The Gaming Zone

Respect your ancestor, May!

Shane Wegner

if it was butts disease they'd have focused on panel 2.

Joe

I’ve thought about this. I don’t yet see this as the arc where Marigold burns out on gaming. Playing a game she had as a kid in an infinite basement doesn’t yet strike me as burning out. May would have to identify that and confront Marigold. I can see this as the start of where Marigold finds something else that she could pivot to or one where she still is very uncomfortable about the wealth she’s producing and possibly hiding from her family. I think this is just the start of Marigold inviting Aurelia to her home, and that might cause anxiety or envy with Aurelia.

Miyaa

Yep. Burnout on tap. She's already wriggled on the hook a few times...

David Pipes

Butts disease-by-proxy

joe velsher

She'll go to get away, wander aimlessly into cubetown. Combo of martin chill, Claire organize and recenter, and Liz goblin-therapy.

joe velsher

to be fair, the 245 is obviously beginner level, those beasts swallowed anything

Jeph does draw some nice looking characters, not gonna lie. That profile of May in panel three... and four, now that I look again.

Doc Gumby

Quite possibly, although who apart from Jeph knows for sure?

Mark

.... is this gonna be the mari burnout arc?

Solomon Garland

I bet somewhere in the QCverse is a place where Tetris is played by sentient pieces…

Mad Marie

Jugs for days. 🍈 🍈

Duran

It plays out quite like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/aUw_TU_79Mw?feature=share

Diptych

When I was a kid (going back 30+ years ago) my uncle still had his Apple IIe. Whenever we'd visit my nan (he was still living at home at the time), we'd all have lunch and then me and my sister would scuttle off to play games on it. It was the bees knees for us (we didn't really have much at home).

David Paul

Also called car trunk Tetris. *nod* related to the art of dishwasher Tetris.

melloncollic

“Tetris for Marigold!”

Miyaa

I think to keep a comic fresh and readable over so many years you've got to do *something* different. Like Diptych points out, we left "normal" territory behind a while ago. I remember being a bit weirded out by the space station arc, which felt like more of a departure at the time, but now this is just QC. I also think that the interest from things like Claire/Marten and Marigold's storylines is seeing characters who aren't used to this stuff deal with it. That's what makes me want to read. It's not as if Claire goes from leading scientific research establishment to leading scientific research establishment, putting them all in order. She's never done this before (and also, the place is a shitshow). So watching her react to it is funny. Is it 100% relatable, I don't know, but I started reading this comic when I was 14, so I couldn't relate to the characters then; I was half their age xD (Or so). There are definitely going to be relatable elements though, like Liz's story being relatable to people who've struggled with being "gifted" even if they never had her exact experience.

enchantedsleeper

One of my favourite toys as a kid was my Granddad's old typewriter and I played with my parents' old toys whenever I visited my grandparents.

quarridors

I replaced the screen in my Gameboy with a modern backlit one. Tetris is literally the only thing I play on it.

Chris Crowther

You have to be careful with that. Nothing worse than when you finally slide that last suitcase perfectly into place and all of your luggage disappears.

BookBeard

The volume stayed off or it got confiscated.

Jim

I think only if the Gameboy is sentient. Which in the QC universe is a distinct possibility. After all it wasn't so very long ago that Winslow was a talking iPod...

BookBeard

(hums “Korobeiniki”)

Mad Marie

All excellent rationalisations! You all win a No Prize.

Gamebook

Considering what we know of Marigold, it is hardly surprising that she was into vintage video games as a child.

BookBeard

Lot of us who were broke had older consoles ans such because the were cheap before the collector market became a thing.

Sezoxeufu

For really old-school Tetris, try packing a family of five and a dog in a Volvo 245 station wagon for a week-long summer trip to the beach.

Mad Marie

There was an add-on for the Gameboy that had a magnifying glass, a light for the screen and fold out speakers. It used it's own batteries and was super clunky, but at least you could play in the dark.

wargrunt42

One of the gaming rooms has actual blocks falling from the ceiling. They don't use it much.

Dean Reilly

Just because Marigold set a high score on Tetris on the Gameboy at the age of 12 does not mean the Gameboy was "new" at the time

ordith

This strip shows up the screwy timeline in QC. For the old B&W Gameboy to have been a thing when she was twelve Marigold would need to be either in her 40's, or the current date would have to be no later than the 2000's. I think Jeph is just going with what was around when he was a kid.

Gamebook

Dora and Tai still seem pretty ordinary, other than being gay and tattooed (which is... still ordinary, tbh)

Minzoku Bokumetsu

Eh... we've been post-Singularity for a while. Steve's a secret agent. Pintsize used to have a military chassis with a high-power laser. And they took down that vigilante with the combat robot scooter. Hannelore took Marten back to space, where she's from. They had a whole story with the secret hive mind AI helping them explore Bubbles' mind palace. Emily wrote some code that was magic somehow and had to be confiscated by the government. What I'm saying is, this strip has always been able to swing smoothly between the mundane and the bizarre.

Diptych

twenty years of comics doesn't leave a lot of ordinary ground untread

Valk

My favorite word from Animal Crossing lol

Pejo

I agree. The turning point was when Elliot asked Marten if he'd ever had to deal with a horrible boss & Marten just drew a blank. It's becoming less relatable how this group of dorks is apparently becoming some sort of nexus point.

Elberik

personally I'm excited about the wild changes and shifts for all the characters mentioned. as for the "ordinary" distinction, a lot of those qualifications (streamer, activist, high-ranking research position) are just ordinary parts of their respective lives. I've enjoyed following these dorks for a while and it's refreshing to see some fun left-field changes. we'll always have Steve eating cereal though 🙂

Zak Hammerman

I remember when Real-life started using warp drives cloning machines and stargates. It was the beginning of the end. I don’t think we’re there yet here. Hopefully we won’t get there.

Matthew Van Gangelen

Game room 2 has virtual Tetris. Game room 1 has virtual virtual Tetris.

Andrew

Coprolite - my favorite word from archaeology school!

Ralph

i found out you can get tetris 99 for free from the switch store if you’re subscribed and i just booted it up and played tetris today for the first time in like 30 years. I’m the main character today go me!

Chris

Is an AI denigrating retro tech considered ageism?

Eric Lusby

I dunno. I've loved this comic for a very long time and one of the best things about it has been that there's not been anything special about these dorks (except Hanners and she actively plays it down). Now we one significantly rich and spending their money, one leading the charge for extended AI rights and another becoming the defacto mayor of a small town / probably the world's most important scientific research establishment. I get that characters have to evolve but this feels different to just folks starting families that we've seen in other comics. I know there's a still tons of "ordinary" folks (Faye / Bubbles, Sam / Emmett, Clinton / Elliot, etc) but it stills feels like a thing I'm not sure about yet. What do other folks think?

David Durant