Video Games and Mad Computer Science

I love the ashlands and Ashlander camps so hard it's not even funny.

Also, the mod that adds wild siltstriders is my favorite of all time.

Stick Canyon ‘NiGHTS Into Dreams…’ SEGA Saturn

Expressions People Use When They Lose a Game (Electronic Fun with Computer and Games #5, Mar. 1983)

Name: Pyroclasmic Slooch (Sulucina vulcanis)

Debut: Pikmin 3

I think Pyroclasmic Slooch has one of the best names of any Pikmin creature! This is the one I break out if I ever need to explain what a Pikmin name feels like. A large scientific jargon-y sounding word, followed by a single silly little syllable it's perfect! And it IS meaningful, because Pyroclasmic is only one letter away from Pyroclastic, as in pyroclastic flow, a hot volcanic gas/rock current. And Slooch is just, look at this thing! It's what "slooch" looks like! Both as a noun AND a verb!

Fire in video game and monster design is usually pretty boring to me, just for how common it is. I get it, since it is pretty much the most "yeowch! don't touch" thing everyone is familiar with, but I have had enough of Charizardlikes bloating my media! Thank goodness, then, for Pikmin, which implements "conventional" elemental properties into fun, pseudoscientific speculative creatures! It may often be a big load of nonsense, but they explain the nonsense so confidently. Yeah alright. Whatever you say! Maybe a slug could be on fire.

Hello Slooch! What a nice smile you have, framed by your oral tentacles! I wonder if Pyroclasmic Slooch's eyes are useful at all. A regular slug's eyes are mostly just for sensing light and dark, but that doesn't seem practical for a creature that makes its own light that would constantly be in view! Just to be safe, you should give this Slooch a thumbs up, in case it can indeed see you! (computer screen is a real portal to another world where pretend creatures live)

So yeah, Pyroclasmic Slooch is a slug on fire, or maybe a snail whose shell IS fire. It doesn't really matter, either way, the DESIGN is fire! The vibrant orangish stripes on its black body evoke flowing and cooling lava! Lava joke: I bet it was a real "aa moment" when they came up with that design quirk!

As much as I love Pyroclasmic Slooch, it is a wild animal! And it will try to eat the min that you picked, with its funny blue tongue! Louie, everyone's favorite menace Louie, recommends cooking this tongue and no other part of the creature. Would You Eat? I wouldn't, but I wouldn't judge you for doing it. If you have plenty of Red Pikmin, though, their fire immunity makes Slooches very easy to deal with.

You know, real slugs like mold! Do you think Pyroclasmic Slooch likes mold? Maybe it could be friends, with mold. Let's introduce them!

RB if you think CD drives in computers are not obsolete, but in fact still necessary, despite being artificially phased out

A tricky match up ahead!! Deltarune's favourite little guys, vs the music so beautiful it makes people violently rip each other apart (average death metal pit). But only one can win!

Sweet Cap'n Cakes propaganda:

-They actually aren't little guys! Sweet and Cap'n are around the height of an average human teenager and K_K (Cakes) is TWICE that. These radio bots would be terrifying in real life if they weren't so silly!

-And they are SILLY. You first meet Cap'n and K_K while they're trying to scam you into buying overpriced bagels, of all things. Cap'n's selling them for $400, while K_K sells for $80 each, causing Cap'n to try and correct him. K_K then sells 400 bagels for $80. You can actually take that deal, which immediately gives you a game over after being crushed by the weight of all 400 bagels.

-You first meet Sweet while they're trying to fight you, thinking you're working for the enemy. Literally five minutes later they fall flat on their face because they ran into a wall.

-They are the only characters in the entire game who are incapable of being harmed or killed, because they heal themselves in battle via drinking almond milk.

-They're rebels against an oppressive regime that's banned music, among a lot of other worse things, but mostly that! Despite this they actually don't do a lot of rebelling except raising funds with the aforementioned overpriced bagels, jamming out in an alleyway, and building complicated machines and giant robots for your final battle!

-This:

A tricky match up ahead!! Deltarune's favourite little guys, vs the music so beautiful it makes people violently rip each other apart (average death metal pit). But only one can win!

Happy 22nd birthday, Morrowind.

Did You Know: You can get drunk in The Elder Scrolls: Arena? If you keep drinking after becoming drunk, your character will eventually die.