Gorgeous waterfall in a vintage Taito shooter (and the story behind it)

Been reading about some of the lineage of taito shooters and realized I had these important but less discussed games lying around — damn look at this waterfall sequence in Gun Frontier

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— Sam Barlow 🔥 (@mrsambarlow.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 12:56 PM

The background on this waterfall, from the game's director Takatsuna Senba (the whole interview is pretty great stuff: web.archive.org/web/20191230...)

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— Sam Barlow 🔥 (@mrsambarlow.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:11 PM

Advice for making good video game trailers

I left little critiques on lots of game trailers so here's a thread with the most common issues (and additional reading) 🧵 1. Don't put logos at the start. It's just dead air that could be gameplay, which is 100000000X more interesting. www.derek-lieu.com/blog/2021/3/...

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— Derek Lieu - Game Trailer Editor (@derek-lieu.com) August 17, 2025 at 6:14 AM

4. If you play a cute animal in your game, make sure that cute animal is on the first frame of your trailer. Learn from @littlekittybigcity.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=REJy...

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— Derek Lieu - Game Trailer Editor (@derek-lieu.com) August 17, 2025 at 6:21 AM

(Long thread)

Silent Hill's "Sakura Head" monster was inspired by barnacles growing on a post

There are inspirations scattered everywhere around this world, but, unfortunately, wonderful tastes to create something is not.
Refining your tastes and the training is most important. It's like factorizing an inspiration into prime factors.

— 伊藤暢達/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) April 7, 2024

(There's an expensive statute.)

Today's news and jokes

Absolutely screaming at this McNally/Jackson book display pic.twitter.com/m5JnYKJzVl

— Billy McEntee (@wjmcentee) February 11, 2024

Director of publishing at Larian describes importance of humor, and then gives an example

First, a story about Disneyland's Jungle Cruise and Baldur's Gate 3:

Watched this documentary about the origins of the Jungle Cruise ride, which was essentially supposed to be a LARP documentary about the waterways of the world. It worked in the 50s until Walt Disney heard a mother saying she’d skip the ride since she’d been on it before, which…

— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 11, 2024

And second, a personal anecdote:

I’m at the airport about to to fly lol pic.twitter.com/B9U50QbVTv

— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 9, 2024

I’m gonna get drunk and say shit like “it’s just wind bro” to anyone in a uniform

— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 9, 2024

Holy shit this flight is wild. Everyone keeps vomiting all over the place. In trays, on the bathroom floor, in aisles. The staff are like pls stop vomiting on ur trays.

— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) January 10, 2024

Mortal Kombat One motion capture featuring some complex moves

@karate.jewels MK1 Stunt Performer vlog. Whole team killed it, much love and respect to all the talents that came in to make this game come to life. Excited to play 😈 childhood dream come true. #mortalkombat #mk1 #mortalkombat1 #videogames #stuntperformer #mocap #motioncapture ♬ original sound - Rememberthe80sn90s

The manta-shaped boss you fight in Super Mario Sunshine is actually a giant pillar you can't perceive

The original post, for reference: https://t.co/e13QGsnK4m

— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) July 21, 2023

Clever malicious design exploiting user-generated material in Team Fortress 2

From a longer thread:

Also conspicuously absent in all the metaverse reading: no one talks about malicious design.

— Dan Olson (@FoldableHuman) May 5, 2023

TF2 and CounterStrike had a similar problem with "lag bomb" tags. You make your spray an absurdly high res image, put it on a wall around a corner, and then hide. Anyone who comes into the hallway lags out as their computer tries to download the texture and you pick them off.

— Dan Olson (@FoldableHuman) May 5, 2023

Oustanding introduction of a boss in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

This boss intro in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow might be one of the best I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/XDR3eg0MSt

— Gary J Kings (@GaryJKings) April 28, 2023

*Previously: I became a Sea of Thieves boss battle for a father and his son

Mortal Kombat's Raiden teleports because they couldn't find a way to get his hat to stay on during filming

Here is our 3rd video celebrating Mortal Kombat’s 30th anniversary! (More to come!) This is more of a fun video that features behind-the-scenes of us filming one of MK’s most recognizable characters. Raiden was played by a FANTASTIC martial artist and friend, Carlos Pesina. pic.twitter.com/IeBEAN6883

— Ed Boon (@noobde) May 4, 2022

We liked that solution (and effect) so much that we ended up giving Raiden a (now iconic) teleport move using the same animation. pic.twitter.com/uV3GvREyYx

— Ed Boon (@noobde) May 4, 2022

Funny tweet about Bioshock Infinite leads to two excellent threads about video game development

random sensory flashback to the Bioshock Infinite DLC where they wanted to communicate to the player "you are in Paris, France" so they put a little kid in the game dancing around in the street while holding a baguette over his head pic.twitter.com/E77jzW0Air

— Pocklecool (@instant_grat) February 4, 2022

First, this thread explains how dancing baguette boy came to be included in the game. Second, this spinoff thread explores politics at the game developer.

Today's funny posts

lately i cannot stop thinking about amoung & amoung pequeño pic.twitter.com/nTh3AvhUsx

— chess!! (@videoChess) January 7, 2022

Today's funny posts

Hawaii freshman DB Michael Graham has entered the transfer portal. Graham is the son of Hawaii HC Todd Graham.https://t.co/yB3q08YEoU

— 247Sports Transfer Portal (@247SportsPortal) December 30, 2021

AI-generated Stargates; Tybalt fan art (Romeo + Juliet); Great roadblocks in video games

"stargate_6" pic.twitter.com/JMp1hrtAT8

— images_ai (@images_ai) November 1, 2021

"stargate_4" pic.twitter.com/6qvnmavp6F

— images_ai (@images_ai) November 1, 2021

Got this costume/silhouette on the brain today. pic.twitter.com/GZnnolyz4w

— Annie Wu (@AnnieW) November 4, 2021

Show me the best roadblock you saw in a videogame. pic.twitter.com/x7Eed8WFHN

— Bálint Bánk Varga (@VargaBank) November 3, 2021

pic.twitter.com/zA0NwR4f12

— 🐱ri-Warui (@oleivarrudi) November 3, 2021

pic.twitter.com/fTdrlesKqg

— Jaybee - Wishlist Still Ridge on Steam (@jaybee_tyn) November 3, 2021

pic.twitter.com/60kuvXU3Y2

— breaking bad fur day (@daniel0ooo) November 3, 2021

Grim Pokemon fan fiction; Grimmer story about a Disney art book; Grimmest story about video game development

Gary twists the shrunken Pokeball from his belt and jams it in his opponent’s bubbling mouth, whites of his eyes stained red, cheeks patched with indigo. The defeated trainer shakes as Gary pushes the button, Pokeball expanding, shattering and tearing away ligaments of his jaw.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) November 18, 2017

We had a Gravity Falls art book all lined up w Dark Horse in 2020, it was going to be amazing, hardcover, filled w exclusive never before seen art. Diz Publishing approved the contract. Then Diz Channel canned it with zero explanation. I still have no idea why. We were all ready https://t.co/B2F33bBWo9

— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) May 25, 2021

The crazy thing is, Disney wouldn’t have had to do *any work.* All they had to do was say “sure” & we would have produced it, they’d get free money, fans would get the book & it would help the brand. Zero downside. We gave them a layup and they puked on themselves & passed out

— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) May 25, 2021

If it’s any consolation, this year Disney made a GF book without me where all the illustrations were just screencaps and one of them- I kid you not- still had a QuickTime player bar on it. This is a *published book in actual stores* pic.twitter.com/DCCxzaQqEj

— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) May 25, 2021

she's gotta be talking about Bioware, and Anthem. Brin and Dax were two Asian women in that game, both looked different and had completely different personalities. https://t.co/3uAndox48E

— gene park (@GenePark) May 26, 2021

Gamer AOC fan art; Blaseball personas; Developers try to protect the inclusive community of Caves of Qud

Poor @AOC ... she had no idea how sus @Hbomberguy truly was. 👨‍🚀🔪👩‍🚀 pic.twitter.com/MnyNFEDb6e

— Aaron Schmit (13/991🏴‍☠️) (@theaaronschmit) October 21, 2020

So here I am, pretending I'm a...?#screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/9DXUpFbjw9

— KevKev (@Der_Kevin) October 24, 2020

Meet the new Internet League Blaseball team, the 🎨PANDEMONIUM ARTISTS🎨

Made up of artists' #blasesona, we are ready to paint the town dead!#PandemoniumArtists #blaseball pic.twitter.com/j2IEn8eHsD

— Mimi Chiu!! 💖 (@MimimiCee) October 22, 2020

just invented a cool new trick pic.twitter.com/YSS58d3Vfn

— its brady! (@bradyjhenry) October 21, 2020

Favorite genre of TikTok this week are guys explaining how they would survive huge video game crashes pic.twitter.com/MgNNQrGMzh

— BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL (@edsbs) October 20, 2020

This how wrestlers looked in wrestling games back on the 64 and PS1 https://t.co/QXx190qeok

— DOMAIN DIEGO🎃 (@DennistheBased) October 21, 2020

"the widespread belief that arcade game design is outdated is disproven by the popularity of the modern roguelike action game, which shares appeal in many (but not all) ways" is a more accurate statement but it doesn't get eyes on it like a shitty meme does so 🤡

— K'eeg (Stab And Stomp!) (@armormodechang) October 5, 2020

this is the most positive review i've ever seen (caves of qud) pic.twitter.com/iUPq3mj6Vy

— Anna Harren (@garblefart) October 24, 2020

1. Actually accept these techniques happen and ban people practicing them.

2. Ban their cultural internet dogwhistles (kek, 4chan, pepe), good faith folk will be like "hey no prob" if you ask nicely to not use those, bad faith folk blow their lids.

/

— Socially Distant Brian Bucklew ₑͤ＞∿＜ₑͤ ∞🌮 (@unormal) October 24, 2020

3. Pick some honeypot discussion topics that are ripe for line-toeing and put them under watch in your coc. The dumbass bad actors CANNOT HELP but get incredibly mad about them. They out themselves immediately and violently.

— Socially Distant Brian Bucklew ₑͤ＞∿＜ₑͤ ∞🌮 (@unormal) October 24, 2020

it's a concentrated campaign aimed not at the game, but at an inclusive community that successfully excises the worst alt-right actors that have run amok over the last decade in gaming communities pic.twitter.com/qxAksSmoJd

— Socially Distant Brian Bucklew ₑͤ＞∿＜ₑͤ ∞🌮 (@unormal) October 24, 2020

how can aoc claim to be a gamer when she can't even name five women she's doxxed

— Andrew Ti (@ANDREWTI) October 21, 2020

How a video game sequel should resolve gamers' seemingly incompatible choices; Brie Larson as Samus; Master Chief 2020 has a bigger bulge

3374. pic.twitter.com/aoHKQGC1u4

— The unstoppable force 🌱 (@ex_aItiora) July 25, 2020

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bosslogic (@bosslogic) on Jul 25, 2020 at 7:21am PDT

added running-turn blends to nugget!#NCFOH#UE4 #gamedev #gameart #gamedevelopment #maya3d #cartoon pic.twitter.com/xiw6W00NNd

— Felix Waubert de Puiseau (@depuiseau) June 24, 2020

the puke#NCFOH#UE4 #gamedev #gameart #gamedevelopment #maya3d #cartoon pic.twitter.com/HHFR06xq39

— Felix Waubert de Puiseau (@depuiseau) July 21, 2020

The Shore - Massive Lovecraftian Monsters Inhabit The Shores of this Near-Photorealistic Horror Game!https://t.co/eWXmLROcQM

by #gamedev @TheShoreGame #indiedev #UE4 #indiegames pic.twitter.com/OzIOmr3m0h

— Alpha Beta Gamer (@gameralphabeta) July 22, 2020

me: i’m loving your game so far!

developer: thank you!

me: as long as you don’t-

developer: *suddenly grinning an inch from my face* put a water level in?

— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) July 9, 2020

Master Chief 2012 vs 2020.

The grittiness of his 2012 armor reflects the "Dark Knight" Nolan art style that was pervasive in the early 2010s. They insisted on a dirtier, grimier look, even for the gambeson-like padding.

also his crotch area is bigger this year pic.twitter.com/jEGYUKFs5b

— Genecast (@GenePark) July 22, 2020

Before video games, people had to painstakingly craft emotions by hand by getting married or getting cholera

— Christopher (@BunchesOfBees) July 23, 2020

Today an average gamer experiences the emotions of being a father who has their wife and daughter kidnapped or killed up to twelve times per month. And who knows what other emotions are out there to discover? I hope someone does because I have no intention of finding out

— Christopher (@BunchesOfBees) July 23, 2020

"This Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest Cave"

From a long article by Claire Evans about the creation of the game Adventure:

The longest cave in the world is in central Kentucky.

...

The earliest people to map Mammoth were enslaved, installed underground by landowners to lead tours. The first of these guides, Stephen Bishop, named its features — the River Styx, the Snowball Room, Little Bat Avenue — and discovered the eyeless white fish that swim in its deepest waters. When Bishop was sold, along with the caves, to a Louisville doctor, he was ordered to draw a map from memory. As cave maps do, his drawing looked like “a bowl of spaghetti dumped on the floor,” but it detailed the nearly 10 miles of passages that Bishop had discovered and remained the most thorough map of Mammoth’s reaches for more than 50 years. One nameless noodle, a passage forking off the subterranean Echo River, became important a century after Bishop was buried near the cave’s main entrance, his grave marked by only a cedar tree.

In Bishop’s lifetime, every landowner in Central Kentucky claimed a cave entrance; if not a natural sinkhole, then a crevice blown open with dynamite. Bishop believed that all these fragments were linked into one larger system, and his instinct was shared by generations of Kentucky cavers.

...

Until the late 1960s, anyone entering Mammoth would have passed the glass-topped coffin of Floyd Collins, a country caver who died pinned by a boulder.

...

By 1972, the Cave Research Foundation had surveyed nearly every Flint Ridge lead to its endpoint, sometimes with 10-hour belly crawls through womb-like tunnels. The “final connection,” as they called it, was imminent.

The cavers believed that Flint Ridge met Mammoth past a choke of sandstone boulders at survey point Q-87, a remote spur miles from the surface, but moving the boulders with lengths of metal pipe was back-breaking work. One expedition tried an alternate route, through a vertical crevice called “the Tight Spot.” Caving humor has a nihilistic streak: the Tight Spot is a dark slit so small that only one person in the party dared enter. She was a reedy computer programmer, all of 115 pounds, named Patricia Crowther.

Tower of Terror made in Minecraft; Killer Instinct arcade got louder the higher your combo went; Control writer polished his craft writing Destiny fanfiction

Watching a Killer Instinct documentary and the early internal decision to make the arcade machine louder the higher your combos went in order to draw a crowd is some brilliant carnie attract mode shit.

— Minovsky (@MinovskyArticle) July 7, 2020

This is the Killer Instinct documentary for those looking for a link. https://t.co/j7Oe38if1Y

— Minovsky (@MinovskyArticle) July 7, 2020

AC fishing dad is the most wholesome thing on this planet pic.twitter.com/uMVFxYUn6S

— Louise! (@themouseyouknow) July 1, 2020

Tencent’s hot sauce fraud exposes expired tech, says @petesweeneypro: https://t.co/5zKhf9djYh. pic.twitter.com/KfqD19jzqN

— ReutersBreakingviews (@Breakingviews) July 3, 2020

The Void at Downtown Disney District Permanently Shut Down Due to License Agreement Breach; Disney Springs Location Potentially Affectedhttps://t.co/8U6jMxzLQS pic.twitter.com/ayIDkcECoz

— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) July 3, 2020

So the Void VR was allegedly served a cease and desist for their star wars experience and an eviction notice, and all I'm thinking is how the VR venture was entirely in service of funding the creator's passion project medieval theme park which I didn't get to go to yet

— Jenny Nicholson (@JennyENicholson) July 3, 2020

...Whatever. pic.twitter.com/1S5VRavffN

— Kheici (@kheici) July 4, 2020

I spent a couple years bouncing between contract gigs. Whenever I was out of work, I would play a lot Destiny but felt bad that I wasn’t writing. So, to keep working on my skills, I started writing short stories set in the fantastic sci-fi universe they had created. 1/2

— Clay Murphy (@yourpalclay) July 7, 2020

Fifteen years ago there were about 5,000 companies in the UK that were sure that the ringtone subscription gravy train was going to keep on going forever, which is always a comforting thing to remember when you look at esports

— Robin Clarke (@rclarke) July 2, 2020

Being a millennial means the PlayStation 3 is still the most powerful computer ever created, whose hexagonal CPU was forged with fire and icemelt by master siliconsmiths in bowels of Mount Takao. Luckily, Saddam Hussein was stopped before he could build a Beowulf cluster of them.

— Swift⬡nSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) July 3, 2020

I once used the cluster of 215 PlayStation 3s at EPFL, that was a lot of cheap computing power at the time. And unlike for other CPUs, assembly programming for SPUs was quite magical: exact clockcycle predictions just from code. pic.twitter.com/d5h2JakZbE

— Marc Stevens (@realhashbreaker) July 3, 2020

GTAV with cyberpunk mods; Designing merchandise for Microsoft's Solitaire; How to create NPC portraits;

GTAV pic.twitter.com/6FpPb7oa9n

— Petri Levälahti (@Berduu) May 27, 2020

Some behind the scenes pics + mod list. There's also a short progression vid of the first shot on my IG Stories, if you're into that kinda thing. pic.twitter.com/s3CaueZsMY

— Petri Levälahti (@Berduu) May 27, 2020

Microsoft's Solitaire 30th anniversary merch sucks, so here's the shirts they should make - https://t.co/MnmZ2gpF8c pic.twitter.com/tBjDezD4hD

— Rock Paper Shotgun (@rockpapershot) May 22, 2020

HOT TIP: How to create NPC faces for your #ttrpg

1. Generate a face on https://t.co/E223CjimX5

2. Run it through https://t.co/gAO5YeXmUd

3. Profit pic.twitter.com/3roYvLot68

— Cezar Capacle (@capacle) May 22, 2020

Why hasn’t there been an investigative expose about the Overwatch League crumbling? Teams with reported ~$60 million buy-ins falling apart, the human impact of the league’s flux? I’ve been talking about this with a lot of people lately, and here’s my take:

— Cecilia D'Anastasio (@cecianasta) May 22, 2020

There are so few full-time jobs, especially after esports publication after esports publication has folded. Volatility is the norm. Many who remain know they might risk crucial access to the next big event if they investigate dirty realities.

— Cecilia D'Anastasio (@cecianasta) May 22, 2020

Going to visit silent hill just to see if my traumas and mental hangups manifest in a sexy way or not

— Zack @ Making MIDI! (@Skeletondoggy) May 23, 2020