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Speaking of Fat Bear Week!

The boss from Ask Questions Later, a concept for a shooter similar to Satan's Hollow. This never went beyond artwork, but I really liked that art!

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 14h

We have a targeting crosshair! Now to actually make it do something aside from floating around the screen!

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 17h

Liquor Cabinet, one of the game concepts for Shootin'anny. Blast all alcoholic beverages! Shoot the mugs of Gold Star beer first to boost the point values of all other drinks! Don't shoot the TNT; that would be bad.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 18h

And we have a super mega early alpha of Shootin'anny! I've got a Konami-style grid that fills the screen, then a timer with big numbers (well, 8x16 pixel numbers...), then the Shootin'anny logo. That's all for now. Nice start, though!

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I made an appointment to have my car's oil changed in town, only to be told that their power box had been soaked in last night's flood and that they were closed. It's been a while since my last oil change. A long, loooooong while.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Damn! Someone's really kicking butt on the Sega Genesis. Note that Windjammers was originally a Neo-Geo game. Note that very little is lost in the port, and he's not even finished with it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRZ...

youtube.com

Windjammers Megadrive - July 26 gameplay update

YouTube video by Format_ c

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Game concept for Shootin'anny. Henhouse doors open every couple of seconds, revealing either 1) nothing, 2) a chicken, 3) a fox, or 4) a star. Shooting a chicken takes away a horseshoe, while shooting a fox adds points. Shooting a star increases the multiplier, making foxes worth big points.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Oh man, they should enact martial law because I ran a stop sign!" just makes you want to escape the planet, like Superman before Krypton exploded. How could you be this stupid and deluded? How can you say this in public and not be found decomposing in a ditch five days later?

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-wP... Urgh. These goddamned people, if they can be so called. "I want a dictatorship because running a stop sign mildly inconvenienced me!" I want to bash your skull with a baseball bat until it's reduced to bonemeal, but we can't all have what we want, can we?

youtube.com

Florida Deputy Has ABSOLUTELY No Time For This Sovereign Citizens Nonsense

YouTube video by Van Balion

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This question from AtariAge tore at me a bit, like a tiny fleck of broken glass. "What do you lose in speed, polished feel, writing in CV Basic?"

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Find the pixel that prevented this from compiling on ColecoVision! (Urrrrgh.)

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"I know the Queen has got 'em too, but she don't work 'em like I do!"

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Heh. Brave of you to admit this, City Connection. "Yeah, our games are mid-tier at best. But you love 'em for it!"

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Really not crazy about the design of Totally Rad, aka Magic John. Are there power-ups? Like, at all? The game is super, super stingy with energy and magic, and there are no checkpoints in each stage. That's not fun. That's just aggravating.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And the next Jalecolle game is... a castle and a microwave. Uh...?

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

That final stage in Shatterhand is murder. Someone really, really should have given this some playtesting. Someone really, really should have showed the player some MERCY.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've been making various games and demos starring my character Byron... sometimes with BASIC, and sometimes with image converters, when a BASIC compiler wasn't available. But with the Atari 2600, the hardware is so limited that I said, "What the hell," and just made a game.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'd rather make something for the 3DO. I'm not under the impression that it would be any EASIER, mind, but I'd rather invest that time and effort into a machine I appreciate, even if it ends in failure. I'll happily/angrily bang my head against that wall for a while.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I realized that I couldn't make a game to my standards on this system. The dev environment was difficult, and realistically, making a 16-bit game is a massive undertaking for a single person. I could chain myself to this anchor for several months and hate the results, or just move on. So I did.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You know what they call blindly loyal fans of a bankrupted failure with more bravado than brains? MAGA. Except you can't make Atari (Jaguar) great again, because it was never there in the first place.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

History will vindicate me on this. The Jaguar sold a pitiful 250,000 units, making even the 3DO look like a sales titan. The supposed hardware potential I keep hearing about wasn't on display when the system was actively supported... for all of two years.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Still licking my wounds from the whole Atari Jaguar incident, but they're starting to scab over. They can think of me as a childish moron if it suits them. They're Jaguar fans... who cares what they think?

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

A fine assortment of 8-bit beverages, planned for the obligatory "blow away everything in the liquor cabinet" stage of Shootin'anny. This is a little tricky, because only two colors can exist on 8 pixel line. However! There are always workarounds...

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Wow, the neehaw crowd jumped on board with Roseanne the moment she expressed her support for you-know-who. You stupid trogs do realize she's always been awful, right? Weren't you yelping about her butchering the national anthem thirty-five years ago? Because I sure remember.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

ko-fi.com/arugulaz If you'd like to donate, I welcome and appreciate the financial assistance. I have delusions of adequacy and think that my articles are worth something, rather than nothing.

ko-fi.com

Ko-fi | Tips and Memberships from fans for the price of a coffee. No fee on Tips

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Anyway! Retro-Babble is back, with the games of Stern. And a couple of games from Konami that Stern developed, because their library is really small and I had to find some way to shore up the numbers. kiblitzing.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...

kiblitzing.blogspot.com

The Tower of Retro-Babble: Stern

"Know whadda mean, Stern?" (image from the Gameex forums) To know Stern is to… know more about Stern than I did yesterday! It’s a relatively...

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Most rich text editors are "what you see is what you get." Blogger is more like "whatever you see, it doesn't matter because we won't give you anything like that." Verdana? Nope, you get the crap default font. Placing images where you want them? Nah, they're going on the bottom of the page.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sega Genesis Shinobi port, by @masterlinkuei.bsky.social. This is not related to a previously attempted conversion that was ultimately abandoned. www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Vf...

youtube.com

SEGA Mega Drive - Shinobi by Master Linkuei PREVIEW (COMING SOON)

YouTube video by Master Linkuei

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And also, white trashy dudes who look like they work for Dog the Bounty Hunter running around, punching the air and pretending to be the title character. I don't get this, but sure, why not? It's too amusingly weird to complain much about it.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I should point out for the record that the Shatterhand game on Jalecolle is absolutely, 100% worth the purchase. They've larded it with QoL features... not just the usual save states, but incentives for mixing up your satellites, health bars for bosses, and a parry that recovers your bot's health.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One of the proposed games for Shootin'nanny. Red holds up two numbered cards... shoot the highest number for points. (Shooting the low number takes away a horseshoe; shooting it twice ends the game outright. You only have four.)

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Every time I've dealt with C++, it's been like assembling Ikea furniture. No matter how many pieces are in the package, there's always something missing! Don't even get me started on that DragonBASIC reboot. Why oh why can't this be drag and drop? Why can't I just have the compiled file? Argh!

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

After the recent tangles with the "do the meth" crowd, I would quite like to not put myself through that kind of torment. "But it's easy!" Your definition of easy and mine clearly do not match, sir. Easy is drag and drop. Your definition of easy is download dependencies and *hope*.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"Since I can't distribute the game legally, you'll have to provide your own copy..." Okay, cool, I know how these things go. "and use this intimidating set of command-line based tools to compile it." Oh. You don't have a patcher like Lunar.IPS? Uhh... pass. I'll just watch the YouTube video.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Tentative logo for the game. It should be Coleco-legal, except for the target, which will need a sprite. It's just how it goes with the ColecoVision! I'd make it for the Master System if there was light gun support; it'd make more sense there, and the color is so much nicer. (And! And! Sega.)

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Missy Scarlett ("Red") has big breasts. Have I mentioned that? (I don't find them titillating, heh. I just think huge boobs are funny.)

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Continued progress on Shootin'anny.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So the Sonic films saved the Sonic games from cancellation? Wow, Sega, the fact that you even thought about ending the Sonic series is proof that the ghost of Bernie Stolar still haunts your office. What the hell else do you have? Don't say Golden Axe; it's not 1988.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In conclusion, feed Atari Jaguar fans to actual jaguars. This ends my TED talk.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Not content with leaving the argument on AtariAge, two of the bastards came to my Itch.IO page to heckle me. Oh, so is that how this is going to be? Fuck allllll the way off. I would sooner make a Mattel Hyperscan game than to give Jagoffs so much as a single line of code.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I gave some consideration to making a Jaguar game, but the environment wasn't clicking for me and, if I can be frank, the fanbase is every bit as awful as the system itself. After the way they treated me, they can die of cancer... and AIDS... in a fire... from an airplane crashing to Earth.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Further revisions to the concept drawing. In the actual game, the five apples and crosshair (and probably Missy Scarlett's eyes) would be sprites. The grass on the ground could be made from animated tiles, like Super Mario Bros. 2.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Concept art for the ColecoVision light gun (light ball?) game Shootin'anny.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This really is one of the best video game tunes ever written. Chip, redbook, modern... doesn't matter.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's just a really weird combination.

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Jess Ragan @mneko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I was probably one of the only people on Miiverse who posted about progressive rock icons.

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