skunk smell emanating from somewhere nearby and it 100% is your dumb fault. a collective may be at fault. gather around the video computer system and plug an Actually Good Controller in to the video computer system. (SEGA Model No. MK-1653 if you know what's good for you)

I Have Just Mouth And I Must Eat

VCS games of this early-80s era live or die on their absurdities, and Telesys' Fast Food absolutely delivers. the chaos of the late pre-crash north american market is best exemplified by this game about a mouth in a void, devouring unfulfilling sustenance at varying degrees of speed. the movement of the character feels especially bouncy, and that's the mechanics. it it does the one thing it does, and it doesn't feel like it's falling apart while doing it.

i get that people decry these games based on the quality of things released after over 40 years of a zero-sum race to continuously shrink the microprocessor have passed. that's fine, but the sheer joy of showing this dingy 8-track lookin thing that was probably picked out of someone's garbage or left to dust in a closet for 30 years to someone, starting the game and going "That Is The Most Accurate Art I've Ever Seen On An Atari Game" at the same time is something to be cherished. atari games aren't meant for Rodd Toddgers to Totally Play For 24 Hours Straight Just Trust Me Walter Day, they're best experienced socially just because of how bizarre they might be, and fast food is no exception. when you're tired of this after 5 minutes, toss lost luggage in, then toss in whatever you get from the stack of these shits without even looking, get tired of that in 5 min, etc.... all while having a joyous time.

good advice for any person playing any sort of game - video or otherwise: it feels better to laugh at your failure states and learn.

the best of the True "Boomer Shooters". [1] [2]

the pre-scrolling shooting game with possibly the greatest emphasis on movement, not just with the single axis given to the player, but from the waves of enemies as well. shots move at just the right speed, with the player's shot limit increased to 2 per ship, but with a set minimum interval between. the large insectoid creatures [3] (an aside: what is it with shooting games and violence toward insects?? see also Centepede, Millipede, Gaplus [aka Galaga 3], Mushihimesama) make their dive toward and away from you with utmost grace, from the very start of each stage and the graceful movement doesn't let up for a single moment, even when they are at the idle formation. each galagan moves in distinct ways, not unlike the ghosts of the Jean-Less "Patman", with those blue and yellow bee-like things being the most devious: faking the player out by circling back toward them just before going off screen, or splitting into a chain of 3 things that also look like they could sting. the challenging stages are to this day the best intermission sections ever put into an arcade game: just enough of a break to catch a sip of water, coffee or tea, but engaging enough to encourage and help foster player mastery.

most galaga cabs out and about these days are either retofitted with an LCD (understandable these days as cathode ray tubes are long out of production and dwindling as they fail with age. but, more often than not, arcade LCDs taking in an analog signal from the edge connector [galaga is pre-JAMMA] without any sort of external upscaling have egregious input latency.), or i end up seeing it in a modern nostalgia-bait barcade-fodder combo Ms. Pacman/Galaga cab, which is fine, but still feels not right. i'd typically be respectfully ambivalent seeing this out in the wild, remembering how i grew tired of it after playing it for weeks via namco museum 64 when i was very young. but after coming across it in a sit-down table cab for the first time, i played it on a whim, and somehow made it to stage 16 on my first credit of galaga in nearly a decade. that experience pretty much helped me understand why namco earned such reverence for their works during the arcade's golden age. [4] [5] it's incredibly refined, and the ramp in speed immediately after the 2nd challenging stage is just on point. as it is a work from its era, for the arcades, it has simple, but immediate to understand mechanics which would be quite futile to explain in detail: you just shoot the Galagans and attempt to get the best score you can, and go for the dual-ship configuration if you wish. as it is a work from its era, it is, especially in the wake of the strive for photorealism and "Could [new game with shiny browns] Be The Citizen Kane Of Gaming????" [6], commonly dismissed and reduced to just another footnote in the medium's history. [7]

[1] that is not Tempest, but its design is bit of an edge case of what was commonly done during the invader-era of STG. that will be saved for another time.

[2] the reason i KNOW for a damn fact that galaga is a "Boomer Shooter" is because like 13 years ago my dad saw me playing world renowned mobile gacha game developer Computer Art Visual Entertainment Company, Limited's DoDonPachi (1997) and said "ohh hey.... that's like galaga!!!!"

[3] without an established scale for the size of the player ship, we can only come to such conclusions by way of assumption. the sprites of the craft the player controls and the insectoids (i am not sure if the developers at namco gave them all indivudal names as they would in xevious, the last "Boomer Shooter" ever made.) occupy roughly the same space onscreen, and assuming that the player craft is single-occupancy for just the pilot, it would make sense that the insectoid creatures serving as opposition in this computer-controlled video game are about the size of a small airplane, if we were to compare it to something which exists on earth. i certainly have not seen an insect or crustacean the size of one of those, personally.

[4] i, frankly think it's criminal to be a video game enjoyer to be outright dismissive of anything older than Super Mario Sixty Four. based on how often i see "game is bad because it's Atari" or something along those lines, it is evident that there is a gross misconception loading to a broader mischarachterization of arcade design as ill-placed boomer nostalgia, deriding such works as "mindless", especially when it comes to works from the period between taito's space invaders and the north american release of nintendo's 8-bit home console, when video arcade games made the move from discrete logic to microprocessors. this is something i too have been guilty of in the past, as the era i grew up in was dominated by the likes of halo and counter-strike.

[5] my opinion is that the real "golden age" of the arcade, on the basis of average game quality and design advancements, was post-street fighter II until development for sega naomi games ceased. but that's not what historians wish to push, it doesn't make sense for infancy of any medium to be considered a "golden age". maybe something is referred to as a "golden age" based on Profits Earned or something like that.

[6] i would much rather see more works within this medium that channel the same energy as The Toxic Avenger (1984)

[7] like this

personal fact: i am pretty sure this is what i played on september eleventh, 2001 after coming home from school. shouts out to namco museum 64 even tho you sucked compared to the playstation volumes.

everytime i feel like im in the absolute peak of a depressive spell i go and look the video on youtube dot com titled "Asm-ng-ld's Lair" and proceed to realize that The Pression is not a one-size fits-all ailment, and comes in many different shapes and forms, at least im not breathing in hella mold spores from the soda cups i got a few months ago at the Watered Burger down the stroad.

played for about 2 months back in like 2010ish because i had a few friends who themselves fell victim to this peice of software for a little bit (they are not still playing it today, thankfully). every time i played with them i just kept saying to myself "I really could just be playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup instead and not have to be a 15 bucks a month sucker".

NO ABSOLUTES
NO GRAND MASTERS

within interactive media, one could find myriad instances of games that could be best described as wasting one's time. menus and metaprogression for hours, idle selection. story sequences to kick back and soak in. this is a phenomena that is best described as "low gameplay density".

Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS is the absolute opposite. from the moment you hear the barely-human "ready, go", you begin to waste each and every millisecond of the game's time (don't worry, it's counting them for you!).

Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS iterates on the desperately needed improvements to the timeless soviet program of pattern recognition made by Arika with 1998's Tetris The Grand Master. quality of life improvements have been made, less for the player and more for the arcade operator, but one should never underestimate the performance of proficient player. emphasizing speed and precision amidst the chaos of fair, high-frequency pseudorandom number generation. movement at instant gravity, managing the shape of the stack as a means of player survival. i tend to consider TGM1 as the transitional entity between the "old" school of tetris, alongside Tetris DX and other proto-SRS games from BPS. (the old school of tetris includes but is not limited to nintendo's 8-bit RSI-inducers, atari's endurance testers and sega's 1988 single button primate neuron activator.) arika iterated on, and subsequently continued to perfect the rotation and piece movement introduced in sega's 1988 release, which is a far cry from the sanitized snoozefest that has manifested as the henk rogers mandated Official Tetris Guideline. 7-bag randomization and the Standard Rotation System are without question the absolute worst thing that has happened to falling block puzzle games, and that culminated in a set of rules that is only conducive to player proficiency within a competitive multiplayer environment (read: oops! all t-spins), which i will never care care for, and i will not be be paying for an online service on the thing that has collected more dust than my wii u just to give arika's return to the four blocks dropping a lot a try. (smash that mf <3 button if you've ever passed out [as in started falling asleep] 3 hours into an endless marathon game, 2 hours past the timer's upper limit, in any post-Tetris Worlds Official Tetris Company Licensee Product Strictly Abiding By The Official Tetris Guideline)

100% Video Game: Complete With Life Ruining Potential!

alongside the third Leader Bee game from world renowned mobile gacha game developer Computer Art Visual Entertainment Interactive Company Limited (the fourth one of those overall, and the third Great [as in prefix] one. Now Avaliable On Nintendo Switch And Sony Playstation 4), Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS was the arcade game i played the most throughout my 20's. for months on end, and pretty much the entirety of 2015, the only video game i could touch was Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS, an incredibly efficient use of video game playing time all things considered. it is probably not coincidental that 2015 and the first half of 2016 were the worst years of my adult life, and it would make sense that i spent my video game playing time playing a variant of what is probably the only video game with healing attributes, but even then it's not without detriment...

firm/sonic drop was a mechanic arika added to Tetris With Cardcaptor Sakura Eternal Heart, which is effectively momentary 20g on demand, instantly bringing the piece down WITHOUT locking in place, unlike the hard drop required by The Tetris Guideline. firm drop's effect on the pacing in the first half of a clearing run is monumental, pushing the skill ceiling to heights never duplicated in the realm of four blocks dropping a lot. now, the player is in control of the game's rate for the most part, pushing the game until the game begins to push you, total player agency in making order of pseudorandom chaos. any millisecond spent in a state of uncertainty is a millisecond spent wasting the game's time. a rhythm consisting of any order of rotate, firm drop, shift and lock begins to unfold, and if your performance is on point you will be locking the pieces on your own terms up until the lock delay begins to decrease. every addition to the stack should account for the piece you might get 5 peices from now, despite only being able to know about just one piece ahead. the rotate-shift-drop-lock rhythm sears itself into the subconscious, the tuned bleeps announce the next piece to help you keep your eyes attached to where it matters most. a perfect connection between human and machine. you might forget to blink.

...perhaps some things are best experienced sparingly, too much medicine can lead to destructive behaviors permanently altering ones brain chemistry. during the periods of my life where most of my recreational interactions with machines involved Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS, something about my thought processes seemed off. beyond a state of what's been studied as the "Tetris Effect" (not to be confused with Rez Tetris), bordering on full blown Tetris Psychosis. maybe it was just an uncovering of a latent, broader ailment that had been chiseling its way to the forefront of my synapses, maybe it was just an obsession not unlike a dependency. waking moments, in situations far removed from the interaction between human (me) and machine (x86_64 computer pretending to be a hitachi sh-2, with lever and multi-button interface), patterns recognized within Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS would intrude the moments of life removed from it, as my brain would try to make order of the sensory chaos of the world. maybe i will reveal an aspect of the self for the sake of this anecdotal retrospective, but it's more likely that this piece of software revealed that aspect of my self to that very self. i am pretty sure i'm not supposed to be hearing this when i'm out at the grocery store, but i did, and it was at first a bit terrifying, but i've come to live with it and things like it, and accept it as a part of me. heightened pattern recognition amidst the pseudorandom chaos of life is a trait, a trait that can be as overwhelming as it enlightening, as complimentary as it is all-encompassing, as damaging as it is enriching. such is life.

Mastering Mode

a key difference between arcade games (both electromechanical and video) and its far seedier relative is fairness. you master the machine, rather than the other way around. despite sharing bits of language (but not the entire language) with one another, they exist(ed) in disparate realms of machine-human communication. a machine that masters the human is one rooted in cognitive exploitation, a human that masters the machine is emblematic of a state closer to the martial arts rather than the "haha number go up" such programs and machines are far too often misconstrued to be. a skilled player will get the most out of their credit, a rightfully earned state of success. contrast this with the relatives of such machines, ones which do not require skill, which seek get the most credits of their victims "Players", feeding off their anticipation of a probable, yet uncontrolled state of presumed success. "Do Nothing And Win Big!!!" vs "Take Everything You Learned And Perform To The Best Of Your Ability"

before my supple mind was altered by Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS, i had spent around 12 alkaline AA's worth of time on Tetris (v1.1) for the Nintendo Game Boy (an unmodified DMG-01, to be exact). that's probably the only version that i have come close to actually being a master of as of this moment (more on this later, well technically simultaneously but Later is how i will roll), alongside Sega Tetris (1999). firm drop, 20g, zangi-moves and even the concept of lock delay were foreign to me, but the sheer speed and seemingly infinite skill ceiling of arika's take on the soviet computer game of pattern recognition would burrow its way into my subconscious, permanently cementing itself into the upper echelon of Things Humans Made Microprocessors Can Do For Human Recreation, or perhaps a part of the lowest unmoving foundation that all Things Humans Made Microprocessors Can Do For Human Recreation sit upon. subtle alterations made by arika may not seem present at first, especially to a novice player (to arika's flavor), but a player is very unlikely to be completely fucked by the (pseudo)randomizer here as it would be in, say, any of the versions preceding Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS's predecessor. it provides a much more engaging and challenging assortment than the malaise of that which is now required by The Official Tetris Guidelines. what's the point in making order of chaos if the order isn't slightly chaotic? chaos will ensue, but it's a chaos that is fair and under control rather than whatever the fuck was going on here.

Tetris Affect

once 20g is in full swing, you have no more chances to second guess. that's not to say second guessing won't occur - it will, and you are likely to be punished swiftly if you aren't adept at managing overhangs or the misdrops that come with the act of second guessing (or with careless haste!). i've come to recognize that some problems are best addressed at a later moment, when the mind has achieved some clarity, but not lost focus. but, Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS, unlike it predecessor, continues its trend of actively minimizing downtime once the player has reached 20G (a quality of Not Your life improvement). it leaves them less time to spend ruminate on where the 5th peice from now might go, less time spent removing that which no longer needs to be, less time spent dropping four blocks, more four blocks dropped. it primarily does this through tightening the various delays until it becomes something only the most adept players can manage, but something that can still be overcome with human intervention. in fact, the player never, ever loses control until either a failure state is achieved or until AFTER the credits roll. some inputs (rotate and shift mostly) can be buffered during some delays even as they grow ever tighter, but there is never a moment where a player is not in control of the peices somehow. i didn't quite realize this until about a year into playing any TGM, but initial rotation is a thing, and it rules, an absolute necesity for the back half's instant gravity. it too plays an audio cue as soon as the peice comes into the field and leaves the queue. less time spent rotating four blocks, more four blocks to rotate. an unrelenting pace for all <10 minutes it would theoretically take to see those credits begin to roll. not a single moment wasted in every respect, the sounds give just enough information without being totally drowned out by some of the finest work by aya and megaten, and beneath the playing field and peices lies a constantly moving assortment of machines that never once tend to distract (see: Sega Tetris[1999]).

what you've heard is probably true, but is probably more of a byproduct of human pattern recognition, ritualistic machine interaction and neuron activation, courtesy of said machine. i would continue to just see squares everwhere, as if they were mocking me. sometimes they were beckoning me. i didn't mind and wouldn't have had it any other way. maybe the next time i really start to play this game i will see and hear them again, maybe they miss me. sometimes i do too.

any other iteration of four blocks dropping a lot will never surpass this, certainly not under supervision of henk rogers. i feel like arika themselves didn't quite surpass this with Terror Instinct, which may be mechanically robust, but is a major step back in its presentation, with just rotating .pngs for its backgrounds, lacking the sharp, cold bite present in Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS. a perfect, audio-visiual-interactive experience. arika were The Absolute best to ever do tetris. forum dullards who love to go "if you can't handle Hardcore Games like "Doom eternal" just go and play tetris because that is baby game for people like you (babeys)" should be forced to play Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS' "The Absolute Death" mode until they can last for 4 minutes in it and nothing else.

bless the fine folks at hamster for making this far more accessible, and maybe there on my Ketsui Deathtiny machine i will one day see it through to that orange line.

but the most i've seen is an S7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzO5DKSi5WM

haven't touched this for months but when im in down bad i end up just playing the shit out of this or some form of the four blocks drop a lot as my brain goes on autopilot.

i remember when this came out it was dismissed as a "meme game", and that might still be the case, but a gamified simulation of the mundane, task of spitting diesel fumes into the the lungs of all upon this soon to be scorched planet seriously has no business being as good as it is. the sleeper classic of the 2010's (and onward, as one of the key shifts within the medium during that decade was impermanence perpetual development of the works within.)

you probably won't like this if you're the type of person who refuses to use turn signals in real life.

genuinely the most engrossing driving game since Service Games Amusement Machine Research & Development 2's magnum opus Outrun 2(006 Coast 2 Coast/Special Tours). It's a compressed, quasi-accurate representation of a continent that i will probably never get behind the wheel of a vehicle in, not unlike the course of Outrun 2 (see ATS if you like the Special Tours course, but i will stick to ETS2), rolling and sputtering along roads and streets as the day goes to night and the night goes to day. on controller with with sequential transmiss, air brake simulation on and rarely using autoparking, it becomes very engaging after leaving the highway, and a constant balance of not trying to go too fast and not depleting the air supply through careful trigger/pedal application. but it rarely is a tense game, most of the anxiety the player faces comes from exiting and entering highways and engaging in the word they have in germany for "Elephant Racing" on, whether or not it's permitted and/or leads to a head on collision. (especially if you go autism mode and purposefully mod in even slower vehicles like a naturally aspirated Mercedes NG 1632, goes well with the Volvo FH16 Classic)

it shares many faults with most of the Open World™ works in the medium but the dulcet loop of steady, careful operation of large, very deadly metal machines across a sprawling network of roads throughout many different, shockingly distinct locales, down to the way the roads are laid out and connect with one another makes up for what could be construed as vapid design if were about anything more than just driving on roads. by virtue of being a one-note-banger, it paradoxically evades the lack of focus that is endemic to many other works that have a sort of "big map, go anywhere" mindset that started appearing more frequently in the '10s, and it does that because all you fucking do in this game is drive. it rules

it somewhat unfortunately has many map expansions thru dlc, but they are fine and nowhere near as egregious as whatever dovetail games does for their train simulators, absolutely not necessary to see if it'll end up being you'll enjoy. people who enjoy using turn signals and people who can tell the make of a car from their head and/or taillights at night with about 80% accuracy might find a lot to love here, i certainly do.

i have not touched the business sim part of the game and honestly never will. ever just sit in your truck??

ugh.

so i played this what.... 6 years ago at this point??? damn.. yet i have close to zero memory of that experience. (the moment i first played smb 3 some 24 years ago is still as vivid as ever) i got the thing that's collected about as much dust as my wii u pretty much just to try this, and ended up just using that as a portable neo turf masters/espgaluda 2/virtua racing/outrun machine in the long run, which i don't mind. (which is probably more indicative of my proclivities than anything else, the only first party-ish games i've got for that thing are this, bayonetta 2 [which i later found out isn't really my vibe but i respect it] and the arcade archives port of super punch out).

the competence at which the plastic makers in kyoto produce video games is certainly remarkable, and perhaps people study and obsess over it a bit too much, and cling on to it like so many fellow millenials cling on some half baked wizard-school books that use a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing (ursula k. le guin did it first AND at least 20 times better). mario odyssey, and pretty much everything from nintendo post-gamecube is so well made that it coalesces into a lukewarm soup of well executed mechanics that don't even meet half of their potential. it's just frictionless and dull. when you try to appeal to absolutely every permutation of a possible audience, something gets lost in the process, all edges sanded down until it can be handled with utmost safety. jumping man nintendo, swording twink nintendo and spacer woman nintendo are basically this medium's equivalent of princess disney, cape disney and space disney at this point. something for everyone eventually means for no-one.

receiving any collectible in this game feels like if a crowd were to appear from behind the bushes and strip mall buildings to applaud you for crossing a stroad at the one marked and designated crosswalk per quarter mile. all reward, no risk. thanks, i guess. while i certainly didn't feel a borderline negative amount of gratification for completing this, as i did when i made it the final world of super mario 3d land with upwards of 60 lives to spare, there are parallels with this and the other Jumping Man amusement parks that have surfaced since the Super Mario Bros. went "New".

there are also parallels between this, Sonic Adventure and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), except sonic team never really put their gemstones through rock tumblers because they were afraid someone might get a small cut, instead opting to serve it raw, straight off the geode with the dirt intact. that's just another thing nintendon't, but i wish nintenwould.

mario odyssey is basically cocomelon for people who hear this and genuinely go "just like me For real".