The start screen of the Gameboy game I’m working on, is based on a book cover for “Murder on the Orient Express”, by Agatha Christy. There’s no connection to the game, other than location (both take place on a train) and the fact that I’m a fan of the 90’s TV series “Poirot”. I plan on using that top quote more in the upcoming year.

A while ago, we watched the 2017 movie version (the one with Kenneth Branagh). Both the ‘moustache’ and accent were terrible but them movie was enjoyable.

A sequel was supposed to come out in the middle of last year’s ‘Global Event’ but it was postponed. I’m hoping it becomes available through streaming somewhere. Although with these recent accusations, who knows how that’ll pan out.

 

The game is coming along. I usually make new screens on a day off and do some sketching or tweaking on following evenings. This means progress is going at a slow but steady pace.
I need to make about 3 more big drawings, including the most difficult one: a long repeating landscape in 3 layers. The program I’ve been using to script/assemble everything, has a planned update that will allow for parallax background animation, so I want to take advantage of that.
Other than that, it’s a matter of scripting the interactions and making sprites for recurring things like coins, health, snacks, … No big technical roadblocks so far, which I’m glad for.

I had a whole bit here about house hunting but it’s nothing you don’t already know. Instead, here’s an interesting read I got via someone else’s newsletter on why The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable. Worse so in the US of course (we don’t have that ludicrous dept culture here) but it’s a recognizable evolution here as well.

If you want to see a bit more of what I’ve been doing with the Gameboys, I put up some pictures of my mods on the Blog. I’m not planning on keeping them all, it’s mostly the tinkering and comparisons I’m interested in and I’m almost done with that. You only really need an GB classic (or 2 if you want to use a Game Link) and a GBA, if it’s just to play some games.
I’ll be upgrading the green GB Pocket and that teal GB Color, and then 2 or 3 consoles are going back up on eBay.

Apologies for the short and somewhat disjointed newsletter. A new year usually comes with a lot of promise and resolutions for oneself but on this end, I don’t have much to report. My head’s been mostly in the Gameboy stuff and stressing about the day job, along with house hunting. I’m mostly tired and annoyed at the state of … everything, I suppose.

I will leave you with a video by one of my favorite people on the internet (and on YouTube expecially), who came out as trans yesterday. Let’s hope we can all find a way to be happy (if we aren’t already).