iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Why are you both like this?

Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

counterargument: is it not cool when some random side character has an awesome design even if they're not relevant to *your* journey that encourages you to think about who they are

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

connecting a chain of carbuncles from one side of the container to the other so he fucking explodes and i never have to look at his stupid face ever again

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RC @rcurchin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Jet Man (I had to shrink him in the wash like 3 times)!! #megaman #megamanDO #megamandualoverride #jetman

An 8-bit sprite of Jet Man from Mega Man: Dual Override.

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

can you tell him he still owes me for the pizza

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thiel @rrthiel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

so many ways to get a triangle wave but none of them sound quite like the 2a03 tri. chiptune equivalent to cookies just like mama used to make

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

many people think they're going to be the exception, the one game that manages to become charming in its dated nature. Buddy, you're not gonna be the exception, you're gonna be the rule

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K'eeg @armormodekeeg.blacksky.app · 25/09/2026

recently I came to a realization about why "smart devices" are so shitty if you take an appliance that creates some sort of physical output, and connect it to a network, what you've actually done is invent a new kind of printer and printers are, of course, the devil's machines

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

sometimes it's not about winning. it's about making sure your opponent loses

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

good afternoon specific nation

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

ok so who's gonna be the joker that qrts this

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cursèd gem 💎 @gemcitygem.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

me: hi gimme a large pizza pizza guy: any appetizers? me: what do you have? pizza guy: we've got fried cheese with no sauce or crust, crust with no cheese or sauce, and crust and cheese with no sauce me: gimme crust and cheese with no sauce pizza guy: and for your dip? me: sauce

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Lina ⏪ @stereoprotect.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Fuck yeah bro. 8 month long understaffing. taking away already existing staff to work on other understaffed departments. 30 patients an hour. increasing wrist tendonitis and lower backpain. it’s capitalism dawg it’s lit

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

i should start drip feeding you all of the old famitracker instruments that were short-lived trends a decade ago. if waifuguitar wasn't founded upon inaccurate fds emulation it would've hit like a truck

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

lmao @ the premature celebrations for proto man gameplay he's just mega man with Shield Techniques(tm) over special weapons, and those Shield Techniques(tm) judging by the jet one seem to (at least some of the time) just be the special weapons with less flavour

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K'eeg @armormodekeeg.blacksky.app · 05/09/2026

I say this as a joke but honestly if, when playing a video game, you can lose and: - not get frustrated or annoyed - think about what happened and examine the elements in play - reconsider your choices regularly then you'll be well on your way to overcoming a lot of difficult gaming challenges

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

if there were two guys on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what

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mors @mors.games · 04/09/2026

made a new game you can only shoot to the dead center. don't get hit by your own bullet made for the #pico1k jam in under 1024 bytes mors-games.itch.io/dead-center enjoy

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

you would think that being forced to write less dialogue due to character limits from the dialogue box size and line limits from keeping your dialogue concise would make this easier. less to write, less trouble, right? However,

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

it's not IMPOSSIBLE to work with by any means - 11 does a great job at having almost all its weapons all stand above the buster. but i think the games really do benefit from not having it in the first place. the benefit of having it in the early game doesn't outweigh its drawbacks for me

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

oh yeah, the charge shot is a huge point of contention. it's super powerful for something that's so easy to use and instinctual - the fangames i've worked on all have the charge shot, and it really limits both the design of the weapons and stages to keep the weapons relevant in the player's mind

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

(personally, i also just *adore* the long-term resource management of the endgame and i really do feel sad whenever it's gone like it is in 8 and 11 due to common ammo refilling)

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

it definitely allows players to play around more, but strangely i feel like mm8's weapon set doesn't get that much comment amongst fans despite it being one of the more useful ones (perhaps due to flash bomb's centralisation) and it having the same refill-upon-death mechanic

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

without needing One Specific Weapon to get an easier route through a boss there's less pressure to save a specific weapon, because you can rely on there being something else in your arsenal that can get a similar job done

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

this is something i've always been interested in, but achieving it without damage output changes that lead players to see a single "correct" option can be very tricky. it's not as good, but i think the lax weakness chains we saw in 1-3 were an effective middle ground - each boss has several answers.

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

there's a bonus mode called "rift wanderer" in magmml3 that might interest you if you want to see how this might play out. limited ammo, no buster, 24 screens to get through. it's score attack, with bonus points for trick shots that clear multiple enemies in a single shot and completing screens fast

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

sure, the buster is often not necessarily the best tool for the job, but it's far from the worst, too. never needing to learn how to use and balance your arsenal absolutely reduces the load on the player - smart and flashy weapon usage is always more impressive as a display of skill to me

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

there's a nasty side effect here in that in the pursuit of the "hard mode" of games, lots of skill expression is being lost. in many ways, weapon usage in mega man demands more of the player than buster only - resource management, situational awareness, identifying the right tool for the job, etc

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

bubble lead does better because it's got spare ammo and isn't the most useful anyway, but we can still observe effects like players not using it against heat man in the boss rush. not so bad here, but eg; in 9's fort, a bad first impression in w1 really makes players nervous for what's coming

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

the two halves of the cause of player hesitance can't be split so easily, as CB without very limited ammo becomes a very different beast entirely. alien is a little better, but the effect persists - when players know the game expects them to use limited weapons later, they stop using them earlier

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

this reflects some of AK's original intent for mm1, where chain reactions on bosses w/ weapons could lead to new secret weapons. getting the balance right might be tricky (megamari's variable weapon set struggles for new players) and it'd deviate from mm's typical feel, but it's worth exploring!

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

i've toyed with some guaranteed ammo drops before, and they work great when they're noticed, but i'm wondering what the knock-on effect of *knowing* exactly how much ammo you've got coming are. definitely something that warrants more exploring for sure

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

guaranteed drops are a design space that hasn't been explored much yet. we toyed with it in operation xmas, where some specific enemies secretly always drop large ammo refills so experienced players can use more weapons. it works great when it's noticed, but i wonder what the knock-on effects are...

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

(annoyingly, game overs are a great way to tackle this, as reaching a fail state means you get an ammo refill, but the fangame player base is souring on finite lives (with some understandable reasons) and infinite lives turn that fail state into a vicious cycle)

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

i feel like the nature of the rest of the game *not* being the gauntlet does a good amount - the cost of experimenting and failing is far less with a full ammo refill after each rm stage. for me the issue isn't about rewarding play, but alleviating the fear of running out of ammo before a boss

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

and even 9 does a decent job by making the weapons all immediately rewarding w/o cutting into the situational nature a good amount of them fit under. getting rid of the charge shot also helped, of course. more situations where the buster doesn't feel as up-to-the-task always helps the other options

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

the flow cost of the menu in most earlier games has definitely contributed to the hesitance to use weapons for sure. more recent entries (7+, bar 9) make swapping between weapons far easier though (esp 11), which has allowed weapons that aren't omni-tools to shine amongst much more of the audience

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

forced weapon usage is a strange one. it's definitely something that's got problems - anybody can tell you how they never use crash bomber prior to boobeam trap in mega man 2, which isn't good for encouraging the game's main gimmick at all - but many people who complain try not to use weapons anyway

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

time based recharges aren't a great solution either - these encourage slow play where the optimal move after each encounter is to wait for a bit. we could consider making the recharge based on defeating enemies, instead... but that's basically the item drop system we already have!

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

full screen attacks are a boring but practical example - a great panic button that's easy to understand, but without some form of limit, these obviously become too much. through balancing ammo and strength, you can get a very varied set where some weapons are easy to rely on and some are strategic

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

ammo limits are a valuable design space in mega man - even ignoring bigger picture things like how running out of one weapon encourages using ones you otherwise might ignore or how the wily gauntlet encourages careful resource management, some weapon types stop being feasible without ammo

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

it's a catch 22 where any attempt to encourage freeform play gets interpreted as the opposite, and people attempting to make their own achievements then won't see the bigger picture. and when achievements are mandatory, counterproductive challenges like that are low-hanging fruit even for the devs!

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Colgate @colagtagte.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

as somebody working on a mega man fangame one of the biggest issues is that the standard is to have special weapons not be required usage so people don't hoard ammo instead of using them freely... but then because the game CAN be beaten buster only, people think the devs want them to do that

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keybug Streams Sometimes @keybug55.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Wow, modern internet is terrible I was checking a VA on a wikia page, and I'm like "I'm too lazy to search it on a search engine rather than clickinga link, let's see" and ofc it's a iMBD link my beloathed a min later, I recieve an email "Welcome to iMBD!" this feels illegal somehow

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Brendan Hark! T'is nearly Halloween. @brendanjharkin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see

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They/Them Squall Leonhart @biggnomeyt.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

FACTS: Visual novels and turn based RPGs are realer video games because video games are about learning skills to overcome tough challenges. Literacy and mathematics are skills you need in the real world unlike flying around in space shooting things or making combo MADs which are wastes of time.

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