Should you bother?

• Atari
• 2600 - Sure, why not
• 5200 - Nah
• 7800 - Only for Ninja Golf
• Lynx - Awful physical experience; emulate it if you must
• Jaguar - Not worth the money; emulate it for some interesting stuff though
• Jaguar CD - See Jaguar
• Nintendo
• NES - Nostalgia and speedrunning
• GB - However you do it, just make sure you get the display right
• SNES - 100% original, 100% awesome
• VB - Must be experienced; nothing else like it
• N64 - Original, FPGA, or emulator; all good
• GBC - Meh
• GBA - Yup
• GC - Meh; get a Wii
• DS - Yup
• Wii - Original hardware or Wii U for everything except Metroid Prime 3
• 3DS - Must be experienced; nothing else like it
• Wii U - Missed potential; leave it be
• Switch - Stellar platform
• Switch 2 - Waiting for a better display
• SEGA
• SG1000 - What
• Master System - Meh
• Genesis - Generally better on emulators
• Game Gear - Awful physical experience; emulate it for some interesting stuff
• SEGA CD - Seriously underrated
• 32X - Missed potential; leave it be
• Saturn - 100% original, 100% awesome
• Dreamcast - 100% original, 100% awesome; punched way above its weight
• Sony
• PS1 - Get a PS2
• PS2 - Yup
• PSP - Sure, why not
• PS3 - Yup
• Vita - Sure, why not
• PS4 - Yeah, but get a PS5 with a disc drive
• PS5 - Yup, see PS4
• Microsoft
• XBOX - Yup
• 360 - Yup
• XBOne - Kinect only
• Series - Sure, why not
• Misc.
• Intellivision/ColecoVision/Odyssey - Meh
• Vectrex - Must be experienced; nothing else like it
• 8- and 16-bit computers - You're a special kind of nerd, and that's alright
• Neo Geo - Totally fine on emulators, but original hardware is so cool
• 3DO - Pretty good, but most of it's also on PC and better there

Interesting that the vast majority of these classic platforms really only have 20 or so exclusive games worth playing; everything else has a comparable port elsewhere or a PC version. Most people just wanna experience cool art though, and that's never been easier than it is right now - almost all of this stuff can be fully enjoyed on a $20 thrift store computer. I hope collectors have fun and enjoy the hunt though, and speculators can get bent. 

Anyway...

I'd forgotten about this bit of nostalgic wish-fulfillment.

DOOM: The Dark Ages going eldritch horror is rad, and way better than whatever that floating mancave in Eternal was supposed to be. Finished the game and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Finally started Jedi Survivor, and yeah, I'd missed this.

Prime Hunters is kinda meh, though still impressive for the DS.

Picked-up Looney Tunes: Sheep Raider for too much money (but less than the going rate), Game Builder Garage and Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (360) for a reason able amount of money, and then decided to finally dig further into Fable II because it's supposedly works well enough on Xbox One, and... It hasn't aged as well as I'd hoped. I really enjoyed the first game on PC - small and flawed, but overall fun and well-built - but II just kinda feels like a slog of navigating eggshells and busywork at the cost of some pretty janky system implementations. It's still fun and interesting, and sports great performances; but then the menus are just infuriatingly unpolished, the moral choices lack nuance, and the writing is questionable - and none of that is a 2008 thing like the bloom, or the motion blur, or the combat system, or the animations, or the dialogue timing, or the checkpoints...  Really though, I just wish it ran smoother.

Hey Lizardcube, could you do Comix Zone next? Thanks.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is fine, regardless of how you play it - but it's also visually drab and poorly written. I'm not sure if I like its cliches less than Echoes', but neither lives-up to the first one. Beyond isn't exactly a breath of fresh air so much as it's just oxygen - a huge jump in production values, especially for secondary characters; Vi-O-La is more engaging than the cockpit in Corruption, and conveys a sense of scale much more effectively; the handholding is a little more obnoxious, but nothing new. I've finished the game and thoroughly enjoyed it - up there with Zero Mission, II, Fusion, and Dread; not quite Prime or Super. The scene when VUE-995 apologises to Samus and she just shrugs? Perfection. The ending though... Trash. I don't mean that the final fight or the conclusion of the story are bad, but the overwrought combat patterns and inconsistent conventions were maddening - i.e. Don't read too much into things; just dodge and shoot... Until you do need to literally read into them, and then risk repeating a significant amount of gameplay for no real reason. It's absolutely boneheaded design marring an otherwise brilliant game. Oh, and the secret ending? No spoilers, but that might be the stupidest origin story I've ever seen. Beyond is still an overall win, but talk about tripping over the finish line.

I've finished Other M as well, and it's mostly really good. The game doesn't play quite like anything else; Sakamoto clearly wanted to try something new in the wake of the original Prime trilogy, and he almost pulled it off. The heinously bad script needs a re-write, and that means those awful performances would need to be re-recorded. While the myriad hackneyed metaphors should be toned way down, I don't think they have to go entirely away - there's an interesting story here that explores concepts like creation and responsibility in terms of motherhood; independence and cooperation in terms of choosing to respect a particular chain of command; all of that in the context of AI, genetic engineering, and military applications thereof. This one's due a proper re-working - existing fan projects look solid, but I'd like to see Nintendo fix this mistake themselves - same story and setting, new script, edited cutscenes, and no more motion controls. Oh, and the epilogue is great right up until the end; it's like they realised what they had done, gave us what we actually wanted, and then pulled the rug out from beneath us at the last moment... I honestly laughed out loud. Anyway, Prime Hunters next.

Finally getting around to trying the Oasis Driver for Windows Mixed Reality on Windows 11 25H2, and  it's pretty rad and I'm pretty grateful.

Found a Ducky One 2 60% Mini RGB (DKON2061ST) with TTC Gold Pink switches for $6 at a thrift store - missing three keycaps, pretty dirty, and not responding to every key-press. Figured worth cleaning-up and maybe getting a new set of caps if it's serviceable. A quick clean yielded some improvement, but input's still spotty and I'm not super-interested in soldering anything. Maybe some compressed air into each switch as a last resort.

Also found a NETGEAR EAX12 AX1600 Wi-Fi Range Extender/AP/Adapter for $6 - no point in replacing the AC1200 TP-Link I picked-up the other week since it's currently only extending an AC router, but I couldn't pass-up a $94-savings.

ALSO found a D-Link DCS-8010LH for $5 - which was particularly refreshing after recently fighting with a set of Blink cameras for someone else, trying to get them to work without a subscription. Pro Tip: The full local storage option is only available on Blink if you don't have any kind of plan active, including the initial free trial 🙄