Other Strangeness — merritt k

The Deep Word

You meet a lot of weird people working in a tattoo shop. Like, a while ago my artist Rosa told me about this guy who walked into her place on a Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t look anything like the usual Williamsburg studio clientele, which are usually either already heavily-tatted artists and musicians or else 20-somethings…

July 3, 2023
Egregore

It started as a dumb joke. One of the users of the forum, 0xUNDEADBEEF, had gone to his local game store to get a copy of Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast, only to find that it was sold out. The clerk pointed to a huge guy in a long, black coat and a fleece…

June 25, 2023
Eternity

Eddie rolls out of bed at 8 AM, powering on his computer then stumbling to the kitchen to make coffee and grab an energy bar. His machine takes ages to start up lately. It’s beginning to show its age, having been built a few years prior. He’d like to upgrade, but the price of graphics…

June 6, 2023
Explaining All of the Fake Games From Wayne’s World on the SNES

Say it’s the 1990s and you’ve been hired to make a video game based on the 1992 smash hit Wayne’s World for the SNES. Well, it’s going to be a platformer, because it’s the 90s. But what’s the structure for the game? Maybe you just have Wayne and Garth traveling through areas inspired by the film,…

February 15, 2023
The Influence of Hilma af Klint on Destiny 2

Visual design is important on two levels in video games. On one level, design conveys mood and atmosphere. On the other, it represents mechanics and interactions. Of course, these aren’t completely distinct — an ominous mood may encourage a player to advance through an area more carefully, for instance. Effective and memorable visual design in…

January 22, 2023
The Web Game I’ve Been Playing Daily for Almost Two Decades

This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in April 2022. It was in my senior year of high school that NationStates swept my friend group. A simple browser game where you make decisions that contribute to the political and social contours of a fictional country, it was a fun diversion for a few weeks until something else online…

January 18, 2023
‘Crosscountry Canada’ Was My Oregon Trail

This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in April 2022. When I first moved to the US in the late 2000s, I’d occasionally hear people talking about an old game they played in school called Oregon Trail. I had no idea what it was, because in Canada — or in Ontario, at least — nobody I knew…

January 15, 2023
Video & Arcade Top 10 Was Twitch Before Twitch

This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in May 2022. Video games weren’t nearly as much of a part of the culture back in the 90s as they are now. Seeing someone playing a game on TV was a big deal — so an entire show about people playing games was huge. Americans had Nick Arcade, which I…

January 11, 2023
‘Creatures’ Was the Grown-Up Virtual Pet

I mostly wasn’t allowed pets when I was a kid. My sister and I wanted a puppy or cat, but our parents always said no. We thought this was our mother was allergic, but that turned out to simply be a front for the true reason she didn’t want an animal in the house —…

January 9, 2023
The Alone Sword is a Lost Ode to a Lost Game

This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in March 2022. There’s something about the early Zelda games that captured the imagination of anyone who encountered them as a kid. More than many other games of the 80s and early 90s, they presented a wide world full of possibility and adventure — so it’s no surprise that many of…

January 8, 2023