Blaze's UberFeed

I know this might be late to ask but what are your thoughts on Back 4 Blood (if you ever heard of it)? And if its the truly good coop game like what the previous Left 4 Dead did?

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

I dunno, Turtle Rock... well, actually, most developers seem to be struggling to replicate the secret sauce that made Left 4 Dead so good.

For Back 4 Blood, the killer for my interest was not having a proper Versus Mode. My friends and I played Left 4 Dead every night for like six or seven years straight. And that was exclusively in Versus Mode -- specifically, Realism Versus Mode.

Back 4 Blood has "swarm mode", whatever that is, but the fact that they swore to never do campaign mode versus means that game is dead to me.

It also just didn't seem to have the right characters. Both Left 4 Dead games have INCREDIBLY strong characters, a really great mix of personalities that are funny and charming and weird. I never saw anyone go to bat for Back 4 Blood's characters the same way they did Bill, Zoey, Ellis or Coach.

A lot of Steam reviews say that Back 4 Blood being compared to Left 4 Dead was just a marketing gimmick and that it's unfair to what Back 4 Blood is trying to do, but man, it's right there in the name, you know? If they didn't want comparisons, commit more to being different. This half step stuff clearly didn't do them any favors.

Hey, @tumblr? You feeling okay there, buddy?

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

Hey, @tumblr? You feeling okay there, buddy?

I can actually audibly hear my CPU fan spin up and then spin down when I do this.

Have any thoughts on Billie Bust-Up?

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

This ask is from 2021 and I thought for sure Billie Bust Up came out by now. Right?

Nope! But I know how it goes. No shade intended.

I actually forgot this was a musical game. Honestly, I'm not sure I ever looked super close at the game before now. This looks neat! Not sure there's much else to say, given there's only two videos on the steam page, but at least they still seem to be providing semi-regular developer update logs.

Tossing it on my wishlist for sure.

We need to port Mario Kart DS deluxe to Switch. More hype than both Mario Kart 9 and Mario Kart 8 Dlc combined!

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

I have such a love/hate with Mario Kart DS. I think it's probably the Mario Kart I put the most time into, but between Mario Kart DS and Wii, those games feel like two parts of a specific generation of Mario Kart where the party game chaos is a little too extreme. DS is better about it than Wii for sure, but DS also had snaking, and people got way too psychotic with that.

So I love Mario Kart DS, but I also hate it with a passion.

Your point about how easily mistakes can crash a studio reminds me of what Miyamoto said to Itoi during a new recruit seminar, roughly speaking how if employees go to work with the focus on making a big hit Nintendo can continue surviving. (Even if he did

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

Yes, and Nintendo in particular has always gone out of its way to make steady, even releases. If I remember right, part of the Gigaleak was tons of games getting released that were effectively finished and ready to ship on the NES, but due to production timelines and scheduling, by the time they were ready to be shipped to stores by Nintendo, the publishers that commissioned those cartridges had gone out of business. Nintendo wanted a steady drip feed of releases.

Similarly, before Ubisoft struck gold with Assassin's Creed, they used to constantly complain about poor sales of their big holiday hits -- generally because they had a nasty habit of releasing games like Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil the same week as whatever the most anticipated game was that year. They were constantly getting steamrolled thanks to poor scheduling on their part.

Nailing a good release date is pretty important to being successful.

The 150 Club | Fortnite

2026-04-24T06:54:01Z

Why do you think in the early 2010s, there was a lot more Mario than there usually is? Mainline wise, but also spin off wise. I mean. 2011 you had Mario 3D Land, 2021 had both NSMB2 AND NSMBU, 2013 had 3D World, and 2014 had Mario Kart 8. I feel like Nint

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

The Wii U and to a lesser extent the 3DS felt to me like Nintendo trying to regain some of the hardcore market again. So you saw a Nintendo that was decidedly less experimental for a lot of it. You had games like Game & Wario, or Nintendoland, but like...

This was the era where Nintendo got really into competitive multiplayer with Splatoon. Mario Kart 8 is maybe the most hardcore and least chaotic party game it ever was. 3D Land and especially 3D World were less big weird gambles on strange new ideas and more focused attempts at bringing Classic Mario sensibilities into 3D.

Nintendo put out a lot of Mario games because that was traditionally their guy. They established this weird blue ocean thing with the Wii where they conquered uncharted waters, now they're coming home, so here's a bunch of relatively normal Mario games. They were trying to preach to the choir.

I Have Complicated Thoughts About Mother 3 (Podcast)

2026-04-24T06:54:00Z

I know you haven’t had time for anime these days but if I could reccomend one show to watch it would be Baccano. Its basically Snatch with supernatural elements. You should also watch it in Japanese and English too

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

I have at least heard of Baccano. But I'll be honest with you, when you say "Snatch", my first thought is the Space Ghost episode. It's actually my favorite Space Ghost episode.

I've, uh, never actually seen the movie. But hey, it's got Brad Pitt in it. I like Brad Pitt.

Do you think it would be possible to get a download link to the moon child song that you repaired? A high quality format like flac would be great

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

I do not deal in FLACs, unfortunately.

Title ThemeMoon Child (Amiga, Unreleased)

Assuming Tumblr doesn't recompress this, this should be a 320kbps MP3. You can very likely point something like Cobalt.tools at it. Not really sure where else to put files for hosting these days.

I don’t necessarily agree about the pixel art platformers being out of vogue statement if games like Antonblast, Pizza Tower, and Rubato have seemed to garner decent success. Have you considered maybe finding some friends who are capable of contributing a

2026-04-24T19:20:37Z

I would describe Rubato as kind of "mixed media." I've only played the demo on Switch but there's scenes that use polygons and pre-rendered sprites and mode 7.

But also you aren't wrong, but I'm describing something a little different, too. There was absolutely an era where 2D platformers were everywhere. And now the nostalgic era is shifting.

ALT

"NES-era" became

ALT

"SNES & Genesis era"

And now if you really pay attention, get real down in the trenches, it feels like the needle on this kind of game has moved to

ALT

I think people are cheating at Fortnite Rivalries | Fortnite

2026-04-24T06:54:01Z

The Hotdog Laserhouse</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://hometoursandotherstuff.tumblr.com/post/809814347134156800" target="_blank">hometoursandotherstuff</a>:</p><blockquote><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="1337" data-orig-width="1080"></figure></div></blockquote> <div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="140" data-orig-width="586"></figure></div><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="107" data-orig-width="583"></figure></div><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="128" data-orig-width="591"></figure></div><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="129" data-orig-width="587"></figure></div> </article> <article> <h1>Seeing Mario and Sonic fans beef over social media arguing what Mario’s “Sonic 06” was || Isn’t it great that we’ve gone from 06 being a standout “coming in hot, IP is irrevocably torched in the eyes of consumers” game in the mid-00s, a thing that had nex</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>I mean there's a lot you can say about Sonic 06 and the state of games now as a whole. Sonic 06 was also a culmination of a lot of middleware being used by people who didn't entirely grasp it (or also have time to debug it). </p><p>Like Sonic 06 doesn't just credit Havok Physics, it uses something called Kynogon for NPC pathfinding, they hired third parties to handle their motion capture and choreography... it was undoubtedly a new and different experience than Sonic Team was used to, where I'm pretty sure they did a lot more things in-house. Not only were they not used to outsourcing like that, they didn't have a lot of time for quality control.</p><p>And with as expensive and as complex as games have gotten, that's now everywhere. Everyone went barreling down the mountain so quickly their feet came out from under them and that's how we get games like Mass Effect Andromeda and MindsEye and whatever else.</p><p>Its an extension of the fact that for a company like EA or Ubisoft or Activision, only big games exist now. Every game has to make a hundred million dollars because it will fund the next game that is going to cost 150 million dollars to create. You have to take every shortcut you can get, pinch every penny available to you, and if you so much as flinch then the whole house of cards comes crashing down. </p><p>People can blame or explain what they want for why games fail, but it comes down to the fact that you can't make mistakes anymore, and when a mistake happens, it causes a cascading disaster that tears entire companies down with it.</p><p>The stakes are too high and the rewards are too small. But some people won't believe that until there's nothing left but ashes.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Surprised Max Payne is your Best Story when I don’t think I’ve once seen you mention it on Tumblr. Never said because never asked kind of thing?</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>I suppose so, yeah. For those of you who don't know, in a couple different communities, one of those grid sites was going around for favorite or notable games and I filled one out. </p><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="884" data-orig-width="818"></figure></div><p>Some of these I really ruminated on, some I didn't.</p><p>I sat here and tried to think about what games I could remember the story from, and whether I liked it or not.</p><p>Metal Gear? Euh... I mean I like how ridiculous Metal Gear stories are, but it feels weird to say those are good stories. They're strange stories to be sure. I've also never finished a Metal Gear so I haven't experienced the gushing love everyone has for MGS3, for instance.</p><p>Final Fantasy VII? I mean... the thing about a RPG like that is the story is so long that to some degree it becomes a little unfocused. You end up with a core narrative but then there are a hundred little side stories cluttered up around it, and I haven't played the OG FF7 in so long I don't remember how a lot of those shake out anymore. I'm a huge FF7 mark but it would be disingenuous to give it best story.</p><p>And then I remembered that I finished Alan Wake a few months ago. Would I give Alan Wake best story? I mean, story is basically <b><i>the</i></b> thing that carries that first Alan Wake game. It's very fun, with some very well written characters. But it also kind of ends in a weird way that very clearly sets up for DLC and/or a sequel, and I don't really like that.</p><p>But what I did like was Max Payne, another game by Remedy. At the peak of the Let's Play gold rush, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5491F17E56069E4A">my cousin and I did a Max Payne let's play</a>, and it was the longest game we completed in our short tenure. And I really enjoyed that a lot. Max Payne's a great game. Very difficult, but a great game. Again, great characters, and a story that actually wraps up in the end.</p><p>A little bit before covid, we found out somebody left a comment on one of those let's play videos saying our Max Payne Let's Play was his favorite LP of the game and he revisited it often. So we were actually in the process of recording a Max Payne 2 LP, got about 3/4ths of the way through the game, and then never went back to it. We were trying to find time within the last year, but it just hasn't happened yet. (spoilers: we didn't like it as much; the first Max Payne is just one notch up on the camp meter and that made the difference for us).</p><p>There's probably a better answer but I didn't want to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes thinking about this. </p> </article> <article> <h1>Buzz vs. Zurg | Fortnite</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Seeing Mario and Sonic fans beef over social media arguing what Mario’s “Sonic 06” was when Paper Mario: Sticker Star was quite literally the turning point to Mario being seen as a soulless and sanitized mascot for a good while akin to Mickey. It’s affect</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>I mean to be it's always going to be Super Mario Sunshine. I know that's contentious, and some people really like Sunshine, but it's at the very least a massive black sheep. </p><p>Its focus on story and cutscenes is very uncharacteristic of the Mario franchise, the story itself isn't very good, compared to most other Mario games its level design is just passable, and it contains a serious lack of diversity. A lot of levels look very similar and you're doing a lot of the same stuff in all of them. </p><p>It is a weird sore thumb and the worst of the 3D Marios, even if it's still better than 75% of all platformers ever released.</p><p>I have yet to touch even a single Paper Mario so I can't really share in the heartache that Paper Mario fans get from what has become of that franchise as Nintendo has locked down its Brand Representation.</p><p>I'm still not sure about vilifying Shigeru Miyamoto though. I'm sure that guy isn't perfect, far from it, but I get the feeling he wouldn't necessarily care about something like Paper Mario if it was not his corporate obligation to do so.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Respect. I just did my own repair of this song last week:</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://funky-vg-beats.tumblr.com/post/813720232283783168/the-games-department-untitled-untitled-moon" target="_blank">funky-vg-beats</a>:</p><blockquote><figure class="tmblr-full"><figcaption class="audio-caption"><span class="tmblr-audio-meta audio-details"><span class="tmblr-audio-meta title">(Untitled)</span><span class="tmblr-audio-meta artist">The Games Department</span><span class="tmblr-audio-meta album"></span></span></figcaption></source></audio></figure><p><i>(untitled)</i><br/><i>moon child ost</i></p></blockquote> <div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="287" data-orig-width="531"></figure></div><p>Respect. I just did my own repair of this song last week:</p><figure class="tmblr-full tmblr-embed" data-provider="youtube" data-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p-Gfyhlc2g" data-orig-width="356" data-orig-height="200"></figure><p>There was an Internet Archive link to both the released Windows version and some Amiga prototypes of Moon Child, and that same Internet Archive link contained some gameplay footage of Moon Child with the song in it. But the song skipped and stuttered, so I downloaded the gameplay footage and did some surgery to repair it and remove the skipping and stuttering. </p> </article> <article> <h1>I hope this email finds you well</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://www.tumblr.com/socpens/813733438519705600" target="_blank">socpens</a>:</p><blockquote><h1>Fart ,</h1></blockquote> <div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="929" data-orig-width="973"></figure></div><p>I hope this email finds you well</p> </article> <article> <h1>in light of today’s events, i want to share a story i was told during a study abroad summer in…</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://hms-no-fun.tumblr.com/post/806662926705491968/in-light-of-todays-events-i-want-to-share-a" target="_blank">hms-no-fun</a>:</p><blockquote><p>in light of today’s events, i want to share a story i was told during a study abroad summer in italy, where i took a class on the rise of fascism.</p><p>the picture below is the site of a mass grave. captive partisans were brought here by nazis, forced to dig, and then executed on the spot.</p><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="750" data-orig-width="1000"></figure></div><p>our tour guide, who was delighted by our group because tourists <i>never</i> ask about fascism, walked us forty minutes to this vineyard in the middle of nowhere. there were no signs on the road. us americans were worried about trespassing, since no one on the property was around.</p><p>he took us to this grove and explained that the partisans were young communists from the nearby town of arezzo. local land & business owners, even their parents and friends, had eagerly ratted them out because they saw nazi occupation as bringing order back to the region.</p><p>we learned that many in central italy still to this day see nazis as heroes and americans as villains, because the nazis got rid of those troublesome punks while the americans brought bombs and tanks.</p><p>then our tour guide informed us that his own grandfather was one of the partisans executed here.</p><p>he told us that the nazis lined them up one by one and shot each in the head, and more times in the chest. but human beings are hard to kill, and it was known that even this kind of brutality was survivable.</p><p>so they threw grenades into the grave, just to be sure.</p><p>this was standard practice.</p><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="1215" data-orig-width="1620"></figure></div><p>nestled in the bushes nearby with zero fanfare stands a single solitary monument. there are monuments just like it all across italy.</p><p>what stuck with me was not just the cruelty of the nazis. it was the callousness of the turncoats, who never stopped believing that they had done the right thing.</p><div class="npf_row"><figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="1215" data-orig-width="1620"></figure></div><p>whether by nature or nurture, there is a class of people who will always prefer death and destruction over a reduction in profits. they cannot be reasoned with. they cannot be taught empathy. they will watch young people shot, dismembered, and buried alive, and they will say that god is good.</p><p>there is no reform. there is no compromise.</p><p>believe what your eyes see. listen to what your heart tells you. we are surrounded by systems that exist to launder guilt and naturalize structures of oppression, so that we side against our senses.</p><p>but you know exactly what is happening. you do.</p><p>we are waking up from a dream of peace in the interregnum of a war that never went away. the fruits of our nation’s conduct, a largely bipartisan project from the start, have arrived by the truck-full. it did not come out of nowhere. it’s not new, or unprecedented, or even particularly surprising.</p><p>what it IS, however, is the present. it’s not a history book. it’s not a mass grave. it is happening right now.</p><p>and right now, this moment and each moment after, is the only moment you will ever own.</p><p>stories will be told about this era for years to come. but only we are its authors.</p><p>only you.</p><p>only us.</p></blockquote> </article> <article> <h1>I have considered deleting my Bluesky account because I don’t want to post anything on social media or talk about my interests in general out of fear of being told that I’m objectively wrong for thinking that Frontiers and CrossWorlds are worse than ‘06.</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>This sounds like a conversation you should have with a therapist. </p><p>Because, listen. Every time I share what I think is a spicy take on this blog, it never comes back on me as bad as I fear it will. Nobody ever yells at me, nobody's ever mean to me, and outside of the one or two weird or rude asks I get per year, generally people are understanding that I come from a place of honesty and they take me in good faith.</p><p>If you are wrong about an opinion, and you're worried people are going to tear you to shreds, that's not always going to happen. And sometimes its healthy to be challenged in your opinions. Sometimes its necessary. It's why I put those spicy takes out into the world sometimes, because I have a feeling I could be wrong and if I am, I expect to be blown up for it. And that has yet to happen. </p><p>It is possible to cultivate kindness around you and to avoid big nasty yelling arguments. It is possible to be wrong and survive the encounter.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Immediately after making that post I found my old one from last month. Thanks tumblr search.</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>Immediately after making that post I found my old one from last month. Thanks tumblr search.</p><p>I deleted it though because it was a very simple “hey here’s the thing” and I’m spending $10 to blaze the new one</p> </article> <article> <h1>Oh right! I never posted about the second one here. So if you didn’t know, for Halloween, I put out…</h1> <p>2026-04-24T19:20:37Z</p> <p>Oh right! I never posted about the second one here. So if you didn’t know, for Halloween, <a href="https://blazehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/796609805700694016/i-suppose-its-also-worth-posting-about-here-if" target="_blank">I put out a podcast</a> in what I suppose I would call “<a href="https://blazehedgehog.tumblr.com/tagged/modern%20day%20campfire%20stories" target="_blank">modern day campfire stories</a>.” They were stories about strange encounters my mom had as she was growing up, bookended with my thoughts on her stories plus a couple of my own. </p><figure class="tmblr-full tmblr-embed" data-provider="youtube" data-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiioZoKUNIk" data-orig-width="356" data-orig-height="200"></figure><p>Episode 1 here came out at the start of October as paid early access, but went free for everyone in the week leading up to Halloween. I promised episode 2 would hit sometime in December, but the holidays being what they are, plus other chaotic factors in my life, it didn’t end up coming out until mid-March. But it <b>is</b> out now, and it <b>is</b> free to listen to.</p><figure class="tmblr-full tmblr-embed" data-provider="youtube" data-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzxHmEzKMcY" data-orig-width="356" data-orig-height="200"></figure><p>Part two is also the final part of this since I’ve run out of spooky stories from my mom. I know other family members have gone through their own things, so maybe it’ll come back some day, but for now, and possibly the foreseeable future, this is it!</p><p>I will also say this: though nobody has complained about it, I do feel like both of these tend to have kind of long intro segments (15-20min). I do structure these so that things escalate as you go, so if you think I’m rambling too much, I use Youtube’s chapter select so you can skip ahead if you want to. </p><p>And if you’d rather grab MP3s of these for your podcast app, I have those up on Patreon: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/140336513" target="_blank">Part One</a>, <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/152577246" target="_blank">Part Two</a>.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Moon Child (Amiga, Unreleased) - Title Theme Restored</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Cold Ones | Fortnite</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Bone Zone | Fortnite</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Put It On My Bill | Fortnite</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Playing "The Lost World Arcade" in VR</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Completing the Mega Man Pass in Crossworlds [Stream Archive]</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:01Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>Shotgun stream! 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Not everything, I peek in on things once and a…</h1> <p>2026-03-14T14:43:14Z</p> blazehedgehog:Would it bother you if I got rid of the current version of bltn.net and just made it... </article> <article> <h1>The Demo Roulette (8/22/2025)</h1> <p>2025-03-04T18:05:42Z</p> <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2547549189"></a> </article> <article> <h1>The Xbox Everywhere System</h1> <p>2026-03-14T14:43:14Z</p> This has come up in a couple discords in the last 24 hours, following news that Microsoft is laying... </article> <article> <h1>Listening for the Voices of the Void</h1> <p>2026-03-14T14:43:14Z</p> ALTIf you would rather listen to me narrate this article, all Patreon donors and Youtube Paid... </article> <article> <h1>The Road Trip Music Video</h1> <p>2026-04-24T06:54:00Z</p> </article> <article> <h1>So It's Your First Time Playing Sonic Unleashed... 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