Ultima 6 took up a substantial portion of my freshman year of college 90-91. Great game with a great story. Wanted 7 so desperately but my friend’s computer was only a 286 and wouldn’t play it.
1 Like
- HHG2G, obviously!
- Grim Tides
- I would say a cross between Ender’s Game, the first 3 H2G2 books, Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, and… I’ll get back to you.
- No hard choice. Obviously the Goonies!
- Red Hot Chili Peppers. Actually, José González is good. And I LOVE Hans Zimmer’s music (that how you spell his name?) You know, Interstellar and Dune? (Those two could be added to my favourite movie list…)
10 Likes
Absolutely amazing scores, both of them.
3 Likes
- SPY INTRIGUE
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 (uhh… it’s so hard to narrow this down to 1)
- Fiction: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton (this changes very frequently).
- Goncharov (1973) by Martin Scorsese (jk; I don’t watch many movies but I did like Everything Everywhere All At Once)
- Band: Lorde
11 Likes
I don’t say that it’s objectively the best IF, but I think my highest enjoyment came from my introductory days , in which I played Unnkulia Zero, in addition to the other games in the series.
Chess… absolutely beautiful for how long and how deeply it can be studied without ever exhausting its subtleties and surprises.
George MacDonald fantasies.
(Pass on movies)
While I recognize many virtues amongst different composers, I have to say a word for the genius and passionate complexity of Sergei Rachmaninov. My favorite music to play on piano, aside from improvising my own.
I’m one of those weirdies that doesn’t listen to any “band” music…
8 Likes
I remember these! In one of them I got stumped forever by a statue of a giant foot that you had to tickle with a feather, and that sort of soured me on the series.
1 Like
I was young when I met that one, and looked at the walkthrough for the first half of that game. Came back to the game years later and finished the second half without hints…
1 Like
- Babel
- Metal Gear Solid
- Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
- The Seventh Seal
- Mike Oldfield
@Rax Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
I ended up reading this quite a lot, maybe once on purpose, once to listen to the radio play, and twice while traveling…wherever I went it seemed like it was on the bookshelf at the library. Adams’ Doctor Who episode “City of Death” also borrowed the time loop plot.
Have you read Last Chance to See? People don’t talk about it much since it’s non fiction but it’s one of Douglas Adams’ best.
8 Likes
Still on my must-play list. One of these days…
I hadn’t thought of this, but it’s actually a really good choice. It was among the very first IF games I played, and I was baffled. Returned to it many years later with a bit of knowledge about IF tropes under my belt, and found it amazing.
3 Likes
Oh man, I am so bad at picking favorites.
- IF game: Spider and Web, for that one moment. You know the one.
- Non-IF game: Star Control 2, Final Fantasy 6, Majora’s Mask, or Planescape Torment depending on my mood.
- Book: I can’t even begin to consider this. I’ll go with Lord of the Rings, which my dad read to me at a very formative age.
- Movie: Princess Mononoke.
- Band: The Who; Composer: Bach
8 Likes
1.) IF Game: (Today only, Cragne Manor)
2.) Non-IF game: Resident Evil 2 for Playstation 1
3.) Book: Fiction: The Bridesmaid (Ruth Rendell, 1989)
Nonfiction: The Order of Assassins (Colin Wilson, 1972)
4.) Movie: Wild At Heart (1990) (Trailer: Wild At Heart (1990) - Official Trailer - YouTube)
5.) Band: Nirvana
Movies are probably my uber-speciality. I’ve seen about 4900 feature films, and that’s not including repeat viewings. But my three favourite films haven’t changed for 32 years.
-Wade
12 Likes
IF game: I’m actually going to pass on this because I haven’t yet played one that has made me think ‘ooh, all-time best’. I’ll find it one day I hope!
Non-IF game: the Monkey Island series
Fiction: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Non-fiction: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Poetry: Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns
Film: Halloween (1978)
Band: Duran Duran
Composer: again I’ll pass because there are many beautiful pieces I love, but I couldn’t name somebody’s work as a whole
11 Likes
1.) IF game: Portal (the 1987 Activision game)
2.) Non-IF game: Marathon trilogy
3.) Book: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
4.) Movie: Joe Versus the Volcano
5.) Band: Bad Religion
9 Likes
A fantastic game that I don’t see talked about as much as it should be.
1 Like
Oh man, what a great topic! I was on a work trip yesterday so I want to catch up and comment on basically all of this but that would be ridiculous, so just a couple highlights:
I actually just recommended this to a colleague yesterday! She was reading a book called Babel that seemed to have a similar vibe, which now that I read the blurb bills itself as a “thematic response to The Secret History [I love that book too] and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel” so I’m feeling good about the recommendation now.
I really like this one too – I didn’t you were into immersive sims! I think they’ve got some points of connection to IF, though of course the gameplay is really different. The Looking Glass/Irrational ones (Thief, System Shock 2) are real favorites of mine though they’re not as accessible these days.
My wife and I have been really enjoying the new TV series based on this – I suspect it takes even greater liberties than the book does, but it’s quite charming if you haven’t checked it out.
Homer! Nobody can come up with a single bad thing he actually did (admittedly, because probably didn’t technically exist).
This is a great reminder I really need to get to this – I loved Accelerate, which is like a spiritual sequel I think?
The future is a foot, stumping a human face – forever.
I love this book so much! Dunno if you’ve seen the movie “adaptation” but it’s quite a good time as well.
…OK, now I need to knuckle down and answer the questions, huh? With the understanding that all of these could change if you asked me 20 minutes later and I’m naming two for most of them:
- IF game: Hadean Lands and Queenlash
- Non-IF game: X-Com (with the hyphen) and Planescape: Torment
- Fiction: Ulysses (even though I only really understand like 20% of it) by James Joyce and How to Be Both by Ali Smith (I’m reading another of her books right now, which is good but I still adore this one above all). Non-fiction: The Sinews of Power, by John Brewer (an incredibly gripping study of the birth of modern public finance in the 17th and 18th century English state) and The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood (a very well-written narrative history of one of the biggest clusterf***s in early-modern history). Poetry: Ariel, by Sylvia Plath (I don’t read as much poetry as I should so this stands alone).
- Movie: like many others, I like movies well enough but there are few that really get me enthusiastic. Two that do are Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring, and Casablanca.
- Band: The Mountain Goats, obv.
9 Likes
Wait, hold on there! You can’t just drop something like this and walk away! Get back here!! What do you mean, “he didn’t technically exist”??
4 Likes
I am very much not an expert, but I believe the current consensus is that the Iliad and Odyssey have different authors and different composition dates (though they each were the work of a single author pulling together a pre-existing oral tradition); the idea of a blind 8th-century BCE poet who composed them both is a later tradition without a real-life person at its base.
5 Likes
I have long suspected that James Joyce is a cruel joke perpetrated by mean academic pranksters on the rest of us. I am a reader. Like a major reader. Usually my experience with classic books is that I finally read them, expect them to be a difficult slog, and then adore them and wonder what took me so long. But Ulysses? I can’t even get through it. And everyone says, “You really need to read it in a class to understand it well.” Screw that. I finally decided that if I can’t read it, it’s a bad book and the emperor is fricking naked.
Yet here you are, someone whose opinion I respect, saying that it’s your favorite book. Perhaps I’ll give another try, like for the 10th time.
12 Likes
Don’t be modest. I’m sure you understand at least 60% of it.
This is a joke, of course. it’s among my favorites, too.
I could have easily chosen this one, too. I"ve probably bought it four times (at least) over the years.
7 Likes
So Ulysses isn’t actually as complex as it intimidates. It’s basically trying to capture polysemous conscious rotation through overlapping mental layers: from abstract sublimity to the most raw sensory reactions to the physical world. That intention produces two main difficulties: referential obscura and a throughline that can helix. However, you don’t really need to master either to go with the flow and catch the feeling. For the references, yes it can add an extra layer of meaning to go through the footnotes and know that this is a reference to an 18th century puppet show or a reference to Thomas Aquinas, but our own conscious experiences are full of likewise contingent social ephemera or high-minded concepts which roughly correspond, so the artistic intent will feel familiar even if its references are foreign. For the throughline, the plot is pretty basic (in this chapter Bloom walks down a street), so the only mooring needed to keep up to pace is knowing the character tensions, which are also pretty basic once you parse them. Once you stumble through the mist, Ulysses is pretty amicable, even rather glib, rather than academic austere. Probably a little too glib in my opinion.
11 Likes