Best Of MetaFilter

giant monster i do my best to avoid by theogeo (cc by)

In videogames, what superfluous real-world behaviors do you do, even though they're not part of the game? Being kind to imaginary characters seems to be the main one.

Snorlax Birthday Cake by Brett Jordan (cc by)

Happy 17th birthday, MetaFilter!

If you're looking for a low-key way to celebrate, drop in and join the wise, suave, and good-looking volunteers who help transcribe the podcast. (Thank you podcast transcribers! You are the best!)

... or if you prefer your celebrations more active, join the stalwart band of Pokemon Go obsessed Mefites as they report back from the field.

bottom_cthulhu by missmonstermel

I have a thing for eldritch abominations, alien geometry, fridge horror, and general nightmare fuel. I want more, pretty please!

In Ask Metafilter: Feed me the nightmare fuel

This video is about everyone in the world who isn’t Phil Fish.

It turns out the great video, "This is Phil Fish" posted by jklaiho was created by "Mefi's own" Peevish. (The transcript has been posted here.)

-342 : guinea pig pwn by Of Corgis & Cocktails (cc by)

AskMe's advice for novice gamers.

Link battles his shadow doppelganger in Zelda II

In JHarris's excellent post about Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Mefi user otolith tells the story of how they finally beat the game, twenty years after giving up on it:

It was one of those games that was just too...frigging....hard. Along with Blaster Master and Castlevania II, it seemed stupidly impossible...I don't remember when, but there must have come a time when I punched the power button on the console in frustration and walked away from it for the last time. And then twenty years passed and I don't recall thinking about the game once in that time.

But a few years ago I was traveling and staying with a friend of mine who owned a game cube. There it was on his system, Zelda II...A wealth of small childhood memories that had been locked together with Zelda in the back of my brain. It was an utterly unique experience for me, reliving those memories sequentially as the game progressed. Which happened somewhat rapidly because I was now A BEAST at Zelda II....

Go read the whole thing.

seanmpuckett tells the story of how he wrote a BASIC program to play a Merlin-like game which made it into Compute! magazine and was later the subject of an article in Mathematics Magazine.