Haha so I’m only familiar with WKUK by title, so I’ll have to check it out. :p

what people do when burdened by unwanted knowledge,

I like this point a lot. A friend of mine once told me something like: horror as a genre is easily defined as “What happens to those who look?”

I loved that quote.

Forbidden knowledge is so scary. It’s like reading spoilers. Just a glance, and it’s in your mind. It’s a part of you. How do you cope? You can’t just drop it like some cursed object or outrun it like some monster.

We want to know lots of things, I know I always love to learn…but the scariest things are those you don’t want to know… But how can you know what these are? You don’t know what you don’t know yet…

Pardon my ramble. Midnight contemplative brain kicked in. 😂

… Yeah I need to watch Pandorum again haha. Introduce some new people to it. :D

Lol I don’t miss that at all either! Starting up a game was some buffet-pick of:

• NVIDIA - the way it’s meant to be played.

• ATI

• HAVOK engine.

• F-Mod

• BINK video

• EA GAMES - (challenge everything)

• Ubisoft purple tunnel video clip

• “This game might cause seizures BTW ask ur doctor idk.”

• “Graffiti is art but it’s a crime we didn’t make you do it.” (JSRF lol)

• NOW LOADING. . . . . . . . .

• FINALLY. Start menu.

And I remember clicking around and hitting ESC or the controller buttons in vain just out of sheer wishfulness. XD

This reminds me of my X-BOX for real. Absolutely amazing console. (I still miss those “Duke” controllers).

But the most common disc reader was terrible. Over time games would just stop reading. Halo: Combat Evolved, I kid-you-not, would start to load…and then load BACKWARDS, usually (but not always!) resulting in “Problems reading disc.”

Me and my co-op friend would be cheering it on like it was going for a touchdown LOL.

Crimson Skies too, I remember. I took great care of my discs but I guess the drive would just scuff them up over time.

Hnnnnnngggggg. That mental image is physically painful. Lol

This reminds me of the story behind CD Projekt RED getting started in Poland. The only way for them to bring games to their community was basically bootlegging them, so that’s where they began.

That’s rough. :(

THIS. 100% THIS.

Simple rule for discs: always touch the edges, never the surfaces! It’s…it’s not that hard. I never had PSX disc read problems.

Not throwing shade at the kids who did because of shoddy lasers or something, of course. :)

(I did have OG Xbox disc read problems… because those crappy Thompson drives shredded discs over time)

Seeing people hold the surfaces of discs with their snack-greased fingers would infuriate me. Same with seeing them put label-up on the dusty VCR / cable box / dvd player rather than back in the case to switch games.

Nowadays it seems even more common because people don’t seem to know how discs work.

On that note, It’s the same thing with RAM. Watching tech review channels where they’re just pinch-holding RAM sticks or fanning them out like playing cards makes me twitch.

Barbarian was wild. I had no idea what I was in for, my cousin just said “Check this one out” last Halloween. That movie had so many good moments. The sheer tonal whiplash once the tapemeasure gets broken out. 😂 And we were all in the living room screaming “That would TOTALLY HAPPEN TOO!”

I love when scary movies know how to manage and pace their tone. They can be scary without drowning the viewer in so much grimdark it becomes a comedy accidentally.

That’s so crazy cool that of all those movies I listed, I meet a Pandorum fan! It’s been ages since I’ve seen it, but it left an impression. I really liked your FanTheories writeup! But also I should really give it another watch with my matured brain and see what I missed the last couple times. I almost kinda like how…the plot is REALLY grim, but only when you really connect all the breadcrumbs.

The movie itself I remember being rather straightforward and exciting, (even with that Act 2 expo-dump), where the plot doesn’t completely screw you up and abandon all hope unless you really start analyzing it lol.

That’s why I liken it to Deadspace…That’s a grim and awful world to inhabit…but wow is it still such a WILD ride that I’m willing to do it again.

Dammit I had like 3 binders full of those things. I tried to keep VERY careful track of them. I didn’t even know how to play the game, I was just caught up in the collecto-hype as a kid like everyone else, so everything was in perfect condition.

I swear I had at least an old-school Charizard or two. OG chubby Pikachu. Pokemon the Movie MewTwo (and Mew?), I had holographic Japanese cards too.

Gone. After like 3 or 4 chaotic moves around the country. I have no idea where they could possibly be anymore. I know I would have kept good track of them. It’s something that itches at my brain REALLY bad these days.

I know it’s all just a BS speculator hype anymore but seriously I could’ve probably gotten out of debt with those binders…

I legit thought it was making the cursor “closer” because windows were layered on top of each other and it was doing weird depth scaling or something LOL.

Alright I can think of a few that strangely haven’t been mentioned yet!

• Barbarian - Woman checks in to an AirBnB. But beneath it lies a horrible secret. This one’s pretty disturbing in subject matter, actually. But it’s solidly eery.

• Tremors - It’s bright daylight! In a small desert town! What’s so spooky about that? Vibration-sensitive, man-eating sandworms maybe. This movie is just solidly fun all around. Legendary B-movie monster film.

• The Descent - Always thought caves were creepy? Want to experience claustrophobia from the safety of your own home? Wanna see how an all-woman horror film cast is done correctly? This one’s a treat.

• Dog Soldiers - The Scottish Highlands are gorgeous for a hike. Less appealing though if you’re a squad of British soldiers doing a training exercise in a monster movie. Features reasonably smart cast of soldiers doing their best, but cleverly using the training scenario premise to take away their live ammo so they can’t just shoot away their problems. Also, I remember it being very “B movie” in a good way. A well-placed cheesy joke or two had me laughing out loud without it being Marvel-grade snark, but it was still tense and exciting.

• Pandorum - Guy wakes up from hypersleep on a giant ship where things have gone horribly wrong. His only other awake crewmate is uh…a bit off, maybe? This one feels VERY Deadspace. If you like “Creepy massive cathedral-like dungeon ships” flavored sci-fi horror, this one’s pretty good. I’d say maybe much tamer than Event Horizon, but clearly took some inspiration there.

• 30 Days of Night - You know how in Alaska they get really long periods where the sun is just gone? You know how certain classic horror antagonists hate sunlight? Uh oh.

• Overlord - A World War 2 horror film. I mean, WWII was full of horror but…like… unbelievable horror. No, like, pulpy mad scientist supervillains and secret experiments horror–No, like stuff that DIDN’T actually happen. It’s the closest to a Wolfenstein movie as we’re gonna get. (And very “Weird Wars 2” if you’ve played a good Savage Worlds TTRPG or two)

• Resident Evil - I liked maybe two or three sequels too, before it got utterly ridiculous to farm cash, but the original is always cited as a horror classic, even among people who aren’t fans of the games. (Almost entirely unrelated characters and plot.)

Mood, man.

…or wait, is that a title? Lol

True that. I loved how the sci-fi made it seem so fascinating to explore. The environment was so cool!

But also there was constant tension in anticipation of what they’d find next, and you’re asking yourself whether you’d just nope right out if you could.

Lmao, we have a small pet snake now, and when she curls around my neck sometimes I do a bit where I mime pressing against glass and hoarsely say “Releeeasse meee”

It gets a laugh.

Freaking love that movie lol

“Well uh, howdy do, Officer! We’ve had a doozy of a day!”

To this day, in response to something awful / revolting I like to shout “Childs, get the flamethrower!!!”

Yeah, that one screwed me up for a week keeping the lights bright in the house LOL.

Sure I’m a rational adult but I sure do hate that gimmick where “If you know about / think about the thing, you’re on its radar now.” Eeesh! All I did was watch a movie!

Haha I still have to try this one some time, but my first thought is always “Ah, Snow Piercer but an elevator.” :p

I vividly remember the night we turned out the lights to try this one out. That was one of the very few horror movies that had me so freaked out and unsettled but also gripped me so much I couldn’t wait to see what happened.

What a wild ride.

It wasn’t contrived or anything, everyone felt real.

Once upon a time they innovated and released games that set a new level for the industry.

For real: Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, Far Cry, Rayman, XIII, the Tom Clancy games, Assassin’s Creed (before it became a yearly by the numbers franchise)… There was a time when they were putting out some “riskier” titles that never seemed to just follow trends.

Splinter Cell was absolutely mind-blowing when it first came out. I HAD TO have that game.

Particularly I loved watching the making-of videos because they put so much love into their craft! There was a cheesy “interview with Sam Fisher” (voiced by legendary Michael Ironside) where they described their decision to cast an older, more experienced character for believability rather than some young cool kid. Or using keyframed animation for everything because it allowed more artistic freedom than just mocapping it all.

Assassin’s Creed’s devs talked about how they designed the controls to feel intuitive, where they tried to map the face buttons implicitly to parts of the body.

People CARED about this stuff!!

I used to think Ubisoft was a mark of quality and one of my favorite games companies. But now…people would call me INSANE if I still held that opinion! How far they’ve fallen.

(I’m glad people seem to enjoy Rainbow Six Siege but I’m forever mad that it means we’ll likely never see another real R6 title again, and that its Fortnite-esque nature has all but pushed out collective knowledge of the previous titles.)

FromSoft could’ve fallen down that rabbit hole as well, but they keep changing things up in their soulslike games.

And then on top of that they were like “Hey you guys still like Armored Core, right?” and continued blowing everyone’s minds. :p Soulslikes might not always be my cup of tea but I’ve got a lot of respect for Fromsoft.