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Nick Robinson takes an entertaining look back at Driver: San Fransico – including a 3 minute diversion into paying for a game with a Subway giftcard, and discussion around the de-listing of the game.
You can sign the petition to bring some visibility to the desire to have it re-listed on digital storefronts here.
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While most train stations alert passengers with basic dings and dongs, metro riders in Japan are treated to uniquely crafted melodies. Minoru Mukaiya is the mastermind behind these jingles—he’s made around 200 distinct chimes for over 110 stations. For Minoru, there’s no greater joy than bringing a little bit of music to millions across Japan every day.
Great Big Story
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This game was unfortunately canceled, but not before the developer got Giant Ant on board to create this gorgeous trailer.
The problem is: all this information came from hobos, a group that took pride in their elusiveness and embellished storytelling. The truth is, there really isn’t any evidence that these signs were as widely used as the literature suggests.
Vox
Related #longread: Twilight Of The Hobos (Buzzfeed):
Minnesota Jim, meanwhile, seems a little confused by the proceedings. His victory seemed, at least in part, based on his age. At 83, he’s one of the few surviving bridgers — hoboes that rode on both steam- and diesel-powered trains during their time — and winning seemed to be a kind of lifetime achievement award. But he cautiously told the local paper that kids today shouldn’t ride the rails. “The trains show no mercy.”
Buzzfeed
Ear Worm is an excellent series, but this episode in particular is just bonkers good.
Learn about how the “ORCH2/ORCH5” stab became so popular by way of a modern music history lesson.
1984 Dave Letterman losing his shit watching someone program a sequencer with a light-pen on a CRT display? I’m in.
In the midst of announcing a massive drop of backwards compatible and enhanced games, Microsoft released a 500MB update to Red Dead Redemption enabling 4K on the world’s most powerful console.
This. Is. Fucking. Amazing.
Most observers reckoned 4K for RDR would never come due to the engineering of the game – many thought the resolution was baked-in for performance reasons. But it seems the Back Compat team at Microsoft are wizards indeed.
So how does it look?
Stunning.
I mean, it’s ridiculous how good it looks. The 360 version (which is also what ran on the initial Back Compat version) was noticeably blurry and shimmery, especially in motion. It still looked great though, and you did get the impression that R* had put a lot more under the hood than the hardware was capable of displaying. And now we know that’s the case.
The result is that Read Dead Redemption is now – again – a joy to play.
More Red Dead:
Finding John Marsden – A wonderful short doc from Polygon about Rob Weithoff, the voice of John Marsden
In depth review (thinreaper) – One of the best game reviews/critiques I’ve ever invested an hour and a half in
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A Sabotage version of every new trailer, please.
Albright said the results suggest that the conspiracy genre is embedded so deeply into YouTube’s video culture that it could be nearly impossible to eradicate.
“It’s already tipped in favor of the conspiracists, I think,” Albright told BuzzFeed News. “There are a handful of debunking videos in the data. They can’t make up for the thousands of videos with false claims and rumors.”
Albright also suggested that the proliferation of these videos makes it more attractive for others to create this content.
To anyone who dabbles in occasional conspiracy-theory deep dives on YouTube, this rings true. There is an absolute avalanche of dipshit conspiracies on YouTube, and most people lack the mental dexterity to tell that a video is playing loose with the facts – especially if it meshes nicely with their existing worldview.
Less common is the conspiracy parody. The Outline absolutely nailed it with this gem:
I’ve often thought a conspiracy channel would be an easy way to make some quick beer money, but it seems I’m much too late to the game.
Or am I?
Yes, I am.
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10 minutes of fire. Not a single pause. Dude is outrageous.
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I’ll still play this when it, maybe, perhaps, eventually drops on Xbone.
Probably.