If you want more SDiAblo-drama, or if you want your cheese ADS improved (a very winning anagram, just visually like a winners' podium), you've got Abyssoft's thorough breakdown of what the Speedrun Anti-Doping Agency found in groobo's run with a more visceral impact of a respectable video production. It certainly makes the missing gameplay frames look worse than our update probably gave the impression of, but then I've been told the run was recorded at 20 FPS while the game trucks along at 30, which to me sounds like these were not the only frames missing, or am I missing something myself? If so, it's another sound reason to sound a furious klaxon of NOPE if this run was knocking at the door today, but hey, it was never the "Tame" West now was it? Another point I don't see myself having gotten across, like fording your wagon in Oregon Trail, is the just the sheer scope of the investigation. I'm being mesmerized by what I can only refer to as a "wall of data" the kind it took Neo most of the first movie to kung-fu punch through. (Right before publication, Ars Technica also ran a piece on this that isn't necessarily adding much, but here's the link for completion's sake.)

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(^ System kept deleting mah bars so I put in some spares... got bars for days, homie!)

Man, someone's really getting a nice buzz (get it? you will, keep reading) out of her hormones today. I caught myself thinking "gracious, that's a beatiful sine wave I find undulating its way into the discerning depths of my auditory cortex" as only a basic bitch can. Follow-ups, in a jumble: "How far can he glide?! Guy's like a flying squirrel on a frisbee above a caldera."; "They fell short of graphics budget before animating the fire tiles so they leaned on that famous Famicom flicker to pass it off like you could toast a few creamy-dreamy Fluffy Puffs on them, or bake primitive bread somehow lazier than Minecraft." and "The outfits... there's one for each color channel." And there is! Jack changes colors. The screens change colors. I still can't quite tell why that needs to happen, and I wear women's clothes.

The last few strokes of this run, a skeletal arpeggio pattern concurs with a rodential run animation to ruin a good anticipatory bone-tingle with banal incidental drollery. But equally sullying the mood is all the leaping around even on flats: "When life gives you lunar Gs, make lunar Gs-cake!" I thought at first, but then realized how... down-to-earth the runner in question was... and found out the jumping obviously has ties with enemy manipulation. 🤦

Here we have one of those ironies where the game rewards you for being quick with slowly accumulating carefully hand-tallied end-level bonus points... and so punishes you for it! I think the reward for quick should always be more of the same, like if you've gotten up sometime before you went to bed to be THE FIRST BY OODLES at the nearest Six Flags that day, there isn't anyone there going "Oh, you're here already? In that case you have to wait there by the security booth for a hundred other guests to have passed through, post which I have to shoo you back to your car and tell you to drive off and try again another day. Sorry, it's to discourage this exact kind of behavior, tsk tsk." I guess they weren't gonna let you ride the biiiiig dipper all by your little old self anyway. Funny thing, they did me once! The biggest, baddest rollercoaster at this popular Finnish thrill park on a rainy day of yesteryear. I got three consecutive rides in without having to leave my seat, without any gagging in the inversions or having to endure any second opinions on how it was: it was great each time 👍 and in some sense illustrates why, to this day, feigned solipsism remains the backbone of my joie de vivre.

This time, the pyramid gits blow'd up real good... and it's still sand! I know you know I know I've told you about this. I still don't dare venture any guesses as to what that "GDV" figure is, but it should be noted it is 69 this time. I'm giving the runner much benefit of the doubt juice here by resisting the notion he's done that on purpose somehow.

BUT WAIT a second run for the same game came in while I was writing that. This requires to differentiate between them somehow. Well, the former was the best ending in 0:11:29 with just deaths (i.e. rightful ones), and the latter, by contrast, any% with deaths and warps in 0:06:21. The game and runner the two runs share and thus I haven't any need of mentioning. EDIT: I've been told I DO have SOME need of mentioning, and it is indeed old faithful 'ktwo' with more Mighty Bomb Jack, 1987 for the NE-S. No, not just any 'S', the NE-S. To get the game started, you press the NE key, and for our modern audiences, to see the swastika, you go to round 14, but it IS the nice way around.

I suppose the other, any% run deserves a few verbal endearments too... Well, for starters, we're re-rediscovering the same "hidden option J-for-joke" warp, which is less like a teleport and more like warping the hardly-unwritten rules of game design, leaving us with the same ponderings about why the ancients put it there, what its function was. Maybe it's literally just a service hatch like the kind that genuinely irks the hell out of the architect that you've found out about? Cause let's make this clear, it WASN'T MEANT TO BE FOUND. I suppose this helps to sell the whole "pyramid" shtick: them 'gyptians seemed to enjoy a little Easter egg every now and again. I can totally hear Radiohead's ode to these... massive mysterious mounds, these... tremendous timeless tumuli, on top of the gameplay, which sounds far-fetched. Now that you (meaning me) mention it, there's a little bit of something there if you just listen to the sound effects when doors spring open and Jack lopes around, glissandoing in ways that don't completely fail to resemble the eerie wind noises in Pyramid Song. Geez, I hope this won't be the last time I get to aim my periscope at these exalting edifices of yore. My pyra-scope.