The Useless Facts Thread

[BIL]

Concerning the fine lore of shmups featuring the horsehead nebula, I know of two instances:

• The shorter bonus stages in Super Aleste/Space Megaforce:



• Stage 5 in the first Rayxanber (and what a splendid specimen it is!):



Do you know of more exemplars?

Epic Megagames' (as they were then known) Kiloblaster for DOS.



I remember it as a competent Galaga-esque, but the big selling point was its ray-traced backgrounds. It did look kinda nice at the time, the horsehead BG really stuck out in memory. Mad props to DOS Games Archive, who regularly help me recover these childhood snatches of shareware.

[6t8k]

Yo straight up photo, leaving little room for stylistic nuance, nevertheless counts of course, nice.

Setting aside the occasional solar system planet perhaps, there's no celestial body more iconic as an inspiration for space backgrounds than that animalized cloud of matter!

[kitten]

ack, this is killing me - something i played definitely had a prominent featuring of the horsehead nebula, but i can't remember what it was. a puzzle game background, maybe? i really can't remember, this memory is super fragmented.

[6t8k]

Not a shmup, but here's another exquisite, albeit small one. Game's Super Widget, never played that one:



kitten: I recalled TGM3 and Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle had some nice space-themed backdrops. Had a quick look, but no horsehead, alas :<

[copy-paster]

Toshiaki Takatori, one of Gradius II programmer said they made Gradius II graphically advanced so no home ports would exist, but they get rekt by Umechan team for their Famicom port.

They did it again with Xexex this time and voila they won! Graphically and presentation way too ahead for a 1991 game, this is where 32 bit were still in development and 16 bit reached it's peak. Literally no home ports of Xexex exist until 16 years later via PSP Salamander Portable.

[Jonny2x4]

Toshiaki Takatori, one of Gradius II programmer said they made Gradius II graphically advanced so no home ports would exist, but they get rekt by Umechan team for their Famicom port.

Gradius II is really more of an arrange ishoku than a a straight port. Then again, the same could be said of all AC-to-FC ports from the late 80's and 90's.

They did it again with Xexex this time and voila they won! Graphically and presentation way too ahead for a 1991 game, this is where 32 bit were still in development and 16 bit reached it's peak. Literally no home ports of Xexex exist until 16 years later via PSP Salamander Portable.

The first level of XEXEX was reproduced in Ganbare Goemon 2 on the Super Famicom though.

[copy-paster]

The first level of XEXEX was reproduced in Ganbare Goemon 2 on the Super Famicom though.

I believe it was only the stage 2, the one with huge colorful atoms, then again that stage is easy to replicate in SFC. I'm pretty sure SFC could handle Xexex with no problem at the cost of lo-fi graphics and imperfect scaling effect, perhaps like how Axelay looks.

[Stormwatch]

Back in the 1960s, the IBM 1401 was deemed a "portable computer" because a complete working setup was small enough to be moved around by truck.


source

[Stormwatch]

More Londoners may have been killed by pollution in 1952 than by V2 rockets during WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[guigui]

Back in the 1960s, the IBM 1401 was deemed a "portable computer" because a complete working setup was small enough to be moved around by truck.

Ahah, nice one. Reminds me of another useless fact : my grandpa used to work on those kind of computers in the 60's too, and he completely stopped following computers evolution when he quit work in the early 80's.
Early 2000's, I had this very conversation with him :
- I bought a new computer, it has 8 MB of RAM memory.
- MB, what is that ?
- Megabytes, that is a million of bytes.
- Oh I see, so you have 8 million bytes of memories to store your datas ? But what are you gonna do with all that ? No one can use that much memory.
- No this is not ROM memory to store data, this is RAM memory, the one used to make the computation.
- What are you telling me ?!?
- I say I have 8 millions of bytes of memories dedicated to computation in my new computer.
- Shut up, you dont know nothing about computers.

[BIL]

Harvey Weinstein has a tiny, disease-ravaged pen0r!



Now, usefully, here is how you can avoid Fournier's Gangrene! It tends to strike the elderly, diabetic, or otherwise immuno-compromised, but this strapping 29y/o lad beat his wiener to a pulp while using shampoo as lube (oh dear sweet Jesus ), and was stricken!


https://www.hindawi.com/journals/criem/2012/154025/
(IMAGES OF DISEASED PENOR & NUTSACK, MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY)

Eat right and take care of your junk, and for the love of fuck, don't beat your meat raw!

[ED-057]

Z-Gundam theme singer Hiroko Moriguchi had her own arcade game https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=morig ... il&id=1673

[Stormwatch]

The oldest system that MESS can emulate is the SSEM computer.

[BIL]

In Pine Barrens, s3.11 of The Sopranos, James Gandolfini asked Stephen R. Schirippa to surprise him when Bobby arrives in full Elmer Fudd gear, as unlike his character, Gandolfini had already seen him in the getup. Schirippa obliged by walking into shot wielding a fucking massive dildo, almost corpsing Uncle Junior's Dom Chianese with the memorably gigantic false dong. src

[heatimusZ4]

Newgrounds' 2005 legendary techno musician "Clayton Tremmel" aka Dimrain47 have finally made a return after 7 years of long hiatus since 2012, creator of many classic tracks such as "At the speed of Light", "Surface", "Operation: Evolution", "Jetstream!", "Forsaken Neon" and many more, which used in many popular flash games back then and indie mobile games aswell.
only those who heard his music a while back knows how awesome his masterpieces really are! >:

[Xer Xian]

Pigs can play video games with their snouts

"Still, pigs are no match for humans when playing games"

I say let them have at go at muchi muchi pork and we'll see about that

[WelshMegalodon]

Gradius II is really more of an arrange ishoku than a a straight port. Then again, the same could be said of all AC-to-FC ports from the late 80's and 90's.

Wasn't Juju Densetsu on the Famicom a mostly straight port? The same could be said for Sunsoft's Sega conversions.

EDIT: Just realized I was replying to a post from over six months ago.

[ED-057]

Crowdfunding campaign up on Makuake to resurrect Phantasm Soldier Valis for Switch
https://www.makuake.com/project/valis/
(goal already met)

[Stormwatch]

The famous "understand the concept of love" line from the Jet Set Radio Future theme is sampled from a 1968 speech by black power activist Stokely Carmichael. In that specific part, he's explaining why Israel is stolen land and the movement should support the Palestinians.

Audio, skip to 57:00: https://archive.org/details/pra-BB1708
Transcript: https://www.abibitumi.com/community/mil ... ure-stoke/

[BrainΦΠΦTemple]

penguins crAp turds out of their assholes

[Stormwatch]

The longest marathon time record was set by Japanese runner Shizo Kanakuri. In the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, he fell unconscious midway through the race; embarassed, he returned to Japan without notifying the race officials, and was considered legally missing in Sweden. In 1967, he was given the chance to return and complete the 40km race, clocking at 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds -- an average speed of 8.35 centimeters per hour.

[dlxmax]

Useless fact: any shmup is better than watching these spectatorless Olympic games!