Happy Birthday to Me!

Dreams is lovely; had to make space though, so Destiny went.

Finally sat down with Transistor, loved it, and I've 100%-ed it since. Was always into the aesthetic, but kept stalling on the gameplay - not really sure why though. Pyre's next, but also temped to go back to Bastion... Hades eventually.

Final build:

• $13 Dell Optiplex 5050 mini-tower (i5-6500/8GB dual-channel/256GB M.2)
• $40 4GB Radeon RX 560 (2nd-best AMD card that fits in the 240W Dell)
• $7 Wooting 60HE
• $2 Logitech G203
• $2 Bluetooth adapter
• EndeavourOS 

Finally dug-into Nintendo 64DD stuff:

• Mario Artist: Polygon Studio - Go Go Park is fun, Sound Bomber is WarioWare, and Jikken World is surprisingly deep.
• F-Zero X Expansion Kit is nice to have, but haven't spent enough time with the original to really appreciate it yet.

SEGA CD support and SNES savestates on Pocket are huge additions. BIOS 2.21X doesn't seem to behave with the SEGA CD core, so I've been playing with 2.11X

Panorama Cotton for Switch was on sale, so I own that now.

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is great; way more in there to do than I expected since the Master Key stuff isn't just a re-tread. Not sure if I'll ever beat Xal'Goroth the Imprisoned or the Master Arenas, but I'm alright with that.

Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers were released on my birthday! They work on original Virtual Boys, too! Both are really good, and seem to push the hardware further than a lot of what we saw in the '90s.

Dawn of the Machine is great; reminiscent of Arcane Dimensions, but Arcane Dimensions remains one of the best video games ever created.

https://github.com/matiaszanolli/sega-vr-disasm/tree/60fps_project#current-state-july-2026 - So I was right: It doesn't work yet, but he's still working on it.

My FZ-1 3DO needs to be repaired - started with quiet audio through the rear outputs, then a dim display output, then just kinda stopped spinning discs. Hopefully just a re-cap.

Found cheap copies of Karateka for 7800 and Space Fury for ColecoVision.

Calculators; mostly just gonna use the first three for games:

• TI-83 Plus for $5 - need a data cable though.
• TI-84 Plus CE for $7 - was able to downgrade to 5.3.0
• TI-89 Titanium for $20
• HP 10bII+ for $4 - nice buttons. 

I love my automatic Mondaine, but it needs a service and I'd been looking for the right solar option anyway. Went with a Tissot PRC 100 Solar - black dial; steel case (that seems to attract light scratches pretty easily :/ ); interchangeable black leather strap, black rubber strap, and steel Milanais bracelet - because everything else solar is some combination of ugly, huge, overcomplicated, and too expensive... Until the 36mm Timex Expedition Field Post Solar comes-out at the end of the year - which now appears to be sold-out!

I'd like you to meet Mr. Pokeylope

Speaking of achievements, finally 100%'d Psychonauts on Steam... Never did show Mr. Pokeylope to all of the campers before.

Not exactly useful, but still a neat curiosity: Found a 2MB Compaq Matrox MGA Millennium + 2MB WRAM expansion module + Quadrant Cinemaster C Rev 1.2C for $7 at a thrift store; neglected to grab the video cable for the MPEG-2 card from the pile though because the store was closing and they were rushing us out :/ Went back the next day, and the cable was gone - but I did find two gray/purple SN30 Retro Set controllers and a Razer Tartarus Chroma for ~$11 - the former needed a firmware update and the latter needed a thorough cleaning, but all three work great! Too bad about that Synapse software though... Ew. Also found an original, $200 Wooting 60HE keyboard for $7 at a different thrift store - it needed a cleaning and a keycap, plus one of the LEDs doesn't do blue very well; but otherwise works perfectly... Now if only I liked 60% keyboards :/ Oh, and a Casio EV-510 for $5 - always wanted something like that, and this one works great with its 3.5mm AV input.

Upgraded to Android 17, and... Time for GrapheneOS? Getting closer.

EndeavourOS + NVIDIA 10-series + NVIDIA drivers + Steam on the OptiPlex was simple enough, but still annoying; and performance lags behind Windows 11. Round two with i3 was unnecessary - still don't need tiling in my life; back to Xfce. Keeping an eye out for a really cheap RX 560 or 6400 someday, but dual-booting from two SSDs for now. Windows 11 on the 2014 X1 Carbon was getting painful, so Endeavour's on there now too. Also playing with lighter options on the HP - Archcraft is ~12GB smaller than Endeavour out of the box, but the default polybar configuration is a little janky on the 1366x768 display and managing Plank can be a bit of a chore.

DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations gets awkward once the spear shows up... More buttons, parry timing adjustments... Keyboard gymnastics... In DOOM :( Feels kinda like Eternal again, and that's just not what I'm here for. Also, in order to use the Tartarus, at least two keys need to be re-mapped... More gymnastics. It's all basically an extended tutorial though, so I'm still really enjoying the DLC.

AMOK on Saturn is still so good; gotta get the PC version running again, and I'd really like to see how far along the 32X version was.

Decent prices at a couple of local stores on:

• AH-3 Thunderstrike (SCD) - Didn't realise it was different from the Amiga and DOS versions - thanks, Core!
• Battlecorps (SCD) - More Core! I just really like this one; very of-its-time.
• Soulstar (SCD) - The best of Core? Always so expensive; saved ~$100 off the usual prices though.
• Real Pinball (3DO) - More exclusives! 
• VR Stalker (3DO) - Another exclusive; also, an American Laser Games title that doesn't use a lightgun.
• Dreams (PS4) - A few things I'd like to try-out on there while we still can.
• Foamstars (PS5) - Free Splatoon from Square? Sure, why not.

Underachiever?

Small computers have always been more expensive compared to full desktops, and the latest Steam Machine is a welcome departure from the trend; beyond that, I know nobody likes hearing "It's not for you", but that argument's always been worth exploring and it feels appropriate here - the new Steam Machine's not going to replace enthusiasts' gaming PCs, custom-built or otherwise; it's not going to replace phones or consoles for casual players; it's not going to replace anything - it's going to offer a turn-key baseline for people who want to enter the PC video game realm. There'll be overlap with all of the above, but there's a specific niche that provides a telling perspective when considered alongside Steam Deck hardware sales numbers in context with console hardware sales numbers. Underserved users get attention and Steam makes its cost back on each unit, while Steam Store penetration and sales dictate the project's sustainability.

Finally sat-down with the System Shock remake, and I am grateful or it. I played the original in the '90s, and it was just so rough. I love the new aesthetic and I only cooled a little on the experience during the last few sections (gameplay changes drastically, and some of the backtracking becomes a chore), but was still satisfied by the end... I just wish any of the Epic Games Achievements had triggered :/

Got Sonic Superstars for just under $13 CDN, and it feels awful - like Sonic 4 all over again... And people liked this? Sonic fans are weird.

Found Desert Falcon for 7800, as well as Pole Position and Star Castle for Vectrex at a game stall in a weird local mall - they supposedly also had a copy of Fortress of Narzod at some point, but may have sold it; need to go back with a proper list and more cash, regardless.

Took four months, but I found a use for it!

I keep running into minor post-update issues with Arch on old hardware and on WSL. Switched WSL over to Debian; not sure about the Core 2 Quad yet, but I did find a Dell OptiPlex 5050:

• Core i5 6500
• 2x4GB 2400MT/s DDR4 (@ 2133MT/s)
• 250GB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
• 250GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD
• Windows 11 Pro

...For $12.99 at a thrift store! That half-height 2GB GeForce GT 1030 I found in February fits in there perfectly, the SATA SSD'll go somewhere else, and it's all really quiet. Cheapest you're gonna find all of that is ~$300.

Forza Horizon 5 is great, but I still prefer Need for Speed in terms of control and feel. Also, a bunch of top-tier cars were free or gifted right away (I guess I am joining a few years late) so I kinda didn't have to try at all, and just focused on signs and stories.

Anyway, watches: Timex for everyone, Casio for nerds, Swatch for dorks, solar for aficionados, automatic for connoisseurs, spring drive for the fancypants, and then anything else over ~$1000 is either an investment, a flex, or a mistake. Seriously, get a Timex or a Casio that suits you, and you're set; Swatch is a fashion statement; just about every brand makes really nice solar options; mod a cheap Seiko into whatever you like, if you must. Personally? I have an old automatic Mondaine Swiss Railways watch, a gold-tone Bulova Computron, a Seiko 5Y66-0AA0, a Mistura Juno Wood, a Casio EFA-124, a Fossil FS-4234, and an assortment of digital and analog quartz Timexes. Would love a Milgauss or a Sky-Dewller; would be more than happy with some of the current Presage models.

Minimal

Deals:

• 67%-off Powerstar Golf
• 65%-off Forza Horizon 5 Premium 
• 88%-off Destiny 2: Legacy Collection (2025)
• Amiga A520 for $40
• Found an Orico 4-bay, USB 3.0, SATA drive enclosure + RAID controller for $8 - appears to be an older 9548U3? Needs a power adapter.

Normal price:

• Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights (3DS) - Underappreciated, still cheap.
• Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch) - Didn't notice it was PAL though :/
• Headhunter (DC) - Has aged surprisingly well!

Dreamcast games that North America should've gotten because minimal localisation required:

• Aqua GT
• Capcom vs. SNK 2
• Cool Cool Toon
• Cosmic Smash
• Evil Twin
• Fighting Vipers 2
• Headhunter
• Ikaruga
• Rainbow Cotton
• Rez
• Shenmue II

...Nothing there that would've saved the platform, and playing imports has always been trivial, and they ended-up on XBOX and PlayStation and Nintendo and Windows anyway; but it's still just kinda sad.

Also, PocketDoom rewrite (SC-55 samples on GUS!) and Saturn DOOM Fix Patch v0.3!

"Repair Complete" 😢

Aveum is almost really good - weird weapons but also genuinely interesting replayability because of them; don't want to replay it because of the awful writing for the main character and one supporting character though. Tonnes of optional content too, but there's such a difficulty gap for some of it that people adopted Soulsborne-style strategies that exploit things like geometry and pathfinding bugs. I did only pay a few bucks for it though, so overall pretty happy with my purchase and time spent.

Speaking of time spent, Druidstone wastes a lot of that, but I'm still enjoying it - not Grimrock levels of fun, but engaging enough that I'll come back to it after rage-quitting.

Doom Resurrection 3.5 and CD32X Fusion 3.0 (Arch-vile!) are out, and the latest PocketDoom feels pretty complete.

Junkrunner64 is really impressive and surprisingly full-featured for something developed over what appears to be only a few months. Also kinda just makes me wanna play ReCore again... I really did enjoy ReCore.

Polymega Remix is interesting, but complicated - no upgrades for original Base Unit owners? No Remix capabilities for either Base Unit? I get the potential for abuse, so at least some kind of chart outlining hardware/physical-media/software/account/cloud validation requirements or something would go a long way to selling the idea of a legal and reliable backup ecosystem.

Neo Geo AES+ is neat, but will an MVS-to-AES cartridge adapter allow old MVS cartridges to run on the new hardware and how are refresh rates gonna be sorted-out? Regardless, I do appreciate that the launch library includes some of the traditionally most expensive titles, and I'd honestly buy four of them right off the bat if I didn't already own MVS copies.

Anyway, found decent prices on:

• Omega Boost and Treasures of the Deep for Playstation
• Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max on PSP
• Tony Hawk 3 and Wakeboarding Unleashed for XBOX
• Shape Up for Xbox One - I think that's all of the Kinect exclusives now!

Act 3: Junk

Spoilers here, but I'd always wondered why Snatcher's third act kinda sucks - mostly because of the absolutely ridiculous jilted-lover contrivance - and now I know that it's 'cause it was supposed to be five acts :(

Found a positive-tipped, 9V, 1.5A power adapter at a thrift store for $4 that works with the re-capped Game Gear, so that's nice.

The Eternal Life of Goldman demo is one of the best games I've ever played.

Found-out about and bought Druidstone - I'd wondered what happened to the Grimrock devs. It's tricky.

Immortals of Aveum is totally decent - the ~7/10 average out there feels about right. Way more Metroid Prime than I expected; lots to do, though it's all pretty janky - the usual Unreal quirks, inconsistent performance at any setting, keyboard gymnastics, unnecessary random powerups, the main character, a lot of the dialogue - but nothing show-stopping.

Bought a random copy of Jeep Thrills for Wii from a thrift store because of that stupid name... I guess I should bite the bullet and finally buy Ninjabread Man :)

Virtua Racing Deluxe was my first 32X game, it still holds-up incredibly well today, the idea of an optimised version running at 40FPS is really exciting, and sega-vr-disasm promises just that. The GitHub project is missing required files though, and the documentation is inaccurate... On-purpose or careless? Even after 20+ years in DevOps, I can never tell. I sussed-out and built a compatible environment (WSL 2 + Arch + marsdev), wrote the missing .lds files myself, and made the latest ROM in spite of everything - and I honestly don't really notice a difference. It doesn't seem to run on actual hardware, and reported bugfixes don't seem to be present; but there's also no kind of build validation in the repository, so maybe I've done something wrong.

I'd heard CachyOS was fast, so I tried it with Xfce on that awful dual-core, single-thread, 1.6GHz Celeron, 4GB of RAM, eMMC, HP Stream - 14-ax010ca (ENERGY STAR) laptop... And it's not that bad as long as I don't try to do too many things at once. EndeavourOS is still a more cohesive overall experience (with Xfce, anyway), but no real complaints.

Also, PocketDoom upgraded to OPL3!