Empty your bladder, find a buttock-friendly perch, and affix a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign to your person before diving into this fascinating 7000-word essay on Japanese rail sims. Open October contributor LBSC doesn’t just discuss relatively well-known-in-the-West offerings such as BVE and Densha de Go, he shines light on local hits such as Ongakukan’s TS series, and lionises a current Early Access title that may well have passed you by.
This week’s handmade co-op puzzle won’t defox itself. If you’re a dab hand at quizzes, lateral thinking, and search engine sleuthing, why not help out.
If you enjoy a good whodunnit, and can tell the bushy end of a foxer from the beady end, THC regular Nutfield has a couple of recommendations for you.
Why do all the screenshots in this turn report look they were taken in 1997? A couple of days ago my PC suddenly decided that it detested OpenGL. Titles that had worked flawlessly for years, no longer launched, and hours of driver switching and windows update uninstalling failed to fix the problem. For some reason the OpenGL-reliant Combat Mission: Red Thunder does still run, but now insists on displaying at a nostalgic 1024 x 768 resolution. Assuming an imminent video card switch fixes the problem, normal service will be resumed next turn!
Using the following clues (the map above is purely decorative) in combination with Street View, work out my location.
A minute’s silence in memory of the demo disc, if you please. Coup de grâced by broadband, the wafer of wonders* that once clung limpet-like to the front cover of almost every games mag is no more. Denied these monthly mix tapes, the gamer of today is, I reckon, less inclined to reconnoitre and genre-flit than their predecessor. Because in 2023 you rarely find yourself installing kite flying sims, apian Settlers clones, and puzzle games inspired by Underground Railroad quilts, out of boredom-tinged curiosity, there’s less chance of unlikely love affairs blossoming.
Every Friday, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. All are welcome to participate.
At the close of turn 15 both teams receive startling news. German forces have blown the bridge at Sandomierz meaning ‘Ivan the Terrible’, the Red Army’s self-propelled 800mm siege mortar, must now cross the Vistula at Lodowice if it wishes to continue its ponderous westward progress. Because the city’s southern and northern bridges aren’t strong enough to support the prodigious weight of the Soviet leviathan, control of Boleslav Bridge in the centre of the map suddenly assumes new importance.