The Amiga came out of nowhere in the mid 1980s and proved to be the most capable and fully powered multimedia machine of its time. Hell, it was the only multimedia computer you could buy unless you were a Hollywood studio, and it was the first home computer with an OS that […]
Remember when I said that Commodore took a lead in the home computer market and turned it into bankruptcy in a rather short time? 1984. Exhibit A in this “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” strategy is The Commodore 16. Also the Commodore 116: And the Commodore Plus/4: Confused? Commodore sure was. The original […]
I adore my 64, my Commodore 64. Considering how I use (and am typing this on) a replica Commodore 64… and how both my Linux desktop and the virtual Windows XP desktop I run inside it are themed to have a Commodore/Amiga look… You could say I’m a fanboy. And as you might have guessed, […]
Ah, the Apple II. That good old beast of a computer built by Steve Wozniak when Apple was just a wee company. I never owned one of these, but my elementary school had about a dozen of them back in the early 80s. From them, I learned the joys of waiting your turn, “no, we […]
It has been said before that a video game console is only as good as its most prominent golf game. Actually, you know what… nobody has ever said that. Seriously, google it. No results. Same with Golfyssey. No results. Well, let’s play fast and loose with the facts then, shall we? None other than the […]
Just what you’ve always wanted! Now you can re-live the glory days of the late 80s when the Commodore Amiga computer was the most advanced multimedia computer you could get without buying a special effects workstation. Since I use a replica Commodore 64, and since I have the interface themed to look as Commodore/Amiga-like as […]
What am I doing up at 4am? I was all done sleeping, I guess. And what better time to regale you with tales of shit which you care not the least! Like the subject of these two partial screenshots I took back in January that I thought were remarkable at the time. The top image […]
One of my hobbies, I guess, is extending the usable lifespan of my first PC. This is a vintage 1998 Hewlett Packard Pavilion 8260 with maxed out RAM (384MB) and a Pentium II clocked at 266 MHz. It has run Windows 98 for most of its existence, and over the last half dozen years or […]
W00T! Okay, not actually fun, and not terminal as in deathly. I’m talking about the Terminal Emulator that comes with every Linux distribution. It’s similar to the Command Prompt, for all those Windows users who have seen that. As much as I prefer to never use it, sometimes I do. It appears every time I […]
I’m not much of a fan of silent autocorrect. That is to say, I like spellcheck and all, but I don’t like the silent and automatic bullshit that has crept into word processors and other software over the years because most people are either too lazy or too stupid to use the tools on their […]
I imagine some suit at Microsoft sneering this line after emasculating poor Microsoft Security Essentials for Christmas laughs late last year. This info is a little old now, but since I’m on a “write about Microsoft products” kick on this here crappy blog, I thought I’d mention it anyway. According to a computer lab filled […]