throttledan

Hope this isn't as bad as your encounter with the barnacle! Feel better Ross!

I think the culprit could be that barnacle monster that got you a couple FM episodes back causing you to throw up in the Source engine! haha In all seriousness, feel better Ross!

Great episode! This game reminds me of this video haha

The unintuitive puzzles where you have to turn switches and connect pipes reminds me of a Half-Life 2 mod that came out a few years ago called "Steam, Tracks, Troubles, and Riddles." This was one of Ross's voice actor roles where he plays a steampunk-esque robot. Here is the steam pipe puzzle. When I played it I couldn't figure out how it worked for the life of me, I had to use the walkthru. Later, there is a part where the robot removes a crowbar from a machine (37.07 in the video). When I played it, I was never able to get that to trigger so I would be stuck in that area. I haven't played it in a couple years but I heard that they fixed a lot of the bugs so I may try it again.

Talking about rediculous Rube Goldberg contraptions that do all kinds of work to do simple tasks, I saw this today. It is a machine to turn the page on a newspaper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtentY8BmsI

The song playing while demonstrating the takedown moves is the same as the opening intro to the original Quake-based Team Fortress. I don't know if that's what Ross was referencing but it took me back!

What was the best or most memorable Christmas present you received growing up?

Ross, when nobody is around, do you ever turn your speakers up really loud and hum weird noises into your microphone like Principal Skeleton from the Grickle videos?

Ross, silly question, but just curious. Being that you grew up in Virginia, what is your experience with guns? Did you grow up with guns at home or did you go shooting with any of your friends?

I enjoyed this podcast, good discussions going on, and it's been awhile since I've listened to some classic Offspring so going to go rock out to that! Hopefully we get more Rosscasts in the future!

I recommend the soundtrack for MotoRacer 2. This was an old 90's motorcycle racing game that came with my video card. The music is kind of like an instrumental ska/punk sound like Sublime/311 http://www.stafaband.co/mp3/download/soundtrack_moto_racer_2.html This is a bit more popular but I also recommend the soundtrack to Interstate '76. Instrumental Funk http://interstate76.wikia.com/wiki/Soundtrack

I don't know who the killer is, but anybody else see a resemblance to this old sadistic gentleman? Makes you wonder....

Here are my other 2 submissions: Stop lying (The Stanley Parable) HBBRBBRBRBRBRBRBRBRRR (GTA: SA)

Here is #1 from me, a trip down memory lane... A cop car protecting a donut stand in Interstate '76

Anybody remember the game Interstate '76? Looking out the window of your room onto a wet rainy day Main street under a slate gray afternoon sky The light on your face is soft and dim under the lace curtain And the streets are empty In the distance, there is a flash and a rumble Clouds sail the sky like giant wooden ships On a blackened evergreen sea Capped with foam

I've always loved hot dogs, but one of my favorite things was Polish gas station hot dogs! Not everytime, but a bunch of times when I would have to fill up my car with gas, I would get a hot dog. They would come in these roles, then put the role in a panini press, then squirt your favorite condiment inside, then insert the dog! I learned how to say "keczup i musztarda", after of course I learned my numbers in order to tell the fuel attendant what pump I filled my car at! There was a small outdoor stage on the cobblestone street I lived near where there were performers rapping in Polish. I later found out it was for a local election and they were handing out these energy drinks with the politician's name on it! This one really cool bar I went to (has since closed down ) called Jazzga painted a giant Mario in their tiles. That day they had a bunch of old computers and game consoles set up as a celebration for retro gaming. Another time they had kind of a sell your own food event where you made food and got to sell it. I wish I knew about it ahead of time because I would have made home made mini corn dogs, which went over rediculously well with my friends over there. I got to see Roger Waters perform The Wall at a smaller than normal venue, meaning I was only about 30 feet away from the stage for not a lot of money! Amazing show! The Polish mountains in the south of the country are one of my favorite places! So beautiful! I took a trip to Morski Oko, near Zakopane. Rented these little scooter things and rode down a hill! Going back to cool innovations, it was the summer time on a ski slope, and they had these big inflatable bags to put around the poles sitting around doing nothing, so someone decided to blow it up and charge people the equivlent of a couple bucks for a few jumps off the chair lift platform about 15-20 feet onto this bag! Because, why not? I held my nose out of instinct even though I knew I wasn't jumping in water!

I think it's cool that Ross is an American living in Poland! Although I'm not living there now, I was in Poland from June 2010-August 2011 on a special assignment for my job. I lived in the city of Łódź (pronounced "woodch") which is right in the middle of the country. It was an amazing experience and I wish I could have stayed longer. I actually discovered Freeman's Mind while I was over there while browsing Reddit, and have been hooked on Ross's videos ever since! Ironically, I missed Ross's meetup in North Carolina in 2012 because I went back to Poland for a week to attend a friend's wedding! Anyway, I don't know if this topic has already been discussed, but I just felt like opening a discussion about what it's like living/working/visiting Poland. Ross's recent videos talking about different aspects of the country bring me back. I had a good time from my experience, so here are some of my ramblings and recommendations: (I'll try to get some pictures too!) One of the things people have asked me, other than if they drive on the same side or if the weather is always freezing cold, was What are the people like, and how is the culture different than the US? From my experience, the people are very friendly and work very hard, but there is a very strong 'can do' spirit of trying new things. At my job, people were changing positions all the time. A guy in Engineering would move to Operations. A girl from Customer Service would move to Quality Control, that kind of stuff. The most inspiring story of this was the sushi restaurant I used to go to. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to get good sushi while I was over there, but I stumbled upon a restaurant in the center of Lodz called House of Sushi that just opened a week before. The chef was a former construction worker that ended up getting into sushi, learned how to make it, then became a master at it. He was always trying new things, then giving me samples and asking what I thought. It was SOOOOOO good! He later opened up a new sushi place called Ato Sushi http://www.atosushi.pl/ and I just read that he won 1st place in a Polish sushi competition in Warsaw and went on to represent Poland for the Global Sushi Challenge in Japan. If anybody ever goes to Lodz, you have to go to Ato Sushi! Here is me at my job's company picnic. This had to be the most epic company picnic I've ever had! This ride was one of the highlights, all I can say is, it's a bicycle thing that goes around, but you have to pedal it to make it go! Imagine if you go to an amusement park and they make everyone pedal to get the roller coaster to the top of the hill! lol 8SXx9KMU2Zw Not shown, but the other highlight of the company picnic was bungee jumping off a crane! Grocery stores are interesting. Most of the big grocery stores are headquartered somewhere else in Europe. The brand of beans Ross gets are from a store called Carrefour, which is a French retailer. Other stores such as Tesco are HQ in UK, while Kaufland is German. Although all of these stores service Polish needs, there is a flavor of each country and sometimes you can get certain things you can't get in another. Like, I was able to get landjaegers (German smoked sausage) at Kaufland but I was able to get Reggae Reggae Sauce (British Jamaican jerk sauce) at Tesco. Like Ross said, the food tastes noticeably fresher, but spoils much faster. When I came back to the US, I almost felt ill from the American food. My body was all like, "Ahhh, Chemicals!"

REMEMBER ME EDDIE?! ADrojCw6amM

As for cult names, how about The Intergalactic House of Pancakes? I'd join that one!

Underground Lovers - Weak Will

When I was in middle school, I had a 66MHz 486, while my friend had a 12MHz 486. I was able to play the game fine, but with my friend it was almost unplayable because of the low framerate. I also installed it on my dad's 133MHz Pentium laptop, and the game went to a turbo mode where it was almost TOO fast.

Great episode! I've been hoping Ross would cover this game since he started doing the game dungeon with old abandonware games. Great memories playing this game back in the day. Loved the road raged Ross screaming in this episode too!

I'd love for him to do a review of the old DOS game Quarantine. Anybody remember this game? It was an open world cyberpunk first person car combat/taxi game. http://www.abandonia.com/games/146/download/Quarantine.htm I got the demo of this game bundled onto a CD with other game demos at a computer fair that was held in a hotel ballroom back in the 90's, and I played the crap out of it. I eventually got the full version which had more levels and more weapons, then it became abandonware and is now free. It has a pretty cool soundtrack too.

I really like this idea, I can imaging Ross' Freeman character playing 90's video games while in college with a bunch of antics going on in the background as he's playing, like maybe he's playing Command and Conquer at a LAN party and Eddie sneaks over and releases a tarantula to crawl up the leg of his opponent or something. Even like a Game Dungeon review AS Freeman however old Freeman was in the HL universe relative to when that game came out and his feelings of how he feels about it at the time.

In one of the recent episodes in Xen where he takes the "Unholy Dumbwaiter" up, he goes: "I DO BELONG ON A PEDESTAL, BUT ONLY METAPHORICALLY GODDAMMIT!!" I got a good chuckle from that line.