sukimon

Yes, Sukimon’s been laying low for the past couple of months, which is, like, forever in webtime. Springtime is always a busy time: work deadlines, high school coaching, attending a friend’s wedding, etc. But all that’s taken care of now, so time to catch y’all up on stuff. First up: Retro Game Night III.

Retro Game Night III was held on March 18, the day after St. Patrick’s Day. In post-celebration, we dubbed Retro III, “St. Sukie Day,” St. Sukie being the patron saint of retro. Just go along with it.

Anyways, for Retro III we set up a video projector and screened films that were also video games: Star Wars (original version), Flash Gordon, Cloak N’ Dagger, and The Last Starfighter. This was a big hit and the films gave everyone a chance to take a break from the 20-minute seshes of Warlords.

Game-wise, we also busted out a couple of the Apple Mac Classics and set up Crystal Quest. One Retro Night participant spent the whole night on it, resulting in a score of over 1.7 million points. Other than the pre-requisite sessions of Warlords, Fast Food, and Dragonfire, Mario Brothers for the 5200 got a ton of play. Low points of the night included Star Wars – Rebel Squadron and the awful Shaq-Fu.

Just as important as the gameplaying itself is the food. Pizza and soda/beer is a must, but this time a couple of folks brought a ton of cookies, a cake, and a much needed and yummy veggie platter.

Another epic night of gameplaying, eating, and movie watching.

The Crystal Quest Queen.

Crystal Quest High Scores. Ridiculous.

Oh, the agony.

Han shot first, but here he can only watch.

Are you feeling this?

3 highschool-aged kids, same score. Must be a generational thing.

…’cause he’s all jacked up in this Super Mario Bros. speed competition, complete with Kenny Loggins background music. Behold the the insane ridiculosity that this video contains, as the competitors proceed to utterly destroy the game without even losing a life.

via Kotaku

Flash-based multiplayer version of a video game classic.

You are arbitrarily placed on one of two sides. Paddle position is determined by the average of where one side’s mouse postions are, as indicated by the glowing blobs behind the paddles. Hypnoptic, time-consuming, and, as the site hilariously states, “humanity has stooped to a new low… Yes, it’s real, and for this I apologize.”

I’ve seen the site get as many as 26 users to a side, 52 players total for a game. It’s like an interactive lava lamp, but that title should go to the trippy Plasma Pong (link via GameSetWatch).

My most recent retro game obsession is Moria, an ASCII-art-driven RPG based on the The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t played Moria in years, until I ran across a link to a PalmOS port of it here.

Anyways, I’ve been playing kMoria for a couple of days now. During one late-night session, I was exploring one of the levels when I had to fight a “Scruffy-Looking Hobbit.” When I had defeated the Hobbit, the following message appeared on my Palm III:

Granted, it’s common in Moria to inscribe objects with titles or descriptions, but to attach “Bilbo” to a sword gives the comic impression that, well, look at my post heading. The following pics further punctuate the punchline:

To make this event even weirder is that my character is a priest, who I named Strom Thurmond. Tré bizzaro, mon.