No need.

Do you need an Analogue Pocket if you just want to play Game Boy/Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance games? No. Get a GBA SP, and it's fine if it's not an AGS-101.

Do you need an Analogue Pocket if you just want to play Game Gear games? Kinda; it really is the best way to go, but for $250 + shipping (and duty if you're not in the US) you'd better really like your Game Gear games.

Do you need an Analogue Pocket if you just want a region-free TurboExpress with a proper display + SuperGrafx compatibility, a Game Gear that isn't completely washed-out, a Lynx that actually fits in your hands, and a back-lit NGPC? 100% yes, and it's absolutely worth the $350 + shipping (and duty if you're not in the US) if you can afford it. Throw-in the GB/GBC/GBA compatibility, save states, custom palettes, display options, screenshots, Nanoloop, GB Studio, and the developer tools... Plus MIDI, analog sync, and link cables... And a dock plus wireless controller support... Yeah, the Pocket's kinda nuts.

I got a yellow one.

No, we will not let you go!

My EndeavourOS Galileo in-place update left some stuff from previous configurations, I didn't want to figure-out how best to clean it up, and I did want to try the new installer, so... Fresh start. Mounting the old system in the new live environment kinda broke the installer (I wanted to check something before I wiped the drive) and offline installations failed consistently (maybe my image was corrupt?); online installations were fine though. KDE Plasma as the new default isn't my favourite, so I tried LXQt... Yikes. So I switched to KDE Plasma, immediately reverted to the Artemis wallpaper, installed Steam, my VPN connection, Remmina, FreeRDP, and the VMware Horizon client. While everything was pretty slick, KDE just wasn't doing it for me; I want something with a mostly-default experience that clicks with me. Budgie feels a little undercooked and a little too Windows; i3 is really neat, but I don't need a tiling window manager; GNOME and its derivatives all feel too chunky... So back to Xfce it is.

Finally...

Finished Cyberpunk 2077, went for "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and the "The Sun". Did everything but the NCPD Scanner Hustles... There're so many! Character was pretty balanced at level 11~15 for everything. Good game; impressive. Haven't bought Phantom Liberty yet though; need a break before I go back.

Also finished Tears of the Kingdom and got the good ending. Loved it. Back to Age of Calamity.

Accidentally bought SIGIL II for €6.66 because I didn't see that there was a free version like the first one... Oh well, worth $10 for both.

Finding programs and disk images for the Atari ST that work on actual floppies has been trickier than expected, but not impossible. Not really interested in buying a card reader for it.

Also, Epic discounting everything I bought during the last epic coupon promotion less than a month later kinda sucks... Could've saved ~$35

4160 Sixteen/Thirty-two

Didn't end-up getting the 1040 STFM, but found another and talked the guy down even cheaper than the first one. Picked it up and saw a 1040 STE badge on it, but the bottom label said it was a Canadian STFM. Opened it up, cleaned it out, saw a lot of extra wires under the power supply, powered it on, navigated GEM (TOS 1.02) with the keyboard (no mouse yet), dug-out some old double density 3.5" floppy disks, ran a system info app, and turns-out it's been upgraded to 4MB of RAM - not bad! Played some games and they were better than I expected, but I suspect it'll spend most of its time as an objet next to the 128 and the 800XL. Now to track-down a reasonalby-priced Amiga 500.

Bootleg MVS carts sold before I could get to them. The Simpsons: Hit & Run holds-up surprisingly well.

Voxel Doom II with Parallax Textures was a delightful surprise.

Almost done TotK, Mad Max, Cyberpunk, and Flynn: Son of Crimson.

The Touryst was everything I'd hoped for, and more. Just perfect.

Picked-up the System Shock remake, Alan Wake II, and Jedi: Survivor - started Alan Wake II; looks incredible at 1080p, medium preset/RTX low.

Jank

Still playing Tears of the Kingdom, still janky, still love it, still think Breath of the Wild is the better game. Also playing through Wind Waker HD, and I think maybe I just don't really like the 3D Zelda games from Ocarina of Time through Skyward Sword.

Mario Kart 8 Wave 5 is fine.

Quake 2 Enhanced was a really nice surprise; played through Quake 64 and Call of the Machine - both were solid fun, but I think I prefer what MachineGames did with Dimension of the Past and Dimension of the Machine.

Voxel DOOM II is fantastic.

Started playing Mad Max again on a whim and stuck with it this time. Really, really well made.  Arkham Asylum/Far Cry/GTA, kind of repetitive both visually and in terms of gameplay but still impressive and viscerally fun nonetheless. Inspired me to revisit RAGE, and it was even better than I remembered. Its limitations are obvious, but id did well within them. I'd love to see it remastered with nicer textures and a proper ending, but I'd settle for some optimisations and bugfixes.

Boltgun's charm wears-off quickly; I'm only maybe a third of the way through the game, and it's becoming a chore.

The RoboCop: Rogue City demo is fascinating - the shooting-gallery action level, the ridiculous police station, and walking the beat are all pretty dead-on classic RoboCop, but also aren't all that fun after a while... Like, the developers clearly worked very hard on a limited budget, but I question whether this needed to exist.

The rest of my Psychonauts 2 Fig backer rewards finally showed-up after, like, eight years - a nifty keychain on a USB drive containing Psychonauts 1 & 2, all in a little Altoids-style tin, and a pin to go along with the Raz figurine. Didn't really need any of that though; just happy the game was made and they nailed it.

My partner hunted-down a SEGA IR 7000 for my birthday, and it's pretty rad. The interface is almost impossible to use for anything other than the battle game, but still glad to own one after all these years :)

Paid decent prices for a bunch of stuff lately:

• Blinx 2 (XBOX)
• Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (DS)
• Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
• Super Mario Maker (Wii U)
• Vice: Project Doom (NES)

...And for Vectrex, complete copies of:

• Bedlam
• Heads-Up Action Soccer
• Spike
• Spinball
• Web Wars

Also tracked-down a bootleg MVS Nightmare in the Dark cartridge and an original copy of The Simpsons: Hit & Run for PC; hope to have those soon.

Have an offer on the table for a straight trade of my loose copy of ClayFighter: Sculptor's Cut for a complete NA copy of Snatcher for SEGA CD... Tempting, even if I do think Snatcher is overvalued.

Finally, got a line on a really good price for an Atari 1040 STFM... Never been a fan of the platform, but like a 500 being the only Amiga you'd really need to get the true experience, the 1040 STFM seems to be the Atari equivalent... Just not sure what I'd do with it.

Moving on...

Final router list:

• 1x Hitron CODA-4582     (AC1750, Gigabit, USB 3.0, MU-MIMO, MoCA)
• 1x D-Link DIR-867         (AC1750, Gigabit, no USB, MU-MIMO)
• 1x TP-Link Archer A7 (AC1750, Gigabit, USB 2.0)
• 1x Netgear R6300v2 (AC1750, Gigabit, USB 3.0+2.0)
• 1x D-Link DIR-859   (AC1750, Gigabit, no USB)
• 2x Linksys EA6400  (AC1600, Gigabit, USB 3.0)
• 1x Linksys EA6300V1 (AC1600, Gigabit, USB 3.0)
• 1x D-Link DIR-822   (AC1200, 10/100, no USB)
• 2x Linksys EA3500  (802.11n, Gigabit, USB 2.0)
• 1x Dynex DX-NRUTER (802.11n, 10/100, no USB)

Using the DIR-867, keeping the Archer as a backup, and playing around with the Hitron as an AP/MoCA client/NAS interface. The EA6x00s could also be good NAS interfaces, but I don't really need that for myself. Was gonna set-up the EA3500s as range extenders for my buddy's place, but it turned-out his existing hardware was good enough and just misconfigured. Another guy wanted anything AC for a different place, but after I gave him the Netgear R6300v2 he said he only wanted MU-MIMO. Had a props master offer to take everything else... Gonna see if she can provide a good home for them, otherwise I'll donate them back to a local thrift shop with instructions attached.

Unpacking was a really fun game, Boltgun is solid but it's no Prodeus, and Mighty Doom doesn't suck.

moomeemo

Picked-up Need for Speed Unbound on sale, and it gets worse the more I play it... What initially seemed like a questionable incremental update to Heat ended-up feeling more and more like a truly odd step backward for the series. The driving feels really good, but I'm not a huge fan of the stylised presentation; Rydell's dialogue is kinda funny, but I'm not into the story whatsoever; the inability to sell or transfer parts is infuriating, but upgrades and customisations are still satisfying when you can afford them again; the cop chases are mercifully easier to escape, but the means of escape rarely make sense; the progression system is so broken that it's actually possible to go back a day if you find yourself running out of money or retries at the end of the week, but it does break-up gameplay and heat levels nicely... Oh, and speaking of retries, YOU SHOULD NOT LIMIT RETRIES WHEN THE PHYSICS AND AI ARE SO RANDOM. Aside from that, I've had cops spot me through walls, the camera get stuck in other cars, brutal performance dips and crashes when changing graphics settings, etc... Also, they changed the Ultra preset in the latest patch and it affected performance on my setup; only found out what was happening after checking patch notes; that's not fun. Anyway, I'm ~25 hours in, and I'm just kinda done with it; it'd like to explore the rest, but it barely feels worth it.

Also got Tears of the Kingdom; Amazon pre-order took longer to arrive than if I'd just ordered it on release day. Awesome. Anyway, huge game with so many awe-inspiring moments in just the first few hours, really stoked to get further into it... And also incredibly angry at how Ultrahand somehow makes the whole experience feel janky, how easy it is to fuck-up and get stuck early on only to have to die or reload to try again, how ridiculous Fuse makes some weapons look, and how baffling some of the default control scheme changes from Breath of the Wild are; short-press to engage power, long-press to select? What was wrong with the old way? I could go on, but at the end of the day - unlike Unbound - I'm actually going to tough this one out.

Would love to get games like Diablo 4, Final Fantasy XVI, Jedi: Survivor, Redfall (just to see), Street Fighter 6, System Shock, etc... Might even treat myself to Boltgun and Dredge; but I still need to play Death Stranding, Disco Elysium, Far Cry 5, God of War, GTA IV & V, Guardians of the Galaxy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption I & II, Sifu, Obduction, Outer Wilds, The Outer Worlds, A Plague Tale... Ergh.

Finally got direct fiber (50Mbps up/down) to my parents' house for $20-less per month that what they were paying for 6Mbps DSL. Also more than tripled the connection speed at my place for an extra $9 a month after all the recent CRTC crap ruined the good deal I had with my ISP. Found a DIR-867 (AC1750 MU-MIMO) for $3.50 CDN, so that replaced my EA6400... Pretty happy with how that all turned-out.

From last time, the Vertex 2 seems to be holding-up, Golf Story got ridiculously difficult toward the end so I walked away from it, and wrapping-up gigs and side jobs in Cyberpunk is still fun in small doses.

13 Years

My 13-year-old 64GB OCZ Vertex 2 may finally be experiencing some issues; it's the system drive in my FirePro V8800 CrossFire Pro setup, and just kinda disappeared the other day... Showed-up again later, so I dunno, maybe motherboard? Tests came back clean though, sticking with it, did a fresh installation of Windows 10 22H2 (the last Windows 10!), see how long that lasts.

Been picking away at Golf Story (gets pretty frustrating by the end), Flynn: Son of Crimson, and Cyberpunk; revisited Arcane Dimensions; messing around with Half-Life 1: Ray Traced; oh, and MyHouse is absolutely incredible!

Mostly busy with work though - building Horizon clusters, render farms full of 4xGPU nodes, dedicated fibre running across the city, migrating from CentOS to Ubuntu, etc...

Bad Latin

Finally, after tens of hours spread over multiple years, I finished Ys VIII. It's good, the last chapter is genuinely interesting, the Origin of Life battle looks absolutely stunning on the Vita's OLED display, and I didn't really enjoy myself very much at all on my way there. It all felt so rambling; a scattered collection of boring chores strewn about a fake open world... This whole series is pretty linear, and all VIII did was spread things out. You should probably still play it though.

Started IX on PC immediately after and I dunno how much the 1440p VRR display helped after all the slowdown on the Vita, but I was immediately engaged. It's very much an Ys game - full of questionable translations, convoluted backstories, and a structure almost identical to VIII's - and this time I loved it. Everything was smaller, more focused and streamlined, and just made no bones about being a pretty linear action-RPG. My love for the series is rekindled, I'm stoked for X, and I may even try to get into Origin again.

Also restarted Panzer Dragoon Saga; finished the first disc, and it's still weird how it remixed the RPG formula of the time. I really like it, but it's difficult to focus on how the battle system seems to be the real star here while I'm oddly warping between towns, camps, and arenas...

Also wrapped-up Mario Tennis Aces - solid game.

Otherwise, Diablo II Resurrected and Metroid Prime Remastered are incredible.

Return to the Return of...

Loved Deathloop; felt less like a roguelike than Mooncrash - way more streamlined, and I enjoyed it more for it. Had a great time just exploring. Highly recommend.

Guardians of the Galaxy was next, and I stalled on that pretty quickly. I think it was that they wanted me to explore the area, scan everything in a specific scanning visor view, and have a target-practice competition with Rocket at the same time - and there didn't seem to be any way to really balance it all. It's slick though, and I'll come back to it.

Was working through Mario Tennis Aces, but some of the challenges got a little too specific and I found myself getting distracted...

...Mostly by finally getting back to Ys VIII; Chapter 6 really brings the rest of the game together, but I'm still feeling pretty disappointed by the feel of this entry overall. It's a good game though, and absolutely sprawling in every sense.

Also restarted Return of the Obra Dinn after only getting about an hour in the first time - and finished it in a day. Lives-up to the hype, but I did rely on process-of-elimination guesses confirmed by the game's "scoring" system rather than actual evidence.

Grabbed Flynn: Son of Crimson on sale thanks to a recommendation from Penny Arcade, and it's good! Nothing earth-shattering, but really solid.

Steam's SNK publisher sale got me the Samurai Shodown Kiwami Pack and KoF XV + Team Pass 1 & 2 + Classic Leona & Garou: MotW Terry for ~$50; that should be fun.

Cadence of Hyrule isn't doing it for me; FAST RMX is slick, but not grabbing me quite like its inspirations; Golf Story is weird and rough-around-the-edges, and I dig it; Good Job! is a lot of fun; excited to pick-up a physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered; and glad that a new generation is going to get a chance to play Ghost Trick!

...And finally, found a Netgear R6300v2 for $4 and couldn't pass it up; going to a friend.

Uncharted: Eerie Indiana

Finally played Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy - ridiculous, contrived, repetitive, formulaic... Loved all of it. I needed some good ol' linear action after playing through so many mixed-genre games lately; was considering getting to Guardians of the Galaxy or God of War next, but opted for Deathloop instead Not sure what I think of it so far, but I'm barely an hour in. Also been poking-around Down in Bermuda with my partner; it's cute.

Also ended-up getting Ys IX from the Epic Games Store because it was ~$40 on-sale plus a coupon. Eh.

Got a Satiator for Christmas; very cool, and Panzer Dragoon Saga can stay in its case now :)

Oh, and apparently I'm a Contributor on PriceCharting; that's real swell!