Blaze's UberFeed

Big Walk Session 10

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Do you think sans the skeleton would win in a fight against sonic the hedgehog

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I don't think Sonic has killed anyone

Willingly

Different anon, but I’m reading the top comments for the Golden Axe trailer and they’re all sarcastically (of course) riffing on the things you also don’t like. Did you just post your comment too early before reality kicked in for everyone?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I dunno. When I say it has the whiff of 4chan chuds on it, it also just feels... weirdly manufactured? Because like I said, I can't imagine deliberately wanting to die on the hill of "No, Golden Axe SHOULD be ironic." Who is interested in Golden Axe in 2026 and wants it to be this weird adult comedy show?

I remember some people claiming the conspiracy theory that Sony manufactured the backlash at Ghostbusters 2016 on purpose because "all publicity is good publicity" (until it got out of hand), but this kind of reminds me of that. It doesn't feel like something people should be in favor of, but somehow there's a loud minority (?) that's mad other people might not like this.

Could be astroturfing.

Big Walk Session 9

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Blue Man on the Run | Fortnite

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Are you gay for Moleman?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Thoughts on the new Golden Axe show?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I don't like how tongue-in-cheek it looks. The game is going for sort of a Conan the Barbarian meets Fist of the North Star kind of vibe, so turning it into this super jokey "isn't all of this weird and wacky?" quippy show doesn't sit well with me.

I left a comment to that effect on the trailer video and it apparently made a number of people weirdly angry in ways I don't understand! Who exactly is dying on the hill that their ideal Golden Axe interpretation needs to be detached and ironic, and why?

Some of these replies have the stink of a 4chan chud on them, so I'm not really bothered by what those sorts of people think of my opinion, I just didn't expect to touch anyone's nerves on this.

August 2026 Update

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Update time!

The last few months have felt so busy for me, wow. If you remember, back in like, March or April, I started down the path I’m currently on where quite a few of my teeth needed to be replaced with partial dentures (I don’t know if I ever explained, but it’s a long story as to why). I didn’t expect the process to take as long as it did, but between the surgery, fabrication and more, it’s been like, what, five months? Four months? Even worse, I was supposed to have my replacement teeth by now, but they kept having to reschedule because the fabrication place was taking too long. By the time you read this, I will actually be going to the dentist today to finally get my teeth back!

You may also remember that I started anxiety medication in July. That required a whole host of subsequent things like getting bloodwork done and scheduling other doctor’s appointments, but I’ve finally been on it long enough that I can definitely say I feel the effects. I’m on the lowest dose, so it’s not dramatically different, but in terms of the anxiety and depression I used to feel, things are a little lighter now. I’ve noticed that my creative spark is getting stronger again. Other things that I haven’t felt in a while are starting to come back, too. It’s sort of remarkable. I see my doc again on the 29th and she is already suggested we might try upping my Effexor dose now that we know my body responds to it.

So things are on the upswing for me! But I’m still completely broke and still out of a job. The medication could start helping on that front, but as for this month, I’ve only got about $200 out of my $700 share of rent, which means I need to raise a minimum of $500 this month. And that’s just rent, too. With my phone bill and other monthly bills, it’s probably closer to $550 I need to raise. $600 would be the most comfortable.

Buy BlazeHedgehog a Coffee

It doesn’t help that I just missed the payout threshold on both Youtube and Twitch, too. Both of those would have helped soften this blow. But, as always, if you have the means, well, I’d really like to not endanger my living situation. Things do need to break soon on the job front, too, because my roommate has expressed a desire to move when our lease is up and that means I need to be on my feet and ready to move out in about 8-9 months.

But getting back to Youtube…

Upcoming Youtube Videos

I really am finally almost done with editing the Shadow Generations review! I also overestimated its length. This entire time I’ve been telling people it’ll be an hour and 20 minutes long, but that was an estimate I made based on my voice over.

The super nerdy explanation is that I record all of my voice over in WAV files, which are basically uncompressed, and work well with my editing software (Vegas). But WAV is a very old format, probably older than Windows itself, and because of that, it has file size limits. An individual WAV file usually cannot be bigger than 2gb. So, on long recordings (like the Shadow Generations video), I split the file up into smaller chunks. In this case, I split the recording up into three pieces, and I assumed all three pieces were the same length: 22 minutes. This would have lead to 66 minutes of voice over, and once you put it through editing with the show intro, the sponsor segment, various parts of demonstration where I’m not talking, I figured you could add another ten minutes to that, giving us something close to 75-80 minutes.

The truth is that all three sections are NOT equal length, and the whole voice over session total came out to around 57 minutes. I also left in some flubs and alternate takes in the finished recording, which actually brings the true total voice over length to somewhere around 55 minutes. We add in our ten minutes for the extra fluff and that means the final Shadow Generations video should be just barely over an hour long, give or take. On the plus side: I’m closer to finishing it! Like, it might be done by or before this time next week! I can’t wait to move on to something else. As you know, I don’t like editing super long videos like this because they take FOREVER. Unfortunately when you have a lot to say, it can’t be helped. And I have at least two more videos on the docket that are also probably going to end up quite long.

In Case You Missed It

I streamed a little bit this month! Technically it was my belated Streamerversary. I streamed Sonic Project Hero Rewired, and broke the VOD up into three parts:

Intro segment: Talking Teeth, New Lobby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Jp_dVM8IE
Three Hours of Sonic Project Hero Rewired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VJQFlTMMhI
Ended the stream with a short horror game: Spectral Filter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxRleed16M

I’ve also been playing Big Walk with my friends and recording our sessions. Not streaming them, just recording. We’re going for a full 100% map clear and we’re rounding the bend on that. I’m bias but I think we’re a good group. The playlist for that is here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFh0EAemSnjQ

Because I was juggling a few different things this month, I missed one Throwback Thursday. To make up for it, instead of every other week, the last two Thursdays of this month are getting an article. Which means tomorrow’s isn’t up yet! But last week’s is. I’ve also scheduled more of these out ahead of time, and there’s posts through October now that will go up automatically.

Throwback Thursday: F.E.A.R. Review (FREE) https://www.patreon.com/blazehedgehog/posts/review-f-e-r-167103044
Shadow Generations Review, The First Five Minutes (Early Access Tier): https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxsyDcyVuUgO4wYErTlFSHk76jvc7Fc4cA / https://www.patreon.com/posts/160789216

Is everyone picking on you for playing as Sonic in Fortnite mean people haven’t actually moved on from Sanic and gotta go fast?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

"Everyone"? It was like, maybe three people, largely spearheaded by an old friend (DigiDoggi). It seems like I triggered something with her and she escalated the argument we had very quickly in a way that still doesn't really make sense to me.

But I do think most of what she said came from a good place. Like, I've shown time and time again on this blog that it's very easy for me to shut certain products out of my life, not give them money, and not even give them my attention if they feed bad actors. A lot of art cannot be separated from the artist when it funds their continued hate.

So, like. I don't really touch FNAF much anymore, despite being interested early on. I kept my distance from the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance game, have avoided basically everything about Hogwarts Legacy, and refused to buy Ion Fury even when Humble Bundle gave me the option to donate all of my purchase to charity and give the developers nothing.

But a lot of those things have (or in some cases, used to have) the stink of some flavor of fascism, bigotry or lgbt-phobia on them.

Fortnite to me is different for a lot of reasons. One, as I originally stated, I've been playing the game every night for seven years. It's the primary way I hang out with one of my oldest friends. We've been playing it for three fourths of a decade before the game leaned hard into partnering with bad actors (Harry Potter last Christmas, FNAF this Halloween) and using generative AI.

We are not happy about the bad actors and the generative AI. But we were here before the neighborhood went to shit, you know? And sometimes you don't want to leave. People stayed behind in Chernobyl after the meltdown, for crying out loud. And what's happening to Fortnite isn't Chernobyl.

Fortnite is also on this stupid bend of wanting "everything ever" in the game, which I imagine means they're trying to be "apolitical" about who gets to be included. It's an ugly excuse to be sure, but I can see the logic underneath it. They aren't getting my money for any of it.

Personally speaking, I haven't been able to afford giving Fortnite any money, and now I have incentive not to. So I haven't, in close to a year now. Though I don't think the $30 a year I spent on Fortnite is going to be missed when they sometimes posted tens of billions in profits from the game. My contribution to Fortnite's margins were less than a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a percent.

Two, if I give up Fortnite for generative AI, I should also give up Youtube, Twitch, Firefox, Chrome, Discord, Patreon, Bluesky, and basically 75% of the rest of the entertainment industry. Nobody likes generative AI except greedy CEOs and they are going to be taught a lesson sooner or later about just how much their consumer base hates it. The wave will pass. There will probably be a day where Fortnite stops having genAI artwork in it.

Will I still be playing Fortnite then? I don't know. We've discussed what has kept us playing Fortnite all these years, because we've definitely gone through periods where we've really hated the game. But we have founders passes, we get free currency every day from those founders passes, and ultimately I only really play one or two matches a day most days.

(Fortnite seasons are about 90 days long, give or take, so you can do the math for how much I play in a given season per day)

I do not in fact eat, play and sleep Fortnite, despite it looking like it. But I do get a steady supply of outfits to try on, and I don't have to pay for them.

So I don't really see it as a big deal. Certainly not worth giving up seven years of precedent over.

I just wish Digi had listened to me and tried to understand that instead of jumping to the worst conclusions, hurling insults, and then muting the entire thread to where it impacted my own ability to see replies to it.

But I also assume she has her reasons. People don't just act like that out of nowhere, you know?

Oh well. Agree to disagree.

...Oh. I wrote all this out and you probably ACTUALLY mean the fact people were shooting at me a lot. Yeah, I dunno what that's about. It was apparently just a rough first couple days in general for everyone, and the going theory is that Epic lowered the number of bots in the game. A Fortnite match has 100 players in it, but typically only 40-50% are real humans. The rest are cannon fodder bots.

The rumor is that for the launch of this season, Epic changed the ratio to be 65% humans, 35% bots. Which probably also started pulling in players from a wider matchmaking spectrum, too. Meaning higher skill players getting mixed in with the rest of us dummies.

As of Saturday or Sunday, they apparently put it back to last season's 50/50. Which I'd believe, given I got two wins over the weekend.

I keep meaning to try the Sonic outfits back on to see for sure but I haven't gotten around to it.

How’s life treating you?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Long term? Bad. The more I think about it, the more I talk about it, the longer I'm in therapy, the more I realize just how awful the first 35 years of my life were. I have a habit of oversharing, but one thing I could never reconcile was how we could be so poor and yet I'd always have semi-decent Christmases where I'd get new game consoles.

Turns out: there's a specific reason for that and it's kind of sad! My mom was so against accepting help from friends and family that my aunt would make a covert trip to our house around Christmas and drop an unmarked envelope stuffed full of hundreds of dollars through our mail slot so my mom could buy presents that year.

My aunt never hinted it was from her, my mom never told me anything like that was ever going on, but if it wasn't for that I probably wouldn't have had a Christmas at all several years in a row as a kid. My cousin just told me all of this a couple months ago and it was a shock.

In the short term, things are starting to look up. I'm feeling my anxiety medication. I'm less anxious. Relationships with my family were rocky when I first came back to Colorado, but those are improving too. I'm about to finally, at long last, go in to get my teeth fixed on Wednesday. I'll have a meeting with my doctor on Friday where I'm pretty sure she's going to suggest I up my anxiety medication dosage. Which, at this point, I'm all for.

Still don't have a job, still don't have a lot of things, but they'll come in time. I feel a lot better about that now.

Big Walk Session 8

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

The Man with the Golden Gun | Fortnite

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

The Man with the Golden Gun | Fortnite

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Do you have any favorite Batman stories?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Never read too many comics growing up. It was pretty much just Sonic. I had a handful of issues of Spider-man that my brother gave me, but nothing continuous.

Being poor, even the $1.75 for a Sonic comic was often hard to justify to my Mom, and Batman and Spider-man comics always cost more. Plus, if you wanted the "real" Batman and Spider-man comics, you had to go to a comic book store, because supermarkets only stocked the "clean" stuff. So anything with even remotely adult themes was harder to find.

And now, as an adult, I struggle to read because of my ADHD symptoms. My mind will start to wander and I'll have to re-read several pages because my eyes were on autopilot but my attention was somewhere else.

I also haven't seen the animated series, not a serious watch, since it was airing on TV. I remember bits and pieces of episodes but I could not tell you titles.

I did finally watch Mask of the Phantasm for the first time a couple years ago, though. That was really good.

The Black Ops | Fortnite

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Big Walk Session 7

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Do you feel Rooftop Run should count as the “iconic” Unleashed level? I feel like it should be like Savannah Citadel because that was what leaked first. Or even Jungle Joyride or Dragon Road. Levels with really cool aesthetic compared to Rooftop Run. It f

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Being leaked doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

As far as Rooftop Run, I'd like to point out that I recorded me doing a lot of Sonic Unleashed runs back in the day, and inexplicably, the one I did for Rooftop Run got a quarter million views when none of the others did.

And that's even AFTER Youtube downgraded it to 360p (it used to be 480p).

I'm fine with it being representational of all of Sonic Unleashed. It's a good level. I do think I have more fun playing Jungle Joyride and Dragon Road, but Rooftop Run is good from an iconography standpoint. And musically, it's definitely the best stage theme in Sonic Unleashed.

…Why are you still playing Fortnite when it’s been known for a while that the game is being made with generative AI?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Because I've been playing Fortnite for SEVEN YEARS before that happened and it's one of the ways I hang out with a friend of mine.

Why are you being a cop?

So, what would you want from a new classic-style Sonic game?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I think if I had to pinpoint what Sonic Superstars did wrong and Sonic Mania did right, I want:

Stronger art direction. Those Genesis games had some of the strongest art direction on the platform, and some games (like Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix) are primarily remembered for their incredible art direction. All the levels in Superstars were very generic and unmemorable, and this was a problem with Sonic 4, too. On the other hand, Studiopolis, Mirage Saloon and Press Garden "get it." They are iconic. Even the two images of the proposed Mania 2 have more sauce than all of Sonic Superstars.
Stronger music. I don't just mean "hire Tee Lopes." Tee's incredibly good, but I feel like Sega mostly uses him to create poppy nostalgic songs. But a Sonic game needs to have a "music identity." I feel like the quality of Sonic music lately has been all over the place and I wonder if somebody on the corporate end of things is pushing their crummy musical taste into the games. We don't need that.
Cool it with the bosses. A Classic Sonic boss fight does not have to be this epic drawn out thing with long periods of temporary invincibility and multiple forms and lots of waiting around to set up attacks. A boss can be 30 seconds or less. It's fine. It's not supposed to be that serious. Stop overthinking it. It's just a little distraction, not a big deal.
We had the drop dash. The drop dash was good. Trying to expand Sonic's abilities beyond that is a delicate thing and all the emerald powers in Superstars were kind of bad. They keep trying to do this. It's like the Wisp powers. Sonic can just be Sonic. It's okay. He's good enough. Just, like, make good levels. That's all you have to do.

If they make another 2D Classic Sonic game but they keep these four points in mind, I'd be very satisfied.

An Uneasy Alliance | Fortnite

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

These boots were made for

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Talkin' Teeth, Showing EmuVR (8/17/26 Stream Archive)

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Spectral Filter (8/17/26 Stream Archive)

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Project Hero Rewired (8/17/26 Stream Archive)

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

Do you feel like ST shot themselves in the foot with the Modern Boost formula? I love Boost gameplay and would love to see it continue but it seems like it has too much working against it to be “The Main” 3D Sonic gameplay style (ex: huge massively detail

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I just think it's a case where Sonic Team knows the boost formula is popular but doesn't really know what to do with it. This comes up in the Shadow Generations video I'm producing right now, but they've really made the boost games pretty toothless when I feel like a lot of the point of that style of game is twitch reaction and practicing the "perfect run." If you S-rank most levels on your first try, what's the point?

I want to see what’s up with this Project Hero Rewired Sonic fangame

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I want to see what’s up with this Project Hero Rewired Sonic fangame

Let's see what Project Hero Rewired is All About

2025-03-04T18:05:42Z

What do you think about Sonic coming to Fortnite next season? And have you seen the “leaked” version of Sonic they’re using?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

So it's been officially announced now and it's pretty weird that even in the announcement comic there's a line from Knuckles that's "these guys look weird."

I dunno, man. Fortnite's on its third or fourth Ready Player One moment by now. Crash looks weird, Sonic looks weird, they're partnering with sloppy Roblox games...

I'm not, like, mad about it. But I'm not super excited for it either. It's just kind of whatever. One of the more "sure, I guess" seasons.

Big Walk Session 6

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

How do you feel about the idea of Robotnik “roboticizing” part or all of himself? Or otherwise incorporating robotics into his body? || For me personally I can’t see him doing it. It’s the ego of the thing. “Humans are the creators of robots, hence they’r

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I can see that, yeah. He loves himself too much to want to spoil his body with cybernetics. He builds robots to be his slaves so he doesn't have to work so hard. Infusing himself with robotics is both pointless and a little offensive. His goal is to kick back and run the world without having to actually get his hands dirty. A utopia where all Eggman has to do is use his brain and the machines handle the rest.

You see Project Hero Rewired? What do you think about it?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

So for those who don't know, this is a project by Stelmo98 and Beatz where they are taking the old 2019 version of Project Hero (a hotly anticipated 3D Sonic game of the era with a lot of good "sauce" in its gameplay feel) and basically making a whole game with it by porting levels from other Sonic games into it.

And it's really cool in the sense they've just stealth announced what is kinda-sorta Sonic Generations 2, with one of the best-feeling Sonic fan engines out there. 9 8 not-quite-new levels that have been expanded and reworked to play nice in Project Hero.

Except, well, ever since a friend pointed it out, there is a worry growing increasingly loud in my mind:

ALT

There's the implication that Hero, the developer of Project Hero, has washed his hands of the project. As they point out, he uploaded a much later (2021) build of the game that they aren't as fond of, but as of yet, neither Stelmo or Beatz have answered me about whether or not they have checked if Hero is cool with them taking over his game.

Now: in their defense, in Hero's SFGHQ post about the 2021 build of Project Hero does contain a Q&A section, where Hero states:

Q: Is this open source?
A: No. It can probably be decompiled easily, though, so you're free to do that if you so desire.

Q: Will you continue Sonic Project Hero?
A: Unfortunately, no.

So he's actually encouraging others to decompile his game, and suggests he isn't coming back to it. But he doesn't actually say if it's okay to continue Project Hero without him. And there's a part in one of Stelmo's showcase videos where he refers to Project Hero as "our game", like he's fully taken ownership of it now, and that feels a little weird.

This is a topic I've wrestled with for many years, because obviously, most fangames are created by taking official graphics, official music, and in some cases even official code, and remixing it. But when it comes to ripping graphics, music, and code from somebody else's fangame, it feels super different to me and not cool at all, right?

But isn't it all just stealing? Aren't we justifying that it's okay to steal from Sega, but not steal from fellow colleagues?

And in talking about this in the context of this Project Hero Rewired thing, somebody said something that finally unlocked it in my brain:

If you went into work one day and somebody had reorganized the break room, like removed a bunch of chairs, added new tables, changed out appliances or whatever, you'd sort of just accept that, right? It's a corporate space. The business owns that. There's something inhuman and dissociative about that.

But if somebody came into your bedroom and rearranged all of your furniture and replaced a bunch of your clothes, that would be offensive, right? You're an individual. You're a person. It would be an invasion of your personal space. That is different. That's very different. It's changing (or even stealing) parts of an individual human's identity.

And that's weird. Maybe don't do that.

The fact that Stelmo and Beatz do not actually clarify if they contacted Hero first make me believe they did not, even if they credit Hero in every post they've made so far. And... I dunno! Maybe it's fine. It's probably fine. But what if it isn't?

How do you feel about the idea of Robotnik “roboticizing” part or all of himself? Or otherwise incorporating robotics into his body?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

I mean to some degree it makes sense to me. If he thinks robots are superior, of course he'd probably enhance himself with them. He doesn't really seem to hold anyone else's flesh with any kind of sanctity.

The question is whether or not he'd trust his own robots to do it. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he knows he's a little sloppy or creates robots that tend to be a rebellious (or a little stupid) and doesn't want to put himself into too much of a vulnerable position.

Big Walk Session 5

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

One thing I’m very curious about- in your showcase video for Beta Windy Valley. You refer to the level as an “adventure style” level. I personally think that level is a very accurate translation of classic sonic gameplay in 3D. So I want to ask. What do y

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Physics are part of it, but that's more about gameplay feel.

Level design for Classic Sonic to me are large, intricate levels with lots of room to explore but don't take very long to finish. This is less true of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, but is the key vibe of Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

This is why I railed against Sonic Mania -- it was too much of a good thing. Levels were a little too big, and before Mania Plus, it was actually incredibly easy to get a Time Over if you slowed down and explored. A lot of things about that game overstayed its welcome.

The ideal Classic Sonic level is under 3 minutes long for the average player. Lots of secrets to discover, lots of shortcuts for players of all skill levels.

The biggest thing that separates modern and Classic Sonic is that Classic Sonic allowed you to go slow if you really wanted to. That's how you were afforded the ability to explore. Modern Sonic forces you to go fast, to the point where it will put up guard rails and play itself just to make sure even the least experienced player can break the sound barrier.

Going fast in Classic Sonic also wasn't necessarily difficult (just learn to time your rolls, really), but you were rarely completely locked into going fast. You could always jump out of loops, stop, backtrack, and explore. Modern Sonic games are all one way streets where backtracking is pointless even if you can do it.

Big Walk Session 4

2026-08-29T06:49:44Z

In your experience, from SA to S06 what were the best Sonic levels?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Red Mountain
Speed Highway
City Escape
Metal Harbor
Seaside Hill
Egg Fleet
Crisis City
Radical Train

Do you like black girls?

2026-08-29T19:35:08Z

Do you typically ask total strangers this question?

FYI PSA BBQ

2026-05-23T04:37:01Z

By the way! If you are unaware, eventually at some point bltn.net will be redirecting to...

Strange Encounters: Part Two (Podcast)

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure 2

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

It's Been One Year... Let's Talk Channel Updates

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

Everybody Loves a Redemption Arc - Yooka-Replaylee

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

Strange Encounters: Part One (Podcast)

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

So I watch some degree of Jeff Gerstmann on Youtube. Not everything, I peek in on things once and a…

2026-05-23T04:37:01Z

blazehedgehog:Would it bother you if I got rid of the current version of bltn.net and just made it...

The Demo Roulette (8/22/2025)

2025-03-04T18:05:42Z

The Xbox Everywhere System

2026-05-23T04:37:01Z

This has come up in a couple discords in the last 24 hours, following news that Microsoft is laying...

Listening for the Voices of the Void

2026-05-23T04:37:01Z

ALTIf you would rather listen to me narrate this article, all Patreon donors and Youtube Paid...

The Road Trip Music Video

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

So It's Your First Time Playing Sonic Unleashed... (Recompiled)

2026-08-29T06:49:43Z

Sonic Kart Nite (Crossworlds Beta, Transformed, Ring Racers)

2025-03-04T18:05:42Z