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Fallen London and Sunless Sea have so many good quotes between them. Here goes:Sunless Sea Port Reports. (In SS you sail across the Unterzee, a vast underground ocean, visiting strange shores. You return to the London Admiralty with strategic information gathered at overseas ports.)Irem:“Irem, the Pillared City. She will rise from the zee and the ice like dawn. She will be garlanded with red and decked with gold. The Seven-Serpent will watch you longingly from its high pedestal. You will always arrive as a stranger, but when you leave, some part of you will always remain.”[Action: Compile a Port Report]: “When you will sit down to write the report, you will recall that it was written already. Who wrote it? The report records that: it was already written when it was found. Who found it? The report describes another report, which will indicate the name of the finder. Where is the other report? There is a footnote which describes when you will record its location. When will that be? When all is well, and all manner of thing is well.”Iron Republic:“Factory-engines roar like false lions. Blood thunders in the dock-pipes. Crimson lightning skitters across the deck, leaps to the rail, coils there like a cat. The city is reflected in glassy-calm harbour water: the citizens there have the heads of dogs and serpents.Hell has brought freedom to the Iron Republic: freedom from all laws, even those of nature.”[Action: Compile a Port Report]: “To record the Republic's events - it's like trying to sing wax or believe water. You do what you can. The third paragraph buds eyes. The date is fundamentally wrong. The full-stops bite. You do what you can.”Venderbight:“Few die in Fallen London. They come here instead.”“You may choose to Explore Venderbight at your own peril. This colony is not the most inviting of places for shore leave, as, since the population is composed predominantly of bandaged undead, there's a bit too much decay and too little light. No cinnamon, no recent newspapers, and very little picked cave herring.”“On deck, you can hear the sound that a thousand bandaged dead make as they shuffle and cough. It's something like the world's most restless concert audience, or the world's most plague-ridden cathedral.”Godfall:"Sometimes - just occasionally - bits of the roof fall off. Be glad you weren't here when this one did.""The brawling bearded men who live here call themselves monks. They pay lip service to 'St Stalactite', which fell from the roof. But their chief interests seem to be wine, blood and shouting."[Action: Compile a Port Report]: “They're eager to talk about their history. The stalactite, they assure you, was one of the citadels of the Starved Men who dwell in the roof. When it fell, a few of its occupants survived to become the monks' progenitors. How does that work, you wonder, with their vow of celibacy? They become vague, and are suddenly eager to speak of the details of passing shipping.”Grand Geode:"A naval base, with the Royal Navy's emblems, curiously amended. Efficient, bright-eyed women and men work briskly, everywhere you look. They are singing: hymns with unfamiliar words. Hard-faced Royal Marines watch you carefully, barring entry to the Geode's heart.A plaque by the docks has been defaced with orange paint, but you can still make out the original inscription: 'STATION V (ADJUNCT)'."[Action: Ask to speak with someone in authority]: “You saw the Commodore, and then - then there was something bright. You discussed matters of importance. You're certain of it. Teasing clues linger in your memory. A zailor asked to stay behind, and you permitted it, because - because -It'll all come clear later. Probably.”The Chelonate:“Waves lap the slabby sides of a vast turtle-shell - bigger than any cathedral. Chelonites loaf on wooden docks around the shell-sides, staring sullenly. Lamps hang like decorations in a festive butcher's window. All around you, the sea is rank with scraps of ancient flesh.”[Action: Compile a Port Report]: “No matter what details you try to record, the stench creeps in around the edges of the sentences. "The Chelonites, watchful despite the reek." "Movement among the miasmic scraps of long-abandoned monster-carcass." "Frequent duels where the stink is thickest - "Empire of Hands:"The apes watch you hungrily."“In the name and by the power of Her Enduring Majesty, a trade embargo and quarantine in absolute perpetuity has hereby been declared on the Empire of Hands.No ship of London is to permit aboard a Pentecost ape without express and prior permission of the Admiralty.Any and all acts of spirifage are prohibited.They know what they did.Beware of stowaways. Keep a tight grip on your soul.- Excerpt from Standard Naval Regulations, Vol IV”“The Flea-Ridden MayorWith the Regulations in mind, it is a surprise to be greeted by a mere itchy monkey in a tattered yellow robe, barely walking with the help of a ceremonial staff."Hello!" cries the Mayor, in the broken voice of one not yet used to human speech. "Come! Make selves at home! All souls welcome in bountiful Empire of Hands!"The crew shifts uncomfortably. They know the stories. It will take more than the natural beauty of this place to make most of them risk shore-leave here.”“Monkey soldiers scour the jungle for fresh meat. The Empire has little of it, but the unsouled monkeys are considered fair prey by their civilised, ensouled betters. So too are any humans who might disappear without too much trouble. Once back at court, both will be served up and heralded the finest venison, veal, chicken and pork for a Court that knows what it is supposed to like... but not what it actually tastes like.You hide in the bushes until the hunting party has gone, and slip away undetected in the other direction.”“Many monkeys are working on the Zeppelin. Many more are feverishly pretending to, banging nails into blocks of wood or smoothing out smooth cloth in an attempt to convince their overseers that they're helping.”Kingeater’s Castle:“An old voracity lives here, in the far reaches of the zee. The priests are long gone, but sacrifices are still made. Perhaps you have come here to make a sacrifice. Perhaps the sacrifice is you.”[Action: Compile a Port Report]: “‘Everything is horrible.’It's not really an appropriate title for a formal report, is it? Let's find something a little more clinical.”Sunless Sea Character Quotes:Irrepressible Cannoneer:"Cheery enthusiasm is a welcome, but unnerving, trait in a gunner."“Captain! Are you looking for a gunner? I'm looking for a ship! Here are my references!! Here are more references!! Here's my design for a whistling shell!! Here's my colleague!! (He'll stay on shore.) Here's my hand!!! Will you take it?”“"I know people here!" the Cannoneer confides. "From the old days. Hm. Perhaps we shouldn't talk about the old days."”Bandaged Poissonnier:“He has an ambition for fish. A great ambition.”“Culinary philosophies“To be edible, is to be possible to be consumed. And to be living, is to consume. Thus we find that the nature of the unliving is to be consumed. In fact, therefore, anything that is not living may be consumed - ””“Dine with the Ba-“Ah, no no no, my captain! You shall dine with me!””Genial Magician:“A profession-changing injury“A snake bit it off.” For once, he is not smiling. “I put my hand through an unwise mirror... and a snake bit it off. That ended my career in the theatre.”He leans forward.“ am not a spiteful man. But I lost my hand. Perhaps you can imagine what that means to a magician. I am looking for revenge, Captain. I need weapons against the serpent. I rather hope we might come across them. I may ask a favour of you, if we do.””Tireless Mechanic:“Hello hello. Busy now, but always got time for you.”““Thanks for the meal. And the company. No, no wine. It makes me sleepy. Oh, yes, I can sleep! Too easily - that's the problem.” He hesitates.“There's a draught I take nightly, to substitute for sleep. It works well enough, and it keeps me sane and upright, but I wish I could enjoy just one night's sleep. If you could help me...”“We need a Clay Man, from Polythreme. We'll need a Mirrorcatch Box. And we'll need to go to Hunter's Keep. I'll explain when we get there. No, I'm serious. I would owe you a great deal.””[Action: Ask the Mechanic to explain exactly what the hell is going on]“"Well, it's like this. I stole a secret from the Echo Bazaar. With the help of the Fingerkings. You know, the serpents who rule dream. Then I reneged on the Fingerkings. Don't look at me like that. Would you rather I'd given them the secret?"”“"I talk about engines. All the time. I'm sure you've noticed. And I dream about them. I found myself dreaming of the Stone Pigs. They're, oh, I don't entirely understand, still. But they're how the Bazaar travels between stars. (Did you know they did that?) And they sleep, so the Fingerkings can crack their dreams open. So the Fingerkings recruited me.""I found a secret in those dreams. An engine like the zee's never seen. Oh, captain, captain, let me build it for you. You won't be sorry! But there are some things I'll need. (I know, I know. Isn't it always the way?)"”“Under directions from the Mechanic, your crew piece the slabs of black ivory together, as the ancients were said to assemble stone walls without mortar. Sometimes they must saw a piece in half, or abrade its sides to make it fit, but the work proceeds with surprising speed. The Impeller begins to take shape - a squat, heavy-shouldered shape, like a scarecrow built to resemble an engine. "I don't think this is engineering any more," the Mechanic confides. "Possibly it's witchcraft. But I don't really mind." He rubs his hands.”Narcerous Outcast:"It drips eagerly. Perhaps if it comes to your cabin you should put down some sort of matting."Brisk Campaigner:“She's marched with armies and cured generals. Don't annoy her.”“One moment she's lecturing an apologetic zailor on personal hygiene. The next, she's stretched full length on the deck. By the time you reach her, she's regaining consciousness.”““In the Elder Continent, there is a flame that burns souls. My soul caught alight. It only smoulders. Souls burn long and slow. But long before it is consumed, it will sizzle my brain and bake my heart. No, it's not dangerous to anyone else... until I die. You should give my body to the sea when that happens. Yes, there is a little danger.”“I apologise, deeply. I should have told you. I have been selfish. But you might have refused my service: and I hope, still, there are things out here on the zee that will save me.””Elegiac Cockatoo:"A majestically crested bird which speaks only in competent elegiac poetry. It is of a melancholy disposition."Vigilant Idol:"Set it on your binnacle, feed it the blood of zee-bats. It will guide you."Parabolan Panther:"A dignified tortoiseshell-tabby, notable mainly for her fondness for mackerel. But the zailors treat her with exaggerated respect. They've seen what she looks like in a mirror..."There are many more witty and awesome quotes and descriptions in the game, but I think I’ve put enough down here. It’s also got an incredible and memorable soundtrack.Sunless Sea itself is a bit slow and grindy, with a punishing difficulty curve, but I still think it’s one of the best games and best fictional universes I’ve ever immersed myself in.Check it out on steam if you’re interested: SUNLESS SEA on SteamIt also comes with a DLC called Zubmariner, which I haven’t yet played, but it looks great, and I look forward to getting it in the near future.

Some parents don’t feel the need to actually be there and watch their children. Or anything that has to do with parenting. I know some parents that leave their kids at home watching tv or playing video games. What is shocking about that is the kids don’t even notice that they’re being left alone.I don’t allow my kids to play video games during the week. They do watch an hour of tv after dinner. They don’t have tablets or phones but I sometimes let them play on mine. On weekends after We are done running errands and being out for the day they get to choose what game they would like to play for a couple of hours as family. If they argue about it then no screen time at all.Their teachers even get mad because i don’t want them to bring their iPads home for homework. I had a big argument last year about it. They actually told me that kids these day don’t need so much physical activity and should learn how to use computers more. Like what the sh*t is that? This year that argument almost came up and I didn’t even bother to sign the permission slip for it.

Good question.In the good ol’ days (1980s through the 1990s), you had two major classes of platforms: home computers and video game consoles. Let’s address them separately.Home computersThe good ol’ Apple II! These were wildly popular back in my ol’ stomping grounds of Silicon Valley (image credit)As Yamen O’Donnell notes, there was less going on with computers back then. This doesn’t mean they were simple, but generally game developers didn’t usually have to worry about exotic hardware. They didn’t have to worry about multi-threading, or 3D graphics cards or any other host of problems they encounter today. They just made their game, tested it, and out it went!The scale of games back then was miniscule compared to today. One of the more popular RPGs, Wizardry, contained just a single dungeon. Also the number of things you could do was small. You could generally move around with a joystick and/or type a few characters, but the game wasn’t rendering 3D worlds with megabyte sized textures.There were so fewer things going on that testers could generally find most of the class A bugs. While games weren’t bulletproof, most of the showstoppers never made it through to customers.Occasionally problems did crop up. Looking back at Wizardry, it was developed for the Apple II and Apple II+, both of which only displayed 40 columns of characters horizontally. The Apple IIe could take an 80 column card, which doubled the number of characters the screen could display horizontally. Most Apple IIe owners had one; it was almost essential for word processing.But while it didn’t contain a bug per se—it worked fine on the Apple II and Apple II+—it whacked out a bit on the Apple IIe, if the user had an 80 column card. Instead of displaying text 40 columns across in big, bold letters, it looked like this:There’s a space before every character; that’s wrong! (image credit)It was still legible, but it was shocking to my 14 year-old eyes. I had seen it on my friend’s computer and I knew that just wasn’t right!So to handle situations like this, most games came with an instruction booklet and a phone number for Customer Support. If a player had a problem with the game, they could call and get technical help from a real, live person.Back then, most games came with a “User Registration Card”. It asked for the user’s name, address and phone number. Though I’m sure many people threw them away, they actually were important. If a big bug slipped through, users would be asked to mail their disks back to the developer and they would mail them a new copy, with all the bugs fixes. This was rare, but it did happen.For most issues, though, a quick call to Customer Support sufficed.(The fix for the 80 column card issue was to just remove the 80 column card. I figured this out myself; I didn’t need to call Customer Support. After I figured it out, I just left it in. It wasn’t a huge issue since it soon switched to graphics mode, which worked fine.)But back to Wizardry, it had a common issue. When playing in the dungeon, the players might encounter enemies so hard that they kill the characters. When this happened, it would immediately write this information to disk. It wasn’t hard to tell that this was happening. All floppy disk drives had a red light that went on when they were reading or writing. Seeing your characters die and then see the floppy drive whirr to life, it wasn’t hard to deduce what was happening.Then the player had to start all over with new characters. This was unacceptable to many players who had spent scores of hours building up their characters. So they’d flip open the floppy drive if their characters got killed.See that little black rectangle in the middle? That’s the floppy disk door. When closed (as seen) it could read and write to the floppy disk (image credit)Unfortunately, this often corrupted the floppy disk, and in addition to their characters getting killed, their game was too. The instruction book said, “Please don’t open the floppy disk drive unless instructed to.” If customers did, it said, it could corrupt the disk. But if it did—you guessed it—mail it to them and they’d attempt to repair it.Floppy disks were expensive back then, so they actually repaired the very disk you sent them instead of just swapping it out with a new one. Usually the player’s characters were intact, and all was right with the world. But I shudder to think how many copies of the game Sir-Tech had to repair this way.So that was it. They’d either:Fix it with Customer Support, orFix the bugs and send everyone new copies of the gameVideo game consolesEven today, video game consoles have one big advantage over computers: homogenous hardware. Except for the display, every user had the same hardware. No one had the dreaded 80 column card, no one had printers, no one had too little RAM. All the consoles were the same.But occasionally bugs slipped through.In this event, they could do two things:Have customers return the cartridge to them via mail for a new copyAbsolutely nothingYou can’t update customer’s cartridges, many of which couldn’t even be written to; it was all ROM!Here are some real-life examples of issues that came up and how developers handled them:I started my career in the video game industry in Customer Support for Accolade. Remember Accolade? Of course you don’t. They gave us such classics as this:As seen in The Princess Bride! (image credit)Back in 1993, they had a Customer Support department, and I fooled them into hiring me (not really; even back then I was Awesome). They had released a version of Hardball for the SNES. The SNES normally couldn’t save anything to the cartridge. If a player wanted to stop a game and play later, it would give them a code, like:A A F 7 0 9 D Q T T 2 5 F F R 7 9 9 2 4 4 N S SThen they would type in the code when they wanted to play again, and it would (theoretically) pick up right where they left off. While it was a pain for the user to type in—especially with a gamepad—it didn’t even always work. Sometimes it would just say, “Sorry. Code is not recognized. Try again.” Then they’d have to type it in again and hoped it worked. Sometimes it never did.Cognizant of this issue, the outside developer introduced a new technology: a battery. The cartridges were equipped with a button-sized battery that would save games. Since this wasn’t a standard feature on cartridges, the batteries had to be soldered to the cartridges by hand.Occasionally customers would call us in Customer Support and complain that their games weren’t being saved. We didn’t know what to tell them; it worked fine for us.Digging deeper, we’d ask them if they saw anything else. They said that when the game started, they’d see a message that said something like “F7 check complete”. The SNES didn’t have function keys; they didn’t know what it meant. Since the games worked fine afterwards—apart from not saving their games—they ignored it.The only thing we could do was have them mail the cartridge back to us and we’d send them a (hopefully) working cartridge.But it bugged us that we even needed to do that. It was slow and didn’t give customers a Warm Fuzzy. So when we’d get one of these cartridges back, we’d try them out; sure enough we saw the same message and they didn’t save the games.To make a long story short, the batteries were dead. See, the hand soldiering process was new. No other games did it. So it was untested. It turns out that sometimes that soldering process drained the battery. That mysterious message indicated that it was dead, though it wasn’t a clear error and, in fact, was just a side effect. It wasn’t ever intended to be seen by users and was just for the developers. But we’re lucky it did appear, because it helped us with a New Process.From then on, we checked all cartridges before sending them out. If we saw the cryptic message appear, we set it in the Defective pile. In all, about 10% were dead. We figured that wasn’t bad for a new technology.Back to home computers, Accolade sold a number of expansion packs for their popular Jack Nicklaus golf games. The disks contained additional real-life courses.You have to hand it to the 90s. They really had much better graphics than today (image credit)For one expansion, we sent the files to the manufacturer as .zip files. They were supposed to unzip them and then copy them to the disks. They didn’t. Initially they just copied the .zip files directly to the floppies.Luckily, they caught the error before too long, after only a couple hundred had been manufactured. But most of those copies had already been sent out, so…Customers would get the expansion packs and they wouldn’t load; the game wasn’t looking for .zip files. So they’d call us.The “approved procedure” for dealing with this issue was to have the customers mail the disks to us and then we’d mail back working disks. This was fine, I guess, but I put myself in the customer’s shoes. I’d be really disappointed to slap down $25, just to have a broken expansion.There was enough room on the disks for the zip files and the unzipped files. So I figured I’d just walk them through how to unzip the files themselves, and save them the postage hassle. So I did.I had to recite the commands from memory, but I was a geek even back then and had done similar unzippings dozens of times, so I was fairly comfortable with the procedure. I’d walk them through it over the phone. A few minutes later, voila! Working expansion!I didn’t get permission to handle it this way—and I still gave them the option to mail them back instead—but customers loved it.One lady gushed for five minutes over how intelligent I was to know how to do that. I thought it was a little undeserved, but it was still nice to hear. One guy wanted us to pay him for having to do that himself. Um, what? He said he’d take some free course disks instead.He got nothing. He probably didn’t realize (or care) that Accolade had already lost all the money on their sale of the expansion to him by needing to employ me to help him.One last customer said he lost his copy of Jack Nicklaus in a recent move and wanted us to send him a replacement disk. I told him the standard replacement fee was $15.00.He flipped. He said he already paid for the game. He just wanted a replacement for crying out loud. Again, I repeated the replacement fee was $15.00. He shouted some more and vowed to trash us where ever he could (this was pre-Internet). He’d go to the papers! “Accolade doesn’t support their customers!” He hung up and never paid the $15.00.I still think about how ludicrous this guy was:We had no evidence he actually bought the game in the first placeIf he had lost his VHS copy of Gone With the Wind, would he expect MGM to send him a new copy for free?Anyway, there’s a smattering of some issues game developers faced in the olden days, and how they dealt with them.