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DOOM CD32X Fusion v2.0 adds a bunch of good stuff like episode-specific intermission backgrounds for DOOM, and it brings back the low detail rendering mode which looks really good on a period-correct TV over video connections like S-Video and composite. I like that the IDKFA soundtrack can be disabled from the in-game menu, though I couldn't get that ISO to work on my SEGA CD so... Almost there, but still just wow; what an incredible project, and what a monumental achievement.

Speaking of period-correct TVs and video connections like S-Video and composite, filters like ntsc-256px/320px-svideo-scanline really are the best way to experience a lot of old games as intended. So many comparisons out there, even from respected creators, ignore the displays of the time and then old games end-up being unfairly maligned. Genesis and early Game Boy Advance games are particularly done dirty by modern documentarians on account of how those platforms compensate for their colour and brightness limitations, respectively. SEGA's colour-dithering often looks pretty rough on modern displays, and a lot of Nintendo's colour palettes do not translate well from the the unlit original GBA. I keep seeing comparisons that include titles like Mortal Kombat II on the 32X and make the backgrounds look embarrassing next to the Super Nintendo and newer; those backgrounds look so much closer to each other on their contemporary displays though, and the Genesis' higher resolution is the dealbreaker in many cases. Something like the SNES version of Aero the Acrobat may look better on a modern emulator, but capture that over S-Video and then compare it to the Genesis version... Now consider the gameplay issues introduced by the Nintendo version's limited playfield, and all of a sudden those transparency effects and Mode 7 bonus levels don't really matter. Maui Mallard is another frustrating example of prevalent, wrong-minded discourse; the SNES port is painfully broken, but people keep giving it underserved points over the Genesis version because it's being viewed through too-modern a lens. All versions of that game have their issues but the Genesis release is by far the most complete and playable, plus it looks comparable to the SNES port on a proper display. As for a prime GBA example, the alleged travesty of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure actually looks and plays really well on original hardware, and even better on something like an Analogue Pocket with the proper filter. It's akin to those comparisons of the audio output of different Genesis models - they're nowhere near as varied in reality as some of the videos make them out to be, but ignorance and clickbait tend to muddy the waters :(

Anyway, here're some modern Commodore 64 games that really impressed:

• Battle Kingdom - Venture!
• C64anabalt - Incredible port.
• Empire Strikes Back - Pretty.
• L'Abbaye des Morts - Stunning, artistic, and epic... But pretty difficult.
• Lester - MegatroidVania?
• Nixy The Glade Sprite - Looks great, but crashes a lot for me; not sure why yet.
• Ooze: The Escape - MetalStorm...troidVania?
• Powerglove - Fun!
• Puzzle Bobble - Incredible port.
• Runn 'n' Gunn - Slick!

Finished Landstalker, and I'm torn - so much potential to be an all-time, genre-defining, system showpiece... But the combat sucks (especially the trivial bosses), the menu interactions are annoying (shopkeepers repeats themselves ad nauseam), and the puzzles are asinine; that last one is made worse by the fact that so many of the game's most frustrating points could be solved with minor programming logic and visual design changes. The game otherwise boasts incredible graphics, a unique charm and aesthetic, a big world to truly explore, and some really good music. It's all worthy of a remaster à la Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap; but in the meantime it isn't helped by the Analogue Pocket's D-pad, and the idea of a dead battery erasing your progress on an original cartridge would be absolutely infuriating. For now, an emulator or an FPGA core with a good CRT filter and support for something like a Genesis 6 Button Arcade Pad or an 8BitDo M30 is the way to go.

Up next for Genesis is a toss-up between Crusader of Centy, Shadowrun, or Wonder Boy in Monster World...

Finished The Last of Us Part II; phenomenal experience. Even when things get frustrating along the way, the pay-offs are always worth it.

Can't bring myself to finish Suicide Squad... Maybe one day, but it's just so boring.

Atari 50 + DLC is a solid collection; weird pricing though - it was cheaper to buy the game and the DLC bundle on-sale than buying all of it in one bundle on-sale.

Also grabbed Space Beast Terror Fright; was really excited for a fresh take on Space Hulk, but this is brutally hard; should try with friends, 'cause I'm not making much progress on my own.

West End

Borrowed a T8 security screwdriver from a friend and got the PS3 open - four discs crammed in there! Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Don Bradman Cricket 14 (ANZ), Grand Theft Auto IV, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition; not bad! Drive doesn't take discs without holding the eject button first, and doesn't seem to read anything. Saw some damage to the bottom of the drive as well as one of the corners of the case, so I'm gonna leave the repair at that and call it a fun project.

Went back to the shop where I bought Pinball Fantasies the other week, and picked-up a few more things:

• Fantasy Life (3DS)
• Been meaning to pick this one up for a while; looks reminiscent of Ever Oasis and Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale.
• Industrial Spy: Operation Espionage (DC)
• Cheap exclusive curiosity.
• International Sensible Soccer (Jaguar)
• Unique port of a fun game, don't often see it in the wild.
• Kenseiden (SMS)
• Honestly missed this one entirely; real showpiece for the platform.
• NHL Slapshot (Wii)
• They threw this one in for free; silly exclusive curiosity.
• Pitfall: Beyond the Jungle (GBC)
• Just completing the set; awful game.
• Undercover AD2025 Kei (DC)
• Cheap exclusive curiosity.
• Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear (GB)
• Childhood memories; badass cover art and cool intro that is entirely incongruous with the in-game graphics and music. Decent platformer.

Going back to Pitfall, I now have:

• Pitfall! (2600)
• Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (2600)
• Super Pitfall (NES)
• Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (SEGA CD, 32X, Jaguar, PC)
• Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle (PS)
• Pitfall: Beyond the Jungle (GBC)
• Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (Xbox)

...Which means I guess I need:

• Pitfall (Atari 400)
• Don't think I need the 5200, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, or Intellivision releases
• Pitfall II: Arcade (SG-1000)
• Even though I can't play it; not shelling-out for a Dina 2-in-1... But maybe the Team Pixelboy ColecoVision port?
• Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (GBA)
• Pitfall: The Big Adventure (Wii)
• Pitfall! (iOS)

Otherwise, found a clean LT2323pwA in the trash, so that got wiped-down and replaced my main workshop monitor.

HEN

Had $6 that was about to expire on the Google Play store, so I bought Balatro and was immediately like, yeah, I see why people love this; but then I'd found most of the stuff, and started winning, and then started losing interest in the challenges, and then I was like well, that was a really fun week ...Kinda like Vampire Survivors.

Found a 120GB PS3 Slim mixed-in with the kitchen appliances at thrift store for $30 CDN; hooked it up to a TV off the shelf with an HDMI cable from a nearby rack, and it seemed to work so I bought it. The drive passed a surface test but the optical drive is jammed with what feels like a disc; none of the manual or forced eject options have worked, so I'm thinking multiple discs are in there. I don't have the T8 security bit to get into the drive (smallest I have is 10) so I started reading-up on the PS3 homebrew scene and wow - hybrid firmwares up to the latest release, homebrew enablers, save tools, etc... Kids have it good these days. Still gonna try to clear-out that disc drive though, and either give it away or keep it as a backup for my CECHA model.

Got a chance to do some video game shopping in the suburbs and picked-up:

• Anarchy Reigns (360)
• I don't know if I've ever finished a single PlatinumGames title, but this was $10.
• Kinect: Disneyland Adventures (360)
• Wanted the Xbox One version, but this was free.
• Midtown Madness 3 (Xbox)
• $3, no cover; no-brainer.
• Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Xbox)
• No manual, but surprisingly uncommon in these parts; plus I got to support a local shop.
• Pinball Fantasies (Jaguar)
• Didn't buy it back in the day because it's been ported to everything, but this was complete and not exorbitantly-priced; might go back for Sensible Soccer International Edition.
• Road Avenger (SEGA CD)
• Fantastic; even better than expected.
• Spawn (SNES)
• Honestly thought I already had this.

Still

Caved and bought a Gotek SFR1M44-U100 for the Amiga 500, programmed it with a USB Type C-to-A cable (I don't seem to have any A-to-A; didn't expect to have to jump unpopulated through-holes either), got it working on the Amiga, and then three blinks on the Caps Lock key... Argh. Cleaning the keyboard a little helped reduce the watchdog errors, but it's still not all that responsive; when things are working though, the whole computer works well! So I still need to disassemble and clean the keyboard, properly mount the Gotek, and convert the RGB signal to HDMI.

Found a Pictek PC244A w/Jixian Blue switches for $6 at a thrift store, and it wasn't grody; decent keyboard.

Wondering if a 5070 Ti, 5700X3D, and 16 more GB of RAM might be a sound upgrade for my main computer this year...

Burned through Wolfenstein: Youngblood solo - not as bad as I'd heard, but not great.

Pacific Drive is very good, albeit not really my kind of thing in the end.

Space Marine 2 is glorious.

The Last of Us Part II  (on PS5, not Remastered) is incredible.

Got a PlayStation Portal as a gift, and it's really cool... Kinda worried about stick drift and what happens when the service is no longer supported, but still really cool.

Getting around to finishing Landstalker here and there -  the Lake Shrine sorta sucked; onto King Nole's Labyrinth. Still curious about Lady Stalker, Alundra, and Time Stalkers though; still need to play through Shining in the Darkness and Dark Savior.

Finished SEGA AGES: Phantasy Star - still obtuse, but so much better than the original.

Makin' my way downtown...

Crackdown 3 was on-sale for $9.99 - I loved the first one as a big, silly, superhero playground; and while I just couldn't get into the second one, I very much enjoyed 3 - the new map is great, the addition of Terry Crews is genius, and I happily finished it in about a week. I couldn't help but feel like I was playing a better version of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League though - just with less story and worse graphics.

Halo Infinite was good. I felt way more invested than I had with the last few entries, even if I still thought there were some storytelling issues to work-out here. Lots of cheap deaths, and it felt more like Far Cry than Zelda; but the good far outweighed the bad, and I'm looking forward to more.

Mortal Kombat II 32X Arcade Edition was already great, but I finally tried the MSU-MD option (in an emulator; hoping for SEGA CD support) and it just makes the whole thing kind of incredible; I did not expect the SEGA CD 32X to be the best way to play DOOM and Mortal Kombat II (single-player) outside of PCs and arcades in 2024... And no, the 3DO port of MKII is not a contender with its zoomed-in sprites, Shang-Tsung-breaking CD format, and approximated gameplay.

Speaking of games that were arguably unfair upon initial release, I finished Batman and Vice: Project Doom on NES... Absolutely relied on savestates, and Batman kinda falls-off after the first few levels; Vice keeps things interesting.

Please just port it already...

I have an old 4:3 LCD TV with VGA, component, S-Video, composite, and coaxial inputs that's been great for Dreamcast-and-older consoles, but it started randomly cranking-up the volume. I took it apart to see if anything looked off with the volume button or the circuit board, but nope; no way to easily check the contact under the button either... So I ended-up disconnecting the board altogether and it's remote-control-only from here on :)

My Ryzen 5600X started to slightly overheat - cleaning-out dustbunnies and re-seating the HSF got things back under control, but I should probably replace the thermal compound.

Halo Infinite started-out really well; the first level was badass, the second was intriguing, but then it kinda felt like Far Cry... And then when I encountered my first "propaganda tower" it sorta lost me a bit.

Ripple Dot Zero works well enough on Ruffle, which is fantastic; the bonus levels are kinda broken, but everything else is pretty great and it's still one of the best 2D platformers ever.

Got Astro Bot, Princess Peach: Showtime!, and a PlayStation Portal as gifts... Not sure what I'm gonna do with the Portal yet.

The math got more complicated, Atari...

Got a Stone Age Gamer Mega EverDrive X3 (Jungle? Electricity?) Deluxe Edition for $60, and I have now played Doom CD32X Fusion on actual hardware, and I cannot elucidate the feelings that I'm feeling for 30-years-ago me. Also got me excited for Phantom Gear, if they ever finish it.

Ploughed through Halo 5, and it's fine; not as bad as I'd heard, but nothing incredible... Unless you consider how incomprehensible the opening of Halo 5 is you haven't played Spartan Ops, but then you also try to figure-out why the rest of the game seems to abandon so much of what was set-up in Spartan Ops; that's incredible. So many major plot-points feel so unceremonious here.

Honestly, I had to go back and refresh my memory on the previous games because:

• Halo: Combat Evolved
• Iconic visual design, epic story with engrossing lore, excited for more
• Halo 2
• Basically DOOM 2 - more of the same, but with more Earth
• Halo 3
• I remembered nothing except for "Floodgate" and the ending
• Halo 3: ODST
• Loved it when it was first released, probably because of the cast; couldn't tell you what happened
• Halo: Reach
• Origins! Really only remembered that final bit
• Halo 4
• Older origins! I remembered there was a lot of talking...
• Didn't play Spartan Ops until this year, and it was really disappointing to see so much crucial plot relegated to what is effectively multiplayer DLC

Finally bought Halo: Infinite, and the opening was kinda great albeit somewhat confusing. Let's see how it shapes-up.

Anyway, I forgot just how annoying Windows 10's HDR implementation is, and so Windows 11 23H2 seems like the way forward... Just need to make sure I can reliably block the 24H2 upgrade; it hasn't been great on my Surface Book, either. Proton has me thinking my next main desktop is just gonna run Arch; only holding-off on my current hardware because of the WMR headset.