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 I joined this site back in 2008, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking to make LPs of my own. I had no experience, no external mic, nothing more than a Dell laptop and desire to create videos because it was the thing I was watching others doing at the time. I posted a Youtube video or two in the sandcastle and...from what I remember I was essentially told not to bother posting them here because I was doing nothing new or interesting with my content. 2008 LP subforum sure was a different time. I quietly left SA for a while and did my videos on Youtube anyway. They're still on my channel, even! They're bad and I don't recommend watching them, but they're there. Anyway, the point of this anecdote is that the thread I wanted to make at the time was a thread to showcase Super Metroid romhacks and share my love for them. They were some of the very first romhacks I ever played and I've been involved in various romhacking scenes for the better part of the last two decades as a result of discovering them. Now that I know what I'm doing with LPs, I wanted to revisit the idea I had so long ago. This LP's been 15 years in the making; it's finally time to LP some Super Metroid romhacks. My plan is to play through at least a few hacks with my friends Artix, PoorlyWritten, and possibly some others in the future, taking a look at both new hacks from the past couple years and some from the ancient era of SM hacks. I don't know how many I'll do, and I certainly won't do every hack. I'll try to keep it to standout hacks that are fun, interesting, and/or influential in the scene. We'll see how long this goes on for. I'll keep the table of contents in the OP updated with each hack we're playing. Unlike the couple Romhackeria threads I hosted in previous years, this isn't meant to be a megathread where anyone can contribute a romhack playthrough. I want this to be my thread first and foremost. Spoiler Policy: If I say a playthrough is blind, don't spoil anything from it. Assume I haven't played any hack released since 2020 or so, but everything earlier than that I have so you can talk about it without worry. ------------------ Table of Contents: Super Metroid: Subversion Episode 1: Big Gravity is my wrestler name Episode 2: I was raised by birds Episode 3: Samus's Power Suit beer helmet Episode 4: The Virtual Boy Visor Episode 5: Spore Spawn's yoku block madness Episode 6: Making a Metroid Cookbook Episode 7: Part of a balanced Chozo breakfast Episode 8: Learning about escarpments Episode 9: Heat 2 Episode 10: What are Mochtroids anyway? Episode 11: Faint praise for Metroid Other M Episode 12: A dangerous diversion Episode 13: Benthic bewilderment Episode 14: We have no respect for vital infrastructure Episode 15: Chilling in the Fire Temple Episode 16: Majora's Mask music opinions Episode 17: The Four Elements: Life, Fire, Ice, and Violence Episode 18: We've created an ecological disaster Episode 19: Double Draygon Episode 20: Baseball Episode 21: A big, semi-blind laser puzzle Episode 22: Metroid maintenance engineers hard at work Episode 23: We blew up Rocky Road Ridge (and more) Episode 24: An extended Beach Episode Episode 25: Puzzle Masters Episode 26: The Perfect 99.1% Run Super Metroid: Searching for Items Episode 1: Door tube appreciation Episode 2: Becoming ungovernable by 2D space Episode 3: That item jingle dopamine rush Episode 4: Happy Metroid Pride everybody Episode 5: I've ruined my chance at a cereal sponsorship Episode 6: Phantoon/Kraid 2024 Super Metroid: Eris Episode 1: Questioning the freshness of salad Episode 2: The nostalgia goggles are slipping off Episode 3: I speedrun the five stages of grief Episode 4: A fresh perspective Episode 5: Take Me To Church Episode 6: Dude Statue Episode 7: Nihilism, or why I disliked Iconoclasts Episode 8: It turns out that wasn't salad Episode 9: A ghost in the machine Bonus: Some of my personal SM hacks FPzero fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Dec 15, 2023 18:56
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:56 |
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 First up, we have Super Metroid: Subversion, created by Test Runner and Amoeba of Doom. The hack was created as a showcase project for a relatively new Super Metroid editor called SMART that was also created by these two hackers. It came out in 2022 and was basically considered hack of the year among the Metroid hacking community at Metroid Construction. And honestly? From what we've played of it so far I can see why. It has a world roughly twice the size of the original, a functioning logbook, an ingame hint system, room and area names displayed, new items and more. I'm thoroughly looking forward to finishing this one and seeing where it all leads. This is a blind playthrough.  Episode 1: Big Gravity is my wrestler name FPzero fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 18:56
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I am also a Redesign apologist but I'm biased because it was the first romhack I played of any game and the one that got me into the whole scene. I didn't care about the endgame fetch quest, I was too enamored by the hack's existence as a starry-eyed 16-year old at the peak of my Metroid obsession.  Rabbi Raccoon posted:There's one I remember reading about that's even bigger than that, though. Something Rescue? I remember "absurd" being used to describe the size of it's map I believe it's called "Metroid Mission Rescue" and yeah it's like 6x the size of the original game. I remember playing it through because I was sunk-costing really hard after a certain point, only for the game to have a softlock in the escape sequence in the version I was playing. I counted it as beaten and moved on with my life.
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Dec 15, 2023 21:40
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 Episode 2: I was raised by birds Considering the fact she was raised by a race of bird warriors, Samus seems to have turned out mostly okay in human society. Mostly.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:33
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Well, Subversion is being played blind so at the very least I wouldn't spoil anything from it in as much as you can spoil a romhack. We're a little ahead of the videos by one recording session but I'm still discovering new things about it as we play so yeah, definitely don't spoil it. For other hacks, well I've played many older SM hacks by now and most of my other candidates for this thread are going to be things I played before. The only notable exception is the recently released "Super Junkoid" but I'm not sure if I'll get to that or not since I'm also not sure if I'm supposed to play the NES Metroid 1 hack named "Junkoid" first. I suppose a better metric would basically be assume I haven't played anything released since 2020, but everything made before that can probably be talked about without spoilers. If I say a playthrough is blind, the same spoiler rule applies. I'll edit something saying as much into the OP.
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Dec 18, 2023 22:25
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 Episode 3: Samus's Power Suit beer helmet We should be sponsored by various beer companies after this episode. ----------------- Bloody Pom posted:Let me be the first to say you owe it yourself to branch out into Zero Mission hacks for this thread, because Spooky Mission 2 and Scrolls 6 are fantastic. I might take a look at some ZM stuff but I haven't made a decision yet. Good to hear the hacks of it are getting good though. I haven't kept up with that scene at all.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:57
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 Episode 4: The Virtual Boy Visor Despite being a child of the 90s, I never got to play a Virtual Boy. But thanks to the power of this hack, we can now all experience the eye strain I missed out on! Your eyes will thank/hate you!
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Dec 23, 2023 18:58
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 Episode 5: Spore Spawn's yoku block madness Ice Man would be proud.
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Dec 26, 2023 19:02
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 Episode 6: Making a Metroid Cookbook Gaming cookbooks sure are an odd trend these days, aren't they?
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Dec 30, 2023 18:44
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 Episode 7: Part of a balanced Chozo breakfast "Oh, you don't want that, it's gonna be half millet." - PW --------- Re: controls talk, I personally never really had an issue with Super's controls and this is coming from someone who played it after Fusion. I like the split dedicated shoulder aiming buttons, and over the years I discovered that putting weapon swap to A and cancel on Select is perfectly good for me. Then again, I also don't seem to mind crunching my fingers to do weird dash jumps with run on X and jump on B, so I do understand that my choices may not be representative of the broader experience .
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Jan 2, 2024 19:28
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I will maintain that Ocarina of Time has been one of the best randomizers that I've played because of that very fact. Most items are independent of one another, so progression is less about becoming overpowered early and more about finding the things that let you solve the puzzles or pathing skips you need to do. It also just has so many more major items to find along the way, making repeat playthroughs feel interesting almost every time.
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Jan 5, 2024 02:05
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 Episode 8: Learning about escarpments And other geological features!
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Jan 6, 2024 19:02
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 Episode 9: Heat 2 Guest-starring my roommate liquidypoo teaching himself how to use our air fryer.
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Jan 10, 2024 03:46
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 Episode 10: What are Mochtroids anyway? They sure are weird, aren't they? They never show up in another game, no explanation, etc.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:34
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I never had the manual for the game, just the cart by itself, so I must've learned the name spelling from all of my obsessive Metroid-fansite-seeking internet usage in the mid 2000s. Finally, all my hours of hard work, paying off!
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Jan 14, 2024 04:23
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 Episode 11: Faint praise for Metroid Other M One of these days I'll do an LP of Other M. I don't know if it'll be a good LP, but I wanna do it.
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Jan 16, 2024 20:01
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 Episode 12: A dangerous diversion Note: It's highly likely that we need to go back to The Hive for further progression but those enemies are so dangerous and I had no health at the time. We'll probably look there once more next recording session.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:03
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 Episode 13: Benthic bewilderment Getting lost in the dark and underwater sounds horrifying, honestly. ---------- Cooked Auto posted:This is more relevant to the recent update that hasn't been posted here yet, but you should go back to older footage and see where that chozo statue that had powerbomb or somesuch revealed when you bombed it. Oh yeah, I remember that one, we'll have to check it out later. It'll be a while before it shows up in a video though, since we did more recording this past weekend and didn't go there at all.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:52
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I actually think I figured out the solution while editing videos today but we won't get a chance to test it until our next recording session.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:58
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 Episode 14: We have no respect for vital infrastructure That elevator project is going to be set back by MONTHS now, the Space Pirate union is gonna be furious.
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Jan 27, 2024 18:05
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 Episode 15: Chilling in the Fire Temple I really love the use of the dried up enemies in this area, they tell such a story. Something's out there, but we don't know what.
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Jan 30, 2024 21:09
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Odd posted:Aw dang, those iBuffalo controllers were really good. Mine gave up the ghost last year, I had it for like 10. My new replacement is an iNNEXT and it's fine but something about the iBuffalo was just right. Thankfully it seems to be working again! I don't know what happened during recording, but here's hoping it keeps on trucking for a few more years.
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Jan 31, 2024 02:57
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 Episode 16: Majora's Mask music opinions Stone Tower Temple (upside-down) is probably my favorite dungeon theme, though Ikana Castle is also a very strong contender.
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Feb 3, 2024 20:55
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Yeah, charge beam is mostly useful early when you don't have other beams, and during boss fights after running out of Super Missiles. Otherwise firing normally is usually sufficient for most enemies.
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Feb 4, 2024 00:52
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 Episode 17: The Four Elements: Life, Fire, Ice, and Violence Those wacky Chozo.
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Feb 6, 2024 18:38
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 Episode 18: We've created an ecological disaster The space EPA is gonna have a field day with us for introducing such an awful invasive species to this place.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:50
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 Episode 19: Double Draygon My emulator choice comes back to haunt me.
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Feb 13, 2024 18:38
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 Episode 20: Baseball There was more of our Orioles talk but it was all happening before I hit the record button.
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Feb 17, 2024 18:01
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 Episode 21: A big, semi-blind laser puzzle Part of me likes this puzzle in concept but the other part doesn't because of all the back-and-forth to check your progress.
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Feb 20, 2024 18:04
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 Episode 22: Metroid maintenance engineers hard at work Give them hardhats to protect their squishy membranes!
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Feb 24, 2024 18:20
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 Episode 23: We blew up Rocky Road Ridge (and more) And that does it for the main game! But we're not done yet, as I've caught wind of something I definitely want to check out next episode... Stay tuned.
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Feb 27, 2024 23:23
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 Episode 24: An extended Beach Episode Where's all the fun in the sun? The swimsuits? The traditional smashing a watermelon on the beach? These Chozo don't know how to party at all.
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Mar 2, 2024 20:04
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 Episode 25: Puzzle Masters You wouldn't download a cryptographic key or seven, would you?
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Mar 5, 2024 18:21
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 Episode 26 (FINAL): The Perfect 99.1% Run It's just so strange that the game doesn't seem to have enough items to get to 100%. How peculiar...  Thank you for watching Subversion! I'm not going to have a video up for this thread on Tuesday but I'll be back with the first video of the next hack a week from today. -------- Unrelated to Super Metroid, if you liked my previous Ocarina of Time romhack LPs (Nimpize Adventure, Master of Time, Gold Quest, Sealed Palace) I will be streaming a bunch of Hyrule Modding's Escape Room Competition on my Youtube at 4PM EST and then again later tonight at 8PM EST. They're escape room OoT mini hacks and we're gonna have a good time solving them!
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Mar 9, 2024 19:03
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Welcome back! The next hack we're playing is Super Metroid: Searching for Items, created by Terimakasih way back in April 2005. It's very short, but it holds a certain level of significance in the community. The Metroid hacking community has some terminology to describe the way hacks are and the relevant ones here are "half hack" and "full hack". Half Hacks are hacks that build a new game on top of Zebes's existing room layouts. This was mostly due to editor limitations early on, as well as the general difficulty of hacking the game at the time. The world layout and map screen will be nearly identical to the vanilla game, but the contents of the rooms will often be changed. Half hacks are much more commonly seen in the early days of SM hacking, though you still see a handful of them pop up these days as either first projects or challenge hacks. Full Hacks are the hacks that change both room layouts and map layouts. Subversion was an example of a full hack, as it was completely different from the original in all ways. Most people attempt to make full hacks these days because not being restricted to the original game's layout allows for much more creativity. However, it's a lot harder to make full hacks due to the extensive requirements of working directly with the game's code, and it's only within the last few years that editors like SMART (mentioned during the Subversion LP) have made these processes more accessible. Searching for Items, then, is notable for being one of, if not the first, full hack completed and uploaded for all to play. It's not very long, and is only about 1/3 the size of the original game, but it crams the full 100% of items into its world and sets the player loose to uncover its secrets. It would hold on to this title for about a month, when the very next month, in May 2005, Super Metroid Legacy was released and became, in many peoples' eyes, the first "true" full hack by virtue of having all the qualities of a full hack described above and being about the same size as the original game. SFI has held up over the years, being a quick and easy hack to play with a constant dopamine drip from all the frequent items you'll be picking up. It's fun to take the time to go back and see an era of hacking this game when it was notable just to be able to do this at all, and that's what this quick LP is gonna look to do.  Episode 1: Door tube appreciation
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Mar 16, 2024 17:12
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 Episode 2: Becoming ungovernable by 2D space Uh-oh. Contrary to the tone set at the end of the video, I've made the decision to continue playing the rest of this hack because it's not exactly very hard or time-consuming to get back to where we were. We just haven't recorded the remainder of it yet, so in the meantime, the next few videos will be of a different hack I had planned to start after finishing SFI, then we'll return to this.
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Mar 19, 2024 17:08
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So right around 10:25 in the video you'll see me fall down, shoot open a door, and go into it. What ends up happening is that the camera scroll doesn't move over quickly enough to be in the right position for a room transition to take place, so I end up transitioning the room while the door tiles are misaligned with the screen edge. This seems to screw everything up going forward and the result is what we saw in the video. A hard reset will fix the issue, but like I said there are no working save points in this hack so we were left with no option but to stop.
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Mar 19, 2024 22:38
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Well, after the slight debacle at the end of SFI episode 2, we decided to jump ahead in my list of hacks to check out and play Super Metroid: Eris next. Eris is a hack released in 2009 by Digital Mantra, or just DMantra for short. It was later updated again in 2012 with a slightly different version of the hack that was supposed to be more polished, and had some additional content towards the end. It's a very compact hack, taking place almost entirely on a single "world map", and in its original release was very open with its progression. The 2012 release seems to rein in some of that openness though, to the point where my memories of the original and the update were conflated together when playing. We're checking out the 2012 version, for the record. The biggest thing that defined Eris at the time was the incredible effort spent crafting each room. In 2009 there was nothing like it visually. Every room is meticulously designed using layering effects to show more detail than would normally be possible. Plenty took note, and this hack soon became an inspiration to many looking to up their visual design goals in their own hacks, myself included. That said, there are some big problems with the overly detailed environments in terms of actual playability that we will see as we play. The biggest one is often "where is the actual ground?" Spoiler alert, this is not going to be a full playthrough. Our opinions on the hack and why we're not finishing it will become clearer through the three videos we recorded. Try to enjoy the ride regardless, and definitely check out the hack for yourself if it looks at all interesting to you.  Episode 1: Questioning the freshness of salad
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Mar 23, 2024 17:24
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Einander posted:I think visually busy games like this probably work better when you're playing them yourself. If you're experiencing the narrowed perspective and increased focus of someone playing an action game, then you take in fewer of the extraneous details and it all becomes more reasonable. So I can see a difference of opinion between those who've played it before and those who haven't, even if I think the complaints about the visuals are justified. This is something that comes up in one of the other two videos as a factor I never even thought to consider. For Artix and PW, the high level of detail combined unfavorably with discord's screenshare function, where it's not always going to be super smooth and can also have blurriness due to bitrate and stream issues. As the player, that's not a concern, but for a live viewer it causes problems. In the end, that's a big part of why I decided not to finish the hack with them, because we were already not feeling it and I didn't want to put them through the rest if the experience wasn't going to be great visually either.
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Mar 23, 2024 23:27
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 Episode 2: The nostalgia goggles are slipping off Featured: My slow realization that this hack may not actually be as good as I remembered it, especially with commentators and actively trying to be entertaining.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:58
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