Remi Cayouette

[Art of Battletech & Mechwarrior @ArtofBattletech]

I'm giving away 2 free Steam keys of @MW5Mercs Chaos Reign to celebrate Pride Month - to participate, simply retweet this tweet and I'll draw winners on Thursday in time for the Steam Summer Sale

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Alley Cat feels exactly like some programmer had a wild late-night coding session on too much coffee (or whatever they had back then) and just let the surreal vibes flow.

That limited 4-color palette (black, cyan/magenta, white) turns the whole thing into an LSD fever dream. Add to that the squeaky PC speaker sound and you got yourself a game!

The gameplay loop itself is unhinged in the best way: You're Freddy the alley cat, jumping bins, dodging dogs, climbing fences, then breaking into people's apartments to knock over vases, eat fish, and court Felicia while Cupid shoots arrows at you. It's like the developer (Bill Williams, ) said why not, went full on "Frogger + dating sim + slapstick cartoon?" and then just shipped it. And serioulsy, why not?

It's charming as hell and oddly hypnotic. I mean just look at those footprints on the floor, what a cute little detail.

[Bitmap Books @bitmap_books]

Game Boy: The Box Art Collection

From Batman to Bomber Man, Zelda to ZOOP, the Game Boy boasted every type of genre. Remind yourself of the games you owned, and discover some you’ve never heard of, in Game Boy: The Box
Art Collection.

Out now: https://t.co/aLAm4oc5zB

#bitmapbooks #books #retrogaming #gaming #gameboy

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@NordVPN Thank you for the reply. Is the download server https://t.co/lNpp2Xr1DT? That’s the download url I received from the support person I reached through your site

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

While developing Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984), Will Wright built a map/level editor for the islands and factories. He discovered he had much more fun creating and tinkering with the maps than actually playing the helicopter shooter.

That experience directly inspired him to make Sim City (1989). The map editor in Raid on Bungeling Bay became the foundation for the city-building simulation that evolved into Sim City.

Here's a quote from an old interview: "To create this game I had to draw all these islands that the helicopter would go bomb... Instead, I wrote a separate program, a little utility, that would let me go around and build these islands real quick. I also wrote some code that could automatically put roads on the islands... Eventually I finished the shoot-’em-up game part, but for some reason I kept going back to the darn thing and making the building utilities more and more fancy."

Thank you, Bungeling Bay map editor! You were the origin of gaming history!

[arborealkey @arborealkey]

When your life is falling apart but the project is due tonight

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@arborealkey Ah, c’est une joli histoire pour lui!

[Jack Prandelli @jackprandelli]

Norway and the UK drilled the same North Sea.

🇳🇴Norway got $2 trillion.
🇬🇧The UK got tax cuts.

Same basin,Same era.... Completely different outcomes.

Norway captured $30 per barrel in government revenue. The UK captured $11.

That gap, compounded over 50 years of production, is the entire difference.

Norway's model was simple: tax heavily (78% marginal rate), take direct equity stakes in fields via the SDFI, own part of Equinor, and put everything surplus into a fund invested abroad.

The Government Pension Fund Global now holds over $2 trillion in assets.
That's $390,000 per Norwegian citizen about 1.5% of all listed equities on earth.

The fiscal rule: only spend the 3% annual real return. Never touch the principal.

The UK started producing earlier, at lower prices, with a lower tax rate (40%) and no saving mechanism.

North Sea revenues flowed straight into the general budget.

Economists estimate the UK missed out on roughly £400 billion compared to a Norwegian style regime.

The windfall largely financed tax cuts in the 1980s rather than a fund.

Where things stand in 2026?

Norway's petroleum sector will generate $63 bn in net cash flow this year alone feeding a fund already large enough to cover 10-15% of the national budget from returns alone.

The UK is a net energy importer.
Since 2021 it has paid countries like Norway more than £100 billion for gas.

One country treated oil as a finite resource to convert into permanent financial wealth.

The other treated it as income.

image source:eia

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@randomcodingdud Gladly

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

King's Quest (1984) was my gateway drug into adventure games. It was the one that got me hooked on the genre.

To all you adventure game fans out there - what was your first love, the fantastic world that you first stepped into, the one that started it all?

As for Sierra games, I know some people criticize them for being too unforgiving - you could die in an instant or run into a dead-end situation if you missed an item or did something in the wrong order, forcing you to restart from the beginning. Personally, I never minded it. If anything, it made finally figuring things out and advancing to the next screen feel genuinely rewarding. The sense of accomplishment was real.

From today's perspective, the text parser looks incredibly crude, but back then it felt like pure magic. It was the most "open world" experience I could imagine at the time, because you could actually "talk" to the game. That blew my mind.

After King's Quest, I moved on to Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Police Quest, and kept playing Sierra games well into the early 90s. Eventually, LucasArts seemed to pull ahead with their style, and I found myself drawn more to their games. But for many, many years, Sierra was undisputed king.

I'll never forget the first time I saw King's Quest on my friend’s PC (PC speaker sound and all, yikes). I didn’t want to leave. We played the absolute crap out of it, and figuring it out together was half the fun. No Google, no walkthroughs in magazines - just pure trial, error, and stubborn determination. And somehow, we did it.

We even tried the most obscure things, seeing how far we could push (can you get up that tree, can you squeeze through that path, what happens if you walk on that railing...?) just out of curiosity.

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@exQUIZitely I enjoyed Sim Farm back in the day! I recently tried to go back and enjoy it again but it felt quite dated, and the interface felt like an obstacle. I wasn’t enjoying the re-experience so I stopped after maybe an hour

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@TheMedievalNerd Truly tragic, my condolences for your loss

[Remi Cayouette @RemiCay]

@exQUIZitely Just like modern games, they run the gamut of great to garbage. Fair to grant some have not aged well, but many that were great still are

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Sleep does to your brain what defrag did to hard drives. If you think this is just a silly joke, think again.

1990s defrag tools took scattered file fragments on a hard drive and reorganized them into contiguous blocks. This improved speed, efficiency, freed space, and prevented slowdowns from "clutter".

Dreams/sleep (especially REM and slow-wave stages) appear to do something similar for the brain:

It consolidates and reorganizes memories - replaying, integrating, and linking old and new experiences.

It also deletes irrelevant connections - clearing "mental clutter" so important info stands out.

And finally, it optimizes your mental storage by strengthening useful neural pathways and discarding noise, making recall more efficient the next day.

This "offline processing" during sleep helps the brain run smoother, much like a defragged drive.

Next time you are doom-scrolling or wondering if you should watch another Netflix show after midnight, think again. Defrag your brain, get some sleep. Your "hard drive" will be better for it.

[Erik Solheim @ErikSolheim]

This is the hell of plastic pollution.

The photo shows Rio Motagua in Guatemala. It’s a horrible scene. There are many similar places across the globe.

But the good news is that at the end of this year the beaches of Guatemala will come back to old splendor - white sands, blue oceans, green vegetation.

This is thanks to The Ocean Cleanup. Their fantastic river interceptors today pick up 2 - 5 % of all plastics moving into our Ocean.

Nearly all plastics coming into the Ocean originate in 1000 rivers. Ocean Cleanup is ready to vastly expand its operations. Nearly all of these rivers are in middle income countries. The rich have effective garbage collection. The poorest cannot afford much plastic.

I had a wonderful conversation with Boyan Slat the founding father of Ocean Cleanup today. “This is the cheapest global problem to solve”, he said. He needs more investors - companies, philanthropy or governments. Can anyone please come forward!

More: https://t.co/u07JfvhZxh

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

In case you're wondering if you're getting old...

These 12 games were released closer to the end of World War II than to today.

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

80 years ago on this day Sony was founded (May 7, 1946). They have come a long way, and I bet that 99% of all people will associate them with TVs, HiFi Systems, and the PlayStation.

Their first product was a rice cooker. From humble beginnings to global brand…

[exQUIZitely 🕹️ @exQUIZitely]

Did you patrol the streets of Lytton, California?

Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (1987, Sierra On-Line) was another one in the long line of excellent Sierra adventures - this time designed by former California Highway Patrol officer Jim Walls.

You take on the role of Sonny Bonds, a cop in the crime-ridden town of Lytton, California. The story begins with routine patrol duties: attending briefings, issuing speeding tickets, handling drunk drivers, breaking up bar fights with bikers, and investigating a fatal car crash that turns out to be a drug-related murder... and sometimes you have time to pull over a pretty lady (one that could easily make a cameo appearance in the Larry games...) just to piss her off.

Eventually, Sonny goes from ordinary traffic duty to heavy narcotics, as he pursues the ruthless drug kingpin known as the Death Angel (Jessie Bains).

Emphasizing "realistic" police procedures (within the limitations of a game, of course), evidence handling, and protocol over arcade action, the game had a much more serious vibe than other Sierra adventures. Its gritty authenticity and in a way also educational tone made it a standout classic in their lineup.

I liked it a lot (still liked Space Quest a little more), and it showed that Sierra was more than just feel good comedy and slapstick humor.