More interesting posts from Cohost archived...

[malymin]

cohost! - "Skykomish Never Sleeps: A Preliminary Report on The Esterb…
archived 21 Sep 2024 03:14:04 UTC

A very strong work of original fiction that I enjoyed. "Archeologists find things they aught not" is a well-trod concept, but the implied future setting adds a sense of deep time. Our moment is not the present, but the past as well.

cohost! - "Aquazone - Expensive Digital Fish"
archived 21 Sep 2024 03:24:31 UTC

An essay on a virtual pet product, Aquazone, that was contemporaneous with my own favorite virtual pets, but which seems to have far less survival in its online presence than Petz has. Ahead of its time in the worst ways (paid DLC microtransactions), and yet so thorough as a fishtank simulator, in a quintessentially of-its-era way, that no modern equivalent scatches the itch.

Comments

[seaglassgarden]

i was fixated on virtual aquarium games as a kid but never came across this one as far as i can remember. im glad the op got to download all the stuff they wanted :')

[malymin]

Me too. :)

There was also a finch-raising game by the same developers that had an even smaller community in the west, being that it was never legally released outside Japan. It's a good thing these works are available as abandonware.