Good morning, it's time for sunday links, my break from the normal blog to link to something to read, something to watch, something to listen to and something to play with. Typically I write every day.

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The Return of Werdna: You Can't Get There From Here by CRPG Addict

To me, there's nothing more satisfying than settling into an CRPG with a cold soda at my side and a fresh sheet of graph paper in front of me. When a man is tired of mapping, he is tired of CRPGs.

Even if you don't feel the same way that I do, you have to pretend you do to understand how badly Level 4 abuses the inveterate mapper. The level isn't just hard to map; it sets out to destroy the player's very love of mapping, his very faith in maps as a tool.

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I Tried to Profit at an Arcade by Drew Gooden

Anyone who's exchanged arcade tickets for prizes has dreamed of finding an exploit. Is there an arcade game with a ticket/token ratio high enough to make the game self-sustaining? The answer... will probably not surprise you... but was very fun to watch.

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Uncle John from Jamaica by the Vengaboys

The other day, a Vengaboys track came up during shuffle play, and I realized how weird it is that the Vengaboys album in my music library doesn't have either of the Vengaboys songs I know best: We Like To Party (Vengabus) and Boom Boom Boom Boom. Those are both from their first album, and I only have their second, The Platinum Album.

It still has some slappers and boppers on it, though. I was looking up some of the tracks for potentially linking here, and discovered they¹ released a music video for one of the songs from that album last month. It doesn't look like a video they made in 2000 and just recently uploaded, either. It's in 1080P and the style looks very modern (a very modern-looking take on a retro animated style.) My music player is totally offline, so it wasn't some creepy algorithmic synergy, just a cool coincidence.

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Good Morning! by cnnmon

"good morning!" is a short morning routine simulator about starting your day right. play through a few colorful minigames and puzzles until you're ready to take on the day.

'Til next time... keep watching the skis 🦝

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1. And by "they" I mean the record label trying to squeeze a little bit more revenue out of their IP, I doubt any of the actual band members had anything to do with it.↩