Skooshjones

Read my edit, I found it!!! :D

Not that one I don't think. The text was all in English.

What a complete knob. That's like saying you didn't know Michael Jackson was a pop star, or that the Pyramids were tombs for kings, pathetic.

Check my reply a few messages down, those are all the details I can remember about it. I am also pretty sure it was a Gameboy Color game, not advance or OG GameBoy, but I'm not 100% certain.

Right on! I'll give it a go lol.

1. Mental Omega, a total conversion mod for Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge.

2. Age of Empires 2.

It's a moving target. For me, I would say anything older than about 15-20 years is "retro" and anything older than 30 years is "vintage."

1. Interestingly, my spouse found out that the lead vocalist now works as a graphic artist and has done work for some huge groups like Twenty One Pilots and Underoath. I found his webpage and have thought about sending him a message, but I haven't ever done it, nervous I guess lol. Your prompt might give me the needed "oomph" to actually go through with it tho lol.

2. It's tough because I barely remember anything specific from it. To make it worse, the game had a saved profile when I got it, (it was second hand.) I only ever played that save file which was already at endgame content, so I don't even remember what the intro/early game was like. Here's all I can remember:

The color pallet was pretty bland. It had lots of random encounters and when they happened, there was a quick sequence where the edges of the screen spiraled inwards in a kind of striped, spiral pattern. There were lots of odd creatures, like these kind of rock worms/snakes if I remember correctly? You had a party of 3-4 people and lots of different spells/abilities. I remember I got lost for a long time wandering through some ice caves and kept having to fight random monsters every 10-20 seconds. I can't really remember the story or lore even. But I'm pretty confident I'd know the music/sounds if I heard them.

I'll check that out and let you know!

My spouse and I had a very long layover between red eye flights and decided to get a ride to a nearby motel to catch a few hours of sleep before going back to the airport early in the morning to catch our next flight. This was in a southern state in the US.

It turned out to be a super sketchy motel and it was really late at night when we got there. We could tell it was in a rough part of the city, driving past houses on the street all had bars over the windows and doors, lots of trash blowing across the street, stuff like that.

We go inside to sign in and get our room and the clerk mumbles something we can't understand and asks us to wait for a few minutes. Then while we're sitting in the lobby, a huge pickup truck pulls up outside with a white guy driving it. Two Hispanic guys get out of the cab, an older man and a boy. They walk in and start talking quietly with the clerk. They both seemed really nervous and kept glancing nervously at the pickup running outside. After a few minutes the clerk led them both away somewhere and then the truck drove away and the clerk called us up and signed us in.

I think it might have been some kind of human trafficking/smuggling thing, but idk. It just was so weird, everybody involved was acting really nervous and on edge. I hope both of them are alright, we obviously never saw them again or even saw where they got led off to.

1. Dead Poetic band merch. A little-known post hardcore band from the early 2000's. I've got all of their CDs and some limited press Vinyls, but I would kill for some legit shirts. Years ago I found a sketchy site that claimed to have a handful left, but they were all too small. I wish now I still had bought them anyways, but oh well.

2. A GameBoy game I played as a kid that was some kind of JRPG. It wasn't a well known one like Chrono, Mother, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc. I have searched through lists online and tried finding screenshots and videos of gameplay, been through several hours of vids, but nothing I've found has been it.

3. A stupid video from the earlier days of YouTube called "The Poop." There is a "The Poop 2" but it's not the same. My friend and I found it randomly on some late night YouTube binge and cried laughing. It became an inside joke between us for years and we would link the video to each other or sing the music from it for instant laughter. It either got privated or deleted. I've spent hours and hours combing through the depths of YT and the internet at large trying to find a copy/reupload, same for my friend, but we've never found it.

Number 2 is SOLVED!!! Holy crap, I literally just randomly found it. Talking about it here inspired me to try some more Google-fu and I happened across an ebay listing for Quest: Brian's Journey and the cartridge artwork immediately jogged my memory. Looks like I mis-remembered some details, that makes me even happier that I found it!

Going to be totally NOT downloading a ROM to play on my Steam Deck this evening...I would never...

Ikr! So glad I got them, especially after wasting hundreds of dollars over the years on various "gaming" headphones that kept breaking after 12-18 months of light use.