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This sequel to Maniac Mansion picks up the story five years later, when one of Dr. Fred's tentacle monster creations accidentally drinks toxic sludge that gives him super intelligence and an unquenchable thirst to take over the world. This brings Bernard (the nerdy kid from the first game) back to the mansion, this time with his college roommates Hoagie (a laid-back metalhead) and Laverne (an endearingly nutty medical student). Dr. Fred tries to send the trio back in time to prevent the catastrophe, but Hoagie ends up 200 years in the past with no electricity to power his time pod, and Laverne ends up 200 years in the future when tentacles reign and keep humans as their pets. As the player you control all three protagonists and guide them to ensure that the terrible, eponymous Day of the Tentacle never dawns.



This was one of my favorite games as a kid, but I hadn't played it since the remastered re-release came out, ten years ago today. When I was looking into it I noticed that it happens to be the #1 rated DOS title on MobyGames. Is this actually the best DOS game of all time? Let us investigate!

( Read more... )

Day of the Tentacle Remastered is available on various platforms for $14.99 USD, and on Steam it's currently on sale for $2.99 USD, so if you never got around to it, now's the time!

The Ainu are an indigenous people native to northern Japan and nearby parts of Russia. Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006) was a leading activist for Ainu rights in Japan, and eventually became the first Ainu member of the Japanese legislature. But his career in the Diet came after the publication of this book, which mixes memoir, history, and ethnography.

Kayano relates what he knows of his people's oppression in the 19th century, when the Japanese government pushed many Ainu groups onto marginal land and conscripted people for forced labor at minimal pay. This leads into his own childhood, when his family's generational poverty was exacerbated by his father's alcoholism. As a young man Kayano came to feel ashamed of being Ainu, culminating in a demeaning job at an Ainu-themed attraction, performing sacred dances five times a day for gawking tourists.

But the tourists' ignorant questions sparked Kayano's realization that there should be a real Ainu museum curated by actual Ainu people and fostering respect for their culture. He was inspired to travel the Ainu lands collecting one traditional tool or piece of clothing at a time (and always paying the people who made them) and eventually succeeded in opening the museum and renewing his own sense of pride in his heritage.

This short book highlights important issues, but I have to be honest—I found the presentation pretty dry. Maybe it's partly the translation? I also noticed that Ainu women weren't given much attention; Kayano has a wife, but her only character trait shown in the book is "supportive of her husband". But I'd say the book is still a good resource on a significant figure in global indigenous rights.

(As an aside: This book was on my TBR list for at least 15 years. This year I'm really trying to either read some of the long-time lingerers or admit I'm not going to read them, so having read this is a great success for me!)

This Flash game by Argentine developer Daniel Benmergui presents a scene with a woman in a rowboat looking up at a man sitting on the moon. As the player you can snap photos of different portions of the scene and move them around, leading to different resolutions of the scenario.

I do remember this game making the rounds in the late 2000s and being held up as evidence on the pro side of the burgeoning "can video games be art?" debate. Personally I have always found this debate tedious and misguided, proving nothing except that "art" is a poorly defined term which is used to arbitrarily judge elements of culture as worthy or unworthy. So that's probably why I never clicked any of the links to I Wish I Were the Moon.

Coming to it now, my strongest impression is that it doesn't demonstrate anything about art, but it does demonstrate (yet again) that I am extremely aromantic. The game is supposed to be a representation of a love triangle; I do know that. But it makes my brain do the thing that it's been doing my entire life, which is to interpret romantic scenarios that I don't understand as anything other than what they are intended to be. (My brain does this especially with songs, which tend to be worded vaguely enough that it's easy to do. This breakup song could be about a friendship turning sour! This passionate love ballad could be about any kind of love and it doesn't even have to be about a person! It could be about a city or a fandom or a celestial body!!)

So what is the moon in this game? It's something the man loves which is separating him from the woman in the rowboat. Who says it has to be a person? It could be his career or his faith or his family or just about anything! I guess you could argue that one of the essential qualities of art is that it's open to interpretation, but let's not and say we did.

The 2008 version of I Wish I Were the Moon is playable in a Flash emulator here. In 2022 the developer also offered a free remaster on his itch.io page here, but I have to say I think it lacks some of the charm of the original.

This is part three of my book club notes on The Black Fantastic. [Part 1, part 2.]

All of this batch of stories are available online!


"The Venus Effect" by Violet Allen (2016)

( The authorial voice repeatedly tries to write stories in different genres, only to be stopped each time by the Black protagonist falling victim to police violence. )


"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" by Phenderson Djèlí Clark (2018)

( What it says on the tin, in an alternate universe where magic is part of daily life. )


"The Hospital Where" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2018)

( An aspiring writer makes a Faustian bargain. )


"The Ones Who Stay and Fight" by N.K. Jemisin (2018)

( A response to Le Guin, in which a utopia has a dark side. Maybe. )