@Connor hi, Connor!!
@Connor hi, Bobby!!
@connrrr hey, cool name
Hi! My nameās kory and today marks my one year insert crediversary.
I started 2021 with the somewhat vague goal of improving my relationship with social media and the internet in general. Itās really easy to be a mindless auto-scroller (the worst kind of level, btw) in this age where everyone is shunted toward becoming an endless fount of engagement and demographic info for megalithic corporations (honestly it boggles my mind to see relatives furiously swiping through tiktok). The ideal solution, of course, would be to āunplug,ā but I chose a different route and decided to lean into some of the glimmers of light I would occasionally glimpse. Just over a year into my experiment, Iām glad to report that the IC forum, a few cozy Discord servers (shout outs to VGHF and Topic Lords :)), and (gasp!) a small, curated Twitter presence have provided me with the most meaningful internet engagement I may have ever experienced.
When I eagerly clicked on the 2021 PSN wrap-up link, I found that my paltry PS4 playtime was apparently below what Sonyās info tracking algorithms even consider worth acknowledging (Uh Oh! said Asto Bot). What I realize now is that this is a good thing! Thanks in no small part to IC, most of my gaming was way more fun and enriching āoff the gridā fareāI spent time with the MiSTer, Saturn, PCE mini, PS1/2, Dreamcast, GameCube, GBA, and, heck, even the Jaguar! Oh, and the majority of that substandard PS4 playtime? That was definitely AC7, and I am grateful to IC for motivating that particular experience (even if I enjoyed the JPEG dog a fair bit more than theā¦uhā¦dog fighting). Heck, my most played game last year, despite being on Switch, was a port of a PS2 game that I had never even thought about trying before out of sheer intimidation! For better or worse, most of my engagement with gaming did not even involve actually playing anything, but instead discovering the joys of modding and that distinctive smell of sizzling flux. Itās safe to say I spent more time disemboweling and re-emboweling Sega Saturns than playing them, but I love that weird misfit of a console even more because of it.
Iāve never been much for writing (have to thank the US education system for irrevocably tying the idea of producing prose with stress, but I digress) but I have to also thank IC, by itās nature as a forum, for encouraging me to put some longer-form thoughts into words even when it physically pains my prematurely atrophied brain. However, thatās not to diminish the value of all the nonsense around here that accounts for the majority of my posts lol. Oh, and I canāt forget to mention some of the other creative pursuits that IC has fostered. Some day I might even gather up the courage to wade into the gigantic movie and book threads (I watched my first two Tarkovsky films over the past year and some day I might even have something coherent to say about them!).
So, yeah, thank you @exodus, @Jaffe , @espercontrol , and all the panelists both on and off the forums as well as, of course, all the lovely dirtbags themselves. Even though I still have this nagging fear that Iāll be outed as a normie and I still experience a small wave of apprehension right before each dive into the dirtbag on the off chance itās one of my half-formed contributions, I feel lucky to have found this weird little oasis in the vastness of the internet.
In closing, I love Cleopatra Fortune and wish I were playing it right now :P
Man, you probably didnāt mean this as seriously as Iām taking it, but coming from someone who still deals with sometimes intense nerd shame and who feels like her ability to explore her interests have been hampered by it all her life, the last thing I would want is to have to deal with the opposite problem where I wasnāt versed enough in the obscura to participate (and yet I feel that way sometimes also).
sound the alarm my normie radar is picking something up
Hi, Iām Herb. As in Iām a Herbert, not xX420blazeitbroXx.
I like the podcast pretty well and this seems to be a chill place, so I figured I'd sign up. In all my internet years I haven't really come across people that have such similar likes and dislikes in game minutiae. It's cool knowing other people hold up smaller games that I adore in equally high regard. Games like Pac-Man 2, Breath of Fire V, and Jeanne d'Arc.
More than anything the podcast has been a great way for me to stumble across games I would've completely overlooked. Raw Danger is my favorite new find so far.
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Hi, pals, Iām topeconhilo. I have a terrible memory so, despite only having stumbled upon the podcast a few months ago, I donāt totally remember how I found it. However, Iāve been lurking for a few months and have seen a lot of people write something to the effect of having distanced themselves from social media, but still feeling a desire to participate in some kind of online community ā thatās certainly something that resonated with me and Iām looking forward to hanging out with yāall.
When I'm not playing games, you'll catch me watching pro wrestling or Formula 1 -- I'm always happy to chat about either!
I've enjoyed taking note of old games with which I wasn't familiar while listening through the back issues. I spent the weekend playing some R4 and dang if that game doesn't rule.
The first video game that I ever played was Lion King on Sega Genesis -- I was four years old, so I never beat it. I recently reapproached it with the hubris of a full-grown adult and I still couldn't beat it. One day.
@Herb I find it endlessly funny that Pacman 2 is a game that so many people here have independently discovered and later bonded over.
Also shoutout to Disaster Report 2, which I also discovered and loved through the podcast. For its time, it feels like a game from the future!
@Connor I grew up on a farm and most weekends my mother would go to the ālocalā grocery that was about a fifteen minute drive from our house. If I went with her sheād usually let me stop in the video rental store next to the super market and pick up two games.
I never wanted to risk my weekendās entertainment, so I usually picked up one game that I was fairly certain Iād like and one that looked interesting. You truly donāt know regret until you rent Speed Racer and Clayfighter on the same weekend, so you just play through Super Mario World for the 20th time. I believe Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure was my safe pick that week and Pacman 2 was the risky one. Pitfall sucked, so I spent the weekend with Pacman 2.
Pitfall was a boring take on something I was plenty familiar with, but Pacman 2 was something very different and pleasant for me. I think this might also be the way Frank has described the game in the past, but it felt like an interactive Saturday morning cartoon to me. I have a lot of those types of rental games that have a special place for me. Other praiseworthy games in my Bad Game that was Actually the Good Game Hall of Fame include Breath of Fire II, Sim City(SNES), and Super Bomberman 2.
@topeconhilo are you Excalibur?
@ColdyBags ā¦ ācoz if I had you by my side, Iād feel like a king!, he said to the puzzled hot girl at the counter, before going back to his drunken friends with the beers.
Hi iām emily
(bunp on the goblin bunker, shout out to da goblins)
iām hoping to maybe listen to more insert credit in the future
but also having another place to hang out is nice
i'm happy to be here :)
<3
@Emily welcome!
Hi, Iām Brandon. I have somehow only just discovered Insert Credit and the Insert Credit podcast and am in awe of Brandon Sheffieldās love of the Turbo/PC Engine. It and Segaās Saturn and Dreamcast are my also-ran gaming loves. Iām also a parent these days, which means I donāt have a lot of time to actually enjoy my hobby so much, but the Switch has helped a lot with that. Iām an early member, former article/content contributor, and current forum moderator at the RacketBoy web site, which is not what it used to be but still a place some of us love to hang out. I'm also an academic librarian and deeply intellectually and emotionally invested in the idea of Open Access, Open Source, and Open Content.
Now I just have to winnow out all the podcast episodes which feature unabashed appreciation for the Little Engine that Could.
I donāt think youāll have any chaff to clean up.
I like to zip through this thread from time to time and notice that itās cool that I see many of you that are ānewā that I donāt think of as ānewā because you are all posting interesting and fun stuff in the threads. I hope that someone ānewā who isnāt doing that feels welcome to participate. You donāt have to be an expert. Iāve asked tons of ignorant questions in threads here and now Iām less ignorant thanks to this forum.
Plug: if youāre new and want a fun avatar or you are not new but want a new avatar, you can go request one in the āGive me a new avatarā thread and someone will make you one! Itās silly and fun.
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@notthetoilet I think I worded it backwards. Nonetheless, the back-catalog is long enough Iāll probably try to stick to older episodes where thereās fun chatter about the systems I love most or fun guests. But I think Iāll be listening in going forward pretty reliably.
@marurun If you like the show and want to help its PC engine loving pundits you can also wishlist Hyper Gunsport on Steam ā wishlisting the game is currently FREE for a limited time!
@marurun Oh hey, another RacketBoy librarian-person! Welcome!