iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

YouTube's now almost completely unusable after the last update. I'd say they should sack their coders but how do you send an AI a pink slip?

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Completed the first sweep of Super Mario Galaxy and have almost all the RetroAchievements that aren't for Luigi, but I've just found the "all coins" subset and this thing's already kicking my ass. There's honest-to-goodness glitch tech needed here.

110

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Heck of a thing that I'm retreating more and more into an Indie and Retro bubble with my gaming habits. I've barely played more than five hours of FF16 since starting it (and I like it a lot, I just keep getting distracted by smaller games).

110

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The new Ocarina of Time's Baby Link looks like he's about to open a store in Hyrule Castle Town with the earwormiest theme music.

001

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Playing more exploraction games, as is my usual bullshit, and maybe getting a little obsessed with this game's OST: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f_b...

youtube.com

Power Sector (A Locksmith's Folly)

YouTube video by Brian Skeel - Topic

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

ICYMI, just wrapped another season of Game OVA, the internet's favorite anime/VG crossover event. Probably true! Linkz: giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a...

giantbomb.com

Game OVA Reversal: Episode 1—Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished

We're switching things up on Game OVA this year: Rather than watching old-school anime and playing games based on same, we're looking at anime inspired by games instead. Since I can't help myself, thi...

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I think if I were ever to start a Patreon it'd be one of those single-tier, no-rewards arrangements but instead I'd randomly insert the names of Patrons into reviews as a series of non-sequitur metaphors. But you don't need to be a CarlSmith455 to know whether that's a good idea or not.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I'm watching the SiN anime movie for a thing and they kill off "John C.Armack" in the first five minutes. This might be OK.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Had a great deal of fun writing the upcoming Game OVA entry. It wasn't even a particularly wild anime adaptation either, I just somehow got plenty of jokes-per-gallon mileage out of it. Even after 15 years and almost 2,000 blog entries on GB, writing about dumbass shit is still enjoyable as hell.

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Whenever I listen to Carpenter Brut I get these vivid mindscapes of starfighter battles and cyberpunk hovercar chases, and then I read the name of the track and it's always something like "Fighting Some Guy in a Parking Lot".

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The Dominion Tank Police cameo in the new Ghost in the Shell episode was fun. I hope Briareos shows up at some point.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

To the Homestar fan working on the subs for this episode of Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You, I see you dawg.

An old anime guy (but only like ""old"" since he's mid-40s) looks concerned about his smartphone being full of viruses.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Weird bugbear that's only going to mean anything to 1% of people who read this, but why is it whenever a new "perfectly cut scream" compilation pops up in my YT algorithm, it's never even close to perfectly cut? It's like people got the broad idea but not the actual joke.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I keep forgetting that people use SMS to promote the things they're doing. Doy! And here I was using it to complain. Well, it can be two things.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Recent N64 stuff! First, June's 64 in 64 returning half-season in four parts: giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... giantbomb.com/users/4945/a... Then, some GS templates for any N64 rankers out there: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

giantbomb.com

64 in 64: Episode 49: Plats All, Folks! Part One

The internet's favorite N64 ranking show is back, just in time for the system's 30th anniversary. We'll be focusing entirely on the remaining 3D platformers for the system throughout this season, with...

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Man, I love me some Falcom but them nuking the Falcom Music Channel on YT is fucked up. An unforced error against the dedication of its fanbase. Feels like the desperation of the crumbling game industry is causing every company of a moderate size and above to go full penny-pinching mode.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Been watching some new anime and caught this, from the fifth episode of From Overshadowed to Overpowered. The "genius" protagonist's overachieving entrance exam is just a slightly blurry retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. I loved when older anime used to do this, glad the tradition's still alive.

An image from an anime of a gloved hand on top of a stack of papers. The text is just about legible as a version of Little Red Riding Hood written in English.

110

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Only just finding out that Sony took away the ability to back up save files via USB on PS5. It's cloud only, and that's only for PS+ subs. Kind of a shitty move. Probably be focusing on achievements elsewhere then, since the occasional save scum can save tens of hours of busywork.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Finally hit the mastery on the largest achievement set I've ever tackled. This took an inordinate amount of time. Worth it though, since it's Dark Cloud 2.

The Dark Cloud 2 RetroAchievements set in full. There's a ludicrous amount of achievements, is the crux of the image.

110

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Really difficult to see what the video game industry is going to look like in five years, or ten years. Intriguing and scary at the same time. Suddenly, my stacking up of 20 years' worth of backlog doesn't seem so wasteful.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

The load-bearing wall of Giant Bomb that is Chucktowski recently wrote a list of first-person dungeon-crawlers that is woefully incomplete, and I've half a mind to suggest we start a podcast with a few of the other site mods about playing a bunch of DRPG classics. We could all it Cops and Blobbers.

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

That's a heck no for the Steam Machine. Going to have to hope this base PS5 and 3060 PC will last me a little while longer. And people wonder why there are so many AI haters.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Top Ten Reasons Why You Shouldn't Swallow a Lithium-ion Battery (#2 Will Shock You)

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Thinking about how many N64-related items I've been seeing on my feed since I started up "64 in 64" again and had that brief solipsistic fantasy that maybe I had something to do it... until I realized the whole reason I rebooted that blog series was because of the N64's 30th anniversary next Tuesday

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

If all goes to plan and he's not bewitched too long by the seductive charms of Garry Kitchen's Battletank, Jeff Gerstmann's "Ranking the NES" series should see its finale either tomorrow or next Friday. To celebrate, I created a little tribute. Just a little one. giantbomb.com/user-lists/u...

giantbomb.com

EURanking the NES

To celebrate the imminent conclusion of Jeff Gerstmann's Ranking the NES YouTube series, which has taken just shy of three years and 145 episodes to complete, I've put together here my own miniature v

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Man, September (and the first week of October) is going to suck if you're the type who has to buy every game new. Fortunately(?) there's way more broke people around now so I suspect we'll see a lot of long tails on these things instead.

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Good to know BlueSky has AI doing all the moderation in addition to the engineering.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Following on from a Giant Bomb meme, I'm hoping that when Falcom finally gives Ys V a big Oath in Felghana/Memories of Celceta-level remake they subtitle it "Kefin's Back, Jack!".

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Definitely appreciate Nintendo just remaking old games for the Switch 2, since it means I no longer need to get it. It's like the Wii U but in reverse.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Aw man, Frinkiac got slopped to hell, too? Well, look at the wonders* of the Computer Age now. (*blunders)

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

They're a Waluigi if they miss, right?

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

The thing with AI is that it's one of those technological fields like genomics or nanomachines that's liable to break bad very horribly, and we've dozens of examples of speculative fiction that go into how that might happen.

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

It's odd, but my PS5 was one of the few console purchases I've been second-guessing since I got it (I have a decent enough PC and almost all of the PS5 library is also on Steam). Now that its default RRP is about to be 150% what I paid, it makes me a little happier to have bought in when I did.

110

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Really hoping blogging picks up again on GB, maybe after a few necessary updates once the more pressing stuff gets handled. I'm like 60% of that feed right now and that's a pretty tragic situation no matter who you ask.

020

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

In three months' time, if all goes unwell, the US will be led by an 80-year-old Nazi. Or, as they're sometimes called, an achtungenarian.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I'm guessing YouTube engineers are about to face a wave of layoffs and need to push some new code around to prove they're still useful. I can tell because YouTube's usability is way down and half the videos have stopped working.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

As soon as I've put "metroidvania" in the grave I'm going after "roguelike/roguelite" next because it's damn embarrassing that you have to keep distinguishing between a genre and its diet version like that. It's like describing a game "it's not as violent as KOF; it's more a Shover than a Fighter."

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Been playing some of the fourth SFC Goemon game (Kirakira Douchuu) and, damn, this is considerably worse than the previous three. To the extent that it feels like a completely different team worked on this and biffed it horribly. Makes sense now why they didn't add a numeral to this one.

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

It should be so easy to make it look like he died naturally of a heart attack, what are we doing here?

100

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

If I ever become one with the internet like the Lawnmower Man I'm just going to go around deleting errant apostrophes from the possessive "it's", plurals, acronyms, and numbers in everybody's posts/comments. Like the Greek gods of old I intend to get obnoxiously petty with my omnipotence.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

YouTube is perhaps the only website I visit regularly that can both crash and freeze up. A marvel of technology. Will its owners spend any of the billions that site makes on fixing it? Nah, they should spend more on AI algorithms that demonstrably don't work and then pocket the rest. Business 101.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I've been watching someone play Mario 64 for the first time with a sense of smug superiority, since I know the game back to front, when all of a sudden he grabs one of those koopa shells inside the oysters and I'm all "wait, you can do that?". There really is no end to that game's little secrets.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Whenever I see Greg Bovino's name on here I keep thinking it's this guy: achewood.com/2007/11/01/t...

achewood.com

Halloween Candy

We got three of these.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Getting the Plat for Kena was roooooough. That game on its highest difficulty thinks it's Dark Souls and it very much is not. Great looking game though; dig the whole Kubo and the Two Strings aesthetic. Oh, and I recorded this for anyone curious about the difficulty: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYT...

youtube.com

Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Woodsmith Fight (Master)

YouTube video by Mento Memori

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Now that RetroAchievements has implemented Multiset compatibility I can finally unlock all 852 Dark Cloud 2 achievements in a single playthrough. Should tide me over for the weekend at least.

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

I'm glad I found out that the PS5 saves video clips of every trophy earned by default sooner rather than later. That would've filled up the ol' SSD quick.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

In honor of his creator's passing, Dilbert's tie will be raised at half-mast today.

000

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

2025 is officially over with the last Mento's Month of the year! Shoehorned most of my GOTY content into this one, since I'd already written about them all elsewhere, plus thoughts on the season/year's anime and a dramatic finale to that Master System thing I was doing giantbomb.com/users/4945/a...

giantbomb.com

Mento's Month: December '25

2025's final monthly round-up of reviews, articles, lists, anime musings, and other miscellany by Mento, the gaming internet's favorite son. I can just write that in an excerpt and it magically become...

010

Mento @gbmento.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

The monkey power-up alone turns Astro Bot from a 5-star game to a 4-star one. Unforgivable to make speedrun courses with this garbage. (The game also has serious hitbox issues throughout but, man, that horrible ape climbing mechanic in particular though.)

020