Author: E. Zachary Knight

Molehill Mountain Episode 30 – Just Stop Playing

Published December 19, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

This is the last Molehill Mountain for 2016 and Andrew was away again. We will not have a podcast on Christmas Eve nor New Years Eve, so you will be on your own for entertainment those nights.

I open the show talking about Arc the Lad, a very short precursor to Arc the Lad 2. I follow it up with some discussion about a Ludum Dare game called Monolith by Rocketdad, as well as a game jam game of my own called Glug Cave. At 18:35, I talk about Facepunch telling unhappy Rust players to just stop playing. At 24:51, I look back at some of the big stories of the year such as Nintendo making multiple headlines, Blizzard launching Overwatch and the closing of GamePolitics. At 47:45, I talk about what I want to see in 2017, specifically the launch of the Switch, the release of Cosmic Star Heroine, and some personal and business goals.

That’s it for the last podcast of 2016. Andrew and I will both be back on January 7, 2017 with episode 31.

Quick Thought: Pokemon Go’s Latest Update Sucks Eggs

Published December 14, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

I don’t have the time nor inclination to write up a full blown 800 word article on this, but I still wanted to share my thoughts. So introducing the first Random Tower Quick Thought. These are meant to get something that is nagging me off my chest and to spark a conversation. You don’t have to confine the whole conversation to the opening topic either.

On Monday, December 12, Niantic dropped its latest update on Pokemon Go players. Many people, such as myself, were expecting Gen 2 Pokemon to arrive. Well, they kind of did that. Instead of dropping the entire Gen 2 catalog on us, they gave us just the baby pokemon, minus Tyrogue. However, you can’t catch these new pokemon in the wild yet. You can only get them from hatching eggs. Sounds cool at first.

Super Mario Run or Super Mario Ruined?

Published December 14, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

While Andrew was unable to join me on the Molehill Mountain Podcast this past Saturday, he still had something to say about our signature topic…

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Molehill Mountain Episode 29 – Always Online

Published December 13, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Andrew is away for the next two weeks, so you lucky ducks get to spend some quality time with EZK. This week, we enjoy some DRM chat. Nintendo’s Super Mario Run for iPhone is reported to require a constant data connection to play and several game developers have decided Denuvo, the supposed unhackable DRM, is not for them and have patched it out of their games.

It may be all EZK, all the time in this episode but Andrew does make an appearance in the chat, which we’ve transcribed below. Next week, he’ll be on a plane where he can’t watch the podcast or play Super Mario Run.

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Baby Groot Wins The Internet In 2016 And More Guardians Of The Galaxy News

Published December 5, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

This weekend gave us two bits of Guardians of the Galaxy goodness for us to relish in. One has me super excited and the other not so much. I don’t really like to dwell on negatives, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. But first off, let’s look at the really awesome news. A new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer launched this past weekend.

This trailer is serious business. I absolutely love it. I fell in love with the first movie after watching the first full trailer. I still break out into “Hooked on a Feeling” at random times to this day. The character introductions and overall tone of the trailer really set the stage for a great movie. I eventually bought the movie the week it came out on video. I had planned to just rent it first, but my wife and I knew we were going to watch it multiple times and we decided buying it was the best course of action. We don’t regret that decision at all. We both love the movie and my kids love it.

Legend Of Dragoon Took 65 Pretty Cool Hours Of My Life I Won’t Get Back

Published November 29, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

A few months back, I started playing Legend of Dragoon for the PS1 for the first time. I had the first three of four disks sitting on my game shelf for years and just needed an excuse to start playing. Had I actually played that, I would have been able to borrow disk four from my brother. However, I was planning on buying that disk somewhere at sometime. That didn’t work out. Instead, I bought the game through the PSN store as a PS1 classic game.

It sat for a few months in my PSN library waiting for me to play it, but I never got around to it. Playing it on my PS3 was kind of a pain because my kids used the PS3 for TV and movies as well as Minecraft. The couple of hours I had after they went to bed were often spent spending time with my wife or working on my side projects. That all changed when I got my PSP. I picked it up at a thrift store for $8 and had to replace the battery for another $9. It was probably the best gaming hardware investment I ever made. I now had the freedom to play all those PS1 classics at will and I decided to start with Legend of Dragoon.

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Black Friday, A Dark Stain On Our Consumerism; Or, How I learned to Survive To Shop Another Day

Published November 23, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Black Friday I am not a big fan of shopping. I tend to go somewhere, get what I need and leave. Occasionally, when I want to waste some time, I will browse for about 20-30 minutes. But I can’t go to the mall or store and “shop” for hours. This is all during normal business hours.

I used to work in retail. I worked at a game store, EB Games, for a few months, but thankfully not during the holiday season. I also worked at Kohl’s as a sales associate and Target as an overnight stocker both during the Holiday season. And let me tell you, it sucked. At Kohl’s I spent my time dealing with unruly customers and short stock on promotional items. It was a terrible combination. At Target, I avoided the customers, but I had to deal with their messes. Customers would just toss stuff around. They wouldn’t put things back on the shelves when they decided they didn’t want the item they pulled off. Shoes were the worst. Even on normal business hours, shoes are the worst to clean up, but during the holiday season that department looked like a warzone.

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Nintendo Announces The Switch, Confirming The Most Recent NX Rumors

Published October 20, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Nintendo Switch Do you remember all those rumors a while back about the NX being a hybrid mobile/console system with detachable controllers and cartridges instead of optical media? The ones that I was really worried about when I talked about them during one of my solo Molehill Mountain podcasts? Yeah those rumors. They were completely right. Today, Nintendo revealed that its next console is a hybrid mobile/home console called the Switch. If you haven’t watched the reveal trailer, where have you been? Anyway, here is the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI

Back when I talked about the NX rumors during the podcast, I expressed skepticism of the target market such a console would have. I was skeptical of exactly how such a system would market itself and compete with other consoles and mobile devices. I expressed plenty of skepticism of the whole idea in general. Well, not everything. I thought the change to game cartridges is a great idea.

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Twitter Handles And Email Addresses In Fiction, What Safe Guards Should Be In Place?

Published October 7, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

FIFA 17 by EA Everyone has seen a 555 number in a movie or TV show. The FCC has declared a subset of those numbers for purely fictional uses. They did this so that real people wouldn’t be harassed by people dialing numbers they see in movies. Of course it isn’t perfect. Some producers don’t realize that only the 0100-0199 block of those 555 numbers are dedicated to fiction. Sometimes a tv show or movie, especially one from a smaller producer, will just toss 555 in front of a random 4 digit number and expect they are safe.

While the fictional phone number is an industry standard, there isn’t a similar standard for other communication mediums. Phones aren’t the only means of communication these days. People use email, Twitter, Facebook and other social media to communicate with one another. While a lot of shows will just make up a social media service to use in their fiction, a lot of them are near indistinguishable from their real life counterpart.

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Pokemon Go’s Buddy System Wants You To Walk 400 Kilometers To Evolve A Magicarp

Published September 14, 2016 by E. Zachary Knight

Pokemon Go's New Buddy System

Get ready to walk your feet off. Pokemon Go really thinks you want to walk 400 kilometers to evolve your Magikarp. Distances for pretty much every other pokemon are also comparable.

Yesterday, Niantic released its Buddy Pokemon update. With this update, you can assign one pokemon to be your “buddy”. As your buddy, the pokemon appears next to you in your profile and next to your headshot. As you walk, your buddy has a distance meter that fills up. When full, you get one solitary candy.

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