It hurts
Also: a nightmare about math, a forever-falling Banjo, and a cream meant for sippin'.
Hello! In this abridged send, we're talking freaky patterns, living in caves, and troubling alternates to ding dong ditching.
The shape of horror
For some members of the subreddit r/geometricnightmares, this video of a Chinese mobile billiards game is a bone-chilling watch. The subreddit invites discussion about dreams involving “shapes or objects, themes of infinity, pressure, an overwhelming sense of unease or terror and anxiety, a void and incomprehensibly large or small objects, and/or a crushing silence.” Other posts describe nightmares involving fractals and “math.” The subreddit was founded in 2021 — i.e., well into the era of Blender and Maya — and many of its users have attempted to simulate their nightmares via animations.
While we here at EX are not dream psychologists, the similarities seem tenuous at best; many of the motifs that Redditors describe seem typical of fever dreams and night terrors. As a result, the criteria feel pretty generous. One user, for example, chimed in with the image of a distant fidget spinner floating in the void. Whether or not the subreddit is bewitched by some folie a plusieurs, however, it’s at least a place for those haunted by shapes to feel less alone.
The FF7 test enemy whose life was pain
Despite growing up in the FFVII Generation, we’d never heard about one of the game’s legends until last week: êúô0(äñ), known also as "Test 0," a pyramidal test enemy that could spawn in the PC version of the game if you switched CDs while a battle was loading. Apparently it was a further corruption of a bizarre test enemy that could appear in the Japanese version of the game, a high-HP Guard Hound that just repeats “It hurts” when you attack it. The FF7 Remake team included a similar enemy in the 2020 game as a tribute, and they said in an interview last year that nobody at Square knows whether “Test 0” was a glitch or an easter egg added by some rogue developer.
This is all discussed on every FF wiki and was the subject of a popular video from old-school speedrunner GarlandG 15 years ago. But the fun part is looking back even further than that. As pointed out by one of the last surviving FF fansites, the 1997 Unofficial Versus Guide actually mentions the pleading Test 0 monsters, and suggests rubber-banding the O button on your controller down to grind them for XP while you go do something else. This is followed by an editor’s note saying that the monster was actually removed from the US version, but they decided to leave the section in anyway, as a treat.
Chum Box
Games
The latest Like a Dragon game has die-hard fans salivating over Majima's
"ponytail physics" [link]
The opening of 1996’s Simulation Zoo has a strange majesty [link]
A Steam title about digging a hole in your backyard was the single-serving streamer game of the week [link]
The Finals has a gun skin that prints out receipts with the names of players you kill [link]
Here’s a hyper-specific meme channel starring one Half-Life scientist [link]
Banjo and Kazooie fall forever thanks to cruel and unusual use of an in-game replay system [link]
Unfortunate phrasing in this screenshot from the latest Sonic Racing game [link]
Wild "Thrillho" spotted [link]
Toby Fox has a way with words [link]
Brought to you by Rondo of Blood gang [link]
Source Engine-ass city [link]
Good Mario TikTok [link]
The Internet
Thoreau invented brainrot [link]
Online poll: an incredible number of Britons refer to the prank “ding dong ditching” as “knock down ginger” [link]
The editor @i_win has been making increasingly elaborate Family Guy x WarioWare crossovers [link]
A recent episode of Law and Order: SVU featured a Roblox knockoff called Wish Crafter [link]
Tulpa of Mike Ehrmantraut [link]
Sippin' cream [link]
Music
Yung Lean thinks it's time that we all move into caves [link]
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