Horror Report

Day: April 15, 2017

  • WIRED magazines opines: Discontinuing the NES Classic Is a Classic Nintendo Mistake

    WIRED magazines opines: Discontinuing the NES Classic Is a Classic Nintendo Mistake

    WIRED magazines opines: Discontinuing the NES Classic Is a Classic Nintendo Mistake:

    All of this written by Julie Muncy at WIRED:

    Considering the dizzying popularity of the NES Classic—Nintendo reported in January that they had sold 1.5 million units—it’s difficult to find the logic in ending production. The product’s entire brief life seems, in hindsight, to have been a rolling disaster: Product shortages popped up almost immediately upon release in November, and even now, four months after the holiday season is over, Nintendo still hasn’t managed to overcome the scarcity issues. Repeatedly, Nintendo has stated that they were surprised by the high demand for the micro console and their supply chains struggled to product enough units to accommodate it.

    It shouldn’t have surprised the company, though—and the fact that it did is awfully telling. Preloaded with 30 original NES games, the Classic offered an entire generation of Nintendo fans an easy way to play games that they hadn’t spent time with in years. It’s a different, broader audience than the type likely to buy a dedicated Nintendo home console like the Wii U or Switch, and it hit all the right buttons at a time when the availability of classic Nintendo products was at an all-time low.

    This points to an ongoing problem that has plagued the company for years: Nintendo doesn’t seem to understand, or be interested in, the ongoing interest and affection people have for their old games. People, whether they consider themselves gamers or not, want to play Mario games, want to remember what it was like to catch Pikachu for the first time, want to feel the thrill of getting the Master Sword in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and videogames in general are excellent at evoking it.

    And I couldn’t agree more.

     

  • This photographer chronicles Pennsylvania’s forgotten industrial towns and people

    This photographer chronicles Pennsylvania’s forgotten industrial towns and people

    This photographer chronicles Pennsylvania’s forgotten industrial towns and people:

    THIS IS A GREAT ARTICLE..

    Photographer Niko J. Kallianiotis chronicles Pennsylvania’s forgotten coal towns and people. After the presidential election, his work took on special resonance.

    A sampling of some photos …


     

  • The Easter Saturday conundrum: Lights Out. Then on.

    The Easter Saturday conundrum: Lights Out. Then on.

    A few days ago the light on the computer desk blew. My wife was sitting writing a check out for a bill.. no better time for a light to fade away than when you’re preparing to watch hard earned cash float down the river of bank fees and bill collection. Nonetheless, given the current state of busy affairs for my family, I have not been able to even remember to get to the store to pick up more light bulbs.. It was on my ‘thangs’ to do list.

    …and now it’s not.

    Because this morning, only moments ago as I write this post, the light actually came back on by itself. Really, it did.  A miracle bulb! Burns out! And re-flares itself!

    An Easter Saturday mystery.

    I am not lying, the light literally rejuvenated itself while my son was playing Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 (I call it Vegetables vs Corpses to annoy him) .. while I Was laughing about my joke of a name, and also secretly panicking because our dryer suddenly stopped working this weekend, the light literally resurrected itself from the dead.

    And while I am not trying to say this is a message from God or a spirit, there is some form of high strangeness that a light, dead, lights up again. Rising from the dead. And what makes this all the more weird: It happened three days after the light burned out…..

    Of course, since it is the modern world, the first thing I did was search Google. And found this interesting REDDIT post in the Glitch in the Matrix.. Someone with logic said this:

    There may be a logical explanation. Inside a light bulb is a filament: a thin metal wire, coiled up like a spring. Electricity causes the filament to heat up and glow. After many heating/cooling cycles, the filament may break and the light is “burned out”.

    However, the little metal spring may only be broken in one spot and could still be bouncing around inside the lightbulb. Sometimes, (due to heating, cooling, or vibration), the little spring will reconnect to the place it broke off from and you’ll get a little more life out of the bulb before it finally burns out for good.

    Logic is necessary during moments of mystery.
    And the light goes on.