One of the first things I do most mornings as I'm settling into my routine is sip my coffee and take a look at recent gaming and tech news. Sometimes I find some really interesting articles that send me down rabbit holes of curiosity or simply leave me thinking, "dang, really?"
Today happened to be one of those days. Since I found a few things of interest to me, I figured I'd share all of them and let you all run down your own rabbit holes of curiosity via the article links.
Let's start with a little news surrounding Super Punch Out!!
Although the game is nearly 30 years old, gamers have proven that they have a talent for uncovering long buried secrets hidden for decades. The folks over at Unlisted Cheats were messing around with the game recently and made a startling discovery: you can plug in a second controller and have a friend control your opponent.
This game has been a purely single-player experience for 28 years and now, suddenly, I have the opportunity to play as Bald Bill and bull rush my sister while she flails around as Little Mac? SCORE. This cheat works on the version of the game available via Nintendo Switch's virtual console, and believe me when I tell you that I'm going to be pulling this out during my next retro video game night.
Check out the article on it here.
In other news of a "Wait, really?" nature, I stumbled upon an article on Gizmodo this morning that caught my interest. Apparently, the idea for court-ordered ankle monitors originated in a comic strip of The Amazing Spider-Man from the 1970s. One of the strips that ran from August through September in 1977 features the evil Kingpin tracking Spider-Man via a device strapped to his arm.
Judge Jack Love from Bernalillo County in New Mexico saw the series and said it inspired him to approach an engineer about producing a tracking device for low-level criminals. He became one of the first judges to use his authority to mandate offenders wearing location-monitoring devices.
The judge himself was the first person to wear what was, at the time, called the Goss-Link as an experiment. A newspaper article from 1983 quotes the judge as saying, "It put me on a very, very short leash." He claims he even wore the device in the shower. Comic books inspiring reality - who'd have thought?
Maybe I spend too much time on the internet and on TikTok, but I really enjoy when I see people having a wholesome and harmless good time. A woman decided to host a Waluigi-themed bachelorette party, made a couple of videos about it, and went viral - for good reason! Their costumes are incredibly creative and their joy is palpable. The prop for the "Cultist Waluigi" - which was a (Walu)-ouija board - sent me into fits of laughter.
Seriously, go check out the video - it definitely made me smile this morning!
Have you read anything interesting lately? Share with me!