I’ve updated my Retro Achievements Page. I’ve got 26% of the achievements for Mystic Quest now.

I was watching Irene Aldana vs. Karol Rosa from UFC 296 the other night. Joe Rogan called it “probably the fight of [2023], period” and I think I agree. What a banger!

I have so much respect for both of these women. Absolutely amazing. Tough as human beings come.

“Spaceship Corridor”

Nikon Z fc, Nikkor Z 40 mm ƒ/2 (ISO 3200 • 1/125 s • ƒ/3.2)

I’ve gradually continued work on my tiny soulsborne roguelike hack & slash game Dark Embers. I’ve previously described the idea here. I now have a a basic game engine going with player animations, a particle system and a way to spawn and despawn game objects like campfires. I’ve also started to implement enemy spawning. Next up is basic pathfinding for the enemies and then collision detection, before I turn to animating the enemies and writing a basic combat AI for them.

I’ve added a separate page for my retro achievements to this site.

→ Achievements Page

I’ve recently bought a Miyoo Mini Plus, a small handheld that runs Linux and emulates several gaming consoles, including the Game Boy, NES, SNES and classic arcades. There’s great open source firmware for it, that I immediately put on mine. I bought this device primarily because it can run PICO-8 carts and thus allows me to test the game I am developing.

But, since the thing also plays Game Boy games — and magnificently so, being just the right form factor and shipping with all the fancy RetroArch video filters and such — I decided it was high time I replayed Final Fantasy Adventure (or Mystic Quest, as it is called here in Europe). Fun fact: That game motivated me to learn English back in school, as there was no German version. It’s probably the main reason I speak English at all.

Through all of this, I also discovered a very cool website that allows you to collect crowdsourced achievements for old games. It works perfectly with the Miyoo Mini, so here’s my first two achievements in Mystic Quest:

Fall to Earth (RA #28942)
"Escape from the Glaive Empire"

Damsel in Distress (RA #28943)
“Rescue the girl”

“We Choose to Go”

Nikon D7100, AF-D Nikkor 70-210 mm ƒ/4-5.6 (ISO 2000 • 1/800 s • ƒ/11)

So, this morning, I was playing the Jumpstart event for the Lord of the Rings set on MTG Arena. This is the deck that it gave me. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Sauron’s Breakfast.

Yes. It plays as dumb as it sounds.

Sauron's Breakfast

Düsseldorf Noir