Nope, that’s the insufferable James Cordon

I, too, was forged in the fires of Macromedia.

Before the dark times. Before the empire.

It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

It’s me, hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!

If you press the dedicated AI button on the All New Logitech Signature AI Edition M750 Wireless Mouse, you may get the exclusive chance to visit the cursed Shadow Realm.

I walked into this game not knowing much, and the simple premise hooked me. Played it and loved the time I spent with it. Absolute gem of a game. Story was good overall, the voice acting was fantastic, and the gameplay loop was short enough to allow me time to play it in short bursts when I had time.

Me loading up A Link to the Past and still having a full memory of every palace, which areas are secrets, which walls make the satisfying clink clink clink, and how to get the Golden Master Sword without having to check GameFAQs:

“Hell yeah. Zelda, go put on your green tunic and let’s go save Link.

Price sticker had me amused - I never thought of that!

Another suggestion is to buy a card in a different language. Or if it says Mother’s Day where you don’t even bother replacing “Mother” with “Father”, but that might be a bit too intentionally mean so I would only send this depending on what kind of relationship and trauma that OP has.

Slight update to this comic, to call out the dangers of Google’s Sponsored Results.

Examples, for those that are not aware of this risk:

• https://www.techradar.com/avoid-google-ad-malware
• https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/scams-verify/google-ads-scammers-redirect-website-url-different-search/536-4ef6c41d-087e-4db9-a281-86bcf7637c68
• https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/01/using-google-search-to-find-software-can-be-risky/
• https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/rogue-sites-causing-trouble-in-google-advert-results

Archive link to bypass the paywall: https://archive.is/wUSey

And an option for me to swipe my credit card, for a reasonable fee, that will allow me to unlock a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Found the shirt!

https://gatatee.com/campaign/alex-schaefer-bankers-behind-bars-bad-for-america-shitibank-were-felons-crooks-shirt

Edit: Ah these are just American banks. Would be nice to slap a big ol’ Deutsche Bank on here too in the largest possible font.

• Marvel
• Dragon Ball Z
• Power Rangers

Totally agree with the modern gaming landscape. It’s exhausting dealing with all the predatory tracking, root kits, privacy invasion, heavy monetization, broken games with promises to “do better”, etc. Thankfully there are many games out there to enjoy that don’t do these things.

Personally I love the option of devs selling DLCs where the value is there: it has a reasonable price and it expands the game in a level that I’m comfortable paying for. I will happily buy DLC of games I love.

What I can’t stand, and absolutely am repulsed by, is games that have kill switches or can be taken away from me without my permission. If when I buy the game, if the button says “Buy”, then I should own it. If they’re going to have kill switches or activation server shutdowns that render my game unplayable, then they should change the button to “Temporarily pay to lease it for some time where we will later take this game from you without your permission”. I’d at least appreciate their honesty that way.

Ever since Ubisoft warned it would shut down activation servers for my Wii U copy of Splinter Cell Blacklist where I paid full price for all the DLC (since I loved that game so much), I discovered I wouldn’t be able to play my DLC. Thankfully due to significant complaints from gamers, Ubisoft backpedaled and decided not to… for now. But now that I’ve seen that, and continue to see this predatory behavior happening to this day (e.g., The Crew, Helldivers, etc.), I am much more hesitant when it comes to buying video games.

My favorite is the 3DS Era. I was a young adult then, and sure I could say I loved 16 bit, 64 bit eras because I was younger and had much more time to play video games. But I had so much fun with my 3DS.

Specifically - 3-D integration into certain video games introduced a new way to play them, and I enjoyed the new layer in puzzles for games like Mario 3D Land and especially A Link Between Worlds.

But what I miss the most about 3DS was StreetPass. How fun it was taking my 3DS everywhere and getting visitors in both my games plus in StreetPass Plaza! I loved the hell out of those mini games and would drive all over the place to different hotspots and collect visitors! Carrying it work and making friends over StreetPass was also such a nice bonus.

Gaming was so much fun in this era and on this console. Probably still my favorite console due to all these memories tied up with it. I could get in so many gaming sessions, and if I needed to handle something quickly I could just fold it shut and go about my day. The OG suspend lol.

P.S - Street Pass is of course officially dead along with many other features of the 3DS era. However, there are archival projects so you can at least get visitors to your console. It requires custom firmware, but look into StreetPass 2 for more details.

I mained these two albums all the time. But I didn’t have a walkman, probably a Philips generic equivalent without skip-protection.

Hi, this is Hewlett Packard here. We read your post and are happy you love our products! Wouldn’t it make sense for you to upgrade to one of our newer models? I’m sure you’re tired of lugging your heavy, old printer these days.

Our new ones are much lighter! Lighter in weight due to beautiful design! Lighter even on your wallet (at first, and for now)!

Won’t you consider upgrading and locking in - I mean - “purchasing” a new printer, pretty please? uwu :3

Here’s a friendly Kirby to convince you to upgrade! See, we’re cool and we know how to use product placement! Upgrade now or else!! We can’t wait for YOUR SOUL TO BE OURS.

Your Friend, HP

(We rebranded. Now the “P” stands for Predatory, but like the cute kind 😘. It’s okay to give us your money, trust us.)

Such an intimate moment of love from the Nazgûl. I teared up at this part. 🥲

This is something I’ve thought about too. I have some rare items on old DVDs that should be preserved. I’d love to upload it to Archive.org, but I’m hesitant because I don’t know if personal identifiers get attached to the media.

If I use a program like MakeMKV to rip my DVD to a computer, how do I check the file if there’s any personal identifiers? I’m aware I can right click and pick “Remover Personal Information” or whatever in Windows, but is there anything else that would attach any hardware identifiers to it? I want to preserve some of these discs since they’re long out of print and the company that distributed it is no more and you can’t buy this anywhere. I just don’t want my uploads to be linked back to me.

Ubisoft in 2031:

We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.

Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.

Gamers:

Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.

Uibsoft:

MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!