10 Animes that Might Help Reignite the Old Spark
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/21/25 at 12:04 AM CT
Everyone on the MJ Crew (except Nick) used to be avid fans of anime – the Japanese flavor of animation that initially started out as a rip-off of Disney before moving in its own decidedly-bizarre and unmistakably-Japanese direction – but we’ve really fallen out of the habit as of late. I was pondering why this was, and it essentially boils down to a few factors: 1) The rampant success of shonen anime like “One Piece” and “Naruto” absolutely flooded the pipeline with similar fare, 2) The online communities we were part of either stopped recommending good anime, stopped recommending anime altogether, or decided that anime was sexist and bigoted and should be actively fought against, and 3) After a few poor choices in DVD/Blu-Ray purchases that turned out to be duds, we became leery about going into any new series blind.
Recently, however, I’ve been using the free “Roku Fast Channels” on my living room TV to watch streaming programming as if these channels were …
ESA’s Mask Slips, Revealing that the Dire Condition of Games Preservation is Intentional
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/13/25 at 01:03 PM CT
Did you know that 87% of videogames released before 2010 are no longer commercially available? The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) knows, and it turns out they LIKE it that way!
In a 16 minute expose, tech YouTuber, Bellular News, goes into the gory details, revealing just how intentionally-terrible “games preservation” efforts, videogames in the public domain, and modern copyright laws are.
It turns out that videogames are being treated as a “special” case, wherein, despite the fact that games are both art and tech simultaneously, they are excluded from all of the copyright exceptions that protect other forms of media, such as film and books. As a result, it is proving next to impossible for legitimate Games Preservationists – not just wannabes like GOG.com – to build legitimate game lending libraries within the structure of the Law.
And why is it so difficult to work out such a library? Because the Corporate Overlords squatting at the top of …
All is Not Well as GOG Floats Subscriptions in New Survey
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/05/25 at 07:51 PM CT
Oh dear! Last we heard of Steam’s most competent competitor, GOG (formerly known as Good Old Games, but changed the name when they started to add BAD old games and newer Indie games to their catalog), the Polish company was getting into bed with Jeff Bezos via an unwholesome and unwelcome alliance with Amazon.
Amazon’s only real claim to fame within the Gaming hobby is its web services, powering both the Twitch ‘creator’ streaming platform and the Luna gamestreaming service. Conversely, GOG has built up a reputation over several decades as being pro-Gamer, pro-consumer, pro-preservation, anti-DRM, and anti-corporate. Now it seems that our former friends in Poland are going to throw all of that away.
In a new survey (which is already closed) e-mailed out to GOG members last weekend, the platform holder nonchalantly asked members what they would like to see from a subscription-based model to “support” GOG’s games preservation activities. While the survey starts out …
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