The sticker business I decided to start this year continues to grow. Gabe’s Sticker Shoppe has been updated today with my latest offerings including what is probably the coolest sticker sheet I’ve made!
The sticker business I decided to start this year continues to grow. Gabe’s Sticker Shoppe has been updated today with my latest offerings including what is probably the coolest sticker sheet I’ve made!
I don't have any particular military or paramilitary fantasies, except perhaps to simulate very small versions of them with tiny dolls I have painted, but one thing I did like about playing Call of Duty's only canonical mode Kill Confirmed was how unified it was conceptually. You could really buy it, and it was fast enough to sand down any sticky-outy edges. Gabriel got back in recently, because it's always sorta the right time to get into it, and he says that capitalism has transformed the game into a lethal mall kiosk that sells Funko Pops.
Need For Speed Unbound got some cool new stuff yesterday with its free Volume 7 update. I spent a few hours playing and I love the new modes!
After my trip through the history of Need for Speed games I decided to do something similar for the Forza Horizon series. I blew the dust off my Series X and logged in to see what Forza games I still had access to in my library. The earliest one in there was 3 which came out back in 2016, fully 4 years before the pandemic when I actually got seriously obsessed with driving games. The times before Covid seem like a million years ago and I had very little memory of Horizon 3. I honestly couldn't even remember if I played it very much. So I downloaded it and yeah…I played it a lot.
It occasionally falls to me to play Gaming Historian, and as Gabriel is in another of his Retro Moods it was easy to recall the incredibly dark times associated with the Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. Living room garottings were commonplace - but our lust for buttons and various bars and XP was so raw, so stokéd, that we just piled them to the side. Oh, eventually MadCatz would offer succor to The Ruined - but that trailing z always made them suspect. It wasn't until the majestic WaveBird lit upon the scene that the future truly began.
I apologize for the delay, but the May Sticker pack for Club PA members will hit the store on May 23rd. Things have just been crazy at the PA offices with multiple weddings and a new software rollout. The good news is that in addition to the Club PA sticker pack, some new professionally printed designs will also hit the sticker shop on the 23rd that anyone will be able to grab. These will be my Acquisitions Inc full sheet and my Est.1998 PA design. So check out Gabe’s Sticker shop next Thursday for all the new goodies!
-Gabe out
We had roused a novel demographic with a recent strip - namely, Mormons who also worship Elon Musk. I hadn't been previously aware of this tendency. Spokane, or at least the places I've lived in Spokane, were full of unfailingly nice Mormons who were having the same trouble navigating religion and adolescence I was, except they seemed to be doing better at it. It's possible that I learned too late that the much-referenced "bite" in Barq's - Barq's Rooted Beers - was caffeine. I was already vibrating at a dangerous frequency, just being fifteen. It probably wasn't helping.
As part of Gabriel's mission to Play The Classics, he has been traveling through racing games of Earth's ancient past. That's part of how he came to follow and then support the cries of those who had their lawful purchases annihilated. Or, maybe not annihilated, but simply placed upon a very high shelf - so high that you can jump and jump and yet not secure it.
Our streams are back up today - traffic gave us a late start, plus Twitter isn't letting me post links anymore...? But I do have a website, and I will post it here.
12-1:30 Acquisitions Intoxicated is a brewing show on Twitch! Maybe the only one? But we take dorky concepts like D&D Classes or sci-fi artifacts and make beers out of them. Come hang out!
Then, at 2:30, join us for the return of our Battletech campaign - Black Remnant. We're just about to put one of our characters on a shonen journey of self-discovery!
(CW)TB
This is the video we mention in the strip. I'm tempted to put the word "interview" in quotes; Xbox President Sarah Bond was essentially thrown to the wolves doing something like this after the closures. None of us have any use for these performances, and as far as I'm concerned we shouldn't require them.
I’ve seen a couple videos recently where people claiming to be journalists sit on a stage with a business person and pretend to ask them questions. I say pretend because they don’t seem to care what the answers are or if answers are given at alI in fact. I would be so ashamed to be either of the people in this scenario. The useless interviewer brought on stage for the appearance of legitimacy or the vacuous executive whose only skill is the ability to speak for thirty minutes without actually communicating anything. It’s just a couple of people who suck at their jobs and for some reason expect me to watch. What a stupid little pageant.
I like Abandonware as an aesthetic, as another strange cubby online to spelunk, but I don't think "Abandonware" is a legal term and my suspicion is that there's no meaningful way to distinguish it from piracy. I'm not telling you what to do - I mean, the law kinda is, but I am no agent of the law. The key is that you gotta get your rhetorical ducks in a row so that when you're face to face with one of the stretched, drumhead-taut faces that represents the machine you're able to deploy a compelling performance. Right? Like my friend Mike.
We've sorta gone over the Helldivers issue, in a potent strip and an incomparable Newspost Malone. Now that the worst is behind us, now that ointments have been applied to the affected regions, has the healing begun? I mean, you tell me. Player count seems solid, and the Reddit has descended into its classic ratio of crunchy memes and internecine warfare. So, nature is… I dunno, man. It's doin' somethin'.
I am dropping the May sticker packs off at the Penny Arcade offices today! These should hit the store and be available for Club PA members to order soon. Here’s what you can expect to find inside!
I was too busy this weekend to engage with what was easily the story of the weekend, that is, if you aren't fully enmeshed in USDA Choice rap beef. Helldivers 2 announced that they would begin requiring PC players to sign into the game with a PSN account. I started posting panels from the strip over the weekend on the Tweeter which people seemed to enjoy, but by the time it came to act the largest part of the conflict had been resolved.
Had a blast last Friday getting my new tattoo, the full contours of which you can see on this sacred VOD - I'm up first, and then there's a cool video that Tony made, followed by Gav's Outer Wilds themed piece complete with the rich lore that birthed it. Cool guests materialize from time to time, like Durty Dwab, also known as Dwab Triple, who was in the office taking pics of new stuff for the store.