Up From Below (2009) by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on Compact Disc.
This band gets a lot of flack for its role in the Stomp Clap Hey genre, especially for the single “Home”—which did gangbusters.
But this is a good album. Hearing that song in context with the rest of the record—instead of bleeding out on FM radio—shows what the band is really good at: folk rock with psychedelic instrumentation and singalong choruses.
I also think this CD sounds excellent.
Time Hollow (2008) for Nintendo DS.
The DS really was a treasure chest for Japanese adventure games—and the stylus had everything to do with it. The system flipped open like a book, which made it perfect for late-night reading sessions or zoning out on a bus ride.
Time Hollow is one of those “timey-whimey” mysteries. You wield the Hollow Pen (your stylus) to cut literal windows into the past, swapping objects and rewriting events in search of your missing parents.
It’s all wrapped in sharp manga art, with anime cutscenes that still hold up. The vibe is what the kids now call “cozy.” I lucked out and found my copy at GameStop for C$15, back when they still had DS shelves worth browsing.
Today’s cassette is Exmilitary (2011) by Death Grips.
I was hyped to play this one—but one of the reels was defective. The tape bunched up, jammed the capstan, and nearly ate my Walkman. I managed to save the player, but the cassette itself is toast.
Fantastic album, though. Now it’s basically a keepsake—more decor than playable media. Might hang onto it, might not.
Silent Dragon (1992) for arcade is Taito’s forgotten attempt at a Double Dragon spiritual sequel.
This one came from East Technology, the same crew who made Double Dragon III (arcade, NES, Genesis, everything). That game is infamous for its stiff, awkward animation—arguably the weakest of the trilogy. But here, they got another shot.
And Silent Dragon is much better. You can tell East Technology saw what Final Fight was doing and tried to mash that polish with the Double Dragon formula. It’s still not Final Fight—by 1992, Capcom’s juggernaut was the yardstick every brawler got measured against—but it feels tighter than what they’d done before.
The action has weight, the sprites pop, and the set-pieces—like smashing through a clothing boutique or blowing up scenery—keep things lively.
It’s also packed with oddities that make it memorable. The bosses are wild: Animal Cupid (a bandaged brute), Wolfkid (basically Jagi from Fist of the North Star), and Frankenman (a stretchy mummy-thing). The HUD even has a bat icon that foreshadows the man-bat enemies later on.
And when you run out of credits, you don’t just get one “Continue?” countdown—you get a second screen with Catherine begging you to keep going, practically shaming you into feeding the machine another coin.
Mechanically, it’s a mixed bag. No separate punch and kick buttons, so the combos never get as flashy as Capcom’s. Still, you can wield a car battery as a weapon, chow down on gift-wrapped chicken, or watch a monkey pelt you with Molotovs before randomly dropping apples as health items. That sort of nonsense is peak arcade beat ’em up.
What I always notice, though, is the stock cast of enemies. Punks with mohawks? Check. Whip-wielding dominatrixes in leather? Of course. It’s as if there was a genre rulebook that every developer cribbed from. Silent Dragon follows it to the letter—only with a few more quirks to keep you smiling while you’re bashing away on the buttons
Hackers (1995) is a film I somehow never saw until now—wild, considering I lived through the real events it riffs on. Only 30 years later did I finally sit down to watch it.
This is a film I should’ve been more familiar with, seeing how it really cuts close to home. And I know some of you might find it unlikely that Hackers has real-world connections, but I’m telling you the truth.
The whole thing about free long distance was real. Back then we called it blue boxing. And in 1988, a young university student released what wasn’t exactly a virus but came to be known as the Morris Worm. It shut down a big chunk of the early internet. So while the movie exaggerates with a 12-year-old wunderkind, the inspiration was there.
Several characters were analogues to real people. Joey was based on a guy known as Fry Guy. And I’m pretty sure Nikon, the Black hacker in the movie, was based on John Threat—who in the 80s and 90s went by the handle Corrupt. I actually know John—great guy.
And yes, a lot of cybercrime investigations were really handled by the Secret Service. People forget their original purview was financial crime. Protecting the president came later.
So I’m shocked it took me until yesterday to actually see this movie. I remember it being a big deal—it touched youth culture and fashion. But let me tell you, hackers didn’t dress like that. Not before the movie came out. We were computer science nerds in labs. Nobody thought hacking or phreaking was cool.
Then overnight, with the movie’s leopard prints, fur, and pink neon side holsters, suddenly computer nerds were “the coolest kids in school.” Angelina Jolie helped with that one—plenty of girls suddenly wanted to get into computer science.
The plot is simple. A bunch of teenagers access file systems remotely, one stumbles onto something bigger, and suddenly they’re caught in a cyber-security conspiracy. The tagline nailed it: “Their only crime was curiosity.”
But the bad guy? Come on. A multimillion-dollar corporation hires as its CSO a dude who insists on being called “The Plague”? And the Secret Service wants to work with him instead of arrest him? No CSO walks into a boardroom with a skateboard and demands everyone call him by his hacker handle. That is the most unbelievable part of the movie.
Well, that and the hacking itself. Real hacking is just terminals and text. In Hackers, it’s skyscraper file systems and sci-fi UIs. Fun to look at, but nothing like reality. Same with the VR headset The Plague uses. VR existed in the 90s, but it sucked. Cool as an idea, but nobody was actually doing anything with it.
Same goes for the laptops. In 1995, laptops didn’t have the horsepower or fast built-in modems for serious hacking—if they had modems at all. They were impractical bricks.
What the movie did predict, though, were translucent machines. Those became all the rage later with Apple’s iMacs. In the 90s, our machines were beige or sometimes black—never cool, never translucent. So that influence stuck.
Other details are hilarious in retrospect. At the end, all the kids run to phone booths to hack. Why? Anonymity? Not really—now people can see you standing in a booth, typing furiously.
I used to mess with phone booths as a kid, routing calls around the world just because I could. That was phreaking. And one of the characters even goes by “Phreak”—spelled with a PH—which is a nod to that world. But almost never did I bring a laptop into a phone booth, not with them being so heavy and lacking battery power.
I realize I’m not treating this as just a movie. Hard to do, because this was my life. I’ve been in the tech industry for decades, and watching this is like a cop watching Bad Boys or a doctor watching House. It’s a story first, accuracy second. They wanted hacking to look cool.
My life wasn’t that cool. I didn’t have Angelina Jolie hanging off my arm. No woman has ever been impressed with my technical skills. Trivia skills once got me laid—technical skills, never.
I can’t believe I waited 30 years to finally watch this film. I watched it with my kid. She liked it. Then she asked me if that’s really what the 90s were like. I had to tell her no. Sorry to disappoint you, kid. But yeah—what a trip.
Ultros on Steam Deck.
Not exactly the game I’d recommend if you’re high—the visuals alone will melt your brain.
But once you settle into it, you realize it’s a rock-solid Metroidvania with smart progression and satisfying exploration.
@stevenray @recordpics Yep, still plugged in.
Talk Talk Talk (1981) by The Psychedelic Furs – 12” 33RPM LP.
My wife hates this record. But I can’t help thinking if she’d been born just five years earlier, she’d be all over it.
Because this album really was a moment in time. “Pretty in Pink” wasn’t just a standout track—it was iconic enough to inspire the film of the same name.
I’ve always had a soft spot for The Psychedelic Furs: sharp post-punk, unmistakable vocals, and pure early-80s atmosphere.
Final Fantasy VII (1997) for Sony PlayStation.
One of my all-time favourite RPGs. I put it right up there with Trails in the Sky—and that’s the highest praise I can give any JRPG. But unlike Trails, this one became a phenomenon. It moved consoles. It sold the PlayStation itself. And at the time, those pre-rendered backgrounds blew my mind.
I also own the PC release, which I adore even more. The models are sharper, Cloud even has a mouth. But make no mistake: this game belongs to the PSX era. It’s the defining title.
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) is a horror movie about a teenage girl who moves to a small town that’s split between old-timers and high school kids—then gets confronted by a clown.
She falls in with a group of friends, and just as life starts to settle, the town’s history comes roaring back in the worst way possible. A clown mascot named Frendo steps out of the cornfields, and suddenly those kids are being hunted down one by one.
The reason I watched this is because I often have this mentality: one plus one equals two. Take one horror premise—Children of the Corn—combine it with It. What do you get? Clown in a Cornfield. So why not go hog wild, right?
Wildly enough, this didn’t start from some B-movie producer’s imagination. It was a novel first—Adam Cesare’s 2020 book—and now it’s an adaptation. The director is Eli Craig, the same guy who made Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, one of the best horror spoofs I’ve ever seen. Incredibly witty and clever. I hoped to see that same wit here. Spoiler alert: no, you don’t.
The core problem is that it tries too hard to do the self-aware teen thing, where characters seem to know they’re in a horror movie. But Scream already did this decades ago—much better. You’re not going to top Scream. And by now, the self-aware horror movie is as much of a cliché as the movies it lampoons.
Where it really goes wrong is the characters. They’re stock, and being self-aware doesn’t excuse that. You’ve got the Black kid who dies first, the snobby popular girls, the rich bad boy, the hick. Later in the film they try to throw a curveball, but it doesn’t land—by then the movie's lurching towards the end, and the relationships aren’t developed enough.
If you’re going to do something like this, the movie has to be clever. This one isn’t. The stock characters never break out of their molds.
That said, Will Sasso as the sheriff was excellent—the highlight of the film for me, though he doesn’t get much screen time.
The clown costumes, designed from Keith Lau’s concept art, were fun and creepy enough to make me giggle. A few kills, like the bench-press scene, were imaginative. But that’s about as good as it got.
The shoot had its quirks. Filmed in Winnipeg in fall 2023, the crew had to use blowtorches to melt snow after a blizzard so it would still look like autumn. Craig stacked the cast and crew with Canadians after moving to North Vancouver and even taking Canadian citizenship, so the whole thing has a half-Hollywood, half-Winnipeg vibe.
The marketing leaned into the gimmick. A week before wide release, they did drive-in-only previews with author signings and posters. Then came the “Frendo Across America” semi-truck tour, rolling up to landmarks with the clown mascot in tow.
It’s not a bad film—there are plenty worse with the same tropes. But because this was Eli Craig, I had high expectations. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil proved he could twist horror with wit. Here, those expectations just weren’t met.
Do I recommend it? Meh. Not a total waste of time, but you could watch better movies.
Where to watch:
Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0GVJCCJDSJI8PS821VSPHOHTQU
Today’s cassette is Uncut (1979) by The Powder Blues. The Powder Blues, they’re local legends out here in Vancouver.
They make a certain kind of boogie-woogie blues style, which was kind of the rage in the 1930s and ‘40s, but they add a little bit of rock into it. The result is some peppy and danceable blues numbers—highly original, smooth, and it’s a lot of fun when you’re going for a walk.
This was their breakout album. I don’t think they’ve ever made an album better than this, but a lot of people remember it—good times. And sometimes you could catch a show by The Powder Blues every so often in Vancouver, though I haven’t seen one myself, but it’s good that they’re still going strong today.
@thomasjwebb @videogames Yeah, I actually own a Sims jewel case. I totally should get her to sign it.
@theogrin@chaosfem.tw @videogames@piefed.social I'm still seeing the original Puzzle Quest on Steam. Has it been de-listed in your country?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/12500/PuzzleQuest_Challenge_of_the_Warlords/
@EricFielding @recordpics Yep, both portable and a proper deck. Should be interesting.
@shovemedia @videogames I didn’t leave anything out. I kept the list to 10. Centipede is good but I don’t think it was more impactful than anything on this list.
@holdenweb@freeradical.zone @videogames@piefed.social When I play FPS games, I don’t think “I want to murder someone.” I think “I’m playing something creative and meaningful.”
That isn’t unique to me. Millions of people play shooters every day without it ever translating into real-world violence. If games were truly the cause, we’d see epidemic levels of violence everywhere they’re popular—yet countries with high gaming rates often have lower gun violence than the U.S.
It’s also no different than playing Clue, where you literally act out a murder mystery. Further, FPS games are less grisly than slasher movies like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both of which portray violence with far more graphic realism.
And even if we wanted to, we can’t sit around monitoring everyone’s psychology to see who’s playing what or feeling what. That’s neither realistic nor effective.
What we can do is focus on what the evidence actually shows drives gun violence: easy access to real firearms. Research is consistent and unambiguous—gun availability correlates directly with gun deaths.
So pixelated guns? They’re a scapegoat. Actual guns are the problem.
@holdenweb@freeradical.zone @videogames@piefed.social Decades of research say the same thing: video games do not cause gun violence. The APA itself states there’s no causal link:
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior
What does drive gun violence? Access to guns. A landmark meta-analysis shows firearm availability doubles the risk of homicide:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301
So worry less about pixelated weapons. The danger isn’t on a screen—it’s in the real-world guns we’ve chosen to surround ourselves with.
@holdenweb @videogames I’ve been playing shooters all my life, yet I’m anti-gun. So what does that tell you?
@StevenSavage @videogames Glad you like the reviews. Hopefully, you found them accurate.
@corbden@defcon.social @recordpics@piefed.social @phaedral@beige.party It was like that when I bought it.
@AndyHat@anti-social.online @videogames@piefed.social The devs are fully aware of Bubsy's reputation. 😆