The other good news from yesterday was getting back from an appointment and discovering a package from Mega Cat Studios had arrived completely without warning (Thank you very much, James!). This is both excellent and somewhat timely, as it had a copy of the rather intriguing Devwill Too MD inside along with a nice note for me. This will get reviewed on the weekend, but when a game starts out with a quote from Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, you kind of realize it’s sort of special.

Here’s a little look at the trailer:

Yes, you should!

I got a proper Krazy Kat meets Super Mario Bros. vibe here, but I’m a bit nuts, so you can decide on your own. Oh, also please go sign up on the Mega Cat site for info on the many other cool and sometime very unusual retro games they’ve released or are working on. A while back I made a small pledge to the Phantom Gear Kickstarter, so I can’t wait for that to be completed, as it looks pretty solid.

By the way, if you have or want a Steam account, you can even get free beta demos on some titles there as well for that platform, which is a good thing as Mega Cat is cooking up some really nice titles. If for whatever reason, you’re working on a retro-style game and need a publisher, well, I think they do that as well.

It lives!

Amusingly enough. I found my ancient Turbo Touch 360 controller for the Sega Genesis, and that mag\de me laugh out loud because I remember the hue and cry about how terrible it was back in the day when it really wasn’t. Between the button-less D-pad and the controller being a bit thicker that normal. I’ll admit it wasn’t flawless for some titles, but served my needs pretty well. Anyway, I’ll see if this still holds true in Devwill Too, but I’m prepared to whip out a 3 or 6-button official Sega pad if it’s not up to snuff.

Interestingly enough, there’s a game from Mega Cat called Bite The Bullet that also has me intrigued for a few reasons. As an old fart who likes movies. the title reminded me of a Richard Brooks film I’ve haven’t seen in quite a few dozen years:

(Thanks, Najimido!)

In a wryly amusing manner, this trailer and the game together also remind me of my current physical condition, which has been a bit up and down for a bit. I don’t talk about it much, but it’s been shuffling between days where I can’t write a word and days where I need to work on something to keep the mind occupied so I don’t think of parts that aren’t working the way they need to. Hey, I’m here to keep whatever readers I have reading, so it helps to stay entertaining. Which of course, leads to me asking this:

(Thanks, AreYouNotEntertained?!)

Anyway, I was at a local clinic for some routine tests recently and a woman came storming out of a doctor’s office being upset at something it seems the doctor had told her. I was next and the doctor I saw happened to be the same one I was curious, but knowing the doctor/patient relationship thing, I didn’t ask. While I was getting checked out, the doctor asked if I used a lot of social media, and I told her I didn’t use it as much as I used to before I got sick, but then I figured out why she was asking.

(Thanks, Mendiant!)

I mentioned to her that I know a guy who had a non-fatal heart attack after getting into a huge argument on social media and she noted that this seemed to be a side effect – a social disease, if you like. She also told me that patients have been coming to her and other doctors with stress-related conditions and it seemed to her and other doctors that some issues were related to continued online-centric elements. I recalled when I was ill and spent 17 days in the hospital, I was out of touch with the bubbles of Facebook and Twitter because I was recuperating and at first, stressing out more about how I was going to pay for my treatment (seemingly, only in America can you go broke from this, but don’t get me started).

(Thanks, Night Of The Trailers!)

It turns out I was covered for my treatment (being a certain age in this city had one perk) and having to retrain my brain to write kept me offline for a while because I was typing what I wanted to say, but it was coming out as the worst shorthand you ever saw. Well, sort of like this example on the right but with 1000% more illegibility:

I had a bit of help from some people who had no idea they were helping, as a few small to medium proofreading gigs game in and I forced myself to at least quadruple check everything  I was doing. A few more things helped as well, but we’ll get to those later. In the meantime, I’ll post this as it’s a bit late and do a part two at a later date. I have a feW games to catch up on, you see.

-GW