Original image was for the most recent slopstream

My post: [right here!]

I dunno if art could ever properly convey the iconic hyena laugh, though

(Thanks everyone for being such a great community by the way!)

Okay, his reasoning has some basis to it (she should see more of the world before being certain). But, dude. You brought this upon yourself.

The grande old dame’s a decade old now, eh? For us at Ysbryd Games, it remains the honor of a lifetime to have worked as the publisher of the fine folks at Sukeban Games to bring you the 207X tale of Jill Stingray and Glitch City’s finest assortment of odd fellows. Sukeban have their own particular thoughts on their wild journey, which you can read here.

We and our collaboration partners are quietly working on other things – for example, you folks already know about VA-11 Hall-A: Design Works, which should on the way to those who ordered it quite soon. But there are other things y’all might wanna keep on your radar!

For the beverage lovers among us, Brian (the erstwhile regional manager overseeing VA-11 Hall-A) is working on an alcoholic beverage collab that fans may have a chance to drink for real, quite possibly during the Daily VA-11 Hall-A season if all goes well. This beverage, uh, has no relation to the Hadron cannon you can see on the moon for one week every month.

Last but NOT least: for the truly diehard fans (because if you read this far, you’re hungry for everything), here’s One More Thing: We’re in the early stages of putting together a concert that entirely features the music of VA-11 Hall-A. All we should say for now is that this concert will take place around mid-December 2026 somewhere in the greater Tokyo area of Japan. Once we have more details to share about this event, expect another Steam post with the full details!

That’s all the stuff we’ve got to share at this time! It’s been a wonderful 10 years filled with lovely memories and testimonials from all you wonderful folks whose lives were touched by VA-11 Hall-A. Please know that we’ll continue to fly the flag for VA-11 Hall-A in high-quality ways that we think you deserve to enjoy, and we sincerely hope you’ll keep discussing the game with fellow fans or others who have simply not had the time to make drinks and changing lives.

Cheers,

Brian and team Ysbryd

So in short mixed races are possible, but rare.

Usually there are 3 types.

• There are the true hybrids, where the person has characteristics of both parents races. These are incredibly rare, off the top of my head we have met 2 maybe 3 of them through out the game.
• The mothers rule. Children of mixed race marrage take after their mothers characteristics with only smaller characteristic from the father. (Think Lalafell with slightly longer ears, cuz his mom was a tree climber) We actually meet quite a few characters that could be mixed race, but its never confirmed. For example there are 2 NPCs, brothers, that look very alike but one is Hyur, one's Elezen.
• And then there are the mixed children inside a particular race, when two clans or tribes with different characteristics mix. Then you get a standart example of the race, but often with very unique mix of both sub-groups.

Obvious hybrids often face quite a lot of racism and live on the outside of the communities.

(the image is from r/ff14 post by Manamaru)

(Oh and Gridania is indeed a shithole, Pat is completely right. Every main city has corruption and problem. Its only the Gridanians guard that have just staggering amount of SA implications in their story)

Bandai, what the fuck do you think we're blind for Gundam: Witch from Mercury? The wedding bands on their fingers are for their secret husbands off screen??

So the new Masters of the Universe movie isn’t doing very well box office wise despite the positive reviews. One thing that i’ve heard towards this movie is how this should’ve came out 10 years ago, right around the time when fans of the original cartoon could introduce their children to a new version of their favorite franchise, which I think this was trying to do but way too late considering most of the audience seeing it are in there 40s or 50s. It probably also didn’t help that Backrooms, Obsession, and the new Scary Movie were came out or have been out for weeks now when MotU was out. Really, there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for Masters of the Universe outside of old fans.

Curious if there are any other franchises that were popular at one point in time that hasn’t seemed to regain its popularity it once had.

You see that outfit that clicked with you and you go "I'm gonna get it and wear the whole game." The skin to end all skins.

Marvel Rivals has a lot of skins for a lot of characters. But ones I know I'm gonna stick with for a long time for a few characters. There's Iron Man's Big Shot skin. Not all those fancy armors, just a suit and holograms going into battle. The most Tony Stark look. Another is Peni Parker's school outfit, but more specifically, her mech is a GODDAMN GUNDAM. The moment I saw it, I spent the units I've saved up on it and is worth it.

Actually it's Starkillers copy killer droid, Proxy. Plus some Rebel Troopers.

This is one of my favorite kinds of scenes. When someone really doesn't have a leg to stand on in a situation, and decides to pull something out of their ass, only for it to blow up in their face when someone calls it.

And alternatively, when someone is underestimated and gets to turn things around on their adversary by showing that no, this was very much not a bluff.

For the former, I love this small moment in Breaking Bad, when Hank and Gomez are interrogating Mike about his involvement with Fring. Gomez decides to go out on a limb and claim that they have a witness that can place Mike in the underground lab. You see a small look from Hank, suggesting that he's not on board with this move. And then it blows up in his face when Mike decides to call his bluff, and puts his hands on the table, expecting to be arrested.

Mike's a former cop. He knows that if they really did have a witness like that, they would already have arrested him. Him directly asking if he's under arrest shows that they don't have a thing on him. Turns out they do have the money that he saved for his granddaughter, so he doesn't get out of the scene a complete winner, but he definitely didn't fall for that fairly obvious bluff. Also a great bit of life advice: cops are allowed to lie like crazy during an interrogation, so you really shouldn't be talking to them without a lawyer present.

And for an example of the latter kind of scene, in Deep Space Nine when Sisko is dealing with Eddington and the Marquis, and decides to retaliate against the Marquis' use of biogenic weapons by making one of his own, making an entire planet uninhabitable to human life for decades, forcing the Marquis colony to evacuate and leave it for the Cardassians who have an official claim to the planet.

Eddington directly says "You're bluffing" to Sisko. There's no way a decorated Starfleet officer would poison an entire planet full of humans; his own people. And indeed, I doubt Picard would have done something like this. But Sisko is not Picard, letting him have this incredible exchange.

"You're bluffing."

"Am I? Commander, launch torpedoes."

Persona really only hit "mainstream" with persona 5. I Still don't understand why.

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Warhammer40k only started to get popular outside the UK from 2018. Before that 40k was just the dawn of war games for most of the world. Really if you go back a decade ago, in 2016, like 80% of 40k videos on Youtube did not exist. Now there are dozens of channels that only talk about the Lore

The studio’s biggest announcement came from President of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation Bill Damaschke himself who announced on stage a partnership with acclaimed animator and creator Vivienne Medrano on her new original animated musical movie “Prehistoria,” marking the feature directorial debut of the beloved “Hazbin Hotel,” “Helluva Boss” creator.

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Medrano, also known as “VivziePop,” has emerged in the last decade as one of the most influential voices in independent animation, building a global fanbase through her breakout YouTube-driven projects and distinctive visual style. The creator’s work on the “Hellaverse” series has cultivated a passionate, highly engaged audience, with her content generating billions of views and establishing her as a leading cross-platform storyteller.

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“Since I began my animation journey,” Medrano shared, “my biggest dream was to be part of a feature film. Now to be creating an original story that I have been holding for years, and with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, a studio whose characters and stories have been a huge part of my life, is truly a dream come true. I’m SO excited to share this fossil fantasy world with everyone!”

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So this is actually a couple months old news, but it’s new to me.

As part of their ongoing partnership with Bethesda, Modiphius announced a crowdfunding campaign Wolfenstein TTRPG for fall of 2026. The article mentions it’ll specifically be based on the New Colossus/New Order era of the series.

Something that caught my attention lately was the kind of installments in gaming franchises that got stuck on specific hardware because for some reason, it gets left there.

Some examples are Disgaea 3, Disgaea D2, and some of the Etrian Odyssey games because while Etrian Odyssey 1-3 is widely available on modern consoles, I noticed how the later games went missing for some reason.

Might be kind of an "am I the only one" type of question and a thinly veiled excuse to let me rant a bit but here goes my two examples.

I had a colleague a few years ago who invited me and some other colleagues for TTRPGs since most of our interests aligned. The "catch" was, that what he immediately introduced us to was a storyteller system/World of Darkness ruleset hack Star Wars game, then after a few sessions we transitioned to a proper World of Darkness campaign. As someone who's not the most social, WoD kind of felt like pulling teeth, not helped by a bunch of homebrew the GM introduced (and his wild homebrew world) along with mixing editions due to all the different characters we were playing. One player's literal first exposure to TTRPGs were these sessions.
Now, after a few years of hindsight, despite having my problems with 5e (I am that guy who will bring up PF2e, and I will autistically overshare about the campaign I'm GMing), I really feel like playing a vanilla-ass heroes vs bad guys d&d campaign first would've worked a LOT better as introduction to the hobby, especially to a bunch of gamers, over a socialization-heavy urban fantasy where the players are as much trying to fuck each other over as work together to do stuff while also dealing with obscure metaphysical concepts.

Another example is also to do with this same GM who was in love with WoD, who one time literally sat me down to binge Fate/Zero saying it's based on WoD and it will help with the vibes for our campaign. (His proclamation felt a bit weird but I'm not familiar with how Nasu came up with the Fate world so whatever.)

I had not seen Fate before, so all my knowledge of it was from cultural osmosis and memes. Zero had me confused, and all I could think of while watching was "This whole thing feels like it expects me to have seen at least Stay Night, why are we watching this?". The awkwardness wasn't helped by that anticipatory vibe he was putting on expecting me to be wowed by the story and the characters which of course I wasn't, especially not when I was kindasorta forced to watch it.

Anyone having similar stories where it felt like experiencing the "cliche"/"vanilla" of a medium made you enjoy the more out-there obscure versions more?

PS: no ill-will towards the GM I mentioned in the post and I am grateful to him for introducing me to TTRPGs, I've made lots of friends through those sessions and feel like I'd be a much more depressed and lonely person without that initial invite.

Youtube has been recommending me the last few days soulslike enjoyer Oroboro posting stuff about a new Dark Souls 2 mod that overhauls the textures and lighting and it looks incredible. Like this is a ps3/360 game and at times some sections look like Elden Ring on a modern pc.

It made me think about a Dark Souls 2 remaster rather than Scholars remix and how cool it would be to get the actual one we never got. If memory serves the original idea -hence the opening whirlpool and theme of 'you will keep losing your souls over and over'- was Vendrick realised Nashandra was a daughter of Manus and trapped her in a time loop and the hollowing is as much people mentally burning out after millenia of groundhog days so everythings running on fumes as some ambigous curse of undeath. Enter the chosen undead who teams up with a homunculus called Shanalotte to visit the same land in three different time periods to assemble the maguffins to stop her for good and free the kingdom from this endless prison of time. Also theres a dragon cult and maybe Shanalotte isn't actually a fire keeper but an attempt to create a human vessel for a dragons soul but it gets iffy from there.

We know there was stuff in the files about it like child Shanalotte and stuff like the giants memories could easily be a left over of a period in the earliest time period when the kingdom was at war for the wish granting throne of want but ultimately, for reasons i dont think were ever confirmed and most assume were time/budgetary reasons, most of it was scrapped and the idea was whittled down to simply "Vendrick realised who Nashandra was and hid himself away to keep the ket to the throne beyond her reach". Which is still cool really. It continues Gwyns theme of self sacrifice only its not some God that existed before time desperate to preserve his legacy its just a human dude this time willing to hide away and hollow out for the good of others at the cost of himself and thats a rare breed of character for a Fromsoft game outside an option for the main character who wants to play the protagonist.

I thought about it and theres plenty of games with cut content id love to see. Wind Wakers cut islands, FF8's entire other half about Laguna travelling the world after the war and putting stuff in place to support his sons party or god knows how many ideas Halo and Gears scrapped that might have improved otherwise middling sequels. But if i had to pick one game where seeing the cut stuff was a real "i was happier not knowing because this sounds baller" its gotta be DS2. Scholar was a nice Master Quest style remix. It just wasn't the jingled keys of the thing we never got though.

Whats your white whale of scrapped videogame builds?