In his travelogue A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor describes a stopover at an inn along the Danube, en route to Istanbul in the winter of 1933. He falls into conversation there–as Paddy is wont to do–about regional history with a local polymath. For Fermor’s benefit, the older man sketches ancient civilization out on the back of his copy of the Neue Freie Presse–the Marcomanni tribe here, the Quadi there–little circles of semi-permanent existence alongside the Danube’s sinuous line. “And suddenly, at last something happens,” exclaims the polymath, invoking Attila and his horde with a slash of graphite through the Viennese classifieds. “Everything starts changing place at full speed! Chaos!”
The sudden flurry of activity…
Sega has launched a mysterious countdown website centered around something called “C-SMASH VRS,” with the countdown set to expire on February 13 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET.
The site features a grid of gray dots on a white background, with a few dots turning orange into the triangular “Play” symbol. Once clicked, the dots create multiple shapes, sound waves, and display the countdown clock within them.
The dots–and the animations within–bear a resemblance to the animation motif of the Sega Dreamcast’s Virtual Memory Unit memory cards, though there’s no evidence to suggest any relation. “C-SMASH,” however, does resemble Cosmic Smash, a puzzle game made by Sega for arcades in 2001, which was then ported to the Sega Dreamcast in 2003. Cosmic Smash also…