Topher Florence

Made a new video for an NES Batman Remix I did.

A fascinating alternate history article about a world where John Lennon wasn’t killed.

A cool photo essay about the fictional life of a 60′s era starlet.

I mumble my way onto the Select Button podcast sometimes.  It’s still kinda rough, but there are some interesting topics that aren’t really covered in this way on other game podcasts.  I am “Take It Sleazy”.

The Bat Cave is where goth furry Bruce Wayne spent most of his time after his parents died.  It’s a super decked out basement with the best PC rig ever.  There is a big penny and a speedboat.  Sometimes he’ll knock people out and bring them there.

The Legion of Superheroes fly around in the Mark X with Matter Eater Lad the best superhero ever.  Matter Eater Lad is hillarious and when he became an adult he was governor of space or something and went crazy trying to get fired.  Also on the show he had sunglasses and a big tooth on his shirt.  Matter Eater Lad is the best and the Mark X is a ship worthy of the best Legionnaire.  Make another Legion episode of Smallville this time starrint Matter Eater Lad.

Aquaman’s Bungalow.  The greatest and most famous of all Superhero Hideouts.  Every time the throne of MermaidLand is usurped and Aquaman is banished, he goes there to solve the mystery of his usurping so he can re-surp the throne and become the rightful surp again.  This is the plot of all Aquaman comics unless he’s punching bad men on boats.

The Baxter Building is that old skyscraper with the big 4 in downtown Manhattan that used to belong to Reed Richards until the EPA shut him down for his Asbestos Rooms and Blasting Rocket Fuel Into The River.  It is not for Channel 4 like everybody says.

The Evil Dr. Who from The King Kong Show has a secret base inside of a pyramid that looks way cooler in this picture from a magazine than it ever did in that cheap-ass cartoon.  Unfortunately there is no sweet playset like the Technodrome or The Ghostbuster Fireman House Deal because this show wasn’t made in the 80′s so kids still had use their lame imaginations.

A Non-Ironic Volcano Full Of Ninjas.

I always liked that Jaws got to hang with his little girlfriend after the laser fight.  But then he was on James Bond Jr. so I guess there is no justice.

This is it.  The greatest video ever made by human hands. The greatest editing/clip choice I’ve ever seen. I have to step up my game.

As part of my ongoing research into the depths of mid-nineties platformia, I started playing a Sega CD game game called The Misadventures of Flink. A couple of hours in, a dormant part of my brain suddenly awakened.

The game is gorgeous and has and has a solid, if kind of awkward, physics system. It’s really intuitive, though rather long, and has no save system of any kind. It starts out easily enough, but the platforming gets pretty hardcore later on.

I have started this game over dozens and dozens of times and have not even bothered to use emulator save states as a crutch. I keep getting a little bit further before I run out of continues, and then start from scratch. I can feel the maps slowly burning into my brain as I play them. The old magic is back.

I am not generally a fan of tricky platforming puzzles. I don’t even really like playing Megaman on NES let alone the modern onslaught of impossibly hardcore flash games, Clickteam adventures, and romhacks.

I die in Flink a lot, though. There are the standard pixel perfect jumps, swinging maces, and obnoxious enemies. However, the game has a genuine sense of fairness and for the first time sense I was a teenager I am actually starting to get that old sense of video game mastery back.

There is a clever magic system to combine elements you find around the level to make handy spells to create extra platforms to get to secret places, minions to attack enemies for you, and other assorted trickery.

The game looks incredible. The pixel art is essentially the best I’ve ever seen outside of the Metal Slug series. The world is lush and rich in color and texture. On the Sega Genesis, I’ve only seen Sonic Team and Treasure come close.

The broadband age changed how I felt about platform games. Having 20 years of gaming at my fingertips kind of cheapens the specialness of each individual experience. When I know that each game is not going to be one of the 3 or 4 expensive cartridges that my parents will buy me that year, I don’t feel a need to be patient with every weird quirk of level design. I can just download a complete save to play the special stuff or use a walkthrough from GameFaqs, anyway. Not to mention that being a grownup affords me less time for all day gaming sessions.

It may partially just be my general mood, but I’m making time for Flink.