Lithium Binge

Game: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of the Seasons Director: Hidemaro Fujibayashi Publisher: Nintendo LB Rating: 5/5 Aptly named--this game is legendary. A common thread in all art and literature I thoroughly enjoy is deliberate design. I will always appreciate when all the elements of the art or literature piece are intentionally placed, guided by a coherent thematic design in view of a meaningful goal. Conversely, I tend to consider fillers as waste of time. I like a piece where I am convinced to check out every nook and cranny because I know that each detail contributes to the grand meaning. Oracle of the Seasons is exactly that. When that theme kicks in, you know an epic adventure is incoming. In general, Oracle of the Seasons tasks the player the ultimate quest: rescue Din, the Oracle of the Seasons, and restore order in Hyrule. The main quest is presented in quite a straightforward manner. At the onset, the Maku Tree tells the player the general direction of where to go for the ent...

Game: Super Mario Bros. (1985) Director: Shigeru Miyamoto Publisher: Nintendo LB Rating: 4/5 I have finally completed this classic. You can definitely hear the music now. Ah. The iconic World 1-1 opening. Before I move forward with my rambling, let me put my perspective in context. As expected, this is not the first time I played Super Mario Bros. When I was younger, I played SMB in our knock-off Famicom until that thing broke. The game was too hard for me, so I was never able to finish it. Over the years, I would play the gameboy port of SMB through an emulator, play for a few minutes, then drop it off. For some reason, I had no patience with SMB... That is, until a few days ago, when I installed RetroArch (I covered this in Lithium Dosage #4). In other words, I had no meaningful history with SMB. My playthrough of SMB occurred at a time after I have been introduced and accustomed to more advanced, higher resolution, and technically better games. No points for nostalgia here. Anyw...

It's the third week of semester break in law school and I have moved on from spamming horror films and League of Legends matches, to exploring the wonderful world of emulation. When I was a kid, my family was not well-off. Consoles and gaming devices were definitely treated as luxury that we could barely afford. And so, the gaming experience of my childhood revolved around two consoles: a hand-me-down Gameboy Color and a knock-off Famicom. There aren't much games to play with as well.  In GBC, playing and replaying Pokemon Blue were all I did because it was the only game I had. Eventually, my parents bought me Tom and Jerry and Montezuma's Return. Not the best of games, but because I played them nonetheless because they're all that I had. Fortunately, some of my friends would lend me their cartridges for some limited time. We also had a Famicom that was definitely a knock-off but was at least able to run basic games like Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and some Olympic gam...

Title: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) Director: Michael Chaves LB Rating: 3/5 The third installment of The Conjuring series takes on the famous Devil Made Me Do It case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson. As usual, spoilers ahead. I always found the Conjuring and Insidious title cards as extremely unnerving. (Image source: empireonline.com) I understand that there are controversies surrounding veracity of events from which the Conjuring 3 is based. For the purposes of this review (and for the full horror experience), I will give the film the benefit of the doubt and assume that the events probably happened. From my understanding, there seems to be three thematically distinct parts to the film.  First is the prologue. We find the Warrens attempt to exorcise young David Glatzel. When shtick hits the fan, Arne Johnson begged the demon to possess him instead of David. Which it did. The exorcism scene gave me little to no scare. Exorcism scenes are cliche in horror films. Speaking ...