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The Nintendo 64, whose first 2D platform game was Mischief Makers

Mischief Makers is a 1997 side-scrolling platform video game, the first for the Nintendo 64 (pictured), developed by Treasure and published by Enix and Nintendo. The player assumes the role of Marina, a robot who grabs, shakes, and throws objects in her journey to rescue her creator from the planet's emperor. The game is presented in 2.5D, with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds behind 2D gameplay. A 12-person team developed the game over two years as Treasure's first title for a Nintendo console. It was shown at the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo before its release. Reviews were mixed, with praise for its inventiveness, personality, and boss fights, but criticism for its brevity, low difficulty, low replay value, sound, and harsh introductory learning curve. Retrospective reviewers disagreed with the originally poor reception, and several highlighted Marina's signature "Shake, shake!" sound bite. In 2009, GamesRadar called it "possibly the most underrated and widely ignored game on the N64". (Full article...)

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Shannon Lucid

... that when astronaut Shannon Lucid (pictured) returned to Earth after six months in orbit, she was presented with a box of M&M's?
... that the Regensburg Botanical Society, founded on 14 May 1790, is the world's oldest extant botanical society?
... that decades after its closure, the station house of the Chicago "L"'s Madison station would house a hot dog stand?
... that before entering politics, Romina Pérez worked at the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research, which "became a 'nursery' for intellectual and political cadres of the Movement for Socialism"?
... that despite his defeat at the battle of Pitgaveny, both of Duncan's sons would later rule Scotland?
... that Kline's Mill is a rare surviving example of an Oliver Evans milling system from 1794?
... that the hoof of Richard Thomas Glyn's horse is used as an ashtray by officers of the Royal Regiment of Wales?
... that the Mesopotamian goddess Iqbi-damiq had an illness named after her?

In the news

Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak (pictured) succeeds Liz Truss as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Xi Jinping is named General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for a third term after the conclusion of the Party Congress.
Ulf Kristersson is elected Prime Minister of Sweden following a four-party agreement.
Hurricane Julia leaves more than 90 people dead across South and Central America.

On this day

October 26: Twin Holy Birthdays begin (Baháʼí Faith, 2022)

Ida B. Wells

1341 – The Byzantine army proclaimed chief minister John VI Kantakouzenos emperor, triggering a civil war between his supporters and those of John V Palaiologos, the heir to the throne.
1892 – Ida B. Wells (pictured) began to publish her research on lynching in the United States, for which she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm proclaimed himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam after defeating former emperor Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum supervised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu.
1955 – The first buildings in the sacred Oyasato-yakata complex of the Japanese new religious movement Tenrikyo in Tenri, Nara, were completed.
1977 – Somali hospital cook Ali Maow Maalin began displaying symptoms of smallpox, becoming the last person known to be naturally infected by the disease.

Cuthbert of Canterbury (d. 760)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d. 1902)
Yamashita Yoshitsugu (d. 1935)

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Arthur Kornberg (March 3, 1918 – October 26, 2007) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid" (RNA and DNA) together with Spanish biochemist and physician Severo Ochoa of New York University.

Photograph credit: NIH History Office; restored by Bammesk

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