Yeah that's one of the things I've like about the children's media I listed. Here, for example, surely the basic message is something you've certainly heard before, but it's altogether a different thing to put a fresh and different spin on it. And if that isn't done, it will die and wither away. I swear the coffee and tea break text scrolls are genuinely the most uplifting messages I've ever received from a video game. And EB has a habit of making you/Ness alone, scared and vulnerable, and instead of turning it into a PSA about how life is dangerous and you really ought to stay at home and listen to your mom, it lets you/Ness still have lots of fun with friends. Yet after victory it's all "I gotta go back to being a normal 13 old kid again!" The aspirational and realistic aspects are well balanced, in the end, so despite the outlandish events it's emotionally realistic while being upbeat.

The Famicom is fun, but it’s about at the level of a TV show. When all is said and done, it’s the people who are funny. It’s not like there’s a person out there who is limited to 24 megabits. There are billion-megabit people just idling around. Experiencing outrageous things outside, having adventures—it’s fun because people like that play the Famicom. I’d like to make a game that those people can enjoy."

Yeah this rules! I'm reminded how in the game after victory, you can go talk to all the characters. How in line with the quote is that?! It's proof how deeply Itoi thought about the appeal of the game and its message.

A similar part on Mother 3 that I've enjoyed is the following:

Why did you give Duster a bad leg?

Itoi I figure that because there are handicapped people in our world, it would also be part of the world of MOTHER 3. After all, there's no way that any two people have the same physique or even the same personality. Just like with the Magypsies, I included Duster so we could have someone with bad breath, a disabled leg, and living as a thief. The MOTHER 3 world is all about having friends like them. Perhaps you could call them symbols of not rejecting such people.

If you haven't read it yet, this interview about how HAL Laboratory's logo came into being is pretty great. It's amazing what an intuitive understanding Itoi has behind the logo.

Yeah, totally, With a tiny synopsis too if you feel so inclined, but no pressure. I think you got my big picture gripes so don't worry about recommend animes similar to the media I explicitly named. Anime is quite foreign to me so I don't have prejudice towards any particular kind, positive or negative.

I have! I haven't finished M1 because my old computer got borked and before that cataclysmic event, I got bored of playing console games on a keyboard. I'll get back to it when I finally buy a console controller to hook up into a computer!

But yes, they are special to me. They're like Calvin and Hobbes to me, except I didn't get to experience them as a kid. I wonder if I had turned around a little bit different if I had done so. There's gentle wisdom in them unlike in almost any other game.

Yeah, I just chose to not make a distinction between all-ages and children's media. There's a kernel of truth in it that there's plenty of children's media that's basically unbearable to anyone not in the target audience, but I feel that often any children's stuff that actually appeals to older audiences as well gets relabeled as 'all-ages' so it works as a term of praise more than anything. Here's an interesting and short blog post how this "domestication" works by taking the critical rave Adventure Time received as an example.

I don't take issue with 'all-ages' in general though, I'm just feeling ambivalent about it. Ryan North explained his approach to all-ages comics writing as that there's no swearing and everyone keeps their clothes on, which just lets everyone enjoy the stories without condescension toward children. That I can appreciate.

But if you want to make a distinction, EB was pretty explicitly of the latter kind as its tagline in Japanese was "[a]dults, children, and even older sisters." Apparently by the time Super Famicom rolled around, RPGs had already lost some of their popularity in the mainstream, especially with women and girls.

I didn't write about EB since I honestly don't have a good take on why I like it in the first place and what's something I'd like to see more of in grown up media. The feeling is real, but I don't have a conceptual clarity. Maybe one thing is that EB is surprisingly melancholic in its way yet it comes in cute, colorful package. That would be something I'd like it, but cute is verboten for grown ups, it seems!

just add cute decals on top of it

TBH what reallys grinds my gears is just how much money you need to spend to be an Apex Gamer and I suspect lots of other ills in the culture directly flow from this. It doesn't help for how many of the loud mouthed gamers the hobby is financed by someone else, like parents. Music, books and movies are so ultra affordable in comparison. (I wonder if the problems in comics culture derive from similar constraints. It's a kind of a bulky media and expensive for the amount of time you spend and piracy is less convenient.)

To really play the newest and the hypest games The Real Way (according to Gamers), you need a solid PC and peripherals. This is the reason why I dropped out of the gaming mainstream when I was 13. I had such old computers (that were full of pirated garbage not installed by me) to work with as a teen it was impossible to keep up with the Culture. And I had no TV and thus no desire to get a console either, but that seems to make you a second class citizen in gaming anyways.

The second thing might be that for many, a laptop/desktop is a tool for work. If I want to relax at home, I sure as hell won't be keen on sitting in a work chair and lighting up a work machine. So a person would probably get a TV before a computer screen for gaming. It just becomes a matter of degrees of formality, really. I don't want wear white tie at home and honestly having a dedicated place for a gaming PC, peripherals and a chair would feel kind of same.

A lot gamer culture is centered around people whose hobby is financed by someone else. You can see it in "git gud" discussions. Playing difficult games for the challenge would be more appealing if the skill practice was subvented by my parents as it was as a kid.

Yeah a long screed, but bytes are cheap so no matter!

I've had to, actually. But I am curious about the answer, as well, so I did a little research. Supposedly if you use an incandescent bulb with a lower voltage, you make the coefficient of efficiency worse but you simultaneously extend the lifespan of it by quite a bit. In a oven, low energy efficiency is not a major problem as the waste heat just gets to be used in heating the oven itself. So perhaps the lamps are quite usual but just get used at a lower voltage? Or perhaps the filament is thicker so it burns slower. I didn't arrive at an answer, but have few plausible conjectures instead.

I had to get this out of the system as I've been thinking about it for a while. If I had thought for a little while longer, I might have put something about EarthBound in as well, but I have hard time putting my finger on what's the appeal of it to me.

Honestly I am going to second Holly, it fits the description to the tee.

If you don't mind a bit of a left field suggestion, The Secret of the Monkey Island has a remastered version that looks cool, has a good soundtrack and I for one enjoyed the game play - it's possibly the single best introduction to the genre. It is very light fare, story wise, and has a genuinely sweet, funny vibe to it. The game design is, I think, quite good, but I won't gush about it now.

Hard mode looks pretty decent with that set up.

cheeeese

I genuinely think a lot of CS analogies are misleading in the same direction but I will probably never make this into actually sensible thesis that I support with anything.

It's pretty terrible what counts as accomplishment, really a shame.